‘Snake Eyes’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan

Summary

The Rewatchables – ‘Snake Eyes’ (1998)

With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan
November 11, 2025 | The Ringer Podcast Network

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Rewatchables dives into Brian De Palma’s twisty 1998 thriller Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, and Carla Gugino. Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan dissect what makes the movie an oddball but enduringly rewatchable entry in the De Palma and Cage canon. The trio explores De Palma’s cinematic style, Cage’s “safety off” mode, Sinise’s villain chops, and the strange late-‘90s energy of the film, touching on everything from iconic long shots to the fate of Atlantic City–and why movies like this don’t get made anymore.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Brian De Palma's Unique Style

• Snake Eyes marks the fifth De Palma film covered on The Rewatchables, praised for its “water slide movie” feel—once you’re on, you can’t stop until the end.
  • Sean Fennessey (02:12): “There's a certain kind of movie that's that I like to call the water slide movie, where once you sit down like, you can't stop, right? … But the slide down in this movie is so fucking fun.”
• The film shows De Palma at his most mainstream, coming off Mission: Impossible, but still brings out his “freak” side in voyeurism, long takes, and split-screen trickery.
  • Bill Simmons (16:21): “The establishment kind of overwhelms the protagonists in my movies. And it's like the tar baby. It's very difficult to beat. You keep socking it, but you just keep on getting another limb sucked in. Jesus, De Palma, you're weirdo. I love this guy.”
  • Sean Fennessey (17:56): “All the movies are about—they're not about the women, and they're not even about having sex with the women. They're about men watching the women. That's what all the movies [are about]. They're all about voyeurism.”

The Cage "Safety Off" Era

• Snake Eyes is a prime example of Cage in his "safety-off," high-volume mode post-Leaving Las Vegas Oscar.
  • Sean Fennessey (10:15): “If you watch Vampire's Kiss, which he made before this, that's one of the craziest movie performances of all time, where you can feel him just being like, screw it. I'm taking this movie over and I'm doing exactly what I want.”
• The gang discusses his transition from eccentric weirdo to unlikely action star (The Rock, Face/Off, Con Air), and how he always imbues oddity into seemingly straight roles.
  • Bill Simmons (07:51): “Yeah, it was like the 2.0 version of it.”
  • Craig Horbeck (06:08): “It's weird, though, because … he finds a way to pivot into this really pained, deep, sincere artist in the mid-90s, and then pivots out of that into these kinds of parts, these action star parts with guys who are a little greasy, a little untrustworthy.”

Sinise as the Double-Crossing Heavy

• The pod highlights Gary Sinise’s ability to flip from trustworthy to chilling in a heartbeat—his performance in Ransom is cited as his “peak evil.”
  • Bill Simmons (31:24): “He's got that thing, that intensity, that face where he can go from somebody … you're supposed to trust and then as soon as the turn happens, he is legitimately a face that you can revile.”

That Iconic Opening Shot

• The ten-minute Steadicam tracking shot through the Atlantic City arena is dissected for both its technical impressiveness and its importance in building the movie’s wild energy.
  • Sean Fennessey (55:02): “That is to get that many extras to work at the same time is master filmmaker … That’s not CGI. All those people in the crowd ... It's like hundreds, maybe thousands of extras.”

Rewatchable Scene Rankings

• Opening tracking shot—ten minutes of kinetic cinema
• The assassination/set-up during the fight
• Carla Gugino’s character hiding and cleaning blood in the bathroom
• Nick Cage discovering Sinise’s true nature (“the bad guy reveal”)
• Split-screen staircase confession

Thematic Oddness & Late-’90s Energy

• The movie’s take on instant celebrity and scandal is timely, but ultimately undercooked.
  • Bill Simmons (24:01): “There’s some sort of thing about instant celebrity ... The most interesting part of the movie to me is the fall after, where it sets him up as the hero. And then, hey, by the way, he was found with cocaine.”
  • Sean Fennessey (23:17): “It’s one of his least interesting thematically. I would say it is very relevant right now ... but unlike Dress, the Kill or Carlito's Way, it's not like a heady movie ... It's kind of trashy. It's like a trashy noir movie.”
• Snake Eyes is a “straightforward” De Palma, with its technical flair compensating for a light plot.

Carla Gugino: The Almost-A-Lister

• Extended discussion on Gugino’s career as someone who “was one role away” from stardom.
  • Sean Fennessey (44:02): “She’s just … insanely hot in Snake Eyes. … But there are a few people, like we've talked about on the show over the years, where you're like, one turn of the dial and it would have been a different career.”

What’s “Aged the Best” and “Worst”?

Aged Best:

• De Palma’s now-rare, auteur pyrotechnics
• Cage’s unhinged performance
• Gary Sinise’s villain turn
• The technical wizardry of the tracking shots
• The hypnotic energy of late-‘90s Atlantic City and its cell phones

Aged Worst:

• The logistical incoherence of the plot (plot holes and character motivations)
• Carla Gugino’s “missiles analyst in a miniskirt” conceit
• The eventual scrapping of the original tidal wave ending, which the hosts argue would have improved the film
• The elaborate assassination plan, which wouldn't work in a post-1998 world saturated with cameras and digital forensics

Homages & Movie Trivia

• De Palma’s Hitchcock homage: the staircase shot is a direct visual reference to Vertigo (75:23)
• Rashomon-style POV flashbacks, split screen, and boxes are discussed as De Palma signatures.
• Casting What-Ifs:
  • Al Pacino reportedly turned down Sinise’s part
  • Will Smith pursued Enemy of the State instead of Snake Eyes
  • Discussion of how Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks would’ve changed the energy

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Bill Simmons (54:03): “Because I was made for the sewer, baby, and I'm the king. He's just screaming for no reason.”
• Sean Fennessey (75:23): “My favorite is the scene when Gugino and Cage are sitting on the staircase ... a direct lift from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.”
• Craig Horbeck (88:35): “It's not a better movie, but it might be a more interesting movie if the lead's roles were reversed ... Sinise as the hero, Cage as the villain.”

The “That Guy” Parade

• The cast is stacked with 1990s “that guy” actors: Luis Guzmán, Stan Shaw, John Hurd, Mike Starr, Kevin Dunn, Michael Rispoli.
• Carla Gugino wins “fan favorite,” while Michael Rispoli is voted the ultimate “that guy.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Cage's Career and Style: 03:27 – 14:00
• Sinise and Supporting Cast: 30:11 – 34:50
• De Palma’s Cinematic Tricks: 15:26 – 20:00, 75:23 – 77:00
• Opening Shot Breakdown: 46:00 – 56:00
• 'Most Rewatchable Scene' Category: 54:03 – 62:00
• What’s Aged Best/Worst: 67:10 – 77:00
• That Guy & Cast Analysis: 47:52 – 52:00
• Casting What-Ifs: 90:29 – 92:09
• Tidal Wave Ending Debate: 79:23 – 81:08
• Carla Gugino Career Talk: 42:04 – 46:41

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On Cage’s Cage-ness:
  Bill Simmons [54:03]: “Because I was made for the sewer, baby, and I'm the king. He's just screaming for no reason.”
• On De Palma’s Freakiness:
  Sean Fennessey [17:56]: “All the movies are about … men watching the women. That’s what all the movies [are about]. They’re all about voyeurism.”
• On Sinise as Villain:
  Bill Simmons [31:24]: “He goes from a face that you're supposed to trust ... as soon as the turn happens, he is legitimately a face that you can revile.”
• On Carla Gugino’s Hotness:
  Sean Fennessey [44:02]: “She’s just … insanely hot in Snake Eyes ... one turn of the dial and it would have been a different career.”
• On De Palma & Cinema:
  Sean Fennessey [43:43]: “As soon as the camera starts moving and you see what it wants—what it's looking at—then you can tell [it’s De Palma].”

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Final Thoughts & Legacy

• Snake Eyes is hailed for its bravura filmmaking and the go-for-broke style of late-‘90s mid-budget genre movies, even as the pod acknowledges its story doesn't fully pay off.
• The episode stands as a love letter to:
  • The vanishing mid-tier, original thriller
  • The lost era of Atlantic City fights
  • Cage and De Palma’s willingness to take big swings
• The hosts agree that Cage “never loses a movie he stars in” and that, despite flaws, Snake Eyes remains a quintessential rewatchable.

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For listeners seeking a nostalgic, insightful, and very funny discussion about kinetic ‘90s thrillers, movie nerd debates, and the evolution (and extinction) of the Hollywood B-movie, this episode is essential.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

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[Sean Fennessey]

Bill Simmons podcast.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's happened to De Palma.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

This is our fifth Brian De Palma movie. It's called Snake Eyes. It belongs to another era, an era that I love very much. And it's next. This episode is presented by PayPal. Let's talk holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility to pay in four no fees, no interest. Save the offer in the PayPal app to get 5% cash back when you pay later. So whether you're shopping for an ugly sweater party or or work gala or whatever else, PayPal helps you make the most of your money. This holiday expires 1231. See paypal.com promoterms subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com payinfor PayPal Inc. NMLS 910457 Snake Eyes 1998. It's under 100 minutes. It's in Atlantic City. It's Nick Cage. It's Brian De Palma. They say the title in the movie multiple times. There's a fixed boxing match. There's an assassination, there's a cover up. There's a dirty cop. Sean, they just don't make them like this anymore.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, man. You know, I was thinking about this, rewatching it last night. There's a certain kind of movie that's that I like to call the water slide movie, where once you sit down like, you can't stop, right? You just go down. It doesn't mean that the end of the ride is going to be the best part. And this is a situation where the end of the ride may not be the best part, it may not be the best fall, but the slide down in this movie is so fucking fun. So I'm excited about this one.

[Bill Simmons]

De Palma a lot of craft and care.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Nic Cage, at a great point in his career, I threw this movie at you and wasn't surprised that you were excited about it.

[Craig Horbeck]

Loved it, saw it in theaters. It's back to back years of going into a movie thinking that I knew what the movie was going to be, and then in the first act going, wait a minute, this is different than what I thought it was going to be in 97. It was Eve's Bayou.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Craig Horbeck]

Which I thought was good film, which I thought was going to be a straight horror movie that ended up being this American. This great American Southern drama. And then when I went into this one, Face off was like a couple of years before this. So I think I expected more of a bombastic action film than this kind of scene by scene, like, totally kinetic, driving, spycraft, espionage type of deal. But I totally was engrossed by it.

[Bill Simmons]

We'll talk about the Palm in a second. Nic Cage. I'll start here. I'm trying to think, is there a better actor to play a crooked cop who has to make a choice whether he wants to do the right thing or not that we've ever had in the history of American cinema? I don't know what it is about. I have some nominees. I mean, Denzel's done this a couple times. Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Idris Elba, I think, has that kind of vibe to it. But it's. I don't know what it is about an actor matching it with this. Like, I wouldn't buy McConaughey as a dirty cup.

[Craig Horbeck]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Bruce Willis, I would still feel like he was Bruce Willis. There's gotta be some sort of scumbag, sleaziness, sleazy. But I'm still rooting for you. And it's a really hard tightrope, and I can't explain it.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's really unusual, though, that. That is the energy that he gives when you look at his background and the kind of roles that he took early in his career and just the way that he is as a person. If you ever see him talk in real life, he's an artist. You know, he talks like an artist. He's from a, you know, very established, famous filmmaking family. And yet he does seem like a sleazeball.

[Bill Simmons]

He's got, like, the chest hair going all the way up to his neck, hairline, receding hairline. He's just kind of, you know.

[Craig Horbeck]

I think that part of what makes Nic Cage, Nick Cage, is exactly what you're talking about. It is a rejection Of I am from a filmmaking dynasty. I don't want my last name Coppola to influence the way you think I should be doing what I am. I don't want to be the Francis Ford Coppola of acting. I want to be this almost force of nature on screen that goes from playing like one of the hardest to watch movies I've ever watched and loved was leaving Las Vegas to then Castra Troy, to this raising Arizona, which is the first time all of these off, built, off kilter things, almost like a rejection of what you would think a Coppola would be doing as an actor.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I like that you flipped him, made him a Coppola.

[Craig Horbeck]

He is a Coppola.

[Bill Simmons]

He's Nick Cage. He is. Changed his name.

[Craig Horbeck]

He did, but he's. When I. It's funny, when I first learned that, I learned that actually on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, I learned that he. Because there's this skit that they do where they're talking about it. It goes like, oh, if we're talking about good bodies, why don't you mention Sofia Coppola or something like that? And he goes, that's my cousin. And I went, what? That's his cousin. That's why I kind of found it out. But he's in his career. That's something that, for whatever reason, he definitely did not want to be. I think it's colored the way that he's taken roles and how he's acted in other things.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's weird though, because, I mean, he appears really early on in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, right? He's in Peggy Sue Got Married. He's in Valley Girl. He's in these movies in the 80s. He's in raising Arizona, where he's got this more like comic goofball Persona. Moonstruck is kind of an oddball and he finds a way to pivot into this really pained, deep, sincere artist in the mid-90s, and then pivots out of that into these kinds of parts, these action star parts with guys who are a little greasy, a little untrustworthy. You're rooting for them, but they've done bad things in their life. You know, Con Air is like this. Face off is like this. It's just a matchstick man. Yeah, Matchstick man. Yeah. He's just. He's a really weird screen Persona. He's kind of transformed many times.

[Bill Simmons]

He wins the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. Before that, he was kind of the. He was a draft pick for hey, who could win an Oscar Someday? He would have been a guy that was mentioned. And he rips the movies. He rips off after that. It was inexplicable as it was happening. And I had, when I did the action hero championship belt, I think he actually had the belt. Cause he's in the Rock and Face off and Con Air, the City of Angels, which, not an action movie. Then snake eyes, an 8 millimeter. Like five of his next six movies are just like these action movies or action thrillers. They're all movies I like. By the way, we've done the Rock, Face Off, Con Air. We've done five of those, six unrewatchables. But as it was happening, we're like, you're, you're a serious actor, you just won an Oscar. What are you doing?

[Craig Horbeck]

But also think about those characters. To Sean's point, those are not characters that really fit into the archetypes of action movie stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it was like the 2.0 version of it.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, it's like in the Rock, he. Yeah, sure, he is the driving force of this big action movie. But he's.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's a scientist.

[Craig Horbeck]

He's a scientist egghead, nerd type of guy. And then in Face off he goes from being this magnificent evil at the beginning to playing the version of Tom of John Travolta's. Cause it's Castor Troy and what's John Travolta's name?

[Sean Fennessey]

And then I can't remember the other character's name.

[Craig Horbeck]

And he's like, gotta show all of this sensitivity and all of this stuff. He always flipped it and Con Air, I remember seeing him.

[Bill Simmons]

Con Air is a real action movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

He's ripped even that though. He's big and he's got the hair and it was kind of like that was a way that you hadn't really seen him before.

[Bill Simmons]

Wrongfully imprisoned.

[Craig Horbeck]

Wrongfully imprisoned.

[Bill Simmons]

Killed a guy defending his wife in a rainstorm and shouldn't kill them because.

[Craig Horbeck]

He'S an army Ranger.

[Bill Simmons]

He had these skills that he shouldn't have used on another human.

[Sean Fennessey]

I've seen the film.

[Bill Simmons]

Had to go to jail. Had to go to jail. No, it's just like circumstance that never happens in real life. But in these action movies where they have to figure out how to get a guy in jail, it's never like, yeah, he had this 15 year old girl in his neighborhood. It's never like gross. It's always like, you know, he had these skills and he had to defend his wife and the guy. He didn't know the guy was going to die.

[Craig Horbeck]

And even. Even that scene in Con Air isn't that one part where he's just looking up, going, like, he's so far out of it. They go so far to make you understand that he's not a bad guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's just good at playing guys with baggage, with dark pasts, with this, like, unresolved problem. You know, Moonstruck is like that, too. Raising Arizona is like that, too. His best movies are always guys where you're like, what the hell happened to this guy?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Why is he like this? This movie is kind of like that, too. It's just like, why is this guy such a scumbag? Why is he such an operator?

[Craig Horbeck]

And don't you just get the feeling that almost more than any other actor, he just likes having fun on screen?

[Sean Fennessey]

Definitely. This movie is a good example of that.

[Craig Horbeck]

He just likes.

[Bill Simmons]

When do you think that wheels kind of started to come off with him as a best actor type of guy? Was it this movie or Face Off? Because these. Face off, he's dialing it up.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And because I always thought with Pacino, when he did Son of a Woman, he just kind of morphed into the Son of a Woman guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And with Nic Cage, I feel like Face off, he never shed Face off in his brain and just felt he's nuts in this movie, which is why I like it.

[Sean Fennessey]

But if you watch Vampire's Kiss, which he made before this, that's one of the craziest movie performances of all time, where you can feel him just being like, screw it. I'm taking this movie over and I'm doing exactly what I want. And it doesn't matter if any other actor is doing this. And he does tone it down in movies after that, like Red Rock West. Right. He's really like, low key and cool, but he even in the early days was just like, screw it, this movie. Safety off. I'm doing whatever I want.

[Bill Simmons]

Safety off is a good way to put it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And that's a good. That's a good list. The safety off, safety off list. That's Pacino and Devil's advocate. He's like, safety off.

[Sean Fennessey]

But he meets. He meets his absolute match in this movie because De Palma is one of the great safety off encouraging performers filmmakers. Cause, like, he did this twice with Pacino. Scarface and Carlito's Way are amazing safety off performances. So they're like. They're so good together.

[Craig Horbeck]

Something. It's funny about Nick Cage. It is a little unfair the way we look at how his career Played out because he's been not just safety off, he's been bazooka safety off for like the last 10 years. But even after this, Matchstick man, the Weatherman, all of these movies, there are some real understated performances that people really don't give him credit for. Even like National Treasure. Of all the movies that he's played where he's kind of played them straight up and down, National Treasure might be one of those things. So it really. For a long time. For a long time. Even after this, there was a great variety in the roles and. And some of the roles were a little bit more understated.

[Bill Simmons]

He was a high volume shooter. His next five after 8 millimeter were bringing out the dead, gone in 60 seconds, the family man and Captain Crowley's mandolin along with 8 millimeter. I remember Captain Crowley's Mandolin. That's when it was kind of ending for Nick Cage where he was becoming a little bit of a punchline. It is interesting. It's like a different Snake Eyes. It's not Apex Mountain for him. It's a different. It's almost like last Title or it's almost like the 1998 bowls with MJ for the nick Cage the Last Dance. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like Last Dance for him where you go to Snake Eyes. Cause it's him and De Palma. I still have faith everybody's gonna make the right decisions. And then it probably ends with 8 millimeter. A movie that I love very much.

[Craig Horbeck]

The film is real, but that movie with that subject matter. He is the only guy, one of the only guys to me. And maybe you guys can think of somebody else on his level of star that would have went on that journey.

[Bill Simmons]

That would have been like, yeah, showdown with me and Machine in a cemetery.

[Sean Fennessey]

He was fearless and he was really into kinky, transgressive stuff. He's still really good though. He's had like a little mini renaissance in the last five years for sure. He was in Pig. He was in Dream Scenario a couple years ago. He's not a huge box office star anymore, but he's still a really interesting actor.

[Van Lathan]

Long Legs. Long Legs.

[Sean Fennessey]

Long Legs, yeah. Every third or fourth movie. Long Legs.

[Craig Horbeck]

You like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

And he's still trying. He's still trying stuff, you know, like, even if you don't like Long Legs, he's going for it in that movie. He's doing something totally new.

[Craig Horbeck]

There's all kinds of stuff surrounding him about like, you know, stuff that he's done off screen and stuff that he's Bought.

[Bill Simmons]

And he's fucking crazy. I mean, he's like a lunatic. Well, you know what he is?

[Craig Horbeck]

He is legitimately, to me, one of the freestyle artists of my generation. As far as actors. There are other guys out there, but Nick Cage is totally free. He makes movies like the movie that he made.

[Bill Simmons]

By free, you mean bonkers.

[Craig Horbeck]

No, I mean free.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like he's not free to be judged.

[Craig Horbeck]

He's not afraid to be judged. Like, he puts the movie out there. The premise of the movie could be crazy.

[Bill Simmons]

So he's like Craig.

[Craig Horbeck]

Whatever. Like Craig, you know, he did make.

[Sean Fennessey]

A film called Bangkok Dangerous. And we're, of course, here with Bangkok Craig.

[Craig Horbeck]

Bangkok.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, that's right. I forgot about Bangkok Craig. Yeah, he's right over there.

[Van Lathan]

He comes out once in a while.

[Craig Horbeck]

Even the whole Bangkok Dangerous era, that movie. And then knowing.

[Sean Fennessey]

Knowing, yeah, that's a movie that on paper, should have been amazing. And then you watch it and you're like, God damn it, what the hell happened here?

[Craig Horbeck]

So it's not a movie that is great, but it is a movie that is better than you remembering.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah. And he has a thing. Before we started recording, we were talking about movie stars. He's got a thing where he can just hold a movie on his shoulders. No matter how good or how bad the movie is, if it's an hour and 10 minutes or two, you know, you know, an hour and 40 minutes, like, you can hang with him the whole time. And that is rarer than we realize.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Remember Ghost Rider?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, of course.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

That was when the wheels came off for him. But I still went. I saw that in the theater because I was like, oh, this movie looks nuts. And Nick Cage is in it.

[Sean Fennessey]

And Ghost Rider, if it was released in 2017 in the Marvel Machine back then would have been cool, fantastic, because.

[Craig Horbeck]

You might have got a different take on it. There's also a Ghost Rider sequel that is, like, almost unwatchable.

[Sean Fennessey]

Spirit of Vengeance.

[Craig Horbeck]

Spirit of Vengeance, yeah. Idris Elbison now is very, very hard to watch. Tough one, but he's also like a huge comic nerd. Him. He's into that stuff. That's a cool character if you're that type of star. Maybe Johnny Blaze is not the of type, the comic book character that you choose to play, but that's the one that he wanted to.

[Bill Simmons]

De Palma. We've done this is number five. There's a few things left on the bone.

[Sean Fennessey]

What do you. What do you. Really Long term.

[Bill Simmons]

Scarface we haven't done yet. Carlito's Way we haven't done yet. And there's one other dress to kill. Dress to kill. We haven't done it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I think that's the big three that are left.

[Bill Simmons]

So I found a 19.

[Van Lathan]

We haven't done carry.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, we haven't done carry. I found a 1998 premier magazine where they interviewed him about Snake Eyes. And it was a Q and A. And the question was your leading men often seem ineffectual, dwarfed by insurmountable obstacles. De Palma was like, yeah, here's his answer. The establishment kind of overwhelms the protagonists in my movies. And it's like the tar baby. It's very difficult to beat. You keep socking it, but you just keep on getting another limb sucked in. Jesus, De Palma, you're weirdo. I love this guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

He is the best.

[Bill Simmons]

He's just a maniac.

[Craig Horbeck]

I. I think of all the directors that are out there, the like the. Obviously he's a really important director for was new cinema.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

He. His movies are the ones that I feel the closest to.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's a freak. Like you.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I'm glad you said it.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's a freak.

[Craig Horbeck]

His movies are the ones I feel close.

[Bill Simmons]

It's almost like one. I was gonna have this in one stage. The worst. One of the most dis about this movie is he kind of suppresses his.

[Sean Fennessey]

Freak a little bit.

[Bill Simmons]

When we're going over the hotel rooms. 1970s, early 80s. De Palma would have had some crazy fuck scene in one of the rooms. This was like mid-50s De Palma like, eh. I don't need to do that.

[Craig Horbeck]

At this point though. Aren't we at the point where De Palma is most flirting with mainstream cinema filmmaker? Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

He's coming out of Mission Impossible.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I think he's on the mountaintop. I mean this is really the highest. The pinnacle of his commercial appeal as a filmmaker. But you think that might have like muted his desire to show some of that stuff.

[Craig Horbeck]

Well, there's touch with it. Right. Like there's. There. There are ladies in the movie that Their sexuality plays a big part in the film. But there's a little bit of holding back to me of that stuff that some of the movies that he made in the past, obviously like Scarface is just like. Just well trusting.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like all of that stuff we did Body double. I mean, you know.

[Craig Horbeck]

But in this you can feel those urges being rolled back a little bit for the sake of. I want you to see the story and how the story shakes out.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

I feel like we're doing something really smart.

[Sean Fennessey]

All the movies are about. They're not about the women, and they're not even about having sex with the women. They're about men watching the women. That's what all the movie. They're all about voyeurism. So the movie is still like that. It's just that, like, I guess the women don't take their tops off in this movie, but for the most part, yeah. It's just.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it seems like it should be a PG13 or an R. And I think it ended up they said it and went for R. Speaking of that.

[Craig Horbeck]

When we're doing Femme Fatale that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, I would argue that's his last great movie.

[Bill Simmons]

I know which one.

[Sean Fennessey]

Femme Fatale, That's a couple years later. Yeah. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He saw something in Rebecca.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Look, they. You always know when it says film, I think that's the. It's like we always. Sean and I would always talk about back when. Back when our fingers used to work, when we'd see other writers and you could cover their byline and knew who the writer was.

[Sean Fennessey]

The best feeling.

[Bill Simmons]

I know who that is. Right. De Palma. Like, you know, I know who's.

[Sean Fennessey]

How the camera's moving. As soon as the camera starts moving and you see what it's wants, what it's looking at, then you can tell.

[Bill Simmons]

He'S always gonna take one big long shot swing at some point. Just Achilles does it.

[Sean Fennessey]

This one might be the Granddaddy, which.

[Craig Horbeck]

Is why I always thought. I mean, looking back on it, he was the perfect director to get the Mission Impossible franchise started.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, he agrees because it allowed him to do movies like Snake Eyes because it did well and he made money from it.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's still shocking to me, though, how that worked.

[Craig Horbeck]

How so?

[Sean Fennessey]

Because he never made anything even close to that scale of a movie. Scarface is a big movie, but it's only got, like, seven characters in it. And him being able to pull off, like, the tunnel scene at the end of that movie is stunning.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, just the set piece.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. The scope of that movie is so big, but it's so. I still love the original. It's so good.

[Craig Horbeck]

And it's the headiest one of all of them. Some people would argue that the movies became more and more ridiculous from a plot standpoint.

[Bill Simmons]

What's your favorite Obama ever? Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Carlito's Way.

[Bill Simmons]

What's yours, Sean?

[Sean Fennessey]

It's probably Blowout. I mean, we talked about it on the Blowout pod, which I just think is like a perfect movie. But that whole stretch.

[Bill Simmons]

I respect Blowout the most, but I enjoy Scarface the most. I fucking love Scarface.

[Sean Fennessey]

Scarface.

[Bill Simmons]

We haven't even done it on rewatchables because it's like I don't want to waste it yet.

[Sean Fennessey]

I know all those movies are great. Carlito's Way is great. There's like a 15 year period where he is unmatched being able to make a sequence in a movie. His sequences are so cool.

[Bill Simmons]

You know why I can't have a baby with her, Manny? Her womb is so polluted.

[Craig Horbeck]

Keep going.

[Sean Fennessey]

Nah.

[Craig Horbeck]

But like Scarface. So the reason why I like Carlito's Way, I can't say that I like Carlito's Way more than Scarface, but the reason why I'm more connected to Carlito's Way is because Carlito's Way feels like Al Pacino and De Palma and Sean Penn together doing an actual thing. Scarface is legitimately take the reins off somebody. Let them fucking go until they can't go anymore. It is like something to beholden. While Carlito's Way, there's actually really, really deep themes of and betrayal, like recidivism.

[Bill Simmons]

There's bad hair.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, I just, I feel real me being an.

[Sean Fennessey]

I love Penn's wig in this movie, in that movie. It's so good. Dave. Yeah, I love Dave.

[Craig Horbeck]

I love that character.

[Bill Simmons]

Craig. When we do Carlito's Way between Sean, Chris and Van, if it's a three person pod, we should have some sort of reality show competition where two people can make it and the third one just gets voted off somehow.

[Sean Fennessey]

The running man. But like bowling.

[Bill Simmons]

Bowling at luck.

[Sean Fennessey]

Strike.

[Bill Simmons]

Just like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

You want to have a bowl off to get on the Carlito's Way. There's an incredible Carlito's Way homage in this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, here's the other thing. The long shot, which I think is the signature from a rewatchable standpoint. It's so amazing how they do it. And he's never really said that it was 12. It's 12 straight minutes. He's never really admitted it was all 12 straight minutes. So then in this Premier Magazine thing, they ask him about it and he says the movie starts out on the boardwalk, blah, blah, blah. The shot establishes Nic Cage's character as he wanders through the arena. And then blah, blah. It's a Steadicam shot that goes on for about 12 minutes. Then he says one continuous shot can really only be the length of a 35mm magazine. A 400 foot load in bonfire. That was one five minute shot. We went as Far as we could go. Of course, you can make it look longer. Like Hitchcock's rope. Have somebody pass in front of the camera. Keep going. Need artful staging and very good actors. So I think he's saying it was five minutes and they figured out some sort of cheat code. And you could. I was watching again, and you can see, like.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's four cuts. Ultimately.

[Bill Simmons]

Has to be. Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

He rounds the corner one time on the wall. You can kind of tell down at the fight floor, they do it once.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes, he definitely is cutting. The staging of the scenes, even with the cuts is crazy because of the size of the. Of the.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a fucking boxing match in a.

[Sean Fennessey]

Freaking arena doing this. It's amazing.

[Bill Simmons]

Guzman goes down the escalator at one point, and you're. How the fuck did they do all this?

[Sean Fennessey]

Camera going around that corner.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

That is just wild.

[Craig Horbeck]

I mean, looking back on it when I watched this. Cause I hadn't seen this in a while. This is a technically really impressive movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I agree.

[Sean Fennessey]

One of his most impressive. It's one of his least interesting thematically. I would say it is very relevant right now, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But unlike Dress, the Kill or Carlito's Way, it's not like a heady movie about the way that people really feel in the world. It's kind of trashy. It's like a trashy noir movie. But he's using it as this vehicle to do all this.

[Bill Simmons]

Nick Cage does say one interesting thing, though, at the end, when he was like. Basically, he was like, well, at least I get to be on tv or whatever. There's something about celebrity going on in the late 90s that I think DePalma was interested in, but I don't. He didn't really hit it hard enough.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, the movie is. It's good. And it's one that, you know, I really liked when it came out. It's not quite as smart as it probably wanted to be.

[Bill Simmons]

It needs, like, 10 more minutes. Worthy. Sorry, Craig. 108 minutes. Might have been able to nail it. There's some sort of thing about instant celebrity. And the most interesting part of the movie to me is the fall after, where it sets him up as the hero. And then you're just like, hey, by the way, he was found with cocaine. And then all of a sudden, he's just on the boardwalk and he had his moment. It was gone.

[Sean Fennessey]

But I think that's a reshoot, which we can talk about why, but I don't think any of that stuff is supposed to be there in the first place. And you could have made the case that if they had thought about it more, that they could have made it more. This arc. Leaning about. Leaning into, like, what you want out of celebrity in life, which is, like a part of that character. There's other ideas in it that are kind of interesting about conspiracy thrillers, but it's more like the classic De Palma stuff of being about other movies. Like, this is very much. You mentioned Rope in that quote. He's constantly being compared to Hitchcock, who's his great inspiration. And he's always, like, looking for a way to take a framework that Hitchcock has and then elevate it. So he has some movies. You know, like obsession from the 70s with Cliff Robertson is kind of like this find. Raising Cane is kind of like this. Where they're, like, more exercises than they are great movies where he's like, let me see if I could do this. And they're still crazily entertaining, but you don't walk away from them with the same feeling that you do as, like, Drastic Kill or Blowout.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. The movie here is, like, surprisingly straightforward.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like, things happen, right? You find out that Gary Sinise is your bad guy. There's no levels to that. That just continues to play itself out.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's revealed and then goes.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's revealed and then it goes. And there's not a lot of, oh, my God, I did not see that coming in the movie at all. That's why the technician part of the movie is so important, because you need that to keep the kinetic energy of the film going. It's kind of like what's gonna happen next from your eyes and not what's gonna happen next from your brain. So it's like what the next thing you're gonna see rather than the next thing that's gonna happen, plot wise. Real quick, where are you on Bonfire of the Vanities? Oof.

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't think it really works very well. Yeah, it's not good. I do think that sequence that he's talking about is interesting. That long tracking Steadicam shot that they do. But it's, like, totally gratuitous. And you can. He's just a mismatch with the material. Like, I think if you had a different filmmaker make that movie, even if you had Scorsese make that movie, it'd be a little bit more interesting. But I never get the impression he's, like, interested in that world.

[Bill Simmons]

That's why there's been books and podcasts and everything else done about that movie because it was such a great piece of ip. And then every choice that every actor they cast was wrong. He was the wrong director. Yeah, it's pretty tough. Every, like, five years, I forget that it's bad, and I'm like, oh, you know what? I'll give this a whirl.

[Sean Fennessey]

You're defending it. Here we go.

[Craig Horbeck]

I always liked it.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'm sorry. My bad, guys.

[Bill Simmons]

Hanks is. Hanks is bad in it. It's weird.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's also miscast.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's just not good in it.

[Craig Horbeck]

I always liked it. I think I was at a time in my life.

[Bill Simmons]

You just would have. You were destined to like it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Where it was like Willis, Hank, Melanie Griffith, like, all in a movie together being like that entire. But you remember also, I liked, you know, at that time, anything set in New York and that whole who's that girl? Madonna? Love the movie. So, like, I just. I've always liked it. I've tried to go back and watch it and find reasons to, like, not like the movie, but I always go, oh, man, I like this.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that came out in 90. After that, he did Raising Cane, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Snake Eyes. It's kind of over after that. Like, he didn't really have the commercial movie after that. That's kind of the end of the run. Which is interesting because it's also the end of some sort of. It's some sort of invisible line with the end of the Nick Cage run, even though we didn't know it yet.

[Sean Fennessey]

He says something he did. I read a couple of interviews with him around this time. I wanted to read this to you guys. Something he said right around the release of this movie. He said, I think that something new is coming. I really think that the conventional moviemaking world is over and the greatest work is behind us. I really do. The industry sort of peaked in the 40s, 50s and 60s, mainly because of the turmoil, wars, all that stuff. European influx into Hollywood. That was the beginning of movies. And it's over. It's never going to be again. I think the next thing that's going to happen is going to happen on the Internet with interactive media now. You can have all this video technology, your own little video camera, and edit stuff at home. You can make movies like novels now. You really can. You can make them inexpensively with your friends and put them on the Internet.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow. And he didn't even see the prestige TV coming, but he basically nailed 95% of it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes, that's 1998. When he said that, he was early.

[Craig Horbeck]

But he was definitely right.

[Bill Simmons]

Also, his whole class, which we've talked about before, that there's been books written about with Spielberg and Lucas and Coppola. All of them are kind of hitting the end of some sort of road. Right. Scorsese is about to transition into his 2000s, which were really interesting.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's about to take off and become kind of the winner of this coming moment, which is really interesting because De Palma for a period of time was kind of, kind of big dogged him a little bit.

[Bill Simmons]

Lucas is transitioning into I'm just gonna redo the IP I did before a corporate God. Spielberg has his crazy, like Minority Report, like he's moving into like that post Saving Private Ryan world. And De Palma kind of doesn't know where to go.

[Sean Fennessey]

He demands a lot of control on his movies too. And you can tell that he's not able to convince people to let him make the stuff he wants to make. I mean, he's only made four movies in the last 25 years.

[Bill Simmons]

Some more stuff to talk about this movie. We're gonna take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. Let's talk about holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility to pay in four no fees, no interest, and save the offer in the PayPal app to get 5% cash back when you pay later. So whether you're shopping for an ugly sweater or a work gala, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday. All you have to do is save the offer in the PayPal app. Expires 1231. See paypal.com promoterm subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com payinfor paypal inc. Nmls910457 a couple actor stuff to talk about with this evil Gary Sinise.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's great stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

So I was thinking we were one Evil Sinise movie away from Evil Sinise month. We could have done Reindeer Games, Snake Eyes and Ransom. We already did Ransom.

[Sean Fennessey]

But you want to re Ransom. I gotta say, I love Ransom.

[Bill Simmons]

We could have even if you read Ransom.

[Craig Horbeck]

Is Ransom the peak of Evil Sinise? He is a.

[Bill Simmons]

So I was gonna ask what's the most Evil Sinise? I think it's ransom.

[Craig Horbeck]

I think it's Ransom.

[Sean Fennessey]

You dropped the Reindeer Games in there, huh?

[Craig Horbeck]

Reindeer Games is in there, but Reindeer Games is not as.

[Bill Simmons]

I like Reindeer Games, unfortunately.

[Craig Horbeck]

I like it too.

[Bill Simmons]

That's a guilty pleasure movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

But that was a DVD classic for me. Yeah, that was a DVD classic.

[Sean Fennessey]

We gotta do Frankenheimer Month, you know, 52 Pickup, get that going.

[Bill Simmons]

A lot of Frankenheimer, really good ones. But like, what is it about Sinisto that you just make it like, oh, man, this motherfucker.

[Craig Horbeck]

He's got that thing, like, even at the end of Ransom where the kid hears his voice and he starts peeing himself. Like, Gary has that thing, that intensity, that face where he can go from somebody. Cause he does this in. He does this in Ransom and also in this movie where he goes from a face that you're supposed to trust and then as soon as the turn happens, he is legitimately a face that you can revile in one thing and like.

[Bill Simmons]

And Gumpy does the flip. He feels like he's evil and then.

[Craig Horbeck]

You root for him and he's in. Like. He's like. He can do either thing so effectively that it works in movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

Who is the modern day Garrison?

[Bill Simmons]

There is.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, these kinds of actors who are like. He was pretty much a star, you know, Academy Award because he had the.

[Bill Simmons]

Apollo 13 piece too. And. And Gump, he's so famous.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. I mean, I. That's a really interesting thing where it's. He's got this incredible stage background. He transitions to Hollywood and he gets cast in big Hollywood movie after big Hollywood movie, whether he's the hero or the villain. And he's not heartthrob. No, he's not always the villain. Right. He's not like J.T. walsh or something. He is.

[Bill Simmons]

No, he feels like he's a little more leading man. Ish.

[Sean Fennessey]

But he's like that really weird blend between character actor and leading man. Right. Where he could carry a movie. It's probably not ideal if he's carrying your movie, but if he's in the number two spot, like in a movie like this, he's Scotty. He's probably gonna be good.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's like he is a super duper talented, like, backup quarterback.

[Sean Fennessey]

Right, Right. To where the Jeff Hostetler of movies. Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

To where you kind of don't know, like, what to do with them. But he can definitely be a crazy addition to your team if in fact he has to carry the team.

[Bill Simmons]

What's your Sinise relationship?

[Van Lathan]

Craig Gump and Apollo.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you see those? See, he's a good guy in those movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

But just a really awesome, steady, like, side character who. Yeah, it's good and everything. I like Gary Sinise.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I don't know who it is, though.

[Craig Horbeck]

Who's like that guy who can then be the bad guy and stuff, like. But you know what? Can I tell you something? The American character actor of that ilk, like, you've talked a lot about. I think it's an interesting observation about sort of the next great Italian American actor that can, like, you know, you're talking about Lyoto or, you know, the rest of these guys, Robin De Niro and all of these things. But, like just the stalwart American character actor, like, who are those guys now?

[Bill Simmons]

They're on tv.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, it's not something movies are even sold on anymore. There are plenty of them.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'm sure there are plenty of them.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sinise is an unusual one. I was just thinking. One of my favorite Sinise parts is he's Stu Redmond in the Stand adaptation, which was on TV in the 90s. And he's, you know, I always love that. That's kind of my Bonfire of the Vanities where I saw it in an age where I was like, this is my favorite thing of all time. If you watch it now, it's a little harder to sit through. But he's so good as Stu in that series.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, but that movie is still terrifying to me.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I love that.

[Craig Horbeck]

Who's the guy that plays Randall Flag in that?

[Sean Fennessey]

Jamie Sheridan. Another stage actor.

[Bill Simmons]

Jimmy Sheridan.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like, that's a miniseries, but that's still like a haunting, terrifying, weird movie.

[Bill Simmons]

S is good because it's like he's a stage actor. He didn't really want to get into Hollywood, but he really loves and he really takes it. And then like 10 years later, it's like CSI New York with Gary Sinise.

[Sean Fennessey]

Didn't he do that show for like 10 years?

[Bill Simmons]

There's semen on the bed. Get the blue light.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, money's good, right? Everybody likes money.

[Craig Horbeck]

At some point.

[Bill Simmons]

Everybody's like, yeah, fuck it. New York sounds great.

[Craig Horbeck]

To be real with you, if you look at him, William Peterson. A lot of those guys ended up finding their homes on shows like that. Their children trusted faces that let you know that a procedural or something like that is a serious piece of art.

[Sean Fennessey]

And who came up playing cops and detectives in movies. And then they transitioned. Yeah, and then they killed movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you read the Peterson interview for the 40th anniversary of To Love and Die in LA?

[Sean Fennessey]

Your guy, Bill.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He hasn't acted in 15 years. They asked him why and he's like, because I've done everything. I don't need to do anything anymore. I want to hang out with my kids. And my grandkids. I live in Chicago. I have a great life. I played every part I've wanted to play.

[Sean Fennessey]

I respect it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I loved it.

[Craig Horbeck]

I respect it, too.

[Bill Simmons]

I was like, you do your thing. William Peterson.

[Craig Horbeck]

I just.

[Sean Fennessey]

He gave us Manhunter.

[Craig Horbeck]

Manhunter. Fantastic. Like, I just kept waiting for the role or the moment, I guess. J.K. simmons is one of those actors that we were talking about. He is, Yeah. I kept waiting for the role. I kept waiting for the J.K. simmons.

[Bill Simmons]

Moment for, like the later in life.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

The big supporting part.

[Craig Horbeck]

The I'm in whiplash now. You got.

[Bill Simmons]

So it wasn't Fear with Mark Wahlberg for you.

[Craig Horbeck]

No, it wasn't. It wasn't. I fuck with that movie, though.

[Bill Simmons]

It's pretty good.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's very hard. I mean, people keep hearing me say it's very hard to mention movies that I really don't fuck with.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, well, like 1991 to 1997. It's kind of like they're all good.

[Craig Horbeck]

They really are.

[Bill Simmons]

I would go all the way to 99.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I was watching the last hour. I was doing some work and I wanted to put on something. So I was flipping cable and Fight Club was on, which we've already done. And I was watching the last hour of Fight Club kind of half heartedly as I'm doing football stuff. And then I just started watching the last 15 minutes and then it ended with the Pixies song. And I was like, legitimate.

[Craig Horbeck]

Really a brilliant movie, though.

[Bill Simmons]

And things are blowing up and he's staring out the window and where is my mind comes in. I was like, man, we used to fucking make great things in this country.

[Craig Horbeck]

We don't even have the nuts to make that one now. The movie interrogates too many things.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, it's a nuts movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

If they made it, it would probably be a little overwrought, a little too self serious. That movie's winking at you a little bit. In a way.

[Bill Simmons]

It's very faithful to the book, too.

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't know, man. What? Eddington won battle. These movies are pretty angry and pretty much about what's going on. Like it happens. It just doesn't necessarily happen in the same way.

[Craig Horbeck]

They are, but they're. And there's Eddington. There is a specific great movie. There's a specific critique and question that Fight Club asks that just would turn so many people off now. It feels like. Like the whole. The whole conversation around masculinity, the fact that hurting people makes these guys feel. There would be a Thousand really annoying think pieces there were then.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, it was not. It didn't have underground reception. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough.

[Craig Horbeck]

I guess I was part of one of those things.

[Sean Fennessey]

I was a very angry 17 year old when it came out and I was like, this is clearly the greatest film ever made. You know, like this. There will never be another. A better movie than this. I've had like a weird relationship to it over the years. But maybe you could cite that movie as kind of like the end of an era in some ways. Like it is. It is 99. It is kind of like closing the book.

[Bill Simmons]

Y2K really did shift us from here to here. And it's hard to explain.

[Sean Fennessey]

Not literally, not the computers.

[Bill Simmons]

It just felt. Everything felt slightly different after Y2K and I don't know why. And then 911 was the other big catalyst. But it just. That late 90s just felt like something.

[Sean Fennessey]

When Snake Eyes came out, I was like, every movie will be cool forever. You know, like to go see a movie like this in theaters, you're like, yeah, of course. This was pretty good. And I don't think it came out.

[Bill Simmons]

The same weekend as Halloween. H20 and Saving Private Ryan came out the week before. And it was just like, that's kind of what we did back then.

[Sean Fennessey]

Craig.

[Craig Horbeck]

I was just so into movies. Yeah, I was at City Place. So I was just in the movie theater. My man Stephan worked there. Stephan would hook us up with the tickets. Stephan was the man. But I was just so into movies. I found myself there all the time at that point. And I think that it used to be that it was like you could just make a movie and cool was the barometer. It's just cool.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yep.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's just like you make a. I was watching so I Married an Axe Murderer.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like all time classic like a couple weeks ago. I'm like, would they make this movie now a movie? Where would they. It's just a. I mean there's a whole MTV type of ecosystem. Cause you have the making of the movie type of deal. Mike Myers was on the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have a take about this.

[Craig Horbeck]

Would they make that. Would they make just a cool story now that didn't like. So I married Act One thing.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm really surprised hasn't happened because we've talked about many times over the years the SNL to movie pipeline on pods. How there has not been a streaming movie pipeline for SNL actors. Where you're like, oh, this. This person's kind of like Chloe Feynman's got Kind of got something, but maybe doesn't need her own TV show, but maybe let's give her a $20 million Netflix movie and see what happens.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, they kind of did this. Please don't destroy. And it was on Peacock, and it. It didn't bother.

[Sean Fennessey]

But that was supposed to be a theatrical movie that Judd Apatow produced. And then, like, it didn't turn out, and then they put it on streaming. I'm talking about, like, shouldn't there be.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, a little Marcelo have a thing.

[Sean Fennessey]

Where he's like, right now, he's a perfect example where I'm like, that guy's just funny. You could tell he's funny. He could carry something, make it low stakes. Samurai Knack's Murder isn't the greatest movie of all time, but it was like, it was a road test.

[Bill Simmons]

But this is the problem with comedies now and why horror movies have just keep ascending and they just have not figured out comedy at all the way they. We had them in the 90s. Because now it's. You just put them on Netflix or Amazon or whatever. No money. Let these young guys take some advantage at bats. I'm with you.

[Craig Horbeck]

I know we got to get back to Snake Eyes, but I will say about that particular movie. I know.

[Bill Simmons]

Wait, what are we talking about?

[Craig Horbeck]

I know we got to say, but I will say with that particular movie, if you. You look at the movie, right, and it's Mike Myers doing his thing. It's like, almost like a pilot for Austin Powers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Craig Horbeck]

Because he plays the dad. He's singing the.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's gonna cry himself tonight on his huge pillow.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. The whole nine. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Son Heed heat move.

[Craig Horbeck]

He's doing all of that stuff. And you're like, it's a virtual planetoid, right? And he's singing the Ross Stewart song. It's hysterical, right? And it's almost like proof that that guy can play those characters in a movie, that it works as proof of concept. And it's kind of like they don't do that anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

You know why? Because they overthink everything. We talked about this with Dirty Work. They're just like Norm MacDonald's. We'll figure it out. We don't need a full script yet.

[Sean Fennessey]

Perfect movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Chris Farley said he'd be able to have two days on the set. We'll figure it out. I think they spend too much time overthinking. What do you think it is, Craig? I mean, part of it is your generation's fault.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, you guys killed comedy.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah, well, we're Trying to bring it back. I think that SNL doesn't cast the same type of people anymore is also part of it. Like, they're not. I don't think there's a lot of people who are like character actors on SNL anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

Like, it's rare that they bring somebody in who can do like 10 different characters. It's not really like what they do anymore. So I don't even think the pipeline is set up to work because it's completely different casting now.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Shane could have done it. I mean, Shane doing Tires is basically like a 90 minute comedy in 1993.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's it. That actually replaced his movie, his dirty work.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Back to this incredible pivot we never talked about.

[Craig Horbeck]

Carla, who's gonna go first?

[Sean Fennessey]

God damn. This is a real Venn diagram for Bill Van Shawn.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, this is.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is one of the real, like.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, we've talked about this.

[Craig Horbeck]

We gotta be professional.

[Sean Fennessey]

We met on a cold, dark night.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

This conversation stays between us in a deep Reddit board.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

Look, man, sometimes people just don't find the right. Sometimes they just don't find the right roles. And there's. We talk about, like in the 70s and 80s, it was just because they didn't have good roles. In her case, the role, I just, I don't know whether it was her fault. She couldn't read the scripts. Like, they didn't know which ones to do. No, no. Director saw what was sitting there.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'd love to know how many great roles she finished in second place for.

[Van Lathan]

Right.

[Craig Horbeck]

It was. And you guys gotta think, man, we're talking about. First of all, I want to say she's had a fantastic career.

[Sean Fennessey]

All right. Great career.

[Craig Horbeck]

She has.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great career. Very successful in the 90s.

[Craig Horbeck]

What we're talking about, we're talking about the rise with Julia Roberts as a stranglehold. But then right under Julia, there's Sandra Bullock, there's Cameron Diaz. This is.

[Bill Simmons]

But don't forget the friends thing. And it's like if you put her on Friends as Rachel, I think she's like an A plus lister. She just never had the one thing.

[Craig Horbeck]

But all of this, though, this is a crowded, crowded feel. And she took the Sarah Jessica Parker. She was in Miami Rhapsody.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's exactly who I was gonna say. I was. Like, Sarah Jessica Parker had the kind of career she could have had. She could have been.

[Bill Simmons]

Could Carla have been the Carrie Bradshaw?

[Sean Fennessey]

Definitely.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause the thing about her is she could be in a rom com. She could be in a movie like this. I Think she could have been in, like, an early 80s De Palma movie? Like, she could have played the Deborah Shelton character in Body Double. And every guy was in love with her.

[Craig Horbeck]

Devastating.

[Bill Simmons]

And I thought she was a good actress. And she's funny. Like at the end when she's turning on the charm with Nick Cage and you're like, this guy's a fucking loser. Why do you.

[Craig Horbeck]

Why?

[Bill Simmons]

But I believe that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. There's a hot moment there where both Carla Gugino and Connie Britton were on Spin City. And I was like, what is. What is happening, Connie? Britney Brighton.

[Bill Simmons]

Think about how long it took for Connie Britton. It took. And then it was Coach Taylor and it's like, oh, yeah, Connie Britton, she's arrived.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, she's just. I'll just be very frank. Just insanely hot in Snake Eyes. Like, it is insane how hot she is, at least to me, in this movie. And it is weird because she's, like, still working and doing really good work, for sure. But there are a few people, like, we've talked about on the show over the years where you're like, one turn of the dial and it would have been a different career.

[Craig Horbeck]

Right. You see her now. She's in the Mike Flanagan stuff a lot. She's doing a lot of different stuff. She's all. She's a presence and a deal. But once again, it's weird.

[Bill Simmons]

The last seven, eight years was probably the best run she's had from an IMDb standpoint.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, she had Karen Sisko, that was supposed to be a big TV show that didn't pop, you know, but she did.

[Bill Simmons]

She was in the Cameron Crow Roadies. That Showtime show that didn't work. Seems like it should have.

[Craig Horbeck]

Once again, it's somebody that you always feel like is who's having a great, great career, but you feel like it's one role away from that next echelon of stardom.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, she probably was looking at Aniston, like, I could fucking have her lunch. Could kill her.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'll be honest with you. I'm looking at the list of roles here. It's very varied. She took Miami Rhapsody is a movie that I love, that not a lot of people have seen.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a really fun movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's a really fun movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

She's really good in it. Carla Cucina.

[Craig Horbeck]

She's in it. Sarah Jessica Parker, Antonio Banderas. It's kind of like Free Willing, Jeremy Piven, story of love and relationships that takes place in Miami. It's, like, really interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

There's some Amanda Pete. Parts she could have played.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a good comp too.

[Bill Simmons]

It's just. I just think you're right. I think it was a loaded comedic actress with dramatic drafts. Draft class.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, right.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

And then, you know, later on her career just keeps trending. She's in Sin City, which is a role that I really really enjoyed from her.

[Sean Fennessey]

Did you.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. That was.

[Sean Fennessey]

What'd you think was the best part?

[Craig Horbeck]

I thought she brought a lot to the table in Sin City. Like a lot.

[Sean Fennessey]

Anything specific?

[Bill Simmons]

Not.

[Craig Horbeck]

Some things were unexpected but I liked that it happened. But if you guys want to just get into the whole thing, it's a.

[Bill Simmons]

Good film with some funny thing she never had. Like even if she'd played the Ellen Pompeo part in old School with some sort of thing that just was like on all the time for 25 years she never had that movie she did.

[Sean Fennessey]

For my wife which is true Beverly Hills.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, come on.

[Bill Simmons]

Interesting.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

To Eileen. She'll always be the girl from True Beverly Hills.

[Craig Horbeck]

I know you love it.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, in this movie she tests missile results for powwow aircraft.

[Craig Horbeck]

Speak on true Beverly Hills.

[Bill Simmons]

They're building a. Which one?

[Craig Horbeck]

Speak on true Beverly Hills.

[Bill Simmons]

Just.

[Craig Horbeck]

I want your opinion.

[Bill Simmons]

I haven't seen it in 45 years. Whatever.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Beverly Hills. What a.

[Bill Simmons]

Can we talk about how Carla was testing missile results which I'm just gonna give her this.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Special category. We don't get to give out much. The Elizabeth Shue is an O Electrochemist award for most ridiculous casting.

[Van Lathan]

I was hoping that would fall to me. It didn't. Damn it. That category you were.

[Bill Simmons]

That was going to be yours.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah, of course.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my bad. Craig.

[Van Lathan]

Sorry.

[Bill Simmons]

Can I ask.

[Van Lathan]

I knew it was going to go.

[Craig Horbeck]

What does. Because I always bring this role up when we. We do this one. Denise Richards as that's the.

[Bill Simmons]

That that could probably be the title of nuclear physicist.

[Sean Fennessey]

Her name is Dr. Christmas Jones.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, I remember she's on Jay Leno and Jay Leno co goes nuclear scientist Dr. Christmas Jones and she goes I can play a scientist. Like what when we do this is this category. What do you need to play a science?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's more her age is the issue. It's like a 26 year old missiles X what they're so specific about.

[Van Lathan]

She's like I'm 26. Like ah, you could have been 31.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's very strange.

[Bill Simmons]

We also have a very crowded that guy and graduated that guy group.

[Craig Horbeck]

This is. Is this the that guy movie of the 90s?

[Bill Simmons]

There's been others, but it's a good one. Ludis, Guzman, Stan Shawn, John Hurd, Mike Starr, who's the guy who dies from eating the peppers and Dumb and Dumber and was in a million mob movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great pull on that, being Mike Starr. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Kevin Dunn, who was that guy from Dave.

[Sean Fennessey]

Absolutely.

[Bill Simmons]

Who was the dad of Mad Love and was just in a lot of 90s movies. Yeah. And then Michael Rispoli, who's Grandma and Rounders in this in the same year. I'm just gonna zam.

[Sean Fennessey]

You going for the Sopranos?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, go for the Sopranos and finish the second again. Dolphining tough 98 for Rispoli.

[Sean Fennessey]

He must have really felt like the world was right in front of him. Yeah. You know, he's. I'm in a Brian De Palma movie. I'm in this exciting movie with Matt Damon and Edward Norton. I'm gonna. David. Tony Soprano.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

This HBO show up as Jackie, right? Yeah, yeah. He ends up as Jackie. So it's like. But it's crazy. You missed one. Janard Burks, you know who that is?

[Bill Simmons]

Which one was that?

[Craig Horbeck]

So in Devil in a Blue Dress. Remember the movie Devil in a Blue Dress?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

He plays in the movie. I'll never forget this. It's one of the great cuckings in any movie that's ever happened. In Devil in a Blue Dress, it takes place easy. Goes over to this guy's house and he has sex with his wife while the guy is sleeping. Do you remember this?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Craig Horbeck]

Lisa Nicole Carson in the other room.

[Sean Fennessey]

Continue.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, he has sex with his wife while this guy is sleeping. Huh?

[Bill Simmons]

That's this guy.

[Craig Horbeck]

He's like. Cause he says to Lisa Nicole Carson's character, he goes, your man is sleeping in the other room. She doesn't care. She's like. He's so drunk, he's knocked out. And then they do it. And Janard Burks plays the guy that gets cooked in. Shout out to him. He's been in a lot of stuff, but.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, there's that girl in this, too. That girl from Devil's Advocate, the black witch lady.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, yeah. She's in the first scene.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, yeah. What's her name?

[Bill Simmons]

She's the announcer.

[Sean Fennessey]

Tamara Tunney. Is that her name?

[Bill Simmons]

Can't remember.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, that's her name.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Written by David Koepp, who apparently is the fourth most successful screenwriter ever by box office.

[Sean Fennessey]

He wrote Jurassic park, among many other movies.

[Bill Simmons]

War of the Worlds, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Spider Man. Also directed seven movies that weirdly, the trigger effect, Stir of Echoes, Secret Window. They're all like kind of the same weird, strange movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's had an amazing career.

[Bill Simmons]

Really good career.

[Sean Fennessey]

He is considered one of the geniuses of screenwriting.

[Craig Horbeck]

Have you guys done the trigger effect? No. Would you do the trigger effect?

[Bill Simmons]

Probably not.

[Sean Fennessey]

I like it. Another movie that came out in the 90s where I was like, the concept alone is so cool to me.

[Craig Horbeck]

Elizabeth Shue.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Craig Horbeck]

Another actress that's right there. Crowding up grabs.

[Bill Simmons]

Leaving Las Vegas. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Craig Horbeck]

For Carly. Would you like another. I'm telling you, it's a deep.

[Sean Fennessey]

She got boxed out. Yeah. We could have had that first sight, you know, with. With or. No. Was that.

[Bill Simmons]

No, that was.

[Sean Fennessey]

That was another one.

[Bill Simmons]

She was also.

[Craig Horbeck]

There's a lot going on. Gwen Paltrow. I'm thinking of the same trouble towards the end. There's like a lot of people.

[Bill Simmons]

Craig, you know what At First Sight is?

[Van Lathan]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a drama that's now comedy.

[Van Lathan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Val Comer's blind, but there's an operation where he can get his sight back so he can see things for about 30 minutes in the movie and falls in love with Miracerbino. But guess what? The surgery had after effects and he's gonna lose his sight again. And now he has to decide what's important to him. And they go to a hockey game at one point.

[Van Lathan]

Why don't we do dramas that are now Comedy Month?

[Bill Simmons]

I have it.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have it.

[Bill Simmons]

I've done all the work because it's regarding Henry Driven Month.

[Sean Fennessey]

I saw At First Sight in high school on a first date with a girl who loved it and I broke up with her after that.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a true story.

[Craig Horbeck]

The sick of it. You're over it. Regarding Henry as unintentional comedy is going to be a really interesting movie to do.

[Bill Simmons]

There's another one for dramas that are now Comedy Month that I might be the only one that thinks it's funny. But Legends of the Fall is hilarious, though.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, I haven't seen it in a long time.

[Bill Simmons]

That was like a very serious drama that is now like, laugh out loud, funny man.

[Craig Horbeck]

That's just another movie in the never ending chapter of my mama's white boy thing. Every once in a while, my mama would say something that would really piss me off.

[Bill Simmons]

You want that to be a Month fan?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

My mama's white boy thing.

[Craig Horbeck]

My mama's white boy thing. My mom will watch Legends of the Fallen be like, I told you about the Thelma and Louise story.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. My mom goes, you mom like Brad Pitt with her friends. She goes, I just saw the finest white boy I ever seen before in my life. And then she's watching Legends of the Fall, and she just says, he keeps getting finer. I don't understand what's going on. My father could not handle it.

[Bill Simmons]

Just think, when she went to see Once. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, did.

[Craig Horbeck]

She go, no, she didn't. See, she's over it now. She's militant again.

[Bill Simmons]

$73 million budget for. $73 million budget for snake eyes. It made $103.9 million. And our guy Raj.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, no.

[Bill Simmons]

He once starred it. I think this is only, like the fourth one star we've gotten from Rush. He said it's the worst kind of bad film, the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down instead of being lousy from the first shot.

[Craig Horbeck]

Damn.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Settle down, Rush.

[Craig Horbeck]

Come on.

[Bill Simmons]

He loved the Steadicam shot in the beginning, and then he just thought it fell apart.

[Craig Horbeck]

Man, oh, man, oh, man. Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

He get Halloween Two. Two stars and this movie, one star.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he was. Sometimes Mirage would just be in a bad mood.

[Craig Horbeck]

Cranky.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, cranky.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is a tough review.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, you read it? Yeah. Yeah, it's a tough one. Most rewatchable scene. It's brought to you by the Home Depot. Black Friday, happening now at the Home Depot, which means it's the perfect time to add to your collection. And right now, when you buy a select battery kit from top brands like Ryobi. Ryobi. Ryobi. Ryobi. Or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tree for free. With Black Friday deals like these, the Home Depot has got you covered. We mentioned for the first rewatchable scene, the opening one shot in the running for best overacting of Cage's career, He's going for. Because I was made for the sewer, baby, and I'm the king. He's just screaming for no reason.

[Craig Horbeck]

It was like an Ace Ventura moment for me. Like when I sat down to watch Ace Ventura, it took me 10 minutes to be like, yo, why is he acting like this? And then you got it. But when Tyler, when you saw Nick Cage in this, you was like, yo, what the fuck is going on?

[Bill Simmons]

Is he supposed to be on cocaine?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, he's like. He's.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, there's the cocaine, my ass line at the end of the movie, I think, indicates he likes to indulge in this fight night. I think it's reasonable to assume that said Cage is kind of like this in a lot of movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. This is a nine and a half out of ten on the cage scale.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's nuts. Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

An all time dial up by him. Really cool scene.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's great when you can see him nailing the synchronization with the crowd. Like there's a moment when he is watching the fight and he stands up and as he stands up, the whole. And he yells something and then the whole crowd stands up behind him. Where it's like. That is to get that many extras to work at the same time is master filmmaker. A. That's not cgi. All those people in the crowd. That's like hundreds, maybe thousands of extras.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it helps the rewatchability of the movie too.

[Sean Fennessey]

Totally.

[Bill Simmons]

Because it's like a definitely. Like, how the fuck did they do this? 10 minutes.

[Van Lathan]

Also very skilled. He's going back and forth between the girlfriend and the wife on the gold flip phone. The pizza with the wife, the birthday with the girlfriend.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

And they let you figure it out. Right. They're not like over explaining everything. You just. The movie just drops you into his world.

[Craig Horbeck]

You get like 1 second of setup and then we're going.

[Bill Simmons]

The shooting scene itself, pretty good. When he watches the video. The knockout punch where he realizes it's a Sonny Liston situation. Right into Carla wiping blood off in the bathroom, which I just put in for Van.

[Sean Fennessey]

That scene alone, I think is worth spending some time on.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, just right there.

[Sean Fennessey]

Angle that he chooses I think is really interesting. You know.

[Bill Simmons]

Gotta get the blood off.

[Craig Horbeck]

Once again, De Palma esque.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

You keep thinking that he's gonna go for it. That there's a change of clothes happening or something.

[Sean Fennessey]

But he. I admire the restraint.

[Craig Horbeck]

I admire the restraint as well. As regrettable as it might be.

[Bill Simmons]

The next scene I wrote down, Stanshot and Nick Cage scream at each other. It's an all time Ruffalo hand and Rubinick Partridge combo overacting award. They're just screaming for two minutes.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Well, I'll come back to that flashback.

[Bill Simmons]

To the redhead pulling. Pulling Sinise away from the fight.

[Craig Horbeck]

That whole.

[Bill Simmons]

I like when De Palma goes backwards. Always fun. The elevator chase, the overhead shot of the Atlantic City rooms. I'm throwing in the Mallory Rubin Award for Did this movie need a better sex scene here? I feel like one of those rooms could have had some freaky Atlantic City shit going on. Topoma's like, you know what? I'm older now. I'm wiser. I'm not going to put that.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's more important that frat boys spray beer on each other. In a bizarre.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that was weird. Carla tells her story to Nick Cage on the staircase. I thought I'd get fired, not killed. De Palma goes split screen as she's telling the story. I always liked how De Palma would use boxes and split screens. I just feel like not enough directors do that. I see multiple things at the same time. By the way, even when the Dodgers won the World Series, I would have gone split screen. Multiple boxes. So we can see three different things happening at the same time. They always discount our TVs are better.

[Craig Horbeck]

Now into things like for the dogs?

[Bill Simmons]

No, like we're. We see the people on the mound celebrating, but then they split screen and we also see the people in the dugout celebrating.

[Sean Fennessey]

I gotta give a shout out to my friend John DeMarsico who does the. Directs the Mets broadcast because he's. This has been written about many times, but he's a huge cinephile. And in the baseball broadcast that he directs, he constantly is using all of those.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, really?

[Sean Fennessey]

He has like huge. He's a huge De Palma fan. Has all kinds of depalmatics. You just google him and look up all the stuff he's done. You'll just be watching a Mets game and. And he'll just pull a move from Scarface in the middle of the Mets game. Wow, it's really cool.

[Bill Simmons]

Guy sounds like your soulmate.

[Sean Fennessey]

He is the man.

[Bill Simmons]

Does he hate his sports life like you do or.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, I don't think he has as tortured a relationship to the Mets as I do. He sees them as a vessel for his creativity, much like De Palma sees Carlo Gugino.

[Bill Simmons]

You almost got passed by Earl Helwani this weekend because he almost had the back to back days of the Blue Jays losing the World Series, then the Bills blowing the Chiefs game.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, well, we share. Ariel and I share the Knicks.

[Bill Simmons]

And you had the Halberton game in May.

[Sean Fennessey]

Thanks for reminding me. Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

Sorry.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

Cage finds the hidden video of Sinise. The classic. You're like, oh, man. You just have your back to that door for too long. We're gonna see the legs going down this. And there it is. It's Denise. I really like when bad guys explain why they did what they did. And you're kind of like, I see his point.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He's trying to save the country.

[Craig Horbeck]

You feel like Sinise has a point. He's trying to save the country with something that doesn't really work.

[Bill Simmons]

He's a bad guy, but at least he seems a little conflicted. But I think he's just a good actor. He seems a little. As he's telling it, he's like, I know this is kind of fucked up, but here's how we got to this point versus like I'm evil.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is he just rationalizing his own greed? Totally, you know?

[Bill Simmons]

Totally. But I bought it as he was doing it. I was like, okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's also. You guys see House of Dynamite. Like this is a plot point in House of Dynamite where it's like. Like this technology might not work. You know, it's like there's only a 50, 50% chance of these anti ballistic.

[Bill Simmons]

I saw the first episode of House of Dynamite. I didn't get to see the second episode yet.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

I saw the part. It was. It was about to get to where the bomb was and then the credits came up. So I just. I'm going to wait till next week to finish it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay. Let us know when you finish the season.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's not. I mean, it's not that good. It's. It's really not.

[Craig Horbeck]

Curses again in the second one. He isn't cursing the first one, by the way.

[Bill Simmons]

Nick Cage smoking in this. The Sean Penn I brought my own pack award for excellence in on screen smoking. Underrated smoker Nick Cage. Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Smokes on screen.

[Bill Simmons]

Kind of could have it dangling in the right way, I would say.

[Sean Fennessey]

Very believable. Almost as though he has partaken.

[Bill Simmons]

We also van. We get somebody says the name of the movie in the. In the. In the dialogue.

[Craig Horbeck]

Love that.

[Bill Simmons]

You got nothing, kiddo. Snake eyes. The house always wins.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great.

[Bill Simmons]

You did it. Love you work that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Cage runs it back too, at the end.

[Bill Simmons]

Runs it back, yeah. There's no we. Kevin. You got snake eyes with the chess suicide, which we don't see a lot in the action thrillers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Have some notes on that.

[Bill Simmons]

I love it.

[Craig Horbeck]

You like the chess suicide?

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's smart. Open coffin.

[Sean Fennessey]

But he's like, I have to turn my back.

[Craig Horbeck]

Open coffin. You don't even get.

[Bill Simmons]

He's thinking he was looking after his family.

[Craig Horbeck]

Goes on in your brain man chest suicide.

[Bill Simmons]

You don't see it in that action mood.

[Sean Fennessey]

You think he'll be getting like a really a formal military funeral now.

[Bill Simmons]

It'll be much better. And then last but not least, the fall of Richard Santoro, which happens for reasons we'll discuss later. What's your most rewatchable Saint Sean? Steadicam.

[Sean Fennessey]

So the opening scene is no question the best scene, the most memorable scene in the movie for me, Gugino notwithstanding. But I do like all Four flashback sequences, or basically all of the POV sequences. So you get. You see it through Rick Santoro's eyes in that opening scene. You see it through Tyler Lincoln's eyes when he's telling his version of the story. You see it through Kevin Dunn's eyes when he's telling his false version of the story. And then you see it through Julia Costello's eyes, Gugino's character, when they're sitting on the steps. You know, it's an obvious homage to Rashomon and a lot of movies about the failure of memory. But you mentioned it when you were describing them. Every time he goes back to. Even though we're seeing something that we think we already know, he manages to turn the key just a little bit differently, which makes it, to me, a huge improvement on a movie like House of Dynamite, which does a very similar thing. Way worse. And there is a way to do this kind of storytelling and make it very exciting. I don't love how this movie concludes. Find the final 10 minutes a little tough. But everything leading up to that, I think, is really engaging.

[Craig Horbeck]

So the open is obviously like. You guys are saying the best stuff to me. However, the specific scene where Gary Sinise turns bad and you see that he is really bad, not turns bad. You actually see what he is, for me is. Was just way more compelling than I remember it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

In this particular time where he's executing his accomplices and all of that stuff, to me, it just. It worked a lot better. Like, after that, that's a real turning point in the movie to where this guy embodies scumbag asshole. Well acted, very high leverage. So that really worked for me.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do you guys buy them as old friends?

[Bill Simmons]

Good question.

[Sean Fennessey]

They have different energies.

[Craig Horbeck]

They do. And they needed something else. They needed to be. They're old friends. Yeah, cool, we get it. But there needed to be something else that undergirded their friendship.

[Sean Fennessey]

Are we supposed to believe that they were in the service together?

[Bill Simmons]

Either that or, like, high school.

[Sean Fennessey]

It said that they were friends, like childhood friends. But did they all Did. Was Nic Cage's character. Did he serve? I couldn't figure that out.

[Craig Horbeck]

Garrison Isse's character has such a faith in his ability to come work for, like, the State Department or something like that. It's almost as if he knows that he has a set of skills that can be useful on the federal level because of something they bring together. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

That was today's most rewatchable scene brought to you by the Home Depot. Time to check out The Black Friday Savings at the Home Depot. So go online or in store to check out the best deal of the season. Stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Black Friday Savings happening now at the Home Depot. This will be fun. Next category. The most 1998 thing about this movie. I have a couple nominees for you, okay? Huge Heavyweight fights in Atlantic City.

[Sean Fennessey]

This was my number one.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, that's the obvious.

[Bill Simmons]

The 90s were like, Atlantic City was the place for nine years and then it died.

[Sean Fennessey]

This was right in the heart of Tyson Holyfield. When those two fights.

[Bill Simmons]

Foreman had a couple there.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, yeah, Those two fights were right in that. 96, 97, 98.

[Craig Horbeck]

And Vegas was making a very direct move to become, like, not just a place where you gamble and have, but the actual entertainment capital of the entire world. There was a very direct corporate move to Vegas, and that's what ended up happening to Atlantic City. Just. Vegas just had the support of all the big hotel chains.

[Bill Simmons]

Vegas got it back in the early 2000s. The fights all came back.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, I mean, at the end of it, it started to be like, you couldn't have a big fight in AC anymore. Like, you couldn't be out there.

[Bill Simmons]

Knick's 1998 cell phone, that's the other one.

[Sean Fennessey]

I wrote down the gold embossed flip phone, and it's giant. It's the most 98 thing ever.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like you couldn't even fit it in your jeans pocket. I also have people caring about the Defense Secretary.

[Sean Fennessey]

What do you mean? Pete Hanks said this in the news every day.

[Bill Simmons]

Just people like, oh, he's here. He's at the fight. It's like, I don't know. In 1998, I would not have cared. The Defense Secretary was in a fight.

[Craig Horbeck]

I have people clapping for the Defense Secretary. Still a situation to where people went, hey, somebody high up in the government. Yay.

[Bill Simmons]

The only other one I have is at some point, one of the characters says, we got a goddamn Columbo around running loose. You know who Columbo is?

[Van Lathan]

Only because of Poker Face.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, Columbo hasn't trickled down culturally. That's a good show.

[Bill Simmons]

Need Kathy Bates to bring him back.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a very enjoyable TV show.

[Bill Simmons]

What age is best for you?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, one more thing. If so and so is happening, like you're watching and you're like, you're fucked.

[Bill Simmons]

Colombo knows I like Quincy. I was a Quincy guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Never saw that. That's one of the Dr. Coroner, M.D.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. The Quincy, Maryland of all of those detectives if you're in a draft of TV Detectives, where you got the Taylor Savalas, Kojak, Kojak, Kojak. You got Kojak, you got Matlock, you got.

[Bill Simmons]

It's Dan Tannen from Vegas is the answer.

[Sean Fennessey]

Dan Tannen, Robert York.

[Bill Simmons]

He got down. Even his assistant was high.

[Sean Fennessey]

Got down.

[Bill Simmons]

He was just surrounded by the ladies.

[Craig Horbeck]

That's not what we were talking about.

[Bill Simmons]

That's my favorite one.

[Craig Horbeck]

Who's the best at solving crimes, you freak?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, Quincy. Because Quincy could use coroner shit.

[Craig Horbeck]

But I feel like he was a.

[Bill Simmons]

Cop who could also do autopsies of the victims. Like, nobody can beat that.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a crazy idea for a TV show. It's not enough to just be a detective.

[Bill Simmons]

And every once in a while, he would. He would look up at Sam, his assistant, and go, it wasn't suicide, Sam.

[Sean Fennessey]

It was murder.

[Craig Horbeck]

Okay? Just different situation because one guy is legal and the other guy is medical. But as far as doctors who are also somehow detectives, do you have Quincy or House md? Cause House md.

[Bill Simmons]

House MD Was good.

[Craig Horbeck]

House MD Was look into some shit and give you. House MD Was the man.

[Bill Simmons]

House MD was good. Did you like House?

[Van Lathan]

Didn't watch it. No interest.

[Bill Simmons]

What stage is the best? An athlete falling into debt and having to do something illegal.

[Sean Fennessey]

Huh?

[Bill Simmons]

Shit. Wow. I wish that wasn't topical right now. Jesus.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, there's a couple of these you're going to be able to see.

[Craig Horbeck]

Mafia, man. Don't just talk about the players. Show the Mafia.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah, Those are my people.

[Craig Horbeck]

You want to talk about the people? I don't really want to talk about them as much.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you have for what stage? The best, Sean.

[Sean Fennessey]

Interesting how you kicked it to me. I mean, this is a very topical film right now. Right?

[Bill Simmons]

Let's do that part later.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I have another spot for that.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think the Maestro movie is like a thing where it's like, let this guy cook. Like, we're gonna. We're only making this movie because this guy knows how to make movies feel fucking awesome. Like, this is something that is also kind of gone now from movies, but as I said, like, this is maybe the 10th or 11th best Brian de Palma movie, but it is one of the most watchable movies of the 1990s. And it is only that way because he can see the movie in his head and he makes it so special in the style that he has. So I don't know. There's just not. That has aged nicely. We don't get those as often as we used to.

[Bill Simmons]

I have the moment in Action thrillers. When we realize someone we thought we knew is the bad guy, there's always that. Like in this movie, he's. Sinise is walking the hallway and he kind of. Somebody's going ahead and he kind of stops and he looks around and you're like, oh, no, it's you. You're the bad guy. And he just gets on his phone. But those moments are always fun. Sinise as a bad guy. We talked about. Did we have another acceptable loss? Like, acceptable losses. I've been a good fantasy team. Name an award for the random guy who didn't do anything wrong in an action thriller but has to die anyway. We might have to consider for this next batch when we do our 26. In this case, the guy who thinks he's getting laid by Carlo and takes her up to the room and that guy just gets shot with a silencer. It's like, did that guy do anything wrong?

[Craig Horbeck]

That's what's aged the best in me.

[Bill Simmons]

What? That guy getting murdered?

[Craig Horbeck]

Asshole. Josh Gadda being used by a super.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm not the same thing. I forget that guy's name.

[Sean Fennessey]

He was on Malcolm as middle actor.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's not Josh Gad.

[Bill Simmons]

It's Pre Josh Gad.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's Pre Josh Gad. It's Gad. Before the Gad. Yeah, Pre Gad. That guy being used by a hot woman for her own thing, thinking that he's the man. I never understand. So you're that dude. Shout out to the Josh Gad guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Josh. God.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, Josh God. You're that guy.

[Bill Simmons]

I call him Gad, too.

[Craig Horbeck]

You're at A.C. yeah. One night, Carla Gugino, for some reason, shows interest in you.

[Bill Simmons]

It's over. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

She's wearing a white miniskirt and a black bomber jacket that's zipped up with only a bra underneath. That's her outfit.

[Craig Horbeck]

And she comes up to you and is like, yeah, let's go up to your. And you don't in any way.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you have air conditioning? I do.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, right. You don't in any way think that's.

[Bill Simmons]

Gonna make it really cold?

[Craig Horbeck]

Like, what's the deal? Cause as guys. That guy just knows he's hot. He came to AC to fuck, and now it's about to happen.

[Bill Simmons]

Whatever happens in AC In Vegas.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's not a very nice guy, that character.

[Bill Simmons]

He's not.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know when she's like, I'm in trouble. He's like, did he deserve to put his sweating ring back on? Very pointedly.

[Bill Simmons]

Did he deserve to die with a silencer?

[Craig Horbeck]

So here's the thing, though. He's not a nice guy. And the wedding ring thing is fucked up. But him actually, at the moment that he realizes that it's not gonna go down. Putting some distance between him and her. That's smart.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Hey.

[Craig Horbeck]

I don't want there to be any type of, like, you know what? You're not down. Let's end the night right now.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, what's aged the worst for this is now in 2025, you just assume this. This woman who's all of a sudden randomly interested you is gonna drug you in your room and take all your stuff.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Because there's been a lot more awareness of that the last 25 years, especially in Vegas.

[Sean Fennessey]

Literally happened to a friend of mine. I will not say who that friend is, but that literally happened to a friend. New Orleans in Las Vegas.

[Craig Horbeck]

I blame him.

[Bill Simmons]

Here's one for Sean.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm not casting any blame.

[Bill Simmons]

Here's the wood stage. The best for Sean De Palma. Easter eggs in pivotal moments that we circle back to the bring that you're watching this live for the first time.

[Sean Fennessey]

Here comes the pain.

[Bill Simmons]

Here comes the pain. And it's basically the owl and blowout where it's like, man, he's really interested in this owl. And then it's like, oh, he's. John Travolta's character is going to watch this video. And it's like, oh, there's the owl hooting.

[Sean Fennessey]

Before he says that, though, we do see that he's wearing an earpiece.

[Craig Horbeck]

True.

[Sean Fennessey]

And that. That's a dead giveaway that something is.

[Craig Horbeck]

Up that he fucked.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Dirty cops who decide once and for all nobody's gonna buy me anymore. I was like that in the movie. Oh, I've been bought for one last time.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'm trying to think of another time that I've seen that.

[Bill Simmons]

I just have to mention a Palestinian sniper terrorist assassinating someone over their cooperation with Israel is topical in 2025.

[Sean Fennessey]

It is.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm gonna move on. Snake Eyes was the last Brian De Palma film for which Steven Spielberg viewed the rough cut. It's an official end of the group.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, they're not fucking with each other anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

And they just kind of got old. Some, like, college buddies who don't really talk anymore.

[Craig Horbeck]

God damn. Are you telling me that there's an end to the Bill Simmons Joe House run Coming.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

Never.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow. No. So I will say De Palma is interviewed in the new Martin Scorsese Doc, Mr. Scorsese. And it's a. He's great in it because he's known Scorsese for 60 years, but he's still a little competitive with him. And you can tell.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Like how come this guy got five parts? My documentary is 100 minutes when, when.

[Craig Horbeck]

And when I was getting into movies and I just thought those guys relationship was so awesome. Like Spielberg comes on the set of Scarface and he's like, do this, do that, all of that stuff. And then one day, like all things, it must end. It's over.

[Sean Fennessey]

It is cool though that it's like, let me just call it my best friend who's also the greatest living filmmaker and he'll just help me on one day. That is fucking awesome.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. Like this is the way. And then that scene becomes fucking. But it's also a testament to the collaborative nature of these guys.

[Bill Simmons]

And you know, it's like when Craig asked me for advice for the fantasy football show, I just pop in like.

[Van Lathan]

Spielberg, cut this, move this around. High fits, quiet.

[Bill Simmons]

Have you ever thought about high fits?

[Sean Fennessey]

Maybe not doing so Craig, the Spielberg.

[Bill Simmons]

In this analogy, I think it's Soderbergh the punk.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I have one last what stage the best Trump, who I think would have hoard out his Atlantic City casino for just about anything in the 90s being like, eh, this is a little rich for me, this whole evil casino owner. So can you make that the Powell Millennium instead? And they don't use the Trump.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Very surprising that he did not allow them to use this or that he.

[Sean Fennessey]

Didn'T appear in the film himself.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. That's the real you would have thought right there.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. So something must happen.

[Sean Fennessey]

John Heard, though. Love John Heard.

[Bill Simmons]

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Figuring out your next career move isn't always easy. That's why LinkedIn connects you with the people, ideas and resources that help you move forward with confidence. Whether you're exploring new paths or leveling up, LinkedIn is here to support your journey. It's the world's largest professional network for a reason. Because when it comes to your career, having the right tools and connections isn't just helpful, it's essential. Whether you're after your first job, looking to grow your professional community or gain expertise, LinkedIn can help you grow your career with confidence. Visit LinkedIn.com Discover the tools and features that will help you develop professionally wherever you are in your journey. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Carvana lets you buy your next car.

[Van Lathan]

On your terms, explore a massive inventory.

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[Bill Simmons]

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[Bill Simmons]

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[Van Lathan]

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[Bill Simmons]

Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return [e-mail] Carvana hey, it's time for the Sean Fennesee award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria. Orgasm.

[Sean Fennessey]

One of the great categories on this wonderful show. My favorite is the scene when Gugino and Cage are sitting on the staircase. And there's an overhead shot of the staircase and showing you all the levels of the stairs and gives you this sense of disorientation which is a direct lift from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. There's a scene near the end of the film in the chapel where we see Stuart looking down the staircase and feeling the sense of disorientation. And obviously De Palma. I think Vertigo is his favorite movie of all time. And also one of the most perverse movies ever made about wanting to have sex.

[Bill Simmons]

I want to actually do it for Rewatchables in 2026 because that movie is full fledged, off the rails, bonkers.

[Sean Fennessey]

It is the origin point of so many of our favorite movies and favorite directors.

[Bill Simmons]

It would be hilarious if they just released that movie in March with Sydney Sweeney as the Kim Novak character. And they just gave nobody any context. People would be like, what the fuck is happening in this movie?

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, I will kill myself if that happens. And yet I would watch it like I need to see it first and then kill myself.

[Bill Simmons]

What'd you have for great shot Go order award for most cinematic shot. I had the overhead AC rooms.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a good one.

[Bill Simmons]

Long shot.

[Sean Fennessey]

Just.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause I always think about like, how'd they do that? Did they have to build all these rooms one by one on a set? Did they steal. Did they have to match it with the casino?

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, I think, yeah. I mean, I think it's all sets that they've built. There's a recent example of that in John Wick 4. There's this very similar sequence where they enter an apartment building and you. It's. The entire action sequence takes place overhead. That is fucking amazing. But I would not be surprised if they looked at this to do that.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's long. No. Have you seen that sequence?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Where he has the fire gun. It's crazy.

[Bill Simmons]

Apparently in episode four of House of Dynamite there's something like that. I haven't seen it yet. Friend of mine has screener.

[Sean Fennessey]

My cinematic shot is when Carla Gugino falls to the floor and her glasses fall on the floor and the camera's all the way on the bottom of the floor and it's just looking at the glasses and you're like, oh, no, somebody's going to step on those glasses. And then crunch. Somebody steps on the glass.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a good one.

[Craig Horbeck]

Mine is there's a sort of pretty long shot through a cracked door at.

[Bill Simmons]

The party with the two guys talking.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, yeah, in there where it starts with a bunch of hot models smoking crack. It looks like they're smoking crack cocaine, which I didn't realize.

[Sean Fennessey]

In Tyler's room.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, in Tyler. And so. But there's a long. And it stays there for a second and you look like you're watching something that you're not supposed to be watching. So it puts you directly in. I like when the camera or the style of the movie puts you in an emotional situation.

[Bill Simmons]

Then you're like, is that Bobby Brown.

[Craig Horbeck]

Out of nowhere? New edition. Getting back together.

[Bill Simmons]

Chess. Rockwell Brocklander's award for best character name. Lincoln, Tyler. The AC Executioner.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

That's good. AC Executioner is really good.

[Sean Fennessey]

I do think the main characters names are really good in this movie. Detective Rick Santoro, Atlantic City PD and Commander Kevin Dunn, US Naval Service Commander Kevin Dunn.

[Bill Simmons]

And they had a Kevin Dunn in the movie, but they didn't change the name of Commander Kevin Dunn. So there was the actor Kevin Dunn from Dave. But then there was a character Kevin Dunn.

[Sean Fennessey]

Must have been confusing.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you have for our Flex category, Sean?

[Sean Fennessey]

I chose the I used to fuck guys like you in prison award for craziest quote. It's kind of more of an exchange, but it's very fast. It starts with Kevin Dunn saying, how's Angela? And Rick Santoro says, fat, fabulous, fantastic. I love her. Then Commander Kevin Dunn says, how's the other one? What's her name? Candy. And Santoro says, oh, Monique. Skinny, mean, expensive. I love her. That's just a great moment in this movie. That's Cage cooking. The line reading is perfect and sums up what an asshole this guy is.

[Bill Simmons]

The Butch's Girlfriend award for weak link of the film. Well, let's talk about the tidal wave. There's supposed to be a tidal wave in this movie that ends the movie. It was filmed by Industrial Light and Magic. You can see some of it online because the original ending or part of it is in there. And for some reason they bail on this in the post edit do the different ending, but it explains why when you're watching this, it's thunder, it's rain. People are looking up, there's the movie begins with them talking about a storm and then there's no payoff. And I have no idea why they cut it.

[Sean Fennessey]

He has talked about how he ultimately didn't feel that this is what this movie was about. It wasn't a spectacle movie. It was a movie about that intrigue that Van was talking about at the top. That it was.

[Bill Simmons]

But how did they not know that before they committed to this tidal wave thing?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think that they weren't happy with how the tidal wave looked. You can watch the tidal wave sequence on YouTube. It's on YouTube. It is. Okay, this is kind of getting into my hottest take, but I think my hottest take is that it's significantly better if you put the tidal wave back in. Even what's existing.

[Bill Simmons]

That's why I have it as the weak link. I don't know why they took it out. It's like we dance toward it for 90 minutes and then it just doesn't happen.

[Sean Fennessey]

The movie just deflates. And also the Kevin Dunn self assassination is just weird. That whole moment is very strange where he turns his back to the camera.

[Bill Simmons]

And then put the gun down. We know who you are. It's like, how do they know who he is?

[Craig Horbeck]

I think the movie ending with the tidal wave is to me, like a natural evolution of the chaotic nature of the film. Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

The escalation.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. To where something just kind of like random or not so random, but something that's been building comes along and sweeps everything up.

[Sean Fennessey]

I totally agree with you.

[Bill Simmons]

Pro tidal wave.

[Van Lathan]

Pro tidal wave.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

Even at the very end, like the cage and Gino on the beach, like the kiss, it felt like very outside what the movie was. It felt a little too, like buttoned up. In rom comy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Wood stage. The worst. I think if you made this movie in 25, there would have been all the cameras. They would have been trying to. They would have figured out so many weird things about this assassination. Why did this girl in the white dress with the bon wig go and it fell off and who is this? And we would have had all of these people.

[Craig Horbeck]

So are you arguing that?

[Bill Simmons]

No, I'm saying just 1998, you could get away with an assassination thing like this at a fight and not. Not have people. They didn't even know that blimp thing was there.

[Craig Horbeck]

Know who it was?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, well, obviously this whole assassination thing made way more sense in 1998, I think than it would in 2025.

[Sean Fennessey]

An insanely elaborate plan. Right.

[Craig Horbeck]

With a lot on the line, like at this particular time. It's almost. There's one of my picking this is that there's a more efficient way to do what it is that they wanted to do.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Why, why did this boxer have to take a dive for them to kill this guy in the front row?

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't fully understand understand that obviously the enlisting the Palestinian to be the trigger man, but then immediately killing the trigger man is very, you know, shades of jfk obviously in this. And then also I don't really understand Carla Gugino's character's plan either. Like why does she have to use this event to go to talk to them?

[Craig Horbeck]

Like a simpler, much more straight to the point way of everyone getting what they wanted to get accomplished in this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

You can now watch rewatchables on Spotify and the Ringer's first ever television channel. Yeah, you heard me. Available exclusively on Samsung tv. Plus the subscription free streaming destination bringing you the best of tv. Also really good tv. Samsung rewatch some of our greatest hits like Back to the Future, Alien, the Sandlot and many more on the all day Ringer channel. You can also settle in and catch up with your other Ringer favorites, including Hasselbar, the Big Picture, even highlights from book of basketball 2.0. To watch, all you have to do is open the Samsung TV app on your Samsung TV or Galaxy Mobile device, navigate to the Ringer channel and boom, you're in Van. You're up with a flex category.

[Craig Horbeck]

My flex category is Van Lathan. How would you have gotten out of this?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, which character are you playing?

[Craig Horbeck]

So I'm Rick Santorum.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Craig Horbeck]

And so you have a wife.

[Sean Fennessey]

Rick Santorum or Santorum? Excuse me?

[Craig Horbeck]

Santorum. I was thinking of political part.

[Sean Fennessey]

You should be Rick Santorum in this. In this.

[Bill Simmons]

Rick Santorum as Rick Santorum.

[Craig Horbeck]

As Rick Santorum. So you have a wife and a girlfriend that you have to explain where you've been. Okay. It's like something's going crazy. There's all this stuff going on. But you haven't been home. You're not really on the phone anymore. You have a wife and a girlfriend. It's two completely different ways.

[Sean Fennessey]

So you have to call Angela and Monique.

[Craig Horbeck]

Angela and Monique. Cause they're both calling you and they want to know what's going on. The wife is Angela, right?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

So you talk to her first and you let her know that. Look, honey, I don't know if you know. What's the homeboy's name again?

[Sean Fennessey]

Commander Kevin Dunn.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, man, Kevin. This guy is not who I thought he was. Yeah, Kevin not coming back to Christmas, baby. No more. No more Kevin. Kevin is like one of the most. You know how he picks up, he plays with the kids. He does all of this stuff. Yeah, that's not the guy. This guy's a killer. This guy's an asshole. She's on the other end of the phone. Like I always told you, there was something that I didn't like. I saw the darkness in him. I could look at him and I could tell that there's just something wrong about that guy. And you're like, baby, you were right. You were right. This guy's out of our life forever. Look at my face. Look at what happened to my face. That was him. He had the heavyweight champion of the world assault me. Baby, you were right about him. Totally different situation with the girlfriend. The girlfriend's name again is Monique. Monique. Monique. Where have you been? I haven't talked.

[Bill Simmons]

Hey, hey.

[Craig Horbeck]

That's not how our relationship goes. What did Jay Z say? Our time together is our time together. Our time apart is our time apart. So you love Rick with your mind and not with your heart? I got a whole family. You don't call me and ask me where I've been. That's not what you do. Now, I will tell you this. The rooms at this hotel in AC are amazing. So if in a couple of days, after this all blows over, you want to come check this out, that's cool. If you want to have some fun, that's cool. But I got kids and a family and a wife. Don't call this phone no more after 10:30. Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

A clinic on how to deal with the gemar.

[Sean Fennessey]

One thing I really like when he's talking to his wife early in the movie is she's asking about what pizza order they should do. And he's given her the details about what's on the different pizzas. And he's like, I don't fucking know. I'm not gonna be eating it.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'm not gonna be home.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know, it's a very relata.

[Van Lathan]

Also, why does she. Can his wife not order a pizza? Why does he have to bring the pizza home at one in the morning?

[Craig Horbeck]

But see this?

[Van Lathan]

Fucking order a pizza yourself.

[Craig Horbeck]

This is. But that's the kind of. That's what he got in. He the man of his family. I guess what he got going on, yeah. Saying, like, maybe y' all let y' all women have free rein to order pizzas and stuff like that, but not Rick.

[Sean Fennessey]

I feel like since we know that Monique is skinny, mean, and expensive, she might push back a little bit on Rick's attempt to manage that scenario.

[Van Lathan]

And we know his wife is, to.

[Sean Fennessey]

Use his words, fat and fantastic.

[Bill Simmons]

So it might have been a late night pizza for her. She might have already had dinner.

[Sean Fennessey]

Might have been her second pizza of the day.

[Bill Simmons]

We're gonna take a break and then do Hottest take. All right. The CR Thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest Take award. Sean, did you do your.

[Sean Fennessey]

So I said the Tidal Wave would have been a much better ending, but I. I do think the less classy the material, the better the Brian De Palma move. So, like, obviously we talked about Bonfire of the Vanities. Very classy novel adaptation of a Tom Wolfe book. Not a successful movie. The hot take part is that I just don't think the Untouchables is very good. And it is, like, the classiest of the De Palma movies. And it's never been one of my movies. I've never really cared about it. I don't think it's that interesting. And I would much rather watch. Watch Blowout or Dress to Kill or Body Double or this movie than the Untouchables.

[Craig Horbeck]

Now, do you think those movies are better, or do you think the Untouchables kind of sucks?

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't know if it sucks. Like, it obviously is so well made. I just find it kind of dull.

[Craig Horbeck]

You agree?

[Bill Simmons]

We did it on Rewatchables. I. There's some. It's got the Daero stuff that I love. It's got the Costner. Like, I. I like it more than ch. I get it. I get his take. It's just he. If a different director had made it, I think you would like it more.

[Sean Fennessey]

That might be it. It's like I'm. I'm like, this is a missed opportunity. Like, switch this. Like, two directors should trade again.

[Bill Simmons]

You're watching Jason Kidd in the triangle offense going, what's going on? Give this guy the ball and let him go.

[Craig Horbeck]

So, yeah, that's kind of the thing, right? When a director like him with, like, De Palma plays it slate safe and straight up and down the line.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

It kind of weighs on you a little bit. And that is a very.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like when Van goes on CNN in.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'm a rabble rouser on.

[Sean Fennessey]

You did.

[Craig Horbeck]

You did Hellraiser.

[Sean Fennessey]

You did the glaze moment. That was that was. That was good.

[Bill Simmons]

You did do the glaze. Do you have a hottest take?

[Craig Horbeck]

I do that. It's not a better movie, but it might be a more interesting movie if the lead's roles were reversed.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Sise as the hero.

[Craig Horbeck]

Sise as the hero in this. And Nick Cage sort of playing up, but Nick Cage dialing it down and Sinise dialing it up.

[Sean Fennessey]

Can Sinise pull off that shirt?

[Craig Horbeck]

Maybe not, but maybe you get something. Maybe Sinise wears. You know what he could pull off? A notorious Big B I G. Versace type joint.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, yeah, the skitter.

[Craig Horbeck]

Give him a little louder and stuff like that.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought you were gonna go Travolta Cage reunion.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, that works too.

[Bill Simmons]

Where either of them could have played either part.

[Craig Horbeck]

But you know what? Travolta can dial it up.

[Sean Fennessey]

He could have been Kevin Dunn, I think. Cause he's got the General's daughter in him. We know he can wear the uniform, right? General's daughter.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's an unfortunate film.

[Craig Horbeck]

As I saw the movie, I kind of felt like in this movie, at a certain point, Cage was doing what he was doing and Sinise was doing what he was doing.

[Sean Fennessey]

That was what I'm saying. They had different energies. They're kind of like not really on the same wavelength in this movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

Right. If they would have switched it up, each guy would have subverted something and it might have been a little bit more interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

My hottest take, Nick Cage, number one guy, all time. You could cast in any part of a Vegas or Atlantic City movie. He could play all the parts. He could be a blackjack dealer, cop, crooked cop, gambler, bookie, fight fixer, pimp, security guard. Name anybody that works in a casino. Nick Cage could play that part.

[Sean Fennessey]

Part. Great take.

[Bill Simmons]

It's the only one that I can't think of anybody else you could say that about.

[Craig Horbeck]

Also, it can be the. The everyman that kind of gets his girl stolen by James Con.

[Bill Simmons]

Could have been in the car with Vince Vaughn and John Favro. Younger Nick Cage. That's like the third being like Vegas could have done everything.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great take.

[Bill Simmons]

Casting what ifs.

[Craig Horbeck]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

DEA offered s role to our guy Al Pacino, who turned it down. Who.

[Sean Fennessey]

Would have needed an older actor to play the other part. If you do that right.

[Bill Simmons]

I was with Rick Santoro half an hour ago.

[Sean Fennessey]

He, of course, is the original utterer of Here Comes the Pain.

[Bill Simmons]

And then this is where you want me big time.

[Sean Fennessey]

You're gonna die big time.

[Craig Horbeck]

This is where car's way of.

[Sean Fennessey]

So good.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'VE been with made guys. Connected guys. Who you been with?

[Bill Simmons]

Van this casting. What if is gonna break your brain?

[Craig Horbeck]

Okay. Let's see.

[Bill Simmons]

Offered Sinise's role. Wouldn't take it because he wanted 20 million and they offered 12. Our guy will Smith decided to do Enemy of the State instead. We all won.

[Craig Horbeck]

Good movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Good.

[Bill Simmons]

Two winners. I'm glad he did Enemy of the State.

[Sean Fennessey]

I like Enemy of the State.

[Craig Horbeck]

Look at the incestuous Enemy of the State he takes. Because Tom Cruise turned it down. Who worked with De Palma.

[Bill Simmons]

This is how movies go.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like the whole nine interesting movie with Will Smith in this movie. Man.

[Bill Simmons]

Could have also could have played either part. But I think him as Commander Kevin Dunn. Will Smith never played a part like that. Right. Actually would have been really interesting.

[Sean Fennessey]

I would have believed he never plays sleazy guys either.

[Craig Horbeck]

Never plays sleazy. Never really plays villain.

[Bill Simmons]

So like he needed one of those.

[Sean Fennessey]

Man. He really did.

[Bill Simmons]

Spent the fucking 20 million. It was 1998. Like that's. He was the most bankable.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's kind of surprising guy that we had.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

This comes bad job on them. Best that guy award. We went through all the candidates. I think it's. I think it's Michael Rispoli. Even though we know what his name is. I think he's the most that guy. Of all the that guys.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have done Raspoli and Mike Starr. I think those are like elite that guy actors.

[Craig Horbeck]

I have burks just because. Denzel. His girlfriend in the other room while he was sleep. And Devil in the Blue Dress.

[Bill Simmons]

Who do you have for Dion Waiter's awards?

[Sean Fennessey]

It's the first I'm hearing of this.

[Bill Simmons]

Who do you have for damn Waiters? Carla's not eligible.

[Sean Fennessey]

A woman named Jane Heitmeier.

[Bill Simmons]

Who? The redhead.

[Sean Fennessey]

Serena. The redhead. AKA the blonde. Who is my pick for the cr. I would throw my life away for her.

[Craig Horbeck]

There you go.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow. She's just.

[Bill Simmons]

She's gonna say the Palma movie with the redhead and. And gambling. And it's a lot of things that check Sean's body.

[Sean Fennessey]

Very comfortable for me. Yeah. It's like a warm bath.

[Craig Horbeck]

She's the like. Like a prototypical Dion Waiters in this role.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like prototypical.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm down with it. Recasting couch director or city. Can we talk about Stan Shaw being a little bit too old to be Lincoln Tyler?

[Craig Horbeck]

Isn't it?

[Sean Fennessey]

He was going to be my weak link.

[Bill Simmons]

He's like. Looks like he's 47 now. We did have older champs at that point. Like Foreman Was older.

[Sean Fennessey]

But if this is not. This is.

[Bill Simmons]

He seems like he's almost 50, but if.

[Sean Fennessey]

If this is Michael Clark Duncan or Ving Rhames, aren't you like. Yeah, I buy that.

[Craig Horbeck]

It. It, like I, I like see him as a boxer. He played a boxer, Harlem Knights, all that stuff. I. I love him as an actor, but when you watch it, I know he's supposed to be a little bit older, but he's jarringly a little bit older in this situation. Like jarringly old to me.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes, we're two. It's two years too early. But this would have been a great 50 cent part.

[Craig Horbeck]

Two years to early.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause he wasn't 50 cent yet. That came out in like 2000.

[Sean Fennessey]

To be weight.

[Bill Simmons]

I was trying to think this. It felt like a good stunt casting. I don't think he needed a real actor.

[Sean Fennessey]

There's just not a lot of actors who could credibly play a heavyweight. Yeah, you have to be tall, by the way.

[Bill Simmons]

He didn't have to be a heavyweight. He could have been a welterweight or a middleweight. It didn't really matter.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's true.

[Bill Simmons]

You know.

[Craig Horbeck]

You know, I guess. But at that time during the 90s, that's probably a reflection to the fact that we only really, really, at that point in the 90s, were really super caring about heavyweight boxes. The only guy that was really drawing someone at the lower weights was De La Hoya.

[Sean Fennessey]

And the Executioners obviously modeled on Tyson in a lot of ways. Right there. Like, hasn't been knocked out in 28 professional fights. And I saw him in the Golden.

[Bill Simmons]

Honestly, they could have just cast. Tyson could have tacked.

[Craig Horbeck]

I always like it. That's why I have something later on. But I always like it in these movies where they go with actual fighters. This role is a little bit, maybe too much. Cause then you gotta act.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's got some real scenes with Cage.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, but like when they get like a real fighter, somebody bing.

[Bill Simmons]

Rams could.

[Sean Fennessey]

He could have done it. He could have been a boxer in Undisputed.

[Bill Simmons]

Could have kicked the tires. Maybe call Wesley Snipes. His agent being like too small of.

[Craig Horbeck]

A role for Wesley.

[Bill Simmons]

98.

[Craig Horbeck]

Too small of a role for Wesley.

[Bill Simmons]

In the late 90s.

[Craig Horbeck]

Blade, same year.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Too small of a role for Wesley.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Craig, you still have your flex category or.

[Van Lathan]

No, a lot were swiped. I was going to bring up Lincoln Tyler. I got the Elizabeth shoe for Gugino also, like, why did she have to wear that wig and dress? Why didn't she dress super understated? I Don't understand why she looked like that. That makes no sense to me.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, she could have worn, like, a hat and a brown wig.

[Bill Simmons]

Baseball hat.

[Van Lathan]

Doesn't make sense at all. This one might not go over well. I don't know about the title of this movie. I don't think it has anything to do with the movie. I feel like Snake Eyes is more of a casino term. There's no dice in the movie. It's about boxing. I just thought Snake Eyes didn't make any sense. I feel like we could have had a better title called Fight Night.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, Fight Night.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's a double on Tom.

[Bill Simmons]

Fight Night's a good title.

[Sean Fennessey]

Double on Tom. Because it's like how he wins. No, but Sinise is the snake. Like, he's the one who. You think he's one thing, but he's actually the opposite.

[Bill Simmons]

And they said the title.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's luring you into his trap and he's a predator.

[Craig Horbeck]

Everybody loses. Everybody comes up Snake Eyes.

[Van Lathan]

Like, the house always wins. Like, well, who is the house? Like, there wasn't. There's no real casino gambling.

[Sean Fennessey]

It was the. The missile defense system, which eventually gets pushed forward, which they learned about. So Gilbert Powell, who is at the seat of power, wins as a power always does. That's the house.

[Van Lathan]

That's why I said I don't think it would go over well.

[Craig Horbeck]

Get your head out of your ass, Craig.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm just saying.

[Van Lathan]

Craig.

[Bill Simmons]

I like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Stay woke.

[Bill Simmons]

I like when Craig sags.

[Craig Horbeck]

So what's a good title, then?

[Bill Simmons]

Fight Night.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, you did say Fight Night.

[Bill Simmons]

Fight Night's good.

[Craig Horbeck]

Fight Night works. Everybody's fighting their own battle. Sure, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Apex Mountain for Cage. No De Palma. No fixed boxing movies.

[Craig Horbeck]

Digstown. Ooh, ooh.

[Sean Fennessey]

Rispoli.

[Bill Simmons]

Rispoli.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes, I have Rispoli.

[Bill Simmons]

Carla. No Atlantic City as a viable destination for a movie like this. Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

Now, I think the answer to that is the movie Atlantic City, the Louis Mall movie with Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, which is an amazing movie, but this would be number two for me.

[Bill Simmons]

You know that movie?

[Craig Horbeck]

Never saw it.

[Bill Simmons]

That's a throw your life away Susan Sarandon performance.

[Craig Horbeck]

What era are we talking about?

[Bill Simmons]

Like 1981.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay, okay.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah. That's her throw your life away era for sure.

[Sean Fennessey]

She's very attractive in the.

[Bill Simmons]

That's another movie that's gone. That's one of those 80s 90s movies. There's no record character piece. No, it's, like, gone.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, people don't watch it. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I think it's, like, doesn't exist. I think it's one of those that's just out.

[Craig Horbeck]

I have thoughts about the older guy character piece.

[Sean Fennessey]

I love those movies.

[Craig Horbeck]

I. I love them.

[Sean Fennessey]

I love a movie where it's like, this guy's 63, but they won't do his fingers.

[Craig Horbeck]

Because the older guys, they want to be too young. They want to be too young.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is the problem.

[Bill Simmons]

You know Criterion, the streaming app, which is really good. And every month they change the movies and they'll have some that haven't been streaming for a while. Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

Their programming is amazing on that service.

[Bill Simmons]

Them and AMC are the only ones left that would have a movie like Atlantic City. But for the most part, they're just gone. And I don't know whether it's like a rights thing, but it's really frustrating, especially for this show. Cause there's movies we can't do because they don't exist. Revenge of the Nerds is gone.

[Craig Horbeck]

Do you know, like, this is interesting that we're talking about this. Like a month ago, like, I'm at the crib and I was just like, I want to watch the Mac. You seen the Mac? Yeah, I want to watch the Mac. I could not find the Mac to watch it.

[Bill Simmons]

Bernie Casey.

[Craig Horbeck]

No, the Mac is. The Mac is Max Julian as that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, the closest you can come.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is watching them watch it. In True Romance. That's what Drexel Spivey is watching on the tv. Right?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, right. You see, I know I'm pretty, but I'm not pretty as a couple of titties.

[Bill Simmons]

But, like, that one's gone.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, the Mac. Couldn't find the Mac. Wanted to watch the Mac, couldn't find the Mac. Settle for Superfly.

[Sean Fennessey]

As always, I'll just say by physical media, you will always have access to these movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that is true. Some of them. Oh, Atlantic City is. You can rent it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great. Recommended. It's a good movie.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the wrong one.

[Craig Horbeck]

I bet my mom and them guys, they gotta have it in Louisiana somewhere.

[Bill Simmons]

I know we got it somewhere Atlantic City. Anyway. All right, moving on.

[Sean Fennessey]

This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. Oh, what fun.

[Craig Horbeck]

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[Sean Fennessey]

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[Craig Horbeck]

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[Craig Horbeck]

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[Sean Fennessey]

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[Craig Horbeck]

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[Sean Fennessey]

Make it all easy. At Nordstrom.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, Apex Mountain. How about this?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Boxing matches in non boxing movies. In a movie that's not about boxing.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm trying to think what else is in there.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like in a movie that's like Pulp Fiction, there's no.

[Sean Fennessey]

We don't see the fight at all.

[Craig Horbeck]

Like, think about it. This movie is not about boxing. Normally, boxing matches come in movies that are specifically about boxing or about the sport.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a very good call. There definitely has got to be another example.

[Craig Horbeck]

There's gotta be.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, you should prep.

[Craig Horbeck]

Sean is gonna come now.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm gonna just be haunted when I.

[Bill Simmons]

Forget to name one movie. His own Criterion Closet. Just looking for a boxing movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, there's a lot of movies in the 40s and 50s like this, right? The Harder They Fall is technically about. The 50s version with Bogart is technically about fights. But it's not a fight movie. But there's a fight in it. There's got to be a good example of this. I can't think of it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I'll think of it. About nine hours from now after the pod's already done. Stan Shaw. No, I do like Stan Shaw.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, he's awesome, but a little miscast in the.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, Hunter. He's too old, but I think I was trying to think what his. He's been in a lot of good stuff, but I think that number one is probably great. Santini. Oh, but he's also in this movie that doesn't exist anymore. Tough Enough with Dennis Quaid, where Dennis Quaid's in a tough man competition, and Stan Shaw is like his. I think he's the other guy in it, but he's been around. Stan Shaw was in five boxing movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

Somehow I feel like I know him. What do I know him best?

[Craig Horbeck]

Does he have a boxing background?

[Bill Simmons]

Because he must.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, I know him from Monster Squad. You ever seen Monster Squad?

[Craig Horbeck]

The kids, they all get together and they're gonna go fight the monsters. Cause the monsters come out of the vortex, right? And Abraham Van Helsing, he comes in at the end of the movie. But then at the end, before he comes in, they have this girl, she's supposed to have a virgin read this incantation that's gonna send Dracula back to this thing. And they have one of their friends of the Monster Squad, they have their sister read the incantation, and it doesn't work because it turns out she's not a virgin and that you didn't know this. Cause you figure, like, she's like, 16.

[Bill Simmons]

This movie doesn't exist.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's facts.

[Sean Fennessey]

It is. It's a quality.

[Bill Simmons]

I definitely haven't seen this movie, it turns out.

[Craig Horbeck]

And then they have one of their little sisters who's a little girl. She reads it. Van Helsing comes back through the thing, gets Dracula, pulls him back through the vortex. They win. I think Shane Black wrote that.

[Sean Fennessey]

He did write.

[Bill Simmons]

What year is that?

[Sean Fennessey]

It's directed by Fred decker. It's like 86.

[Craig Horbeck]

All the monsters come back to this town.

[Sean Fennessey]

Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon.

[Craig Horbeck]

All of them.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's perfect gateway horror. If you're eight years old and you see it, you're like, I'll watch horror movies forever.

[Craig Horbeck]

And it fucked with me because I learned about the lore of the wolfman. Cause they killed a wolf man in the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wolf man's got nards.

[Craig Horbeck]

Wolf man's got nards. They killed a wolfman in the movie. And then a wolf man goes, oh, thank you. Because he's been released from his curse. I fell for him.

[Sean Fennessey]

Stan Shaw's in that movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Cruise or Hanks.

[Sean Fennessey]

So this was gonna be my other hottest take, but I didn't want to step on this category. It should be Cruise and Hanks. Cruz is Santoro, and Hanks is done. And then when Hanks. It's revealed that Hanks is the bad guy. It's the most shocking reveal of the 90s. And this movie would have made $900 million. You leave the tidal wave in, you get an extra $50 million in the budget because you've got the two biggest stars of the era. And it's directed by Brian De Palma, who's just worked with Cruise on Mission Impossible. And we know it will be great in the movie. And Hanks, of course, was already in Bonfire of the Vanities. Make this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Couldn't you make the same argument for Cruise and Will Smith?

[Sean Fennessey]

They're not the same age. To me, you couldn't get away with, I think, Cruise and Hanks being the same age.

[Craig Horbeck]

If it's Cruz and Hanks, this movie is the espionage version of Interview with the Vampire. It's like two titans coming together to where just the fact that their names are up there together sparks a whole bunch of interest for the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Is there a spot for Cruz to run in this movie? Maybe he's running through.

[Van Lathan]

Maybe through the back hallways. You can always find spots for him.

[Sean Fennessey]

Down the hotel room.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe he.

[Craig Horbeck]

Oh, he has to roll down the hotel hallway.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I think he would have put that in his. In the negotiations. Yeah, he's like, I read the Script. When rick's on the 35th floor, what if he's on the wrong side and has to sprint the other way? Scorsese or Spielberg? This is obviously Scorsese. This would have been a cool Scorsese movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

And what part would Philip Seymour have played? I think Sinise's part would have been.

[Sean Fennessey]

I wrote Gilbert Powell, which one was that? The Donald Trump figure that John Hurd plays. Oh, when he gives the big. He's yelling at Sinise's character about all the his plan and what's going to happen and how he needs the millennium to open. That's just a very psh kind of moment in the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Picking nits. What do you got, Van?

[Craig Horbeck]

They're having a full on party with crack before a heavyweight title fight. They're smoking crack. It's pre fight. Now I know that boxers get crazy, but I don't know how many times I've seen them go to the back where the fighters are getting ready and there's a full on model party happening in the dressing room of the boxer where they're getting down.

[Bill Simmons]

And I think that might have actually happened during the Tyson post jail era.

[Craig Horbeck]

Maybe, maybe before the fight. She's covered in blood and she's running through the thing. One guy stops her, other than that nobody really gives a shit. It's the whole time she's covered in blood. I'm like, I'm trying to think of any time I've ever seen someone even with a bloody nose. You're like, hey man, I don't know if you know, but your nose is bleeding, she's got blood all over her. Nobody cares.

[Sean Fennessey]

You wanted a cop to set her aside. Full body cavity search, that's what you wanted.

[Craig Horbeck]

Full search. And why don't you get out of those bloody co. Those are the types of movies I like. He's running security. Gary Sinise's friend Garrison Isse is running security. He however, gets his boy tickets to the fight and there's been no security screening of any kind. He just chills right there with the Secretary of Defense. I'm like, is there no lyric or no piece of dialogue where you go, hey man, I'm glad that you guys put me through this extensive security where now I get to chill and sit right next to the Secretary of Defense. All of that stuff. None of that happened. It's just I'm the bodyguard for the Secretary of Defense. Hey my friend, come to the fight. I don't think that it works that way. I don't know why it Popped in my head. Another thing is wow, you're really bringing.

[Bill Simmons]

It to the table this week.

[Craig Horbeck]

Just one more time.

[Bill Simmons]

Just one more Snake Eyes in it up.

[Craig Horbeck]

These are some slightly high BMI heavyweights. Now, I am not in any.

[Bill Simmons]

I thought the same thing.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'm not in any.

[Bill Simmons]

This looks like an ESPN Friday night Fights fight.

[Craig Horbeck]

If you guys look at me, I'm not in any way shaming anyone. I'm just saying this is two heavyweights fighting that in the 90s. This wasn't the heavyweights. It was Lewis and Tyson and Holyfield and all of that.

[Bill Simmons]

Razor Ruddock.

[Craig Horbeck]

Razor Ruddock. You know, you had maybe a couple of guys, but these are some high BMI heavyweights.

[Bill Simmons]

That's it.

[Craig Horbeck]

That's all of them.

[Bill Simmons]

What'd you have, Sean?

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, I mentioned already that Carla Gugino's plan is incoherent. Craig also points out that she's dressed like Marilyn Monroe in an attempt to get the attention of the Secretary of Defense at a fight. But then her whole intention is to be a whistleblower. To have this whole plan destroyed and then so she would put herself out of work.

[Van Lathan]

In theory is I need to get her attention. He invited her. Theoretically.

[Bill Simmons]

More importantly, we have fucking email in 1998. Send him an email.

[Van Lathan]

She said she wanted to deliver it by hand. Cause I think she didn't want it to get.

[Bill Simmons]

No, we have email.

[Craig Horbeck]

There's specifically some mention in this movie somewhere of an email that was sent.

[Bill Simmons]

But it was a mention that was said in a way where email was still kind of new and it seemed conceivable she wouldn't be able to get an email to him.

[Craig Horbeck]

No, but she says something in the movie about either she sent an email or there was an email or something in the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

I feel like she could have gone up to him before the fight versus.

[Sean Fennessey]

During the fight rather than during the fight.

[Van Lathan]

Maybe giving it to him when every camera's on him.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, everything. Everything is on him.

[Craig Horbeck]

Don't you just have also gone to the press?

[Sean Fennessey]

In theory, yes.

[Van Lathan]

Probably worried about her last season.

[Bill Simmons]

Although.

[Sean Fennessey]

Because he was being applauded. Maybe he was a beloved Sec Def.

[Craig Horbeck]

Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know, he could have been a hero.

[Bill Simmons]

I have a really stealth boxing nitpick. The crowd is just too energetic and into it and upset in the first minute of the fight. They're just booing because there's not enough action. No crowd has ever been.

[Sean Fennessey]

They had knockdowns in the first round.

[Bill Simmons]

But initially they're booing because there's not action yet. And it's like the fight just started. That never happens.

[Sean Fennessey]

Can we talk about Jose Pacifico Ruiz for a moment? So I didn't know where to put him. I don't know if he should have been in overacting. I don't know if he should have been weak link. I don't know if his character.

[Bill Simmons]

It might be a new category. It might be the Jose Pacifico Ruiz worst sports movie character.

[Sean Fennessey]

First of all, you know, I'm sure he was a wonderful boxer. His acting is abominable. Like he is absolutely terrible in this movie. Also when Stan Shaw really is awesome, he's so bad.

[Bill Simmons]

His name sucks. Jose Pacifico Ruiz.

[Sean Fennessey]

He. If we're to believe what Tyler Lincoln says, this guy was also on the take. But he's fucking up the plan because he doesn't know how to box. Like what exactly is going on where he pulls back on the phantom punch. He doesn't go for the kill when he's supposed to. He's kind of jabbing him. You know what he's describing.

[Bill Simmons]

And he's talking shit.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, yeah, he's talking too much shit. He's losing sight of what the job is to do.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you think he even knows that there is a job?

[Sean Fennessey]

Isn't it clear that he's supposed to know when he hears the sign too?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, I think they're both, they're both.

[Sean Fennessey]

In on it, right?

[Craig Horbeck]

I think they're both in on it. It am I. I could be wrong.

[Bill Simmons]

It's terrible grip play. Bush on. Here's my biggest nitpick. Why isn't Carla wearing contact lenses? It's 1998. She's like, if I lose these glasses, I just become Mr. Magoo. Like you have a job working for a defense, you know, or you're a weapons analyst. You can't put in some contacts.

[Sean Fennessey]

There is really. There is one really funny Mr. Magoo style pratfall moment though where she comes out of the bathroom after she's cleaned herself up and she's walking back into the arena and she bumps into the wall and she like looks at the wall cuz she can't see. It's like a nice reminder of the.

[Bill Simmons]

Fact she also, if she was that blind, the glasses would be way thicker. And I, I say this as somebody who's blind and I've never had a pair of glasses that. Those look like reading glasses.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, like come on, contact lenses. A love them. Where would I be without them?

[Bill Simmons]

The actual. Oh, Nobody notices the heavyweight champ punching out a copy. That one jumped out to me. And then obviously, Carla making a move on Nick at the end. Where does that come from? They have no sexual attention the whole movie. And she's batting her eyelashes and being cute and being like, maybe you should look me up sometime. It's like, what is happening?

[Craig Horbeck]

They did that.

[Bill Simmons]

This guy's a loser scumbag.

[Sean Fennessey]

He does make a move on her earlier in the movie when he sits her down before it gets real and he learns that his friend has betrayed him, but so there's some indication that he wants. He's down.

[Craig Horbeck]

The only 90s movie that had the sense to take out the underlying sexual energy between the man and the woman was the Pelican Brief.

[Sean Fennessey]

Because America's racist, right?

[Craig Horbeck]

That's part of it, yeah. And that's where the sense came from.

[Bill Simmons]

Missing a major chunk of that movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

That's the only movie that was like, you know what?

[Sean Fennessey]

You think they showed full penetration in that scene that they cut out?

[Craig Horbeck]

I think should have gone. I think they.

[Bill Simmons]

Darby Shaw got her world rocked.

[Craig Horbeck]

I think they should have gone with the Pelican Brief. You make that movie, right? I'm sure they haven't come out with that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Did this movie have a porn parody?

[Craig Horbeck]

You know, they definitely could. And so, like. But everything else, they just had to do it. Like, they had to do it. They had to make the people have some type of energy. They always had to do it, I guess. They didn't do it in. Didn't they take it out of.

[Sean Fennessey]

You can't Handle the Truth, Few Good Men.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, they took it out of that one too.

[Sean Fennessey]

Joe.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Joe doesn't get it.

[Bill Simmons]

She was with the Galactically Stupid sequel. Prequel. Prestige tv, all black cast or untouchable Prestige tv, maybe. I don't know.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, wow. I'm so defeated.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I just.

[Sean Fennessey]

Never seen you be so defeated by your own category.

[Bill Simmons]

I think this movie's fine. I wouldn't do.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think a prequel about Rick and Kevin growing up is kind of fun.

[Bill Simmons]

Fun, okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

And then we see Kevin's dark side, but Rick can't see it because he's kind of a scumbag.

[Bill Simmons]

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Noah, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs or Wilford Brimley in the Firm. I have a new combo for this. Joe Davis and John Smoltz announcing the fight. And there's another knockdown. John. Whoop, gunshots. The Secretary of Defense is down. And John Smoltz goes, yeah, we've Never seen this before, Joe. This is pretty crazy.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's all I got is the idea there that they don't have enough energy.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes, that's the idea, Sean.

[Sean Fennessey]

But if. But if Shohei Ohtani was present at that fight, they would have cut to him and said, there he is, the greatest man in the history of attending fights. Ohtani again, it's Joe Davis. That bastard. If it's a Dodgers moment, he really gets his dander up. Poor Blue Jays fans.

[Bill Simmons]

I should have put in something about them bringing up the Joe Carter home run during the Lincoln Tyler fight.

[Craig Horbeck]

Just stop bringing the fucking shit up, man.

[Bill Simmons]

Joe Carter. It's, like, particularly painful now.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, now it's tough. A moment for Blue Jays fans. That was. That was brutal.

[Sean Fennessey]

Brutal.

[Craig Horbeck]

That was brutal.

[Bill Simmons]

And Lincoln Tyler is down again. He sure is. Joe.

[Sean Fennessey]

I do think. I can't adequately do this because Chris is not here, but I do think Byron Mayo would be incredible in this movie. Movie. He was like Kevin Dunn, my old friend. Meet my friend Serena.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, in the backstage.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, that would have been good.

[Bill Simmons]

What was Carla's name in this movie?

[Craig Horbeck]

I forget.

[Bill Simmons]

Carla, I notice you lost your top. Let me take you to the gift shop.

[Sean Fennessey]

Carla. I've got air conditioning.

[Bill Simmons]

Probably an answer question. I just don't know why all bad guys don't use a silencer. What's the downside?

[Sean Fennessey]

Great note.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, it's good.

[Sean Fennessey]

Incredible note.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it heavier? What is it, Craig?

[Van Lathan]

It's bigger, bulkier, harder to pack. It's longer.

[Craig Horbeck]

Harder to conceal.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Just like if I was ever an assassin. Silencer. Every time.

[Sean Fennessey]

But I love a scene when I. When, like, two assassins are getting ready to go to work and they start screwing the silencer on. I'm like, this is. That's movie magic to me.

[Craig Horbeck]

Because you're getting ready for. For to do it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Action's gonna happen.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Deliberate. They are.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

FanDuel line for Lincoln Tyler versus Jose Pacifico Ruiz heading into the fight. Yeah, like Tyler. Minus 650.

[Van Lathan]

They said he was 10 to 1.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, they did.

[Van Lathan]

10 to 1.

[Sean Fennessey]

Favorite Ruiz.

[Bill Simmons]

That was answerable.

[Craig Horbeck]

Well, that's why he was getting his. He. He was so up about the bet.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I could offer you the bloody 100 bill. I could offer you Nick Cage's jacket, which you could wear. I could offer you an actual poster of the fight. Could frame that. What would you take?

[Sean Fennessey]

I have another answer. Go. The ruby red ring, which is revealed in the concrete slab at the End of the movie. At the end of the credits.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, good point.

[Sean Fennessey]

Which is the ring that Serena, the redhead, wears. She's killed. And then they're pushed off into a. Into the concrete slab. That's like. There's all this. This big sequence where after he kills them, we see them getting loaded up into this truck, which is really a weird way to dispense. And the two dead bodies are inside of that concrete slab.

[Bill Simmons]

So you'd want the ruby red vest.

[Sean Fennessey]

Chip that out, coach.

[Bill Simmons]

Finstock Award. Best Life Lesson. I'm naive. There's worse things to be. Guess that would be it. Don't be naive. Best Double Feature Choice Blowout. Face Off.

[Craig Horbeck]

I'll put Face Off. I put Face Off. Just run it. Run it right back.

[Bill Simmons]

Nick, what do you have?

[Sean Fennessey]

I have five nominees. Domino, you tell me which one you like.

[Craig Horbeck]

Okay, cool.

[Sean Fennessey]

Dress to kill. Jfk. In the Line of Fire. No Way Out. Oh, LA Confidential. Which of those do you like?

[Craig Horbeck]

No Way Out.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's pretty close tonally, right? Where you're like, this is a sleazy, crazy crime drama set in the world of high power politics.

[Bill Simmons]

Craig ruined no Way out, though. Why? He said Sean Young wasn't hot.

[Craig Horbeck]

This is one of the greatest big.

[Bill Simmons]

Controversies.

[Craig Horbeck]

Because the poll would have to. It's like in like an actual Gen Z can't participate.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, we need. Like, we need, like, geo blocking. But for a generation get to vote. That's how it should be in America, too. Only millennials and boomers get to vote.

[Van Lathan]

Now here's the point. Watch the movie. Does she do it for you? I'm winning that.

[Craig Horbeck]

Okay. I mean, maybe amongst your generation, the ones that shy away from.

[Van Lathan]

I'll take it across the board. I'll take your generation.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's like. But, dude, that's a tough one, bro.

[Van Lathan]

Also, remember, she is Finkel to me. She is Einhorn.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

It's a whole different relationship with her.

[Sean Fennessey]

I have. It's a stellar performance, but also she's not getting it.

[Bill Simmons]

Who. Who won Snake Eyes for you guys?

[Craig Horbeck]

I don't think Cage has ever lost a movie he starred in.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, interesting.

[Craig Horbeck]

I don't. A movie where he's the guy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Now, that would have been a great, hottest take.

[Craig Horbeck]

He has this overwhelming energy that, like, I just. I don't think he's ever lost a movie he starred in.

[Bill Simmons]

And De Palma, I mean, you know, I thought about Carlo. I did Test Drive Carlos, but I think it's De Palma.

[Sean Fennessey]

Carlos bra.

[Craig Horbeck]

Well.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause it's De Palma's last one that actually made Some money and was memorable.

[Sean Fennessey]

And that was my other probably unanswerable question is, did De Palma quit or get fired from the role of major director? Like, what actually happened?

[Craig Horbeck]

Let's look at this.

[Sean Fennessey]

He makes Mission Impossible. Massive sensation. He makes this movie, makes money. It's a well known movie. We're doing it on the show right now. Now. And then what happened?

[Bill Simmons]

It's his late 50s, and directors usually have a run of somewhere between seven and 25 years. Unless you're Scorsese or Spielberg.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think he turned 50 when he made this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

It said he was 56 in this.

[Sean Fennessey]

50. Okay, 56.

[Bill Simmons]

57. Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

So we talked about Mission to Mars.

[Bill Simmons]

Bad movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

That bombing, you think that killed it?

[Bill Simmons]

That's a bad movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

Disney swing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

And he never should have made that movie.

[Craig Horbeck]

And then he comes back and Femme Fatale was like a movie that people enjoyed, but it lost money and it was sort of controversial.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Craig Horbeck]

And a little bit off kilter.

[Sean Fennessey]

It was like a Euro sensation.

[Craig Horbeck]

Right, right. And then after that, he kind of just.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, it's like Black Dahlia.

[Bill Simmons]

What was the movie with Rachel McAdams? That one's weird.

[Sean Fennessey]

Passion. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Office.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's interesting. I kind of like it. Yeah, it's cool. You ever seen that? It's very classic to Palma, really kinky.

[Bill Simmons]

Gets a Tubi classic.

[Craig Horbeck]

But it's almost like he. I think maybe he threw his chips in because he didn't go back to.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do that quote about him saying, it's the Internet's time now, movies are over in 1998 is chilling.

[Bill Simmons]

He's pretty lit. And I think there were some things that happened, too. There are things that happened to him in the 70s and 80s that I think there were some things ingested and smoked and done.

[Sean Fennessey]

God bless him. The. The Noah Baumbach Jake Paltrow documentary about him is one of the most pleasurable things I've ever seen. I can put that on at any time of day and enjoy myself. Or just him talking about what a genius he is making his movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Him and Schrader. Well, I guess. And Friedkin, too. Three guys who were like, is that recorder on? It's a fireblower. They could give a shit. Craig, let's hear it. Would you think?

[Craig Horbeck]

Think.

[Van Lathan]

Loved it. Every time I watch. Every time I watch a dealma movie, I'm like, man, I loved this movie. I got to watch every dealma film because I think I've only seen the ones that we've covered on the show. I love Body Double. Yeah, I just like in general, when great directors make smaller movies like this, even though the budget was bigger. Whatever, the story feels small and kind of random or insignificant, and I just think it's more enjoyable. The stakes feel lower.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the end of the rewatchables.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing. Thanks to Geha, who passed out an.

[Van Lathan]

Hour ago under this.

[Bill Simmons]

Thanks to Ronick, as usual. And we'll be back next week with.

[Craig Horbeck]

Stays under $250 a night.

[Bill Simmons]

VRBO makes it easy to celebrate sweaterwear.

[Craig Horbeck]

Weather book a cabin with leaf views or a home with a fire pit.

[Sean Fennessey]

For nights with friends.

[Bill Simmons]

With stays under $250 a night, find a home for your exact needs. Book [e-mail].