Nope

Summary

Unspooled Podcast: "Nope" (June 25, 2026)

Hosts: Paul Scheer & Amy Nicholson, with Molly Reynolds
Film Discussed: Nope (2022, dir. Jordan Peele)

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Unspooled, Paul Scheer, Amy Nicholson, and Molly Reynolds revisit Jordan Peele’s 2022 film Nope, delving deep into its layers: spectacle, Hollywood history, trauma, our addiction to attention, animal (and human) nature, and the boundary between entertainment and danger. They explore Peele’s ambitions post-pandemic, the film’s IMAX mastery, standout performances, and its huge but subtle commentary on industry and society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Cultural Context of "Nope"

• Jordan Peele’s Trajectory and the Pandemic:
  • Coming off Get Out and Us, Peele’s ambition accelerated but collided with the COVID-19 pandemic, slowing Hollywood to a crawl. (07:46-08:05)
  • Peele aimed for a “big, splashy movie, bigger than the others in terms of scale and awe...a spectacle” to bring people back to theaters. (08:05-08:32)

2. Plot Primer & Themes

• Plot Recap:

  • Siblings O.J. and Emerald Heywood attempt to capture definitive footage of an alien menace to save their horse ranch, as their neighbor Jupe monetizes trauma and spectacle.
  • The film is “about spectacle...audience bait...the unpredictability of the natural world...a modern spin on the showmanship of King Kong.” (08:32-08:51)

• The Hollywood Parallel:

  • Both the film’s characters and Hollywood itself struggle with how far they’ll go for the spectacle—risk, violence, even self-destruction.

3. Box Office & Oscar Snubs

• Nope did well—$171 million on a $68 million budget—but wasn’t a runaway hit and was omitted from Oscar nominations.
• “Not a massive, massive hit, but respectable...I think the movie is about so many things...it's a lot of movie to take in on one watch.”
  — Amy Nicholson (09:31)

4. Spectacle, Social Media, and Distraction

• The film critiques both Hollywood spectacle and our everyday obsession with attention and virality.
• Parallels to TikTok, Instagram, and AI content: The allure of the confusing, sensational, or distressing.
  — “What this movie is saying is, is this chase of the spectacle actually killing us? And in this movie, it is. Right? Literally, if you look at this thing, you will die.”
  — Molly Reynolds (15:30)

5. Technical Brilliance: IMAX & Visuals

• Praise for Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography.
  — “It’s just the most beautifully composed shots. I, of course, was like, who did this? …It's Christopher Nolan’s guy.”
  — Amy Nicholson (17:11)
• The IMAX camera is used innovatively, echoing the film’s theme of trying to “capture” the unknowable.

6. Hollywood Insider Satire & Metaphor

• The filmmakers’ quest for “the Oprah shot” is a reflection on Hollywood’s exploitative attention economy.
• Scenes on set are praised for their accuracy and satirical humor.
• Keke Palmer’s Emerald “lays down the entire exposition of the film...a world in which people have been erased...and it's all for the business.”
  — Molly Reynolds (28:57)

Notable Quote:

• “Do you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion picture was a 2 second clip of a Black man on a horse? ...There is literally no record of him.”
  — Keke Palmer voicing Emerald (24:58–25:46)

7. Jupe, Trauma, and the Commodification of Pain

• Jupe’s commodification of his sitcom trauma (the chimpanzee attack), told through a surreal SNL sketch.
• “He is monetizing trauma.”
  — Molly Reynolds (39:49)
• “Once you take a memory and turn it into a story, a joke, a skit...it’s almost easier to deal with.”
  — Amy Nicholson (38:05)

Notable Moment:

• Steven Yeun’s delivery recounting a fictional SNL sketch of the traumatic event:
  • “Saturday Night Live...But of course, the star of the sketch is Chris goddamn Katan as Gordy. And he is undeniable. He is killing on that stage.”
    — Jupe/Steven Yeun (+ Paul quoting, 35:17)

8. Animal Nature, Hollywood, and Limits

• Nope blurs the line between human and animal—everyone wants to control nature, but both animals and humans have limits.
• “You cannot tame a predator. Like, he says here, we pissed him off...You gotta enter an agreement with one.”
  — Paul & Molly (45:11–45:21)
• Respect yourself enough to say “nope” and step back from danger or self-exploitation.

9. Design of the Alien (Jean Jacket)

• Is it an alien or a monster? The gradual reveal subverts expectations (not a spaceship, but a creature).
• The design flips sci-fi tropes—Amy says it resembles a cowboy hat; Molly sees a jellyfish predator.
• “Any alien that doesn't have a vagina mouth to me, I'm into...I just applaud that this movie went in a different direction.”
  — Molly Reynolds (65:44)

10. Spectacle, Religion, and Human Obsession

• Connection between aliens, angels, and religious awe is made explicit.
• “I think he's basically saying that what we see up in the sky has been here with us since the Bible, that it is an angel. Like this is maybe how we even should be picturing religion itself.”
  — Amy Nicholson (63:02)

Notable Quote:

• “We are, in fact, just replacing angels of 2000 years ago with high tech angels now...we have this inner need to feel we're not alone in the universe.”
  — Paul Scheer quoting Ancient Aliens (62:39)

11. Rules, Boundaries, and Surviving the Spectacle

• The ultimate thesis: You can’t stop the spectacle, but you can choose when to say “nope”—to look away, to retain your autonomy.
• The film offers no solution, only equilibrium: “We just gotta live in this weird equilibrium.”
  — Amy Nicholson (75:41)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• 00:01–03:22 — Banter on UAPs/UFOs, personal stories of sightings
• 07:32–09:49 — Film context: Peele’s ambitions, pandemic, and plot setup
• 11:31–12:25 — Technical marvels (IMAX, shooting night for day)
• 24:57–25:46 — Keke Palmer’s pivotal exposition about Muybridge and erasure
• 35:17–36:03 — Jupe’s SNL trauma monologue (Steven Yeun quoting and discussing Chris Kattan)
• 45:11–45:21 — Animal trainer ethos (“You gotta enter an agreement with a predator”)
• 54:09–54:29 — Repetition and purpose of “Nope” as a refrain
• 63:02–64:11 — Angels, aliens, and spectacle as religious awe
• 75:41–75:53 — “Living in equilibrium” as the film’s message

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Keke Palmer/Emerald:
  “Now, did you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion Picture was a 2 second clip of a black man on horse?...But does anybody know the name of the black jockey that rode the horse? No. Nope.” (24:57-25:46)

• Molly Reynolds (on spectacle):
  “Is this chase of the spectacle actually killing us? And in this movie, it is. Right? Literally, if you look at this thing, you will die. But people can't help but look at this thing.” (15:30)

• Paul Scheer (relating trauma to pop culture):
  “I always thought that O.J. believed at a certain point that he didn't kill his wife, even though all the evidence is there to say that he did. Right. That he was able to write a book called if I Did It...we kind of take something and recontextualize it, make us the heroes.” (36:54)

• Amy Nicholson (on animal/human binaries):
  “We need to be nice to animals. In the back of my head, I keep thinking we're animals, too. I don't think humans are any different than animals. I think we're just, like, a weird animal that somehow got a lot of control on this planet.” (53:12)

• Amy Nicholson (summarizing):
  “We just gotta live in this weird equilibrium, Right?” (75:41)

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Final Reflections and Tone

The hosts agree Nope is dense, multifaceted, and especially rewarding on repeat viewings. It reflects Peele’s skepticism toward Hollywood means and ends, while universalizing its themes to the wider social media age and human appetite for spectacle. The tone is both deeply analytical and conversational—sometimes tangential, often funny, but always invested in the film’s deeper meanings and reverberations.

They end with love for Keke Palmer’s performance and segue to plans for their next episode on Gremlins.

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Flow & Utility

• This summary is for anyone unfamiliar with the episode or the film, highlighting cultural, technical, and narrative insights.
• Focus is given to direct quotes and key conversations, so the flavor and humor of the podcast are preserved.
• Advertisements and non-content segments are omitted.

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Next Episode

Coming up:
Gremlins — “Should we mess with things we don’t know? The rules have been set but we are not following them…”

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Produced by: Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds, Harry Nelson
Art: Kim Troxell (episode), Lee Jamison (show)
Music: Devin Bryant
Social: Zoe Applebaum
Realm Production

Transcript

[Amy Nicholson]

The year is 2022.

[Paul Scheer]

Generally. I'm calling UFOs anymore talking UAPs now.

[Molly Reynolds]

Why they gotta change the name?

[Paul Scheer]

Exactly.

[Kiki Palmer]

Now.

[Paul Scheer]

Fuck it. I'll tell you why they changed the name, all right? It's cause they want to keep us in the dark. Remember when they declassified all that UFO footage a couple years ago?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, people started paying attention, so they changed the name to uaps. No one knows what the fuck a UAP is. So everyone lost interest.

[Amy Nicholson]

The movie? Nope. Hello everyone, and welcome to Unspooled.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must sees, and in case you missed EMS, we have

[Amy Nicholson]

covered the AFI top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterboxd top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb top 250, and the New York Times 1000 essential films.

[Molly Reynolds]

And we will also be chasing our own curiosity. And Amy, you and I have been on a little bit of an alien kick and we felt like after our conversation about Close Encounters, this kind of felt like a movie that was worthy of a rewatch.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know how much you're aware of this. There's a lot of alien talk happening. Like just, just this week there was a thing about like, hey, have you heard about the flying saucer that looks like. Well, you're never going to guess, but something that you've eaten. The city of Colorado Springs showed up in the Pentagon's release of its third batch of UFO files detailing a mysterious potato shaped ufo.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, take a look right there.

[Molly Reynolds]

An FBI rendering attempted to capt what

[Paul Scheer]

a group of soldiers saw in 2020 over Cheyenne Mountain as they left their office building.

[Molly Reynolds]

The service members claimed it vanished after two minutes.

[Paul Scheer]

None of the men had phones on

[Molly Reynolds]

them, so there's no video or photos to provide more proof that's true.

[Amy Nicholson]

It does look like a foil wrapped potato. The FBI found with low confidence that it may have been backscattering of sunlight. The men insisted it was a clear and cloudless day. No aircraft or balloons were believed to

[Paul Scheer]

be in the area.

[Amy Nicholson]

So the case of this mysterious hovering potato remains unsolved to if it was

[Paul Scheer]

a clear and not a cloudy day.

[Molly Reynolds]

We need to ask Robert for that day.

[Amy Nicholson]

Specifically.

[Kiki Palmer]

Baked potatoes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Amazing.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, I mean, a baked potato is not a shape that is incredibly unique. It's just like, it's like an oval. I mean, you know, it has similarity to other shapes. But I do like that they are really saying baked potato as if that is a unique form, you know, but it is.

[Amy Nicholson]

It's got the lumps. You know, it's like saying, we're not perfect. It's not a Jordan almond.

[Molly Reynolds]

Again, another pretty basic shape. All I'm gonna say is that Dark Web, the show that I do with Rob Huebel, we go deep into UFOs and alien theories occasionally. We just actually did a big UAP episode. So if you wanna get your alien on, Amy, come on over. It's free. It's on YouTube. You can check it out. Real people, real encounters. By the way, I am Paul Scheer. I'm an actor, a writer, director, and a believer. I mean, we have to believe at this point.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah. I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. I have the clearest memory in my head of seeing. And I'm never gonna call them UAPs. Like, never. They're UFOs. To me. I'm very much with the character Near Angels, who's like. They just changed the name to make it impossible for us to talk about them. They're UFOs. I'm not doing this. But anyways, I know that when I was five, I'm pretty sure I saw one out of my nursery school window. I just. I just. It was nap time. I can't nap. Do you know this about me? Like, I won't nap or refuse to nap. Hate naps. Won't do it. Makes me more tired. But I was. Like, everybody else was napping and I was. And I was looking out the window, and I know I saw something hovering. San Antonio, Texas. Probably, like, noon. I don't know, but it kind of looked like an X. Like a red X with little glowing things on each corner. I've never forgotten this image. I can still picture where I was in the room. I know that this happened.

[Molly Reynolds]

Ooh, that is spooky, Amy. And I love that it's just still in your head. I have never seen anything that I can call a uap. I mean, I've watched footage, but I. You know, look, just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it's not out there.

[Amy Nicholson]

I can't believe you're so committed to uap. That's why. Why you're just giving them what they want. No, they're going to change it again once you do this ufo.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, look, is this even an alien film? I mean, that really is the question. And I guess we're going to get into this today as we talk a little bit about. Nope. Hey everybody. One of my favorite podcasts, Talking Pictures is back for another season. You know this, it's from TCM and HBO Max. It's a podcast all about movies and memories hosted by Ben Mankiewicz. And he gets to sit down with some of Hollywood's most influential actors and filmmakers to discuss the movies that inspired them. I've been on the show. It was the most fun. And this season he is talking to people like Edgar Wright about pacing and montages in film and Rosie Perez about her acting career and how it kind of just began on accident. He's also talking to Patton Oswalt, Susan Sarandon, Hira Murai who is a director who did a lot of Atlanta and the great new show Widow's Bay, Sally Field, Tony Goldwyn and so much more. This season Ben and his guests are on camera. So you can also watch Talking Pictures on HBO Max and Spotify or listen wherever you get your podcast.

[Amy Nicholson]

I see you.

[Molly Reynolds]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Molly Reynolds]

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[Amy Nicholson]

This is sick.

[Molly Reynolds]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Molly Reynolds]

To talk about Nope, we have to talk about where nope came from. All right, the year is 2022, and Jordan Peele has made a major name for himself as a director with his first two films, 2017's Get out and 2019's Us Now.

[Amy Nicholson]

Two films, two years, that is a great pace. But right when his momentum is very strong, the pandemic hits and the entire movie business slows way, way, way, way down. And like everyone else, Jordan Peele becomes one of those people who spends a lot of time inside wondering how dangerous it is outside, that there is this wild and biological thing in the air.

[Molly Reynolds]

Likewise, the pandemic has been destructive to movie theaters. I mean, are they even going to survive the shutdown? I mean, hopefully they will. Jordan thinks that, you know, he's going to have to do his part by making his third film, a big, splashy movie, bigger than the others in terms of scale and awe. And as he says, he wanted to create a spectacle. He wanted to create something that the audience would have to come and see.

[Amy Nicholson]

So he makes, nope, a movie that is about spectacle. It's about audience bait. It's about the unpredictability of the natural world. It's kind of this modern spin on the showmanship of King Kong. It is a story about two siblings, O.J. and Emerald Heywood. They are trying to capture footage of an alien so that they do not have to sell their family's ranch, which supplies horses for Hollywood movies.

[Molly Reynolds]

But the ranch next door belongs to an ex sitcom star, Jupe, who runs a mini theme park named Jupiter's Claim. And Jupe wants to use the alien as an audience draw, even though as a kid he survived a deadly chimpanzee attack on set and knows the dangers of messing with something uncontrollable.

[Amy Nicholson]

And then people mysteriously disappear, but you can hear them in the sky screaming.

[Molly Reynolds]

OJ And Emerald are played by Daniel Kahlua and Kiki Palmer. Their camera crew, a Fry's employee named angel and a cinematographer named Antlers are played by Brandon Pereira and Michael Wincott. And Jupe is played by Steven Yun.

[Amy Nicholson]

Nope was released on July 22, 2022. It cost $68 million. It made $171 billion. That's respectable. Not a massive, massive hit, but respectable. I think the movie is about so many things. Hollywood history, Hollywood ignorance, Hollywood collapse, that it's a lot of movie to take in on one watch.

[Molly Reynolds]

I also want to contextualize that number because, yes, I agree with you. There's a lot of this movie to take in. But again, it is a time when theaters are not quite back. Right. It's. It's getting there. I feel like Top Gun Maverick was the only one that really kind of galvanized movies, but this. This is still in that kind of precious period where things aren't making as much as they used to.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I think that's totally fair. And nope. Was also shot out of the Oscars. And speaking of mysteriously disappearing, Jordan Peeley and Daniel Kalua haven't been seen in theaters since, which really surprised me. I checked that, like, 900 times. Like, wow, okay.

[Molly Reynolds]

That is wild. I was thinking about that last night when I was watching it. You know, the one real. Not even standout. I mean, everybody in this cast is fantastic, but the breakout star from this film, I feel like the one thing that everyone took away from. Nope. Was, holy shit, Keke Palmer. I mean, that. That has really been the revelation of this movie. Even though she's in a cast of just, you know, heavy hitters, her career really just took off after this film.

[Amy Nicholson]

That is true. Like, Keke Palmer has been great in everything I've ever seen her in. I mean, she's been acting since she was a kid, but nope. Was the movie where I was like, oh, I'm gonna see everything Keke Palmer does. And from that moment, I have. I mean, she's amazing. She just. She shows up in a movie. She's just this kaboom, instant injection of, like, life and humor. She's the best. She has stayed huge on my mind after this. And nope. Itself, despite being shot out of the Oscars, it has stayed very high on my mind. And so that is why, with everything happening in the world of Aliens, I really wanted to do a rewatch right now.

[Molly Reynolds]

I'm so glad you did, Amy, because, you know, this is a really interesting film that I don't think people talk about that much. And again, not to blame everything on the box office at this moment, but I do feel like there were a lot of movies that came out as movie theaters were kind of coming back that we kind of forget about. And this was a big movie shot on imax, you know, Some of the technology in this, the way that they did night scenes during the day. And then kind of reversed images. Technically, it's a marvel. And I think it speaks to what's been going on in our culture in a major way. Because this is not just an Alien movie. This is a monster movie. I love the way that you said this was like a modern, you know, re envisioning of King Kong. That, to me, really, I think, speaks to what this movie is trying to say.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I think so. And I think there's an interesting parallel in there. You know, King Kong is a movie about people trying to create musty entertainment during the Great Depression. We did King Kong forever ago, back in the first season of Unspooled. And I love how that movie takes its time. Starting with, you know, Fay Wray on the street, hungry, stealing fruit, trying to support herself on the streets. And this framing of, like, when stuff is really bad, what's gonna get us together? What's gonna get people to put their pennies together? What's gonna make people spend money to have entertainment? Cause that feels like the least important thing when the world is chaotic. And yet those two parallels together, Depression era, pandemic era, what's gonna happen to entertainment and this ability to bring us together. It is what. What's bringing us together? Dangerous.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right? Because that idea of spectacle is fascinating to me. And it's something that culturally, we've always been dealing with. You know, when you go back to, like, the 1950s, when it was, like, William S. Castle making these movies that were almost daring you to go to the theater, can you handle it? Will you be able to, you know, survive the Tingler or the giant spider movie, whatever it is that singular is

[Amy Nicholson]

pretty fun, to be honest. I've never been tingled. I've just been. I've just seen the movie. The movie itself is great.

[Molly Reynolds]

I want to be tingled as well. I mean, we all want to be tingled. And how do you.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yes, we all want to be tingled.

[Molly Reynolds]

I mean, how do you. How do you compete with spectacle when you can open up your phone and have access to everything, Right. And everything now is being presented to you in a way where you don't even get the beginning of the tingles. Like, you just get right into it. Like, everything is, you know, created in this short form way to just shove the most exciting part of the thing at you.

[Amy Nicholson]

And you done get zapped. You get zapped.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, like, one of the things that's been really fascinating for me to kind of get my head into. There's an article a couple weeks ago in the New York Times. It was by the guys who are running a lot of the AI, like, Instagram accounts.

[Molly Reynolds]

Okay.

[Amy Nicholson]

And they were explaining that the thing that draws audiences in on Instagram with AI stuff is stories that make no sense and make you feel confused and upset and just, like, what's going on? Upset isn't quite the right word because upset is, like, negative. More just like, huh. Like, right. We have breaking narrative where your head hurts and you have to watch it again because you're just lost. It's a really weird headspace that I think we're just running towards full time.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, there's so many TikToks that make me stop and pause. And obviously that's the reason why they're there, where it says, like, before you use your microwave, make sure you do this. And then someone just puts, like, tape over the numbers in a certain way, and you're like, wait, what was that? And you rewatch it like, you've missed something. But it's not even about giving you a tip. And I don't even think it's there to be funny. I really just think it's there to, like, ratchet up views. Right? These bots are just confused and be like, yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating as a temporary psychological art form that, oh, my God, I don't know what it's gonna do to us.

[Molly Reynolds]

And this is why it's so hard to fight for where our eyes go. Like, how do you get people to look at your thing and not the other thing? And meanwhile, I think what this movie is saying is, is this chase of the spectacle actually killing us? And in this movie, it is. Right? Literally, if you look at this thing, you will die. But people can't help but look at this thing.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, we've gone to the movie to see what this thing is that Jordan Peele has created. Right. But he. I mean, I love that you're already bringing up the way this film looks on imax, because I think this is a stunningly gorgeous film. I don't think I'd really absorbed how beautiful this film is shot the first time I saw it, because I think now that I'm really putting myself in the headspace of 2022. I was probably going back into theaters earlier than most people because it's my job. And I wanted to. I wanted to. I really missed it. But I think Nope was one of the first films that I didn't review. I just went for fun and Bought a ticket. And I think I was just kind of still alive with the idea of I'm in a theater. I'm in a theater. And I don't know if I absorbed how beautiful this movie is until I rewatched it, and I was like, oh, my goodness, who is this DP who shot this movie? My God. The steadiness, almost the way that this film is shot has a control and an absorption that's the opposite of everything we're talking about with TikTok. It's just the most beautifully composed shots. I, of course, was like, who did this? It's the best person I've ever seen. And it's Christopher Nolan's guy, you know, Hoyt, who's doing the Odyssey. So obviously he's gonna make the most beautiful film ever. But he hasn't, I think, even done horror films like this as a. As now that he's, like, come to America as, like, the guy who does

[Molly Reynolds]

Tenet, you know, well, Hoyte Van Hoytema is this true kind of technical genius, and I think understands how to make these images pop. Like, his. His work as a DP is truly stunning. And I think working with Jordan's story, they were able to create this world in which you felt like a kid. Like, you felt like young Amy looking up into the sky. Because. And I think treating an IMAX camera almost like a steady cam, by having it, like, shoulder mounted in some scenes and really pushing those cameras to the limit, I think paves the way for Sinners. Coming up in a little bit. You know, what you can do in this format. But also is this great collaboration between a visionary director and a visionary dp. They really complement each other in a way where it feels like we're seeing something for the first time, which is so important for a film where you are looking up and seeing this alien, which looks very different than any other film or any other Alien film, I should say. Right. It has a unique look.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. And the mental brain work of it, too. Like the teamwork. I mean, one of the stories I heard is that Jordan Peele came to Hoyt before they even started filming. And he said, if I came to you, and I said, there's a UFO in my backyard. You have one shot. What camera would you use? And Hoyt was like, I'm using my imax. You know, my IMAX would have the best resolution. I mean, they're kind of creating this teamwork that sort of parallels what's even happening in the film when, like, these guys, when the family comes to Antlers, their cinematographer. And they're like, we gotta shoot this. How are we gonna do it? How are we gonna do it? You know, they're pitching them. I love it when Kiki Palmer just calls the Cinetaga to be like, come work on our thing.

[Paul Scheer]

I did get the number.

[Kiki Palmer]

I got it from the call sheet. So we have a project and you know, what if I told you it was the offer of a lifetime?

[Paul Scheer]

Hopefully not my lifetime.

[Kiki Palmer]

It's a good one. I'mma be real with you. We don't have a lot of money to pay you up front, you know, not like you used to.

[Paul Scheer]

But I tend to do one for them, so I kind of do one for me. So what is it?

[Kiki Palmer]

Reality?

[Molly Reynolds]

Oh, no, reality. Documentary.

[Kiki Palmer]

Doc. Documentary.

[Molly Reynolds]

Oh, that's better.

[Amy Nicholson]

Scenes like that are so much of why I love this movie. Because you just hear Jordan's ear for how pitches work in this town, how a bad pitch works in this town, how language works, how documentary sounds more posh than reality, how cinematographers even decide to take jobs. You know, one for them, one for me. It has this sense of absolute reality, honestly. But then there's an alien happening and this guy is just a little bit crazy. And meo, I wonder how much Hoyt is even in that character. Where are you off to this summer? Day trip, weekend trip, week long trip. Whether you're thinking staycation or destination vacation, check out the travel section of Quint. To get going in style, throw a Napa leather duffel bag in the back of your car. You get this classic old school look going on. Brown leather, black leather, very Paul Newman. You can head to a picnic with Quince's all day neoprene duffel bag, which has enough space for a weekend hotel stay. And it comes in six colors, including a gorgeous bright red. Last year I treated myself to Quince's Italian leather dual compartment toiletry bag. I got mine in cognac brown and now I have taken this thing to Australia, Canada, France, even just to this cabin in Big Bear. You would not believe how much stuff I fit in it while feeling organized. This toiletry bag, it's got holders for makeup, brushes, razors, toothbrushes, however you want to use it. And it looks neat when you arrive and unpack. And of course, if you're imagining what else to pack inside your bag, whatever bag you're in the mood for, you know that Quint has your effortless summer wardrobe from pajama sets to 100% European linen. Shirts, shorts, dresses, pants, him, her, they got everything. And you know that everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you are paying for quality, not brand markup. So elevate your summer look. Go to quints.com unspooled for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now vellum in Canada too. That is Q-U-I-N-C-E.com unspooled for Free shipping and T365 day returns quints.com unspooling starting

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[Amy Nicholson]

unschooled.

[Molly Reynolds]

I do think it is interesting that you know this is a big spectacle but yet it also is this movie about Hollywood which I'm wondering if that plays a part in, maybe why it wasn't as fully received as it should be. Cause I always think that when you make a movie about Hollywood it alienates a certain group of people. And this is a movie that's very inside baseball Animal trainers, right? And they're showing you that even in the world of these animal trainers and not calling the dp but in their day to day job they also have to pitch and act and be these performers that get hired, right? Oh well, you're younger than the guy that we normally work with. Nope, don't worry about it. When Daniel Kaluua has to give this speech, he can barely make eye contact. He can't talk. And then Kiki comes in with this amazing introduction to the movie and just nails this pitch about what they do, who they are, and, you know, essentially why you are working with them. Why are you giving them your money, why are you paying them for the spectacle? Right? And that's what this whole movie is like, paying people for a spectacle. And she sells it. And I love this opening here. My name is O.J. i think my sister's gonna be here in a minute.

[Amy Nicholson]

Little loud up, please.

[Paul Scheer]

We kind of hanging in the back.

[Molly Reynolds]

I said we are animal wranglers. We're Haywood Hollywood Horses. And did you know the very first.

[Kiki Palmer]

Hey, yo. I'm so sorry about that. If you do that. Sorry.

[Molly Reynolds]

Safety meeting.

[Kiki Palmer]

Yeah. Hello.

[Amy Nicholson]

How y' all doing?

[Kiki Palmer]

Sorry for the tardiness. My name is Emerald, that's OJ and we are your animal wranglers today with Heywood Hollywood Horses. Now, did you know that the very first assembly of photographs in sequential order to create a motion Picture was a 2 second clip of a black man on horse? Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Look it up. Now, I know you guys know Edward Moybridge, the grandfather of motion pictures who took the pictures that created that clip. But does anybody know the name of the black jockey that rode the horse? No. Nope. I mean, the very first stuntman, animal wrangler, and movie star all rolled into one. And there is literally no record of them. That man was a Bahamian jockey that went by the name of Alistair E. Haywood. And he is mine great great grandfather. Great. There's another great grandfather.

[Amy Nicholson]

Okay, well, I'm gonna cool with you on one thing, actually. Maybe I'm gonna say that you've enlightened me. Maybe mass audiences don't like movies about Hollywood, but Oscar voters love movies about Hollywood, which is why I'm kind of surprised this didn't go further. Yeah, I feel like if you could make it through that gateway. But yeah, maybe if you're just like a person who enjoys movies, you don't want to go see a movie about, like, blah, blah, blah, These poor people. Why are they whining? They live in the dream factory. But I think that I really admire how Jordan Peele makes living in the business of Hollywood seem just like a normal job. You know, there's such a reality to these characters, to being on a set. I didn't realize, by the way, that the director of this like, fake commercial within the movie is none other than Osgood Perkins, who's gonna go on and do like long legs, I think the next year after this. Yeah, really great Osgood Perkins cameo in here. But yeah, like, this is how a set works, right? It's a little bit chaotic. People are talking over each other, there's music going on in the background until they have to shut it off. Like, God, it just feels so credible to me. And you know what? I think I didn't appreciate enough the first time I saw this film is because my eyes were so much on Keke Palmer being fantastic. I don't think I fully appreciated how amazing Daniel Kalua's performance is as just a horse guy, a guy who can only really be around animals. And he's so just sunken in within himself into the world of relating to horses. Like, it's not a performance that's flashy. And I think usually those are really hard to appreciate.

[Molly Reynolds]

He is our quint. If this movie is our Jaws, he is our quint because he is the one that is able to actually, you know, figure out what this alien needs. And I think that what's so kind of special about this movie. And it goes back to a theory that my friend had. My friend said to me that Hollywood is based on giving people a chance to make their vision. But most of the time the people with the best vision are the writers or the directors, not the actors. But you're forcing them to perform and it's an incongruous task. Like if you're a great writer, you don't have to be a great performer, but to sell your script, to get out into the world to be a great director, you have to perform. You have to put on these one person shows for these executives, for them to buy your work. And it has nothing to do if you're actually good, but you're giving them a show. And I always think about that, like, what are the pieces of work that can't get acknowledged because someone can't, you know, sell it the right way. But like, it's the only profession where they make you audition for something that you would never actually do. Right? You don't need an actor, you don't need a writer to be a good actor.

[Amy Nicholson]

Wait, this is true. I usually sometimes go all self pitting on myself because I'm like, I just went into this world to be a writer. I never thought I'd have to do any sort of speaking in public or putting my face out there because, you know, I hate getting my picture taken. But, oh, my God. Yeah. Screenwriters have it so much worse. So much worse if they're, like, quiet and shy. And that also, I think, helps explain why so many mediocre things can get pushed through, right?

[Molly Reynolds]

Because you're basically giving it to the biggest mouth, the person who's got the P.T. barnum cell. And I think this movie is also saying, don't underestimate the shy person. Don't, you know, don't take for granted that. You know, just because they aren't, you know, giving you this show of what a horse trainer is or what an animal trainer is, doesn't mean they're bad at their job. As a matter of fact, he's great at his job. I would say that Keke Palmer is not a great animal trainer. She is the frontman for this organization. By the way, that opening that she does there, she did that 14 times. And apparently Jordan Peele said, just do it completely differently and every single time. And I think that that, to me, not only speaks to Jordan knowing exactly who he's got. Cause Kiki kind of fits perfectly in this movie as that kind of salesman, right? But she brings this energy like you're brought in, and she lays down the entire exposition of the film, you know, which is this world in which people have been erased. You know, people have been commodified, and it's all for the business, right? And it starts off with that story about the first, you know, images of moving film. It was a black jockey on a horse. But we've kind of forgotten that jockey, and we've forgotten the people behind that, and we are more focused on the image. And Hollywood eats you up and. And your stories get eaten up, and it's for the greater good, and that's what this movie is. But she does it all. She lays it out right there at the top of the movie, if you're paying attention.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. And Muybridge is kind of fascinating. Like, this is a guy who would. When he did this footage in 1872, he made a point of noting who the horse is. He was like, this is a thoroughbred bay mare. Her name is Annie G. But, yeah, not the jockey. But he was a guy who, I think totally himself believed in reinvention and in changing and in shifting. Like, I mean, his name, Edward Muybridge, his first name is Edward, but he, when he moved to America, changed it to be not just Edward, E, D, W, A R D, but he changed it to be spelled E A D. W E A R D to look all crazy and fancy because he was just reinventing himself. And, I mean, around this time, he's, like, shooting footage, too, of, like, a lot of naked people. He was really into horses and naked people.

[Molly Reynolds]

Oh, there you go.

[Amy Nicholson]

So there's, like, all these unnamed naked ladies who are, like, hanging laundry on a clothesline. Or there's a naked dude playing tennis. I think he shot that one around the same year. So you could do a totally different version of. Nope. But it's about this naked dude being like, nobody knows who I am. I'm just playing tennis. If I was a horse, you would have cared about me. Yeah, He's a real weirdo, by the way. Edward Morbridge. Fun fact about him. Ten years before he shot this horse footage, he was married to this girl who was half his age. She was kind of a party girl, and he was away a lot shooting his horse footage or trying to figure out his game. So she had this baby that he thought was fathered by another dude. So he came home, murdered this other guy, and then pleaded insanity and said that he was a little bit cracked because he had once fallen off a stagecoach, and he had this head injury and got acquitted of murdering the guy that he thought was his wife's lover. Then his wife died, he took this kid they had dumped it in an orphanage, and basically, like, never thought about it again. But the kid did wind up growing up to look like him. So it was his kid all along.

[Molly Reynolds]

Oh, wow, look at that. Little stroll down memory lane there with Edward Muirbridge. You know, I think that as we're talking about it, I'm realizing you have to set a movie like this in Hollywood because it's the clearest encapsulation of a monster that, like, eats you up and spits you out. And I think it starts off with this idea that, like, oh, there is so much motion picture history that is foundational on black labor that we don't talk about. Right. We're gonna leave that on the side. And then you think about cinema as it first started, and, you know, the cowboy movie and the Old west, and we have these, you know, cowboys versus Indians. And you're taking this period of American history that's incredibly violent, and you're oversimplifying it, and you're making it very compact and nice, and it's.

[Amy Nicholson]

And you're writing black cowboys out of it.

[Molly Reynolds]

Exactly. Right. So you're kind of always just. Just taking what you need and getting rid of the rest, the sloppy stuff. Right. You're not engaging in the mess. Which brings us to the most, I think, interesting and probably the part of the film that resonates from a horror level with so many of us. This idea of, you know, Joop the sitcom star, the kid sitcom star who is on this crappy sitcom with a chimpanzee, you know, it feels like something out of the 80s, just a syndicated family show. And the chimpanzee goes wild and murders at least the entire cast, except for him. And this moment, you know, this violent moment where this kid is hiding under a table watching everyone get mauled and killed is then also commodified. And I mean, the way that he sells his own trauma as something that, you know, is entertainment is probably the most disturbing thing in this film. I mean, the monologue that he gives, one of the funniest monologues in anything Jordan has done. But the monologue that he gives about the SNL sketch about the murder of his cast is just absolute perfection.

[Paul Scheer]

Saturday Night Live Daryl Hammond as Tom. Anna Gosteyer as Phyllis. Sherry o' Terry is Mary Jo Elliott. Scott Wolfe is the host. He's me. But of course, the star of the sketch is Chris goddamn Catan as Gordy. And he is undeniable. Okay, bit goes like this. Everyone's trying to celebrate Gordy's birthday, but every time Gordy hears something about the jungle, Gordy Catan goes off. And it's. It's Catan. He's just crushing it. He is a force of nature. He is killing on that stage.

[Amy Nicholson]

I think that is such an intelligent way to write this scene. Because Jordan Peele isn't just saying, picture this happening to some people you don't really know. He's saying, picture this happen to some famous faces that you think are sort of funny who never did this. But because he was telling you to imagine Chris Kattan, you actually can do it. And like, gosh, the enthusiasm in Steven Yeun's voice when he's like, ugh, it's catan. You know, so he's like crushing it. His love of Catan just adds this extra, I don't know, complete giggle layer to me. But it's weird. Cause you can see, like, how disassociated this guy is too. Like, in the middle of it, you have that tiny little edit back to seeing what he was like as a kid hiding under that table, being really scared. But it's just real brief. We haven't gone all the way back into that scene yet. It's just like, boom. No, this guy is Telling you a perky story, but he's absolutely not telling you the complete truth, or he's just crushed it down.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, does he even believe or remember that? Like, I guess that's part of it too, right? Or he bought into the other version. It's like, I always think about. And I know the character in this movie is O.J. but when you think about our O.J. the real O.J. you know, he wrote a book called if I Did it after he was accused of murdering his wife. Like, and I always thought that O.J. believed at a certain point that he didn't kill his wife, even though all the evidence is there to say that he did. Right. That he was able to write a book called if I Did It. And that, to me, is another way that we kind of take something and recontextualize it, make us the heroes. It's the Old west mythology again. It's this story. Like, he creates a room in. In this, you know, in this Old west museum celebrating this monkey, this attack that he survived. But did he survive it? Or did he just never deal with it? Or is it just being in a system where he's not working as an actor? And so, yeah, the only thing he'll do is he'll just commodify anything he can to stay, you know, relevant or alive.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Tangential to the industry business. Like, he's. Yeah, he's repackaging it as a museum. He's repackaging it as a theme park. He's repackaging it as a funny story that happened to him. He's repackaging it as a Saturday Night Live skit. Like, he's repackaging it in all of these palatable ways. And by the way, I have read if I Did it, it's really exact. If I did it, I probably would have worn this pair of shoes and done that. Like, it's very specific. But I think that is an interesting idea. Like, can you even rewrite the history so much that you forget what it was? I. I would say absolutely. I think we rewrite history all the time and forget what it was. Because once you take a memory and turn it into a story, a joke, a skit, a sketch, a thing in a box, it's almost easier to deal with. He has that shoe that was standing upright when he was a little kid hiding under a table. His first crushed shoe covered in blood. He has that immortalized as it was in the bizarre memory which, you know, just crystallized there. But the physicality of having it in a Box almost shows you the distance he's keeping from it, you know, like, you have it preserved.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right. And the fact that he's focusing on that as, like, a miracle.

[Amy Nicholson]

But it's like a bad miracle.

[Molly Reynolds]

A bad miracle.

[Amy Nicholson]

And we get these, like, running lines in here about bad miracles all the time.

[Molly Reynolds]

What's a bad miracle? Hmm. They gotta work for that.

[Kiki Palmer]

Nope.

[Molly Reynolds]

And, you know, you think about, well, what about the other people, right? The other people who died and their families? He's profiting on this. He's letting people spend the night in this room. And obviously, he lived through it, but he is monetizing trauma.

[Amy Nicholson]

And, yeah, when she shows up, right. The little girl who we see get the most beaten when she's at his. Oh, God. You know, the first real star lasso experience, hiding behind that veil because her face got ripped off. And she has to wear a sweatshirt of what she used to look like. There's something. Okay. The costuming in this movie is phenomenal. And, like, that sweatshirt is just one of the phenomenal little details. The costuming here dresses people as though they kind of dress themselves in a hurry in a way that I love. Like, the way Keke Palmer is dressed. Casual, weird things fit her. Okay. A little bit mismatched. None of it looks like, look at me, I'm wacky. It just looks like I put this on, I'm busy. I'm doing my life. It doesn't quite fit exactly right. It is my favorite costuming in a movie in a while.

[Molly Reynolds]

I mean, anyone who's been on set knows that that's how people come to set, right? You're the.

[Kiki Palmer]

The.

[Molly Reynolds]

The way that crew dresses. And, you know, it. It's not. You're not going out. You're going to work. You're doing. You know, for all intents and purposes, a lot of crew is doing heavy labor. And these characters feel like they're not thinking about. They're not going out to dinner. They're just doing their job. And I love all the cast and crew shirts and stuff like that, you know?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Then he's wearing, like, a Scorpion King hoodie. Like, it feels exactly how people dress, but it's not boring. It's not like, oh, we put you in a default blend shirt and jeans.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Interesting. Like, it's all kind of interesting in its own way, but not interesting because they were trying to be interesting, you know?

[Molly Reynolds]

And I think that when you look at Jupe, you know, Jupe was a child star, not on a Old west show, Right. On a very, very Basic, like kind of Charles in Charge ALF style show. And he.

[Amy Nicholson]

But also that kid sheriff one, whatever that was. But yeah, I don't know what that show was.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, there was, that was the one where they made a reality show where they made all the kids, like, run a town, which I could talk about forever. Kid Nation. Amazing.

[Amy Nicholson]

Wait, that's a real show?

[Molly Reynolds]

Oh, yeah. It was a reality show where they. That was actually the premise of our human giant sketch where we said we let children take over a prison because that show is so nuts. It's incredible. Lawsuits, Kids were getting burned. They were, you know, they were like, do yourself a favor. I could talk about Kid Nation literally for hours. It is one of the most fascinating pieces of reality television ever made. They just let kids loose in a town and said, govern yourselves. Make your own rules. And it was a complete and utter disaster. And even more so that we don't see because I think the lawsuits were so massive afterwards. But all that being said, like, our, our main characters, they're dressed casually, like they're, they're living in this world. They're. They have their own look and style that feels, I think, very normal. But Jupe is dressed like a cowboy. But not even like a cowboy. He's dressed like in a cowboy costume. Cause I would argue that OJ Is technically a cowboy, right? In the sense of he's wearing the Carhartts, he's wearing boots. Like, he's like, he is a modern day cowboy. Right. He's wrangling his horses.

[Amy Nicholson]

O.J. is a real cowboy and Jupe is a phony cowboy. And I like how you get that reveal when he puts on that red western outfit. Yeah, he's presenting his lasso show to the crowd. And it's only when you really, really realize that it's a show where the alien is going to come down because this movie doesn't announce it. It sort of creeps up on you as he's giving this speech that the camera pans around and you see he's got the UFO on the back of the cowboy outfit. I love that reveal so much. But gosh, to put all those things together, that means that the girl that he watched get beaten up by the monkey. He brings her back to witness this show and so he ends her life by getting eaten by an alien.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right? And it's all because he bought into his own story about that animal attack that, you know, that he had this kinship with this animal, that the animal wouldn't hurt him, that he feels not like, oh, my God, I Survived. But I am blessed and I actually have a connection here. Right. Cause he's been, you know, buying horses from, you know, from Daniel Kahlua and Keke Palmer, kind of thinking that he's training the alien. Right. Like that he's gonna now, you know, he's now gonna monetize the alien. But it's like he didn't realize that you can't control this uncontrollable thing. Like, he is the, you know, his life is the personification of you can't trust. You can't trust an animal. Cause that's what it is. It is an alien, but it really is acting like a predator. It's a beast. It's coming down and it's feeding on. On us. And the only person that respects it as an animal is Daniel Klua's character. He's looking at it and understanding, like, what are the triggers here? Because his whole job is to manage the triggers of the animals that he is loaning out to sets. And the opening scene is obviously with him is that they get fired because someone spooks their horse. Right. And so he's very aware of treating all species with respect and understanding that, you know, no one's greater than the other.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. We have that almost mantra that he's saying throughout the whole thing. You know, the horse needs a break, the chimp hits its limit. You cannot tame a predator. Like he says here, we pissed him off.

[Molly Reynolds]

We're not the reason it settled down here. That was Juke. He got caught up trying to tame a predator. You can't do that. You gotta enter an agreement with one.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, that's Sigfried and Roy.

[Amy Nicholson]

I love that you're having these kind of built in mantras all the way through. I mean, it's strange because when you go back to that flashback scene that you're talking about where we really get to see what it was like for Jupe under that table. I love how that's filmed, by the way. I love that the camera is underneath the table, shooting through that green gauze of the tablecloth.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

And that the monkey is just acting like an actual monkey. It's like smashing when it wants to smash. Distracted, takes pauses, thinks about itself, doesn't know for sure that the girl is hurt or dead. We don't know if she's hurt or dead. It's like nudging her foot. Like it thinks it's playing, like she's gonna get back up again. I mean, it only kind of just stops. Not because it's come to any sort of emotional catharsis. It's just, okay, now I'm done with this, and I'm gonna be friendly to this guy. It is acting so legitimately like a chimpanzee and not a villain. You know, not like a movie where the monkey is like, I'm full of vengeance. It's just. It's complete animal behavior. And I really respect that, you know? Cause I don't like it when they make animals act as though they're deliberate villains.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, and by the way, did you know that all of these monkey scenes in here are played by Terry Notary? He's the guy who was in that movie the Square, right before this. Oh, interesting. Where it has that famous scene where there's a bunch of rich people at a banquet, and then an actor comes in and he's acting like a monkey just to make everyone feel really uncomfortable. Jordan Peele hired that guy to be the monkey in this movie. And then he had him run around as himself with furniture that was, like, 30% too big to put everything to scale. If you have not seen the Square, just watch even the scene, and you can see the guy playing Gordy the monkey as his true self, terrifying people. You can even hear how scary he is just here.

[Paul Scheer]

Go on, Go away, Go away.

[Molly Reynolds]

And so, I mean, we've talked about so much. And again, I think what's beautiful about this movie is it can be looked at as just a simple, you know, story of a monster. And they have to figure out how to defeat the monster that's still running through the center of it. I think it makes this movie so much richer to look at the layers beyond it. Right. And I think that the simplest way to look at it is this is a movie about respecting other people, but really respecting animals. Right. You know, like, because humans, to a certain extent, and you can say this with the Clint Eastwood movies back in the 80s, you know, all the way to now, you know, we're like this idea of, like, oh, animals. We can. We can control them. We have them. We can. We can put them in a situation. You know, I remember when I was on the League, we had a bear on set one time, and we had all these rules about the bear on set. And you couldn't walk past this line, and you couldn't make eye contact. You couldn't do this and couldn't do this. And at the end of the speech, he's like, well, but, you know, he's also a bear. It's like, wait, oh, what?

[Amy Nicholson]

Right?

[Molly Reynolds]

And it's like, yeah, it's also a bear. Like, it's like at a certain point you have to be like. And at a. Yeah, you can't. They're not humans. They might do something insane.

[Amy Nicholson]

Okay. Yes. But then we have to add this other layer to it, which is this is a family, the Haywoods, that has to make their business and wants to continue making their business on using live animals for their needs. Their business needs horses to do it too. Like, I've been thinking about this a lot because I know that we are not supposed to be using live animals that much in movies anymore, that we have a lot of concerns justly about are they being treated correctly? Are the breeders being fair to them? Are they being handled well? Is it just stressful to be on set? But I go so much back and forth on this. I have a lot of conflicted feelings. I think I have the same conflicted feelings that this movie does because there's kind of something special about seeing a real animal in a movie, being a real animal. The real horses in this movie are gorgeous. And you're supposed to feel sad, I think, when the first shoot goes badly and a green screen horse is wheeled in. But at the same time, we definitely probably shouldn't be using chimpanzees. They are very violent. They can go sideways. But then when I saw the new Spielberg, finally Disclosure day, there's so many fake looking animals in there that just kick me out of a scene and I hate it. I'm like, why are you making a fake deer? Why are you making a fake bunny? What are we doing? Like, I don't know what the middle ground is, but I don't think this movie is necessarily saying we can't have any animals in films because what is this family gonna do?

[Molly Reynolds]

I think that as someone who's done sketch comedy, and I know Jordan obviously has done sketch comedy, animals are often, you know, put into sketches. And so I've worked with animals many different types. I've worked with snake handlers, I've worked with bear wranglers, I've worked with chimpanzee, you know, owners. And I, and I always say that these are not trainers, they're owners. Because at the end of the day, you cannot train anyone to do something. They're not going to hit their marks perfectly. They're going to be spooked. I can't tell you the amount of times I have hired an animal trainer. They have come there and I go, well, can they do X, Y and Z that we said that you needed Two weeks to prep them to do well, no, you know, like. And, like, you know, and then you're constantly. And then as a, you know, as a Cree, as a creator, a producer, director, you get frustrated. Like, well, I need the dog to, you know, push the, you know, the blackjack cards forward on the table. It's like. And you get caught in this world where they over promise you want more. And, you know, and you're, you're, you forget that it's not an actor. It is this. This creature. And, And I think there's something really fascinating about animal trainers, um, because inherently you're saying, break your nature, do something else. You're also making them do something that they don't want to be doing. Um, and you are playing with fire. All because. Wouldn't it be funnier if there was a real bear in this scene? TJ Miller got Yogi Bear because he convinced someone to let him in the bear cage at the Los Angeles Zoo to do his audition for Yogi Bear. And that tape went around all online and it was like, yeah, it's spectacle. It's spectacled spectacle. Spectacle. And, you know, and I think it's this idea of how wouldn't it be cool, though, if they were right next to each other? If you saw that, like, you know, if you saw that there's an element of danger. That's why we like Tom Cruise movies. Like, he broke his foot. Now, I like everything more that he does because, oh, my God, if he could break his foot, that means he could die, right? And you go there and make, well, I think Tom Cruise is gonna maybe die if he jumps off the, like, this idea of, you know, it all goes back to, like, Faces of Death, right? Like, oh, can you see this thing? And I do think it takes a toll on us emotionally to kind of devalue, like, what an animal actually is or really what, you know, how temporary we create life. I think that SNL's story going back to that, is that whole thing. It's like we're making fun of this thing because we're removed from it. Like, if I told you, oh, my God, it was an animal attack on this sitcom, it was terrible. But can you imagine, right? And then all of a sudden, it's a Chris Kattan sketch. We've seen that play out multiple times. We've seen horrible things. I mean, look at the way that we talked about Monica Lewinsky, you know, the snlification of these real people and real events. I'm not saying that I'm above it. I'm just saying. But we are. Culturally. It's like, well, we gotta make fun of it. There's gotta be a joke about it.

[Amy Nicholson]

We.

[Molly Reynolds]

We buy into these things because it's like. It's just entertainment. And sometimes you have to take a step back and be like, wait, what are we watching? These are real people. This is real. This is awful stuff.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I love how much you just built that out from, like, a bear to basically Real Housewives.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Because I'm with you. I mean, this whole time you've been talking about, like, we need to be nice to animals. In the back of my head, I keep thinking we're animals, too. And I think that's also in here. We are animals, too. I don't think humans are any different than animals. I think we're just, like, a weird animal that somehow got a lot of control on this planet.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah. And yet we wanna blame animals when they make a mistake. Like, it's like, well, hold on one second. Like, when that woman puts that mirrored ball in front of the horse's eye, it spooks the horse. Right? It's like, well, that's what. Of course you didn't respect the animal.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah, yeah, but that's why I wanna get to the title. Because this title is not about, like, respect the animal. This title is Nope. And what is Nope? The only thing I can really cling to about what Nope is in this movie is it's respect yourself. Don't go that way. You know? Oh, that's really freaky. That looks dangerous. Nope. Like, nope is just a phrase that is heard throughout this movie, and it's heard from the very beginning. I like how they kind of just set it up, even at the title. When you're listening to the old sitcom.

[Paul Scheer]

I said it to Icelandic time because we share a love of the aurora borealis, Gordi. And you have no idea how to tell time.

[Molly Reynolds]

Great gift, dad.

[Amy Nicholson]

Way to think things through.

[Kiki Palmer]

Somehow you'd think that a man who can send a rocket into space would be able to manage a halfway decent birthday present.

[Paul Scheer]

Nope.

[Amy Nicholson]

And then it just continues all the way through. You know, I love the scene how they stage it when Daniel Kalua is in the barn and there's the little kids dressed like aliens, and we don't know that they're little kids. And they're freaking him out, and he's like, oh, no, I've hit my limit. The horse hit its limit. The chimp hit its limit. He hits his limit right here.

[Molly Reynolds]

No, no, this.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, what happens when you don't respect your limit, even as a human being, when you're the guy from TMZ driving around this electric bike, not listen to anybody, not hear people say, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. You hit a wall and you go flying off your bike. And it sounds like this.

[Molly Reynolds]

I love that. I love this TMZ guy. By the way, the TMZ writer's name, I believe, is also a variation of the name of the director of the. The black jockey on the horse.

[Amy Nicholson]

This idea of, like, his name is Ryder Muybridge. It's almost like he's a descendant. TMZ descended from this guy.

[Molly Reynolds]

Exactly. Now, I do want to say, like, nope, that title, obviously, what's so funny about it is it's a trope of black horror memes, right? Like, nope, I'm out. And, you know, it's the antithesis of Richard Dreyfuss and Close Encounters, right?

[Amy Nicholson]

He was like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

[Molly Reynolds]

And, you know, and I. And I do think there is this a compulsive need to see the thing that we shouldn't see. Right. We want to turn it into content. You know, people are taking out their phones instead of helping. But I also don't think that this movie is making a. I don't think that the movie is saying, like, we shouldn't be interested. We shouldn't run towards it. You know, I think it's, you know, it's about learning maybe when not to look. I'll tell you. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, boy. That's. All right. Okay. Yes.

[Molly Reynolds]

There's plenty of footage out online that, like, it was there. And I really made a concerted effort never to see that. I don't need to see that. I don't need to see someone be assassinated. Right. But if you are, you know, I don't know. I think that there's a challenge to it. Did you see it? Did you look at it? I don't want to do that, but that's taken, you know, years, and I hope, you know, a sense of judgment about what's okay for me. And this is like a conversation I have with my kids all the time. It's like, yeah, there's a million things out there, but can you handle it? And you don't know. And you shouldn't have to, you know, you shouldn't even be put in positions where you have access to all of it. I don't think. I don't think that's healthy for us. I just don't think it's good because I just think.

[Amy Nicholson]

Huh. I mean, I hadn't really thought about that. I saw the Charlie Crick thing, but I saw it before we knew he was dead.

[Molly Reynolds]

Okay.

[Amy Nicholson]

I wonder if that's why I was able to watch it.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Maybe because I was like, oh, no, Charlie Kirk got shot. I was boarding a plane. I was like, what? Really? And I looked at it, but it wasn't like, charlie Kirk is dead. Watch the video. It was like he got shot. I was like, oh, is he okay?

[Molly Reynolds]

Okay. Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

So I wonder if I would have been able to click after that. I don't know. But what you're describing, like that line between entertainment and destruction, I think this movie captures that really well. Auditorially, when you hear the people above in the aliens and it sounds like you can't tell if they're screaming, like they're on a roller coaster, like they're having the best time of their life or if it's actual hell and death.

[Molly Reynolds]

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[Paul Scheer]

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[Amy Nicholson]

I don't know what I think about the alien design, to be honest. Like, I kind of go back and forth on it because to me I think it just looks like a big cowboy hat. Maybe that's probably just how I see it. I'm like real cowboys, fake cowboys, real cowboy outfits. Fake cowboy outfits. Look, it's a real cowboy. It's probably because also they frame it sometimes where it's like hovering behind Daniel Kaluuya's head and it looks like a hat. I don't know. Maybe it's just Me.

[Molly Reynolds]

I mean, so Jean jacket, right? That's what we can call the alien. Jean jacket to a certain degree. Like, every chapter in this movie is a different animal's name, right? And jean jacket is what they call this. This alien. And you know what I. What I like about it is you were describing earlier the idea of the potato or the almond, right. This is not a spaceship. And I think in the beginning of the movie, we think it's a spaceship. And that's kind of part of the fun of it, right? It's a creature.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

That is really cool.

[Molly Reynolds]

It is a monster. And I like that idea that we can't even see what its true form is. And we have these preconceived notions, the same way we'd have a preconceived notion about a chimpanzee. Put him in a costume, give him some symbols, let him run around the set, oh, my gosh, isn't that cute? Just because he's wearing overalls means he's domesticated, right? But this thing expands and sucks and does all this other, you know, expands and sucks people up and is incredibly violent. But we just are looking at it from a preconceived notion of, oh, it's fine. It's probably fine. I mean, this whole movie is based on the fact that they want to get their Oprah picture. I mean, our main characters are not above. Above the spectacle, Right? They're trying to sell the spectacle. They want to get their virality. And that's.

[Amy Nicholson]

And so does Jordan Pugh.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

I'm trying to make the spectacle come see my spectacle.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right? And, you know, I think that this is not a movie saying spectacle is bad. I think this is a movie saying you have to determine what you say. Nope to. And we're in a culture in a society where no one's going to say that that's wrong. Everything is out there. So you have to start to be the arbiter of, like, nope, I'm out. And. And that's what I think is probably more interesting, because there should be movies that are spectacles, but there shouldn't be a movie where, you know, you're watching someone get killed and that should be released in the theater, you know, snuff film or something like that, you know, But I like the idea that it is a jellyfish. I know you say it looks like a cowboy, but I think it looks like a jellyfish that looks like, you know, and that's. And that is a predator. But it's also beautiful, like, when you see Jellyfish in an aquarium. Like, it's stunning. You want to touch it, you want to get in there, you know? But I love that it is an otherworldly version of something that you can't keep your eyes off of. It is gorgeous to look at.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, and here's where I think it gets kind of built into what I think is Jordan Peele's even larger point beyond everything we've even talked about so far, which is, you know, the religion. Remember how the character from Fries shows up and he's like, don't you watch ancient aliens on tv? Which is a real show? Sounds like this.

[Molly Reynolds]

But just what sparked this sudden turnaround in religious thought? Could the church have been influenced by recent scientific discoveries?

[Paul Scheer]

You can make the argument that we are, in fact, just replacing angels of 2000 years ago with high tech angels now, and that we have this inner need to feel we're not alone in the universe, that we're scientific people, and we would be embarrassed to call them angels because we've stopped believing in that kind of superstitious stuff, but we still believe in aliens from other planets.

[Amy Nicholson]

The idea that he is drawing a line there, using this show, that the things we see flying up in the sky, flying saucers, the jellyfish, they could all be this thing that you even have traced all the way back to the Bible. You know, this idea of a spinning wheel in the sky, which is how they used to describe angels. These spinning wheels spinning high up. It could look like that. And Jordan Peele is even opening this movie with a clip from the Old Testament, you know, Nahum 3, 6, I will cast abominable filth O you, make you vile, make you a spectacle. I think he's basically saying that what we see up in the sky has been here with us since the Bible, that it is an angel. Like this is maybe how we even should be picturing religion itself, which I find really interesting. Just kind of even in conversation with Disclosure Day, which is where there's a nun or a former nun played by Eve Hewson, who was like, we can't know that there's aliens. It'll help us stop believing in God. How will we have any faith in God if we believe in aliens? At the same time, Jordan Peele's almost like, it's all the same. Whatever we see up in the sky is the same thing. Which is why I think he even named that Fry's employee angel to make sure we're thinking about it.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah, well, I mean, look, I think that there's a lot of fan theories out there that says like, this is an angel. This is like a. Like a harbinger of the end of time, right? Like it's like it is sucking up everyone who can't look away. It's like Medusa. Like if you look at her snakes spectacle, you will be frozen forever. Right? There's an element of that. But I also think what is interesting is that what is sucking us up is something that kind of looks like a camera too, right? It's like when you get to that, I wanna call it a mouth or whatever that, you know, that square that kind of comes out and opens up

[Amy Nicholson]

and the fabric and the.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah, yeah. It kind of feels like the camera is pulling you in the same way that like, you know, the. What was. What did they call it in? Get out. Like when you go into the other world.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, the Sunken Place.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah, the Sunken Place. The Sunken Place is pulling you down and this is pulling you in, right? Like these are these ideas that are taking you out of yourself. Up or down, you're gonna be a less of a version of yourself. You're gonna be kind of manipulated by something. And obviously the alien is eating you and spitting you out.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, and the squareness of it kind of bothers me too, because it feels so anti. Everything I know about biology, like, what is square in nature? And I was reading an interview with the alien designer and he's like, well, that was sort of Jordan's idea. Like if you have a square in a living creature, it makes it look extra alien. Because that definitely says, I am not from around here.

[Molly Reynolds]

Here's what I'll say. Any alien that doesn't have a vagina mouth to me, I'm into. Because it's like, I feel like we've gotten so used to a certain design of creature and everything. I just applaud that this movie went in a different direction. The way that like Spielberg laid down the fabric of what we saw aliens as in Close Encounters. This is trying to do something that just, I think was engaging just from the fact that it was something I wasn't expecting to see and I was pulled in by it because I was like, ooh, that's interesting. What is? That you are caught there, you know, that is true.

[Amy Nicholson]

I think I am really done with little green men. I'm kind of over that. Especially after disclosure day. Nah, I don't want to see any more of those bug eyed dudes either.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, it humanizes them, right? Like we are. Like, it makes it safe in a way. Not that like, makes us, like, walk in. Like Richard Dreyfus walks in at the end. Right. Daniel Kaluwood would not walk in. And I love the way this movie is done in the sense that, you know, like, predator prey. I should say more. You know, any great big bad can be defeated. And sometimes by simplest means, it happens that in this movie, they kind of defeat, you know, this creature jean jacket the same way they defeat Jaws. You know, you put. You put something in there that blows them up from the inside. It's the same idea. Right. It's like you put container, canister of. Was it oxygen and Jaws, Right. Or is it just.

[Amy Nicholson]

I think it was oxygen. Yeah. For the scuba dive.

[Kiki Palmer]

Yeah.

[Molly Reynolds]

Blow it up. And this is what's going on here. And I think that. I love that, you know, you don't understand why these things are falling out of the sky. But I. But I also think it's so interesting that the alien can't process all of this human stuff, too. Like, there's certain things that the alien can't, you know, like, he can't just suck up everything. He or she can't suck up everything.

[Amy Nicholson]

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it definitely doesn't seem like it can dissolve metal.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

And gosh, now you're making me think again of just about the opening scene where you have, you know, Keith David out on the horse. Keith David, who could, like, run both sides of this business, whereas, like, his kids can only run half each. I just love how that first shot looks and feels. Just seeing him out on the horse, having that talk about what the business needs. And then, you know, almost the last thing he says before all the metal starts flying from the sky, I think is so fantastic. I want to listen to it here really closely.

[Molly Reynolds]

Keep our heads up out the clouds on this one. I know.

[Amy Nicholson]

Okay. I love that line because right here at the beginning of the film, he's basically saying to even dream of a life in the entertainment business is like keeping your head in the clouds. Right, Right. That's just where all the threat is even coming from. You really, in this movie, want to keep your head out of the clouds, because if it's in the clouds, you're getting eaten. But we want movies to exist. We want this family to exist in the movie business. We want Jordan Peele to keep making more movies.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah. And there's something about this movie that I think when you talk about Jordan Peele's career, this is probably the least talked about film. But I also think this is the movie that has the most dense Subject matter in it. Right. It's a little harder to wrap your head around. But it's a movie that I think pays off on rewatches and opens a much larger conversation, you know?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. It feels like a guy who's like, I've made multiple movies now. I know what this business is like, and somebody has to say how it is.

[Molly Reynolds]

And especially coming from someone like Jordan, who breaks out onto the scene with this movie, and immediately everyone wants to figure out, how can we be in the Jordan Peele business? And, you know, people who may not even get it just want to be there because they know other people get it. And I remember I took a meeting in Hollywood one time, was like, one of the first meetings I ever took. It was at Will Smith's company, and I had a show, a live show that was going on, and the guy brought us in, and he's like, I didn't see the show, but, you know, this is the meeting I said I would never take, but we want to work with you. And it's like, well, you didn't see the thing. You just knew other people were talking about the thing. And I can only imagine that he feels like that, too. Like, just put him in here. Let's suck out whatever we can get from him. We'll put your name on this TV show. We'll put your name over here. Let's have you do this. Let's have you do that. That to me, coming off the sketch show and coming off this movie that revolutionizes or at least shakes up Hollywood is this moment where you probably are, like, you feel like an animal. You feel like, just come over here, do this other thing. And I think this is, in many respects, in the fact that he hasn't worked in three years, him saying, nope, I'll do what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right? Because otherwise, this business sucks you up and spits you out.

[Molly Reynolds]

And it's the reason why when you talk to or not talk to. But when you see, like, Christopher Nolan, he's like, I don't use email. I don't. I have an old phone. It's like, right? There are. There are certain things, like, I refuse to be a part of this thing. I refuse to engage with this because I think it is pretty and I think it is nice, and I think it is attractive. And I think at the same time, it leaves you empty. Because we are seeing Jupe. He is left empty. And there's a part of him who he's Making himself bait. I know that he's trying to create another wave of something for himself, but inadvertently he's making himself bait again. Like he doesn't just realize, I'm lucky, he runs towards the danger.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. He is trying to even like elevate his kids as the next generation of kid talent. You know, he brings them, his three little boys out and he's like, remember their names. Remember their names. And they're instantly eaten.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, it's so brutal. I'm trying to like raise the next generation of child talent. And they are destroyed. You could almost say that he is. And now I feel like I'm stretching a little bit. Far from an analogy, but I'm just thinking about that like, suck you up and spit you out thing. He's like the nickel that gets spit out at the beginning, which is not an object that is necessarily harmful on its own. But when it's being propelled, rejected, and hits a certain velocity, it can become destructive.

[Molly Reynolds]

And by the way, that coin that spit out is also a coin that helps save the day. Right. So the discorded. So the discarded piece also becomes a crucial piece in capturing the image that they need. Right. But what I love about this movie is it's not like aliens are so much smarter than us. This is a creature that has rules, but also isn't above being caught up in its own spectacle. When they see that giant boy with a blinking eye, right? Like, you know, the, the. I guess it's jupe. You know, the blow up of jupe, which is its ultimate demise. Like jean jacket falls the spectacle as well. We all do. And I think that, that maybe is why the movie is interesting. It's a constant battle of like wrestling. Like, what's safe, what's not safe. You know, they already like, jean jacket already ate the, the little flags on the line, you know, whatever that is, you know, like, and spit it out. Knew it was bad, but went back again. Right. So everybody here is on the same page. Everyone can be sucked in. And you have to kind of question, wait, why is this here? Is this too easy? You know, they, they trick it pretty easily and pretty dumbly. Not like, not them being dumb, but like, it's, you know, it's a very basic attack. It kind of reminds me of like, what's that city in World War II where they just made inflatable tanks and stuff like that?

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, I love this stuff. The Ghost army stuff.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah, the Ghost army. Where like, so it was tricking, you know, it was tricking Germany. Like that they thought that there was a whole army there, but it was really just all inflatable tanks and a whole village. So they're like, oh, we can't attack here.

[Amy Nicholson]

We both fell in love with this because of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. I know that. Right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because they have a display on it. It was like they had blow up tanks and it distracted everyone. And they were over what I thought that was. That's one of my favorite World War II stories that I want to know more about. Well, I don't know if you know this about me. I bought a ghost army shirt at the museum gift shop. I'm like, really?

[Molly Reynolds]

Oh, I wish I would have seen that. I was there. I would have done that. Oh, my gosh. You know, and I guess at the end of the day, they have this ownership of this picture. They captured this. Now will they sell it and then continue the cycle? Right. You know, people died here, and yeah, they saved this town, but will they? You know, I think there's a part of this movie that's like, they got the shot. They needed the shot, they got the shot. But how is that any different? You know, like, obviously TMZ is trying to steal somebody else's thing, you know, oh, we'll get the shot. We'll get credit for it. Even though you've done the hard work for it. But, you know, this movie isn't saying at the end that they're bad. It's like, oh, we feel good. They got the shot. But the shot is only important if you get your Oprah moment. And if you get your Oprah moment, then you're continuing the story. Maybe there's a part of this that's like, this is the world that we live in. We're just always going to be caught in the cycle and maybe just being aware of it or having certain rules, because animals have rules, right? Let's not feed it something bad. Let's not don't look it at the eye. Don't spook it. Like, what are our rules? What are our animal rules? And can we abide by those? And if we can, maybe that's how we can stay safer. Because these spectacle will kill us.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know what? I think that is almost my favorite kind of movie message is not we found the solution. It's we just gotta live in this weird equilibrium, Right? Yeah.

[Molly Reynolds]

Nothing ends, nothing gets. The day doesn't get saved. They don't rip up the picture at the end.

[Amy Nicholson]

It's just like, oh, I don't want this anymore. Although she hasn't picked it up in her hand yet. And I'm like, go get that, though. Go get that, Kiki. Don't forget it. Don't forget it.

[Molly Reynolds]

But I do think this is gonna be a film that, when you look back, I know for a long time we didn't wanna do get out on the show because we're like, well, let's see more of the work. And I think we finally did, because it's like. Well, I think it's worth talking about. But I'm really curious where this will sit in all of his films.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I feel like it's gonna elevate. I really feel like it's. It finally. It kind of feels like his most complete movie to me.

[Molly Reynolds]

I think it's gonna elevate it. I exactly agree. And I think that if I was to give it a note and I've just sat here for the last hour singing its praises, I think it would be a similar note that I give to Close Encounters, which is like, maybe the next film is not gonna be 1942 is gonna be the ET where you kind of blend it all. I mean, he's already done it, I think, to me, Get Out. It was a popcorn movie that had big, big ideas. This one, I think, is a little bit more cumbersome. And maybe it doesn't interact in a way where people feel like they had their Jaws moment. That would be the only thing I could kind of throw at it. It's like. But, man, I watched that ending today, and I was like, this is great. The motorcycle chase, the way that it's all kind of planned out, the amazing shot on the horse. Like, I don't know what didn't necessarily connect or why people don't talk about it, because I think he's doing everything. But it feels like it just may be, like, one degree off from, like. From the, like, perfection of it being a monster movie and having all these themes in it. Maybe these themes are just harder to digest too.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I think it's three themes. And it's hard because it's like you can't even just escape the larger frame of Hollywood itself is dying. It's not like Hollywood is at its peak and we're doing really great. And, oh, Hollywood. If you just wouldn't keep, like, putting animals in movies, everything would be fine. I don't know. It feels precarious. It feels like you have to. You cannot make this movie without the recognition of, is this way of life even gonna exist for this family? No. Matter what. There's an overall giant cloud over the movie that I find really compelling.

[Molly Reynolds]

And by the way, they always say there's that famous phrase, patriarchy is the air in which we breathe, and spectacle is the air in which we breathe. It's right in the sky. It's right above us at all times. It's right in front of our faces, and we are not acknowledging it. Right. And again, I don't think this is a movie about spectacle. I don't think this is a movie about spectacle is bad. But you have to understand, like, what you're ingesting. And that can be in every single avenue, can be within a political, you know, identification. It could be within pornography. It could be within, you know, entertainment. It could be within anything. Right. Like, what are we accepting and what are we taking for normal? And I know I'm always one to talk about, like, the social media influence, but it is that thing of, are we missing connection? And I think a lot of youth are getting away from the digital, going back to the analog, getting rid of phones and going back to, like, dumb phones. Going to movies, going out to see live events, trying to connect in a real way. Because at a certain point, I think we're like, well, why do I need to do anything? I don't need to shop anymore because I have Amazon and everything else. And I don't need to go here because I got this and that. And I don't need to see my friends because I have text like, no, let's go to the bar. Let's go see the game. One of the coolest things I got to do was watch a lot of these NBA Finals games in crowded rooms, and it was the most fun. Instead of being at home texting, like, 12 of my friends at the same time.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, it really feels like we're hopefully headed in that direction. I almost wonder if us older generations are going to be slower to realize we have to put the phone down. Kind of like how we want our parents to get off Facebook.

[Molly Reynolds]

My. The older people in my life are on their phones more than I am. I see it. It's hilarious. I'm like, what are you checking? I know you're not getting that many emails, but. But they're caught into a whole other thing.

[Kiki Palmer]

The.

[Molly Reynolds]

The older people in my life and their phones. I am. It's like, they're kids. I'm like, put it down. Put it down.

[Amy Nicholson]

I would really love it if we could just put our phones down. I mean, we were trying to do things like, yeah, we've been doing more watch parties with our friends for stuff too. It feels great, like hanging out, yelling, screaming together, having fun.

[Molly Reynolds]

I went out to dinner when I was in Atlanta a couple weeks ago and I had dinner by myself and I went to this restaurant that I really wanted to go to. It's a really kind of famous sushi restaurant in Atlanta where they get the best fish. No, but this place was unbelievable. And it's an eight person seating and I was, you know, solo. I sit, I sat next to somebody who's celebrating their 26th birthday. A Japanese couple on my left, a couple that just got married, and then another couple who just had been saving up for this like night out. And at first we were really quiet and I never do this, but I felt rude to have my phone out so I couldn't get in my phone. I felt weird to have reading a book. And I just said in the middle of this two and a half hour, 20 course meal, I was like, is it normally this quiet in here? To the chef, and he was like, oh, well, it depends on people. And that gave this moment for the eight of us to have this group conversation. And for the next two hours it was the most amazing thing. I would never have done that anywhere else. But it was so silent and it's so respectful and everyone was in their little corners. But we're sitting at this table, we're all arm to arm to arm and we weren't even engaging. And it was one. I just really had one of the best experiences just because it was like, oh, right, this is always available to us. You can have a conversation. I don't have any of those people's numbers. I'm never gonna talk to those people again. It was just a great time to meet some people and that was it. And you know, and not be on my phone and not have, you know, not be in my own little world. And I think that that's. I don't know, for that to even feel novel is interesting, you know, And I'm like, oh my God. Yeah, I guess we've gone, I've gone far away from that.

[Amy Nicholson]

But I love that. I think that should be the goal of the next year and the year after that and the year after that. Even for myself, like when I'm in line, stop nervously going inside my phone.

[Molly Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

So I can have something to do but be like, hello. I mean, I am an annoying person. Like I'm the person who loves to talk to strangers. And I, I don't understand why people take waymos Cause they don't want to talk to drivers. I love talking to drivers. I have so much fun talking to just random people and, like, learning about their life. But I'm the annoying girl from Texas, so I get it. But yeah. And now I feel like we've really gotten off the point of. Nope. A lot. But in a way that I'm happy with. Like, movies at least bring us together to enjoy a movie together. I remember feel like being in the theater for. Nope. And being enchanted to be surrounded by so many people in a movie theater again.

[Molly Reynolds]

Right. And that's why I'm excited to see Jackass in the theater. Cause that's still one of my favorite experiences in the theater. Like, everyone goes, oh.

[Amy Nicholson]

Ah.

[Molly Reynolds]

Like, that's the only way to see it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Molly Reynolds]

Well, this was really great. I would never have expected this movie to resonate with me in the way that it did, because like I said, I enjoyed it, but I didn't really get a chance to think about it more than my post ride home from the theater. And I hope that other people get a chance to kind of dig a little bit deeper into this movie and see what they find.

[Amy Nicholson]

Can we leave with just like one random Kiki moment out of the gazillions that I love? Yeah, sure. All right, here's one.

[Kiki Palmer]

Now that I'm thinking about it. Fuck Cyber Dominion. This shit right here is a moment. Our moment. You set it up, Lisa, the right way, man. I'm talking rich and famous for life. How you doing? You look pretty. She's like. She got a big house.

[Amy Nicholson]

Okay, well, you know what? This movie actually makes me want to do next. Roll with me on this.

[Molly Reynolds]

Okay.

[Amy Nicholson]

We're talking about. Oh, cute little thing. Oh, I love it. Can we do Gremlins? We've never done Gremlins.

[Molly Reynolds]

Why not? Let's keep on. Let's keep on engaging with. Should we mess with things that we don't know? I like it. Or. The rules have been set, but we are not following them. I think that this is a great way to kind of continue this conversation. All right, so Gremlins is next. You can get that wherever you stream your films. And I believe that this is a movie that was released in the summer, that is a Christmas film. And I think more people need to embrace this as a Christmas film. But I'm happy to celebrate it the way it was intended to come out in the middle of the summer.

[Amy Nicholson]

It's true. I think I've always kind of low key earmarked this for a Christmas episode. But you know what? Christmas in July, that happens.

[Molly Reynolds]

That's the thing. I love it. All right, so definitely watch Gremlins and continue the conversation with us on Substack as we will dive deeper into. Nope. As well as check out our brand new merch. We have an Odyssey shirt, we have a Terry Gilliam shirt, we have a Letterbox shirt. It's all [e-mail] Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson. Sound engineered by Corey Barton, music by Devin Bryant, episode art by Kim Troxell, show art by Lee Jamison and social media production by Zoe Applebaum. This is a Realm production. See you next week. Bye for now.

[Paul Scheer]

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