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- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New film Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Don't miss the movie critics are raving is the real deal. An intelligent, deliberate paced journey into the soul of an artist. So Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now. I need support staff to clear the room.
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B
Stand up and walk now.
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A
Hello and welcome to the Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor@theringer.com and joining me on the other line from the house of Guinness, it's Andy Greenwald.
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B
I'm not, though. I'm one of the. What are they called? The Fennies, the Feenies, the Fiends, the Feenings, the Phoenix. Yes.
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A
You're not my guy. Yeah. Feeding. Yeah.
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B
Which are the ones that are like pro England, because that's where I am. That's what I am. But that's where I am.
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A
Greenwald is in London. I am in Philadelphia. It's an east coast, America old world podcast today. Andy, it's great to see you. We're going to talk a little bit about the last couple episodes of the Lowdown that we've seen, episodes three and four. We're going to talk a little bit about House of Guinness. I have some other stuff for you today. It's great to see your face. How's England treating you?
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B
You.
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A
You're muted.
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B
Well, I was going to say it's a. It's a country and experience of highs and lows. One of the lows being my brand new travel microphone that has a mute button right on the soft spot where I like to touch the microphone. So that's going to be fun. I'm going to be like Stephen Miller when I say my opinions about House of Guinness. Are you there?
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A
Wait, where does. When does Stephen Miller ever cut out?
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B
I feel. See this clip? No, that's the thing. I've been awake for hours. So they were interviewing him on cnn and he was like, we declare plenary freedoms, plenary authority to deploy troops. And then he just stopped talking because he realized.
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A
He realized he was committing an act of treason.
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B
Sure. Anyway, I was going to say allegedly. I can do that now, by the way, because I'm.
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A
It would be funny if, like, the Watch was Stephen Miller's way of getting away from it all. She was like, God, it's been tough I've been invading multiple cities.
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B
Why won't these guys weigh in on English teachers? As to. I would say that my experience has had some wonderful highs. Like this morning when I was strolling down the lane, schlepping this new microphone and recording rig, and a. A very kind Englishman said that hi. And he said he loved the pod. I would say the lows include there is a washer dryer in this flat that I've now run a small load of clothes on the dry cycle twice. Yeah, Each cycle is two hours and 50 minutes.
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A
They don't. They don't have electricity over there. It really does make you wonder, like, I. I definitely want to save the planet. I worry about my carbon footprint. I do think that America is going to be a giant data center soon.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But it is cool to be able to dry your clothes in, like, 20 minutes.
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B
I mean, what, to dry my boxers and my sweatshirt is equivalent to how many Genmojis. Like, just put it to give it the numbers. I would also say the other tell that I'm far away and that the jet lag is roaring is like when you were deep, deep asleep last night. I was definitely weeping. To the live performance of golden by the real actresses who play Huntrix in K Pop Demon Hunters on the cutie.
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A
Fountain that you're talking about where you're breaking from reality with me.
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B
Listen, this might be a vulnerable pod. Sorry.
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A
It might be. I wanted to kind of keep it pretty loose today. Thursdays are chaotic episodes. There are a couple of news things that I wanted to bounce off of you. So I'm on the east coast because I was here to do a big picture live show with Sean. Amanda, how'd that go? It went great. It was really, really fun. It was at 92 Y 92nd Street Y. It was with David and Griffin from Blank Check, which is an awesome movie podcast that people should be listening to if they don't. And we were drafting New York movies. It was very fun. The spirit of cinema was in the air in New York City because the New York Film Festival is currently underway, and Sean was hitting up a couple of movies from there. And the night after our show. No, Monday night. So our show is Saturday. Monday night. Marty supreme, the new Timothee Chalamet movie that's coming in Christmas, did a surprise screening on Monday night for my ff and it was like pandemonium cult, you know, like, in terms of, like, the word of mouth.
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B
Did you see it?
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A
I did not see it.
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B
But did you see Sean? Sean fired off an all time tweet. You might need to read it on this podcast. Great tweet, Sean, truly.
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A
But my, my kind of observation about it was just that like there really is, I think between that, between one battle after another, a lot of stuff. Like we, we are moving into award season with movies, but we are, are definitely in like a, a state of like peak hype for movies where I think that because of how vibrant online cinephilia, I guess, or how whatever you want to call it, like, like film fandom and film criticism is, there's like an ecosystem to promote and hype up and at times knock down films. And you know, I think, you know, they did a big picture, did a conversation with Van over the weekend about one battle after another. It was basically like an expanded conversation and expanded in depth kind of look at it that I felt like it was just really a cool thing to listen to after many, many rounds of. Of Hosanna's being thrown at one battle after another. So I was thinking about all this and I noted with real interest yesterday that the heat to casting news and studio news, it just exploded. Uh, it's moved from Warner Brothers to Amazon, mgm. Jerry Bruckheimer and Scott Stuber, two incredibly heavy hitters are attached to produce it and Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently circling the Chris Shaherless the Val Kilmer role rather than the Neil McCauley role. So this is crazy amount of news. It does seem like this is happening. I still wake up every day and I'm like, this is, this can't be real. But it really, really, really does seem real. My. The reason why I'm telling you about these two things is as I kind of was getting ready for today's pod for pods in the future on for, for the two of us, I was like, why doesn't TV have this kind of hype around it? You know, I was thinking about Pluribus, the, the new Vince Gilligan show that's coming on Apple, which is from the creator of Breaking Bad. And it's been you releasing these like very small teasers that I think are doing a great job of hyping up, you know, like creating like an. A sort of interest around the show. But it doesn't have like, when's the last show that's come out that you feel like had what one battle after another or Marty supreme is getting in terms of like people running out of a room and be like, I have to tell everyone. I suppose the closest thing I can think of is adolescence and that weekend of, of of just like Breathless. Have you seen this?
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B
I think first of all, it's a good question. It's a complicated question. I think the only equivalent to wide release in television at this point is Netflix. So you can see phenomenons build almost in a classic box office sense. We saw it with baby reindeer, we saw it with adolescence. Beyond that, the similarities to cinema continue because you're not really going to get giant premiere numbers for something that isn't a sequel. And by sequel I mean either the second season of something that did very well or. Or something that is directly based on prominent ip. That's pretty much the only way to get eye popping numbers, everything. Which doesn't mean those are the only things that are considered hits. It's just that the language that TV executives use internally is still a lot more growth oriented with things developing over time. Like I think for example, and we're going to, you know, we've been talking about it every Monday. The sense I get from HBO is that they're extremely happy with Task and not just because it's extremely good.
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A
I get from the people in Philadelphia as well.
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B
Are they? Well, I'm happy about. But. But the reason that they are excited is not just the quality, of course, but it's because the numbers apparently have gone up week to week have ultimately outperformed Mayor of Easttown. Which isn't to say the first episode outperformed the first episode of Mayor. What they're looking at is retention over time. I guess I would turn the question back to you and say there definitely is a hype cycle with movies that understands very well now how to manipulate a strong word, how to interface with burgeoning the letterboxd army and get people fired up about format mania and all of that. There was an interesting article about the Warner brothers. Not just their success at the box office this year, but about their marketing team and all of them being under 30 and being engaged with online life in a way that other movie studios aren't. All of that said, Smashing Machine tanked, right? Again, that's not a value judgment. It might be a great film. I would like to see it, I think.
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A
But you love ufc, I love Smashing.
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B
We're headed towards an era of machines. What's not to like? But that had everything that had the full head full of steam in terms of the standing ovation, the press tour, the narrative everyone seemed to understand. Joe Popcorn understood that the Rock was going for an Oscar this time and the letterbox loonies were like which Safdie is the best who knows? And then it was released with an absolute thud. Right. So the success of one battle after another, I think belies that. But all of which is to say, like, I'm excited to see Marty supreme, and I'm really hype off of it because literally, because of Sean's tweet, I think he thinks I'm making fun of his tweet. I am not. Our Phillies are down.02 right now, so.
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A
I'm not a position to make fun of Sean.
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B
I want to be very careful. But that's no guarantee that it's going to be successful.
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A
You're right. I mean, maybe it's this weird thing where it's like the hype is disconnected from the actual success of the film. And maybe all these TV shows that, when I am anecdotally asking if somebody has seen the Lowdown and they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about, doesn't actually indicate whether or not people are actually watching it. They're just maybe not participating in a hype cycle around it. Obviously, you and I kind of came of age professionally in this particular part of our careers at a time when, like, Sunday nights ruled the pop culture week, seemingly, the television Sunday night and the recaps of those shows kind of drive conversation around them, the idea of a water cooler show. But this is just something I've been thinking about. I mean, he too, probably won't roll, I would imagine, until late next year. Let's just say if everything went really, really well and they nailed all the casting and they get Bradley Cooper and Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver to be in this movie, and it's gonna be a globe trotting mega production run by an older man and Michael Mann.
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B
First of all, international intrigue plus older men is of Earth for the last 10 years. So I don't really see a problem.
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A
Is that, like, this is like, I'm going to be anticipating this movie for multiple years the same way I am for the Odyssey, and there's nothing like that in television. But then on the flip side, I don't even know if that. If that really matters. I guess I'm just like, why isn't there more like.
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B
Well, clearly you haven't been following my Reddit posts demanding Top of the Lake season three. You know, I'm just like, one of these days it's going to come. It's going to come true. Monsieur Spade, S2, let's go. I hear you about that, and I do want to add, I do want to do One more like heat check with you, like, specifically about this news. But I feel like, in a way, this conversation goes back to something that we've said before, which is that, like, we are all in a Damon Lindelof show right now because we are all existing in multiple timelines at the same time. We are. We have never been more travels across the ocean once. Seriously. Well, did better than Oceanic. But, you know. Yeah, you know, there's always the return because we've never been more now, like, more clued in to release dates, towards box office openings, towards things needing to. And also just the industry needing immediate return on these extravagant investments. Everything is geared towards the first week numbers, towards awards, towards box office, et cetera. But we've also never been so immersed in everything else that's come before. Yeah. And I think that our. Our sense, like me currently with the actual Earth clock, I think our sense of what is happening gets a little bit blurred. Like, we are living in a reality where these letterbox loonies are, like, lining up to see Marty Supreme. They're already buying their format tickets or whatever, making sure they can see it in the best seats, and they are also going to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood every other week at the Vista and also going to see Big Lebowski, which I think in the collective consciousness now, I'm just pulling that movie out of the air. But that movie was not, quote, unquote, successful. No, it was. It's a masterpiece. It's a cult classic. Yeah, it's a classic, but. But it's a cult classic that I think has sort of. Sort of merged into just being a classic. And I think the perception of it is that that's a success, even though it made, like, 30 million bucks and was decidedly not the biggest movie of 1998 or whatever. And you could pull a hundred other examples of that. Right. Just to say that, like, there are right now on Netflix, there are out of the box hits like Adolescents, which are critical darlings and commercial darlings and certainly cleaned up at the Emmys. But the other big story on Netflix this week is Halo is airing on Netflix, the really not that awesome Showtime, and I think originally Showtime and then Paramount plus series that was just. I think it was just unwieldy, nothing else. And it's doing well because you put something on Netflix, and so now everyone's like season three. So both of those things are happening at once, and it's hard to square those into one easy narrative, I think.
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A
Yeah, I guess this is the trade off, right like when you have something like Smashing Machine and it comes out and there's all this, like, push around it and then it doesn't do well. In one metric, the one, the metric that really matters for new releases, which is box office, it winds up seeming like a complete failure. When you have something like the Lowdown, which we're going to talk about in a second, which I think you and I adore, will be in our top tens, we will push that boulder up the hill. I have no idea whether it's doing well. I have no idea what that would mean watching it, whether they're saving five episodes to kind of get into it. You know, whether the act of watching something week to week that isn't hugely twisty and cliffhangery has basically been abandoned. And now people are like, yeah, I'll catch up. Like when I have a flight, I'll watch four of those, or something like that. But on the flip side of that, you're not aware of failure either. I'm not aware that this quote unquote flopped. I wouldn't even know. Well, a network would never tell us if it did, you know.
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B
Well, I want to. I gotta. I need a second to, like, put on my full lowdown cape. So we will talk about that. But I think the other thing is that there are just many different shout out to another Lindelof show. There's a lot of narratives happening at once, meaning the Smashing Machine is a box office failure. I still think it's a huge win for the Rock, who has successfully presented himself as a series actor. And people who make decisions about casting and awards will consider it and remember it. I think it's a failure for A24 in the sense that A24 is trying to pivot to becoming everybody's darling, not just an indie darling. And their budgets have gone way, way up. And I think they have real skin in the game now and can actually. Those are not insubstantial losses. Losses when they invest. They're making Elden ring now.
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A
It's not just to.
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B
To balance it out. Exactly. So it's a lot of different stories all at once before we get to the lowdown. You can't say this big Heat news and not just like, give your, give your, give me your 32nd stump speech. Because when I last was sort of. This is not my story to tell. But I will say that the last time I was kind of aware of it, the rumors were Apple was picking it up. And Apple was picking it up. And that was dependent on Leo starring in the movie.
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A
Yes.
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B
And Leo was assumed to be taking on the role of Neil, is that right?
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A
That was what I said. Because he had a goatee.
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B
Okay, I see your method, Seymour Hersh over here.
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A
I just said that it looked like he looked like young Robert De Niro in the One Battle After Another promo run that he did. Now that is a basically cleaned up version of Bob Ferguson from One Battle After Another. So it's not that strange that he had the goatee. But I think that most people looked at him and were like, okay, this is Young Neil or Younger Neil in the pre Heat narrative. For people who don't know, Heat 2 written by Michael man and Meg Gardner, came out like 2022.
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B
This is the book, not the film.
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A
It was the book. And it's a novelization of a, of an idea or it's a novel that man wrote with an acclaimed crime writer named Meg Gardner that basically does a prequel to Heat, cutting back and forth between a prequel to Heat and a sequel to Heat.
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B
The sequel, it's like Godfather 2.
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A
Yeah. And the sequel to Heat follows the continuing adventures of Christia Herless, the Val Kilmer character in the original film, as he goes into South America and becomes security for a Chinese triad, which is basically.
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B
That's a fan fiction dog.
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A
That's just like Stop the Watch. When I introduced you as doing that.
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B
Do you understand that? You, I think you told me that dream in Good luck bar in 2015. Like, this is so wild.
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A
Where do you think Charles is now? And the preheat stuff happens in Chicago and is a young Vincent, younger Vincent and a younger Neil kind of just missing each other in Chicago. And there is a Waingro esque character. I won't get into spoilers and stuff like that, but there are some incredible sequences in the novel in both the pre and post. And I imagine if they are undertaking it and if it has a $200 million price tag, which it seems to, that he is doing. He's, he's shooting the whole boat. He's doing the sequel and the prequel. Look, that's all I ever want in life is to see this. I, but I, I, I want this to be good. I don't want this to be a strange kind of like, like a, like inadvertent roast of Heat where it's like everybody's getting on stage and doing Heat bits, you know, and that like it. I want it to live up to what the original was. And because it's made so far from the, like from when man shot Heat, which is now, you know, in the.
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B
90S, 30 years ago.
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A
It feels a little bit like. I'm just nervous for it to be like two years of waiting for it and then people be like, oh, that was all right.
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B
Well, that's how I felt about Twin Peaks, the Return, and that worked out for me. So I believe in you.
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A
That's true.
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B
That's true. I mean, it worked out for me by being absolutely confounding and doing almost nothing of what the normies wanted. Yeah. But so I don't know if, I don't know if Scott Stuber and Jerry Bruckheimer are like, confound us, Michael. No, I don't know if they're like.
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A
We'Re gonna make sure this actually gets finished on time and that you are able to pull off the sequences that you need to pull off to make this, like a huge box office and.
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B
To make it a plausible action movie that's released in theaters.
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A
Yes.
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B
Yeah.
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A
A lot of my nervousness comes from. Despite the fact it's easy for me to like Ferrari and be like, actually, you guys don't get it, Ferrari's good. Or you guys don't get it, Black hat's good.
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B
It is very easy for you to do. That.
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A
Is awesome. And no, everyone's like, okay, Crystal, you just would like if Michael Mann shot like a bird landing in a nest.
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B
And I'd be like, that would be on task. I believe.
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A
I know that's true.
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B
That's a beautiful sequence.
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A
Birdman is task. I, I, I, it's, it's, it's, that's like underdog stuff. It's just, you know what I mean? That's like cheering for, that's like cheering for the six seed is when you're a big black hat guy. This is the one seed, man, there. This is, this is an undefeated team going into the tournament. So it's, it's a little bit more nerve wracking. And I think from everything that I have read, everything that I've heard, everything between the lines, all of this is contingent on DiCaprio's participation. And DiCaprio has a pretty full dance card. He's supposed to be doing this Martin Scorsese movie that I believe he kind of blind, like, obliquely referenced to Sean in their conversation about how he had been watching rewatching Vertigo for some reason.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Then he was supposedly going to do this Evel Knievel movie for Damien Chazelle, but it seems like Glenn Powell might do that now. And, yeah, like, there's also this Hawaii Gangster movie that Scorsese was going to make with the Rock. So as somebody's like, things in production start, you know, as their dance card fills up. You just worry about, like, being able to hold all the actors, hold all the locations, hold all the money, and will this happen? But I think Amazon, MGM getting involved in this is really interesting because in some ways it's more significant even than the casting rumors is like producer rumors being confirmed and studio rumors being confirmed.
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B
Can I ask you the one other thing that we still have on our plates to worry about?
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A
Yeah, sure.
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B
In regards to Heat too, I worry about Austin Butler because he did a lot of weapons training, possibly for nothing. Yeah.
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A
But he could be getting ready for Miami Vice. Like, we have no idea. Like, there's. Do you think that there's only one, One. One role out there that requires weapons training?
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B
Yes. I watch three movies a year. Yes. I. That. That is 100% what I think. Oh, my God. Can we. Can we talk about the other. The other. The big TV thing? I just thought it was interesting. Yeah, please, of course. I'm not prepared to talk about it, but I do want to talk about it.
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A
You're talking about the Dakota Fanning. Sorry, The Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman show Discretion.
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B
Yes. It's a show called Discretion. And the reason I bring it up is not necessarily because we have an opinion about the show or know anything about it, although it is relevant because it's an A24 TV production. And 824 is part of their glow up and build up is getting into TV production. This is a hot package in town. And by the way, just the fact that there's a hot package again is pretty significant considering how dire things have been for the last few months and years. This is a project that was apparently subject to a big bidding war and it was snapped up straight to series by our, the new players in town. The Bari Weiss boys ponied up to the table and Paramount has bought this show and it's a legal thriller is all we know. Nicole Kidman loves doing television shows. So does Elle Fanning. They're both very reliable. Also, Nicole Kidman has some free time now, I guess.
- [24:04]
A
Sure. Oh, not much since Lioness is coming back.
- [24:08]
B
That's a good point. That's a good point. Her dance card is still full, professionally speaking. I just thought it was worth noting. A few weeks ago we talked about how really all it takes to shift the industry is one new whale showing up at the table. And that's what David Ellison and You know, and his and his dad have. Have done. I don't. I'd be very curious what the path of this show would have been in a pre Skydance takeover era. It seems like it would have been. Apple took it off the board. The implication that there was a quote unquote bidding war. I'll put it this way. I don't think AMC was just throwing in an ante and asking to see everyone's cards. A bidding war to me in 2025 implies that paramount outbid Netflix and Apple, which is significant and which is something to watch going forward in addition to maybe watching the show at some point in 2026.
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A
Yeah, I'm an idiot, because when all of the Paramount stuff was happening last year or two over the course of the last couple of years, and I was sort of reading about it in the trades and reading about it in Bellamy's column, and it was like, is Ellison gonna get this from Shari Redstone? And is he gonna. Is he gonna buy the mountain? And it almost seemed like he had to, like, scrape together money. This is just my, like, like, he was shaking couch cushions to find, like, the last million to get it over the line. And now that he has Paramount, it seems like he's like, oh, no. Like, now the vault opens and now I'm gonna buy Warner Brothers and buy this show. Buy the duffers and buy, like. And now he's like, giving Mangold. James Mangold. Overall, like, it seems like you're right. Like, Paramount's a rival, but their willingness to spend. It's like they may cut CBS News down to basically being like three hot take artists, but it does seem like they are spending a ton of money on. On actual shows and movies, which I think is a good thing for. For what's left of Hollywood.
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B
Is 60 Minutes going to be like that? Ozy.com Whereas that dude being like, I've talked to Lisa Ling or whatever, and everyone's like, this is a success. Clearly. Anyway, Trump pardoned him. The fun thing is about the Paramount deal is maybe he really was just scraping things together a year and a half ago. But then all these weird coincidences happened. Like his dad just got permission to buy TikTok, you know, like, so it seems like, I don't know, like, Fortune Fav. The Bold, I guess.
- [26:37]
A
Why aren't we more like that?
- [26:39]
B
I don't know.
- [26:40]
A
I threw it in just like a. We just like a cheeky offer for this Nicole Kidman show.
- [26:46]
B
What was the show that we were bidding. Our listeners will remember they're oh no, we wanted to be heads of amc. I still think that's a legitimate thing. I do think that they're honestly my pitch is why not the Anne Rice universe manages itself. God bless. We will retain the leadership structure behind the vampire shows. Like that is my first order of business. Everything else just let us what's the.
- [27:08]
A
First AMC18 show that you would want to reboot?
- [27:12]
B
Remember when.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Their first ever show before Mad Men. No. Well, like I think that I, I think that we could get a little cheeky in the international marketplace like AMC has been doing with like spy shows and things and co pros. I think that there might be some opportunities to do the versions of like mid AMC shows like Lodge 49 or the one that I never remember the name of the Bob Odenkirk Lucky Hank. I don't think either of those shows were complete successes, but I also don't think they were failures. And I think they scratched a niche that does exist in TV and can be done at a price point.
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A
It's that kind of middle of the road thinking that's going to get us to the top, I think 100%.
- [27:56]
B
The other thing is though, I would greenlight the Sally Draper in the Downtown 81 Mad Men spinoff.
- [28:03]
A
This is why we've been put on this planet. To see Heat 2 come out and to put Sally Draper in the mud club.
- [28:09]
B
Yep. Let's just do it. We'll make that show. Yeah, vote for us. Or we'll cut the government in on a sweetheart deal.
- [28:18]
A
That's right.
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B
Whatever it takes.
- [28:20]
A
Mario, let's take a quick break and we'll go talk about the Lowdown in House of Guinness. Let's talk about episodes three and four of the Lowdown. Four was especially lovely to me. Directed by Macon Blair. Blair and written by Duffy Boudreaux. Macon Blair is a frequent collaborator with Jeremy Saulnier. He also plays the lawyer in this series in Lowdown. And Duffy Boudreaux is a name you may remember from especially the written by credit in Barry. He is a frequent collaborator with Bill Hader. Bill Hader and Duffy Boudreaux, also from Tulsa, much like Sterling Harjo. So kind of a family affair here. And I was thinking about how one term we used to use during the era of like truly peak prestige television was the idea of long form series television being novelistic, you know. And I think we referred frequently people called the Wire like novelistic in its storytelling.
- [29:22]
B
Even its creator, David Simon did that.
- [29:24]
A
Even his creator David Simon. The Lowdown really does feel novelistic for all, all the good reasons and even some of the reasons where it's like sometimes I have a hard time settling down enough to read a novel and I. There are times when I turn the lowdown on and I'm like, oh, okay. Like we are moving at a slower pace and we are moving at a different pace than, than like most of my consumption is moving at. Over the course of my. Of my day when I have my phone in my hand for 11 hours of it and it takes a second to get. To get into the water, you know, and to like let it wash over you. And this is a really good example. This episode four, which is called Short on Cowboys. It kind of starts three times. You know, it's got this sort of fantastical Tim Blake Nelson narration. It's got a. A kind of lazy, awesome 10 minute scene at a diner between a father, a daughter and a mother. And then it really gets going and you get like basically a half hour short film about a tryst between Gene Triple Horn's Betty Jo character and Ethan.
- [30:38]
B
Hawke's Lee character, we could call it Before Hangover.
- [30:41]
A
That's right, because they do drink more tequila than I think most people east of Tulsa can handle.
- [30:48]
B
I felt quite ill, honestly, watching it. I felt concerned.
- [30:51]
A
What did you think of this episode? How are you feeling about the show in general?
- [30:55]
B
I want to talk specifically about this episode and also last week's, which we didn't really touch on about the Beluga Brothers. But I want to say something broader. I want to give my campaign speech here, which is to say if you listen to this podcast and if you've listened to it for a while, chances are you like television a certain way. It doesn't mean we may not all agree. Unlike that brewery owner in Maine. I'm just bringing people together here. We're one country. We may not agree on all of the shows that we love or what we want to see week to week on television. And I think there are people who are indulging our love of task and they think we only like it because we're from Philadelphia, which is only maybe 10% true. I actually think it's approaching masterpiece status and we'll talk about that on Monday. But I do think that one common thread that unites all of us is that we want television to be good and interesting and for lack of a better word, brave. And brave could mean something like adolescence, which is both aesthetically brave and also, I think, creatively brave and certainly thematically brave. Or it could just mean Purely aesthetically brave, like the Lowdown is. And so what I want to ask everyone in this great big beautiful country of ours is a simple thing. And I feel like we don't use this as a bully pulpit enough. I want all of you to. To watch the Lowdown. I want you to record it on your. Download it from your Hulu app or.
- [32:12]
A
Put it on TiVo.
- [32:13]
B
Watch it on television. I don't even know what matters.
- [32:15]
A
Make a new Max out cassette, put it in the vhs, because this is.
- [32:21]
B
What we are always talking about. It is absolutely idiosyncratic. It is unique, it is funny, it is heartfelt, it is stakesy, it is exciting. It is surprising. It is. It gives actors great opportunities to work and to bring Joy. Like Kyle McLaughlin, Keith David, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Hitchcock. Like an all star team of those guys doing elite work. Gene Tripplehorn in this episode, especially Scott Sheppard. Just people who are a friend of the pod. Tracy Letts. Just people willing to show up and work because they know that they're working with a creator in Sterling who's going to take care of them and showcase them and give them stuff to do. And also, I've been railing for years against the auteur theory of television, but I do think that Sterling Harjo is the kind of auteur that we need and that we want. Because there are elements in the show that, like you said, that kind of just don't make sense. If you watch Normie TV all the time, like Tim Blake Nelson narrating from the afterlife and then sitting next to Ethan Hawke and his daughter and they both look at him. Or the way it becomes like Double Indemnity briefly when it's already been something else for a long time. And then it cuts to the security guard dudes doing a rap on YouTube in front of a car that's on fire. There are moments on the show where I'm like, oh, yeah, I mean, obviously Sterling likes Twin Peaks. Like the moment in episode four when Betty. What's her name? Betty. She has a second name.
- [33:50]
A
Betty.
- [33:50]
B
Joan Triplehorn's character, Betty Jo opens the door to the room where Tim Blake Nelson's character supposedly probably killed himself. And I'm like, oh, this is a Twin Peaks moment. The way this room is lit, the.
- [34:00]
A
Way the sound design is the Twin Peaks moment. Ethan Hawke's character introducing himself as Agent Cooper in the third episode.
- [34:06]
B
I was about to say that. Exactly. But also you can tell that Sterlin loved Twin Peaks and he also loved Twin the Return because Kyle is giving some Mr. C energy when he gets furious in this episode or this phase. I say that not because it's cool that a guy who makes a TV show likes the same stuff that I do. I'm saying it because it's not fucking pastiche. This is a guy who knows how to make films, knows how to tell a story, lives in a place, knows things and is generous enough to share them with us and has been given a platform to just fucking leave it all out there. And like you're saying, I have no idea if it's succeeding or failing on commercial terms, but I think so far it is 100% succeeding on artistic terms. And sometimes we gotta show up and support that shit. Yeah.
- [34:49]
A
And I think that the payoff for this show at the end of every episode that I have watched, that I would imagine at the end of the season itself, is going to be like that of finishing a great novel where, you know, it's unlike anything else legal, you can really do with your brain. It is really the most enriching, beautiful three dimensional experience and imaginative experience you can have. And this show feels different than weekly mystery box puzzle shows. And it's really lovely to have this and task on at the same time because I think it shows the huge spectrum of not only enjoyment, but intellectual stimulation and emotional kind of fulfillment you can get from crime shows and from crime fiction. Because you're putting these characters, many of whom are pretty normal people, in broken situations and putting them in extraordinary circumstances and asking them to make these incredibly complex and consequential moral decisions about what to do next and what to do to fix things that have happened in the past, to fix things that will happen in the future. And they bring out really amazing performances. And you know, you talked about the incredible Murderer's Row of supporting actors, but like, this is among Ethan Hawke's best performances.
- [36:11]
B
I wanted to say that too.
- [36:12]
A
And the reason why I think that is it is both a movie star Paul Newman performance and it is also like a freak, like used bookstore guy performance. And he's able to have both an incredibly cool, charismatic, attractive quality to him, while also being the kind of guy you find flipping through records or through used books at a store in Tulsa. And it's kind of remarkable to watch him cook on this level. I mean, obviously you and I were fans of Good Little Bird. We've been fans of his work for such a long time. But this is such a Titanic undertaking. He has to do so much shit in every scene. He has to be a lover, he has to be A fighter. He has to be afraid. He has to be a convincing writer, and he has to be a comedian. And he does it all so well.
- [37:05]
B
He's like. He's such an interesting performer, and we love him for a long time, but he never quite fits, right? Because he's a freak. He's too weird and too obsessed with the little, you know, the. He's, like. Speaking of crime novels, like, there's always a scene, like in a classic George Pellicanos novel, where someone drops the cocaine and then they're, like, going through the carpet fibers. Like, that's how Ethan Hawke approaches a script. And often movies that aren't directed by Richard Linklater don't know what to do with that. You know, like, it's too much. And it's also diffuse. And yet he's handsome and charismatic and famous enough to lead a television show in the Prestige era. Serlin knows how to work with him, which I think means to collaborate with him because he fits the frame on this show in a way that suits everyone involved, and it's really exciting to watch. Now, I'm not saying the show is perfect, which is one of the reasons why I like it. The third episode. And again, this might have been the jet lag talking, but the third episode is challenging. And I think it would be challenging for, again, for normies who are like, you know, want to pick up this flag and carry it for a little while. The setup is essentially the head that in order to pursue this reckless investigation of a potential suicide of the strange brother gubernatorial candidate, they must drive to Ethan Hawke's character Lee, his daughter and his frenemy. Michael Hitchcock's character, who is a rival antiques dealer, must drive to a lake somewhere outside of Tulsa in Oklahoma and somehow either woohoo or confuse or distract a scary or, like, aggressive Mexican American antiques dealer who has come into the possession of a box of the dead Brothers Jim Thompson novels. Yes.
- [38:50]
A
Which include letters that the guy has been writing or diary entries that the guy has been writing that will then help him elliptically piece together a massive conspiracy.
- [38:59]
B
And if you think this sounds like. And I feel like it's okay to spoil it because. Because I'm either convincing you or you've already seen it. If you think that sounds complicated. What if I told you that what actually happens is Michael Hitchcock's character just drinks whiskey alone in a diner while the daughter meets the scary antiques dealer and steals the books, while Ethan Hawke steals a park ranger jacket and then gets enveloped in a violent backwoods caviar theft, but also which it's also a love story about poetry. Dude, that's fucking nuts. And I think that everyone involved is like, I guess John Landgraaf was on set on Alien Earth that day when we greenlit this, you know what I mean? But God bless them for green lighting it and giving him the space to do this. It's worth it when you have the chance to invest in something like this, both as a network and as a viewer.
- [39:51]
A
Usually with a mystery show like this, I think you and I would spend a fair amount of time talking about the narrative. I'm more here for Ethan Hawke walking down the street and someone asks him what his favorite Michael Curtis movie is.
- [40:06]
B
I know.
- [40:08]
A
And when, when something like that is happening and the way that even making Blair films that and the way that they sound design it, where it's kind of happening in an Altman y way a conversation is happening as Ethan Hawke is walking by. But Ethan Hawke is being asked to weigh in on this debate between a used record store gu and his customer. And like, what's your favorite Michael Curtis movie? He's like, what? What are you talking about? And he's just like, oh, I thought you were going to say Boy from Oklahoma. And he's like, no, Captain Blood. And it's just a second, but I'm like, I can't fucking believe this is happening. Like, you know, this is the dream of the 90s is back.
- [40:47]
B
You know, life goes on. Well, pavement's more popular than ever. Like maybe, maybe we're coming. Maybe these clothes we like are finally coming back into fashion. I mean, or at least our gum.
- [40:55]
A
The sort of recurring bit that this used record store proprietor has is that he is getting rid of loiterers. That there are all these people at this strip in Tulsa where Lee's Bookstore and this record store and a diner and a law office are. That this guy is like, you know, somebody was loitering outside your store. So I told them no loitering. And this show, this show is loitering. This show is just fucking hanging out. And you may have to like adjust your brain a little bit when you, when you do that because I don't know that we hang out with television as much anymore, especially 55 minute mystery dramedies. We're more like, oh, yeah, I like to hang out with my sitcom buddies for 22 minutes and then get the.
- [41:42]
B
Fuck out or white knuckle it with my pals in the pit.
- [41:45]
A
Yes.
- [41:46]
B
Like, I love these people so it's worth it.
- [41:48]
A
Even though they're so extremity of emotion. I don't want to have to think, I don't want to have to like feel. I don't want to have to pay attention. I want to be able to kind of either this is a like I want a drug experience. I either want an upper or a downer.
- [42:01]
B
It's also to go back to the novelistic example. It's okay to, to, to love disliking something like these, these emotions are closely related. And like there are a lot of books like I talked about on the pod the other week like I had because you, you, you just the way that you casually just reveal things about yourself only on this podcast that you've read every Robert Stone novel. And I was like, I'm right here on the other end of this text thread. So I went and I got this Robert Stone novel called Children of Light. And I'm here to tell you, as I told you of her text, it's awful. But I loved it. And I'm not saying the lowdown is awful. I'm just saying it's cool to engage with art that inflames you one way or the other. And my guess is, and I don't have anything to back this up, I'd be curious if people would write to our email address or whatever and say I'm curious if there is a percentage of people who are like, I love the lowdown one and I love the lowdown two and I was out on lowdown three.
- [42:56]
A
Three.
- [42:57]
B
I'm curious about that.
- [42:58]
A
I think maybe it would be people who are like I've gotten to low down three and it's just too sleepy or it's too, I, I, you know, I, maybe, maybe they don't give a about Michael Curtiz and junior Kim Burrow and they're just like watching people drink coffee for 11 minutes and read letters to each other is, you know, I've got, I've got like a, come on, I gotta keep on a schedule here.
- [43:20]
B
As someone with a 12 year old who's recently very coffee curious, I really felt seen by that.
- [43:24]
A
So what do you do with that?
- [43:25]
B
That, you know what she loves right now is decaf.
- [43:30]
A
Yeah. There is a trace amount of caffeine in that.
- [43:32]
B
Right? Yeah. And she likes matcha lattes. Those are really big with the kids. So I try to cut those. I, I let that happen. But usually like pre 1pm you know.
- [43:41]
A
I used to just drink the sweetest possible, but the largest possible Dunkin Donuts. So it would just be like French Vanilla with French vanilla creamer and sugar.
- [43:51]
B
Yeah. I mean, the thing is, like, when.
- [43:53]
A
I say that they made the coffee itself tastes like French vanilla, you added extra.
- [43:58]
B
I want to be clear, when I say that she likes coffee, what she likes is a warm mug, giant mug of milk with like some light decaf coffee flavoring.
- [44:06]
A
Yes.
- [44:07]
B
Last thing, I feel like we've said our piece, but you mentioned Duffy Boudreau. I won't spoil the end of four since we're kind of like getting, hopefully getting people to watch it. But there is a sequence, a violent sequence at the end of four that is very berry core. It really reminded me of Barry in its mix of like the macabre and the intense and the outrageous and funny.
- [44:27]
A
That's a great shout. A much different animal is House of Guinness, which we haven't talked about, came out a couple of weeks ago on Netflix. It's the new show from Steven Knight, which I think I will sort of generally tar with this brush of. It's Steven Knight's succession, you know, okay. Effort. It's about.
- [44:49]
B
Do you want to give background to Steven Knight? Because he. When you say the new Steven Knight show, there's often two a year.
- [44:54]
A
Seven of them. Yeah. Stephen Knight is one of the most prolific and successful TV creators that we have right now. He is essentially like England's answer to Taylor Sheridan in some ways. He frequently writes these rather muscular, historically minded, often period piece TV shows. I love him. He is the creator of Rogue Heroes, which is my favorite series by him. But obviously I also am very, very into Peaky Blinders and evidently so is everybody else, because there is not only a Peaky Blinders movie, but a Peaky Blinders spin off series in the making that should arrive at some time, you know, in the next couple of years. And that is set in the aftermath of World War II, which is pretty exciting because Peaky Blinders is really good and it's also really interesting historical time period. He also, like just last year put out a show that I never got a chance to see because I don't think it came out here called this Town, which was about like the Two Tone.
- [45:52]
B
Oh, yeah, that never did come out here officially. Yeah. But he also did A Thousand Blows, didn't he?
- [45:57]
A
Yeah, and A Thousand Blows. And he's a prolific screenwriter in films writing. You know, he was working on a Star wars movie. He's, you know, just always, always, always writing. So House of Guinness is a show which I think you could be uncharitable and be like, oh, he Saw a succession and was like, I can do that. And it is about the death of the patriarch of the Guinness family, as I believe it's sort of in the early 20th century, and the efforts of his children to keep his alcohol empire together as Guinness is sort of becoming a global brand and Ireland is facing a moment of revolution and also a temperance movement. And also the kids themselves are at each other's throats.
- [46:46]
B
Would you, if you had the ability, would you travel back in time to the Guinness patriarch's deathbed and as he's passing, whisper in his ear a full explanation of dickhead splitting the G at the Devonshire just on Instagram. Like, would you just let him know?
- [47:00]
A
See, I can tell you're getting like a little bit too crappy because like a year and a half ago you were like, I can't wait to be a splitting the G. We are the problem.
- [47:10]
B
Like, I think we're self aware. I'm just saying, like, he. It's funny watching a show and maybe this is why Guinness allowed their trademark and their name to be in it, because it's is based on historical fact. But it's very salacious and out there. But, like, they won. Like, Guinness has never, ever, ever been trendier or more popular. So congratulations.
- [47:33]
A
Historically minded, but historically loose with tone, I would call this show. And in Rogue Heroes, I enjoy the rock and roll approach to a World War II movie. And kind of imagining the Dirty Dozen but with the White Stripes playing in the background is essentially like how Rogue Heroes kind of presents things. The house of Guinness is really chaotic to start with. You know, there's a lot going on. You are introduced to about 15 to 16 people instantaneously. And they are only on screen for like, you know, 10 seconds at a time.
- [48:15]
B
And they're all beating the shit out of each other.
- [48:16]
A
They're all beating the shit out of each other or doing drugs or drinking or having hangovers or they're related. And even though it's the early 20th century, the Fontaine's DC are playing many times.
- [48:27]
B
Yeah, a lot of needle drops, but there's also a lot of, like, animations or animatics, like explaining things and saying, like, power, intrigue.
- [48:36]
A
Yeah.
- [48:36]
B
Also, this is the history of Ireland at this period. It's a very noisy, noisy, noisy show.
- [48:42]
A
We were talking about whether or not TV needs a better hype machine. And I almost wonder whether Steven Knight backed into some weird thing, which it feels like you're watching the first episode especially. And I've watched two, and I think I will Keep watching it because it is definitely the kind of thing that I like to throw on at 10pm and just veg out and watch.
- [49:01]
B
But, Steven, I find it very stressful.
- [49:04]
A
But the first episode, though, is like a pitch deck for the show.
- [49:08]
B
Yes, that's well said.
- [49:09]
A
And it almost feels like a proof of concept that he made for Netflix. And Netflix was like, that's the first episode. And maybe that works. Maybe that's a good idea. Idea.
- [49:19]
B
I mean, it feels like an interesting collision between the rock and roll history sensibility that you're talking about, a. A kind of British television aesthetic that I want to ask you about, because I feel like you watch a lot more of this than I do generally. And Netflix's global domination strategy, like, the way this show starts, it's clearly a Netflix show. It yells at you about what it is so quickly that you're almost held captive by it. That didn't really work for me. I'll say that Steven Knight is a very clever writer and he's incredibly accomplished and just in his bones, knows how to build story almost out of anything. It seems like he's like a savant. And there's so many good actors in it, as there tend to be in Steven Knight productions, like Anthony Boyle, who is one of the best young actors.
- [50:12]
A
James Norton. Norton, yeah.
- [50:13]
B
Working. Oh, that's James Norton. Right. I knew I recognized him. We saw Anthony Boyle in say Nothing recently.
- [50:24]
A
Yeah, and the Lincoln assassination show.
- [50:28]
B
He was at Booth. And Lewis Partridge is one of the stars. And Lewis Partridge is famous for being the male boyfriend in the Enola Holmes movies, which get a lot of burn in my house household. And also dating Olivia Rodrigo.
- [50:40]
A
So, Steven, hot cup of decaf in an Enola Holmes movie. It sounds like a Saturday night.
- [50:45]
B
Don't make me more homesick than I already am. And then also a couple other fun things on the margins, like Jack Gleeson, who famously retired from acting or took a step back from acting after Game of Thrones, returning to the screen in this in a fun way. I have no hate in my heart for this, but I have to say there's a certain aesthetic. And it's not. Not so much the needle drops, although they do feel really glib, especially when it's just like things are about to get serious, lads. And then Fontaine's drops and people knock each other's teeth out. It's like, what are the actual. This is violence. Do you know what I mean? And after watching two men grapple with their sins in Task on Sunday nights, it's sort of hard to see this kind of savagery without any reflection whatsoever. But there's an aesthetic. And maybe this is the Steven Knight rock and roll history aesthetic. But the show, it used to be like 20, 30 years ago. British imports like BBC One Original or things that ended up on Masterpiece Theater or Mystery, they all looked a certain way. Whether it was the lighting or the camera. It just didn't look like American television.
- [51:48]
A
Now that's just a global television aesthetic.
- [51:50]
B
But this is the particularly British flavor of it and it's leeched into shows that we've loved. I think there was a little bit of it in the Pursuit of. Oh God, I'm blank. Pursuit of Love, the Emily Mortimer series, which I adored. But there's also a ton of it in. You have better recall than I do and I'm jet lag. But like other shows like this Thousand Blows, for example, or other non Steven Knight shows. Yeah.
- [52:13]
A
And it's, it doesn't honestly feel significantly different than Mobland. You know, like there is a kind.
- [52:19]
B
Of, it's a certain recognizable aesthetic that I'm just not. It's serviceable and it works. But it does seem like a mass market export product right now, like Guinness itself. And I just, I'm not vibing with it.
- [52:31]
A
So, so there is just something really interesting. I, I, I called it Succession, Stephen Knight Succession. And I. There's obvious reasons for that because of the, the plot setup. But there is also a few quiet moments in the opening episodes of Inter Family banter that I think doesn't necessarily reach Jesse Armstrong levels of like, symphonic put downs. But it's kind of a different sh.
- [52:57]
B
Show.
- [52:58]
A
It's a different show than the one of that seems to be taking place in the same sound stages that they shot Peaky Blinders and is a lot of rock and roll while people are throwing Molotov cocktails around. This, the, the stuff that I'm here for is the, is the family stuff. So I'll continue to check it out, but I'm glad you at least gave it a look. And I do think that there's something to the, the universal British export aesthetic that we're, we're arriving at.
- [53:25]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's just maybe there's, maybe that's a more natural segue from the thing we're saying about the lowdown. Because certainly a lot of the homogenization of global television and global television made for Netflix is because of Netflix. And it's also because of an American aesthetic that has.
- [53:41]
A
Well, I mean, I think that the ultimate test is like, the Lowdown dares you to be bored. Like, they're like, you need. If you may think that this scene is going on too long, but this is actually how people talk. And House of Guinness is like, you will never get bored because the scene changes every 37 seconds.
- [53:58]
B
The other thing that I think that differentiates. I mean, a lot of things differentiate the Lowdown from House of Guinness. I mean, the only thing that they have in common is, I think, alcohol. But the other thing about the Lowdown that feels really refreshing at this moment is that it doesn't have to do anything. And so much of the way we talk about contemporary television is we talk about it in terms of, yes, sticking the landing or answering the questions or servicing X, Y, or Z thing. And it does become this weird exam structure where we're like, okay, well, what does Alien Earth have to do to keep us interested or make us feel like it was worth it? What did Noah Hawley have to do to please the deep xenomorph heads like yourself and then also bring in noobs? That's a lot of have to's. And it's such a privilege to watch a show that absolutely didn't have to do anything except just march to the beat of its own twangy drummer. Drummers aren't twangy.
- [54:52]
A
Let's wrap it up there.
- [54:53]
B
Guitars are twangy. Thanks to Kai. I'm fading, but I'm good. I'm good.
- [54:57]
A
And Kai, we'll be back on Monday. Greenwald will be with me to talk about Task online. But, like, we may have some extra stuff on Monday. So everybody have a great weekend. Enjoy Task on Sunday night, and we'll see you on Monday.