Sean Fennessey

Well, ding dong, the witch is dead. RIP Boston, Bill. I haven't said it to you one time in days. I haven't given you the floor. I haven't said a damn thing, and I'm happy to... Well, one, thank you for having me. Thank you for having Ariel. Thank you for giving us this platform. You've given me a lot of platforms over the years, and I'm grateful to you.

But honestly, we just kicked Boston's ass, man. That was amazing. That was genuinely beautiful. Like, I... I never in my wildest dreams thought they were going to win that series. Ariel, I think you're a much more positive fan than I am. I'm a cynic to the core. I've been burned by this team dozens and dozens of times. And... this series was magical. And this week is extraordinary.

And I don't want to hear a damn word about guys over-celebrating a second-round victory because we haven't been there in a quarter century. And that was an incredibly meaningful moment for the franchise, for the fan base, and for a team that had lacked a signature moment all season. And this series was clearly, to this point, their signature moment. So I'm just elated.

I'm thrilled, and I'm super excited about this year's The Pacers.

I want to play. We're not done. I think this is a team that has a really good chance to move on. And frankly, we have revenge come due after last series with the Pacers last year. So I wanted Halliburton the whole time. I'm glad it worked out. I'm glad the Cavs, once again, were a paper tiger. That's three years in a row they've been a paper tiger.

And I think this team, I don't know if they're a team of destiny. I have heard that said a few times. I think the guys on group chat called them a team of destiny the other day. But there is something different. I never would have guessed that a team that is highlighted by Carl Anthony Towns, a player I never understood or respected all the way up until last October.

But there is some sort of juju going on with them right now that is just thrilling. And the only time I'll probably disagree with Ariel this entire call is that I want the game to start tonight. I wish they were playing right now. I'm ready.

if they get good deuce and they get good Mitch, they're incredibly formidable team. They, that legitimately feels like a championship team to me. If it's only six guys, I get really tight.

And if one of those guys who's missing from that seven is cat, like he wasn't game five, then I'm really nervous that that was the best and the worst of this team that you saw in five and six when all cylinders were firing in six was the opposite of five. So it's not, this is not, you know, this is not the 93 Bulls. Like, that's not really what we're looking at here with these teams.

It's just, there feels like an opportunistic hole for them to slide into. And like Ariel said, they have JB. Like, in my lifetime, never been an athlete who in the final minutes of a game, I trusted more in my life. Wow. Not even close. I mean, literally not close in my 43 years of watching sports. I mean, who's on the list? I mean, you're a Bills fan, Ariel.

I'm a Jets fan, so obviously I don't have anybody to choose from there.

Wow. I'm sorry.

That's when they're at their most comfortable. You know it now. I know.

But game six would have been really tough for you guys. Even if Tatum was healthy, I think.

Did you say Brunson Fowler? Brunson Fowler, some people say. That's his role in this series, I think. Okay.

Also a former Sixer, which means I double despise him. However, if T.J. McConnell were a Nick, he would be an icon. I just want to put that out there.

the arena they have they have great fans the one thing did you notice Rick Carlisle in his pre-series comments was trying to give a lot of credit to Precious Achua I think to kind of Jedi mind trick Tom Thibodeau into playing Precious I was like I love Precious Precious plays so hard but I was like why are we talking about Precious Achua you really wanted him out there and Obi Toppin old Nick coming back for you know he'll have one quarter or one game where he's just awesome and be like ah the Obi Toppin game um

You know, I'm in a passionate one-sided affair with Anne Hathaway and I love her to pieces. And she's, you know, she's a big Knick fan. But there's a little bit of confusion as to whether Philly or New York is the city, sports city of choice for her. You know, she was at that Eagles Super Bowl. Little Bigamisty. You know, her family's from Philly, but she roots for the Knicks.

But then there's a clip of her wearing Giants gear on Jimmy Fallon from eight years ago. Little bit of confusion around Anne. You know, I think she's a wonderful actress, but she's not really out here with, like, Tracy Morgan, Rock, you know, Stiller. The Sopranos guys. Yeah, Bobby Bach a lot. Like, those are really the icons. Yeah, Edie Falco. Chloe Sevigny.

I know where I was when that series was happening was I was in a bachelor party in Montreal off my tree and watching that game in tears. I was so fucking mad. And all the verticality. I remember that era very well. Where's Roy Hibbert now? Nowhere to be seen. Where's that style of basketball? Dead. What are we playing now?

Mitchell Robinson ball where we defend all five positions elegantly with grace and power until we break our ankle.

I'm not doing anything.

All right.

This is dicey with us, though.

Oh, I mean, it would have been Gandolfini. I mean, what an extraordinary Gandolfini part that would have been. You know, he's got the same bearing, burly guy, the deep voice, the thinning hair, you know, man on a mission.

I mean, yeah, you could put a prosthetic. You know, GMI would be a good Jeff Van Gundy, actually, now that I think about it. Okay, yeah.

I'll be 43 in July, yeah. Yeah.

What day in July? I'm turning 43 in July too.

I, speaking of John Jastrzemski, John and I were talking about this last week. I feel like the franchises are in very good hands. That's something that has been, has defined my fandom is feeling like the franchises, you know, you mentioned Lowell Knicks, Lowell Mets is an ongoing and Lowell Jets are ongoing bits for all the teams I care about.

They're often considered the laughingstocks of their respective leagues. And somehow, you remember this, Bill. When the Knicks missed out on Kyrie and KD and they signed Randall, I was apoplectic. I was so upset, so furious. I felt like it was the culmination of 20 years of failure for the franchise since that 2000 run that they made that Ariel was referring to earlier.

And I just could not take it. I was so sick of Dolan. I didn't understand. I thought the Tibbs hire was a retread. And I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I was wrong about everything. I was wrong about every move that they made in the aftermath.

I was, I actually liked the Brunson signing and did not have the, like, I don't know about this contract attitude about it because I had just watched him mow down the jazz in that previous series and the Western conference. So I liked that.

And I liked that his dad was basically like, we're bringing this kid here in two years and they had a plan, but almost everything else that they did, I didn't really get it. I didn't see it. I didn't understand it. I'm just a fan. Like I'm not an expert, but, And to be proven wrong specifically in this way is the greatest feeling in the world.

Because even the Bridges trade two months ago, maybe even two weeks ago, people were saying, this is a terrible trade. And then he did things in that Boston series that completely flipped the argument. Completely. Fuck them picks is a motto in New York now. We don't care about that. We are just delighted to have beaten the Celtics and to be going on to face the Pacers.

I did see a screening after.

I did used to live that life of going to Knicks games. I'm trying to figure out. I don't know if I can go back now that since I haven't gone back already. Now I'm like I'm feeling a little bit superstitious. I don't I don't know.

Yeah. Friday, I was in Oregon at a golf resort about as far from the New York Knicks celebration universe as you could possibly be. And I'm the lone guy sitting in a bar watching the game near tears, just gobsmacked, gobsmacked by what I was watching. Same thing after game two.

I'm sitting in my house in Los Angeles alone, hoping my child does not bother me, stunned by what was happening in game two. That was the most shocked I've been at a sporting event. in 10 years. So there's a part of me that thinks I just need to sit on my freaking couch and watch this series and not go anywhere. But if they advance though, I don't know. I don't know how you'll keep me away.

Like, I don't know how I could not go to the NBA finals. It's hard for me to dream of that, but that would be genuinely exciting.

Like there's a more complicated thing there.

To me, it was a mystery, and now it's just a frustration that it has taken this long for two reasons. One, I know you both know this, never seen anybody better on the mic short of Ric Flair in pro wrestling. I mean, he was just in the prime of the Attitude Era, and even in the second half... moving into the scene era, he was unbelievable at just selling anything.

And a huge part of being a movie star is selling the absurd, is selling the ridiculous setup. So on that face, he should have been incredible. And then secondarily, I always tell this story. I went to the premiere of Hobbs and Shaw, whatever that was, seven, eight years ago. And it was at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. And someone's soda was

rolled down the aisle and smashed into a chair, which then triggered a fuse explosion and the lights turned off in the theater. So there was a delay before the film started. And to stem the tide and keep the people in their seats, Dwayne came out and just riffed for 25 minutes. Just talked, made tons of jokes at Jason Statham's expense.

Just sold, sold, sold for 25 minutes in front of 2,000 people waiting for this movie to start. And he was magnetic. And then I see the movies that he makes. And I'm like, who told him to do this? Why is he in Jungle Cruise? Why did Black Adam happen? I don't understand. Because you see him communicate and you can tell just what a vibrant, fascinating, funny, self-aware person he is.

And he just hasn't picked good collaborators. And the end note on this conversation is the person who directed The Smashing Machine is Benny Safdie, a Knicks fan and New Yorker who understands the peculiarity of strange characters. And Mark Kerr is an interesting guy. And the Smashing Machine documentary is not a cookie cutter portrait of a rise to greatness. It's much more complex than that.

So I think if you care about sports movies, if you care about The Rock, if you're interested in combat sports, it feels like it's tailor made for an incredible moment for him and for movies. We'll see. I care about all three of those things.

Yeah, it's coming out in the first week of April, or excuse me, the first week of October, which is historically a kind of a circling the square for box office and awards consideration. That's like the same weekend that a movie like The Star is Born was released.

So I think they're looking for a kind of like commercial critically acclaimed movie, which is, as we know, like one of the hardest things to do in movies right now. And we'll see.

You're still picking the Pacers? Wait, I was going to say, you're picking against us or what? I hear you and Russillo and you guys just spend all this time hyping the Pacers and kind of like not negging the Knicks, but just not addressing the Knicks.

just shook him off and got the shot he wanted like that was great nobody does that to drew holiday so can i tell you something i watched the four minute cut down recap of game four like 11 times in a row that night just to watch him absolutely cook white he cooked white he did all day long that was astonishing to watch whether he can do that to aaron fucking neesmith we're about to find out yeah yeah

Thank you, Bill. Thank you.

Tatum and Brown for KD.

I hope Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart pod forever. I'm really enjoying that show. It's them just shitting on each other for 45 minutes. You're the biggest loser.

Hire an assassin to kill John Rose. I'm not sure. I don't listen to a lot of those shows, if I'm being honest, but I do respect that they are currently working very hard to eliminate shows like this. We have been observing your strategy of hot takery, and we can do better.

Just like we can dunk better than you, we can also hot take better than you, and that's kind of what each new show that comes along needs to go to a higher level. So do you listen to that next podcast? Sometimes, yeah. You're like, these are my guys? I have an emotional relationship with these men who don't know who I am.

About Iran-Contra, you know, with that affair, well, at that time, we know Larry Bird was going for 26, 9, and 7. Were you sad to see Aaron Rodgers go? Sad to see Aaron Rodgers go? Yeah. No. No, I honestly hope he goes to hell.

My favorite thing ever, no one here cares about the new Jets regime, so I'm sorry, but the story that they were like, you can come back if you don't go on McAfee, and he was like, no dice, tells you everything you need to know about that guy.

I mean, Jack and the Lakers is the realest shit ever. Not Larry David and the Jets?

No, Larry David quit the Jets. Yeah, he quit the Jets. Once again, smartest guy of all time.

Yeah, you nailed it, brother. In August, we were texting about the... No, in September, we were texting about the Oscars. And I was like, I think it's a Nora because there's like nothing else going on. And you're like, no chance.

What did you think of that?

Did you like those scenes?

It was Crash, yeah. Well, Brokeback Mountain won those three awards in 2005. Oh, yeah. Brokeback Mountain won the three and didn't get the last one. And then Crash won on Oscar night, which is the first time I gouged my eyes out and then had a reconstructive surgery.

Three and a half hours is a long time. What was the name of the Netflix true crime doc you were telling us about backstage?

Gabby Petito?

Was it roughly three and a half hours?

Yeah, a mood to enjoy something great. My wife liked it. I forgot to tell you. Did she? Yeah.

I'm out. I'm out. That's going to be in The Brutalist 2.

No.

He has not won a single precursor. So if he wins, it's going to be really surprising.

I think part of his campaign for this whole movie where he's been doing non-traditional media like Nardwar and doing photo ops with Carl Anthony Towns, which I fully support, has been so that he maintains his cool without having to seem like he's glad-handing every Academy member. I like it. Adrian Brody's going to win, though. Who's winning Best Actress?

Two weeks ago, I would have said Demi Moore, but now it feels like Mikey Madison. She won at BAFTA over the weekend. She has to win. I don't know. It feels like we'll find out on Sunday at the SAG Awards. That's when we'll figure it out. If Demi Moore didn't win for about last night, she's never winning.

I mean Batman forever sucked. That was tough. You know, we came off to Burton movies. Yeah, like I'm mixing it up. Schumacher. Yeah, he's interesting. Lost boys. I like that guy. The client was big fan of that film. Batman Forever is terrible. That was tough. I mean, Godfather 3 is a famous one, but we've come all the way back around. International. Oh, my God.

It pains me to say this because I don't know that he's the most charismatic person in the world. But, you know, Jason Tatum is like really famous and successful. And I'm not kissing up to you.

I went to Waterloo Records. Shout out Waterloo. Yeah. And I spent $184 on Blu-rays.

Yeah, I think it's Boston. It is really painful. Shut up. It's really painful knowing, rooting for a great team and knowing that they're what I want them to be, but knowing that they're still just one inch below a couple of other teams. That's painful. You've been there before. You've never been there. Um...

We flew like four hours. Why does he get the first pick?

That's great.

Yeah.

Shoot. I didn't have Brendan Fraser's character from Bedazzled on my board.

That's a tough one. Um... Well, the first name I wrote down is Jesus Shuttlesworth from He Got Game. Which has the added benefit of being a great movie. And, you know, honestly, there are not a lot of great basketball movies, which you realize when you're going through this. A lot of great basketball characters. But Jesus was loosely modeled on a LeBron-esque figure.

Somebody who could come... Supposedly Stefan Marbury. Could save the game. Yeah. Memorably played by Ray Allen in the movie. And he had it all. He had incredible range, handle, good defender, good team guy. His teammates loved him. He had a lot of fun at Big State on his trip there. So he seems like an obvious centerpiece of my team. Yeah, good pick. So, Jesus.

Panic trading Chet?

So it's because he's white? Yeah, that's why. Billy Hoyle, great character, very inspiring to a young me, but also a complete fiction. The idea of that guy bawling out on the Venice courts, absolute nonsense. Sidney Dean would have broken his ankles a hundred times out of a hundred.

What about the Sanuki brothers, right?

Sean, what do you got? I'll just take Sidney Dean so nobody else can take him. We can close out. White men can't jump right here, unless you want to take some of the guys they were playing against. No, I have people nobody's picking. I just think Sidney Dean and Jesus in my backcourt. We've got a lot of speed, power. We're going to be really hard to defend at the rim. We've got range.

I'm feeling good about my backcourt so far. Also, I had my eye on Neil just to make you mad, but you jumped the line. I'm going to make the crowd mad.

Who do you have, Sean? I'll also be selecting a stretch five, another incredible athlete with a gift we've not seen before. I'll be taking Sandy Lyle from Along Came Polly as portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I just took Sandy Lyle, yeah. Yeah, so you have three. Yeah, we're doing this correctly. You go, and then Bill goes two, and then you go back. My turn.

Another white guy.

Billy Hoyle tried to quit his relationship. You're up, Sean. I'm going to take a more recent vintage player and the most recent great basketball movie, Hustle, starring Adam Sandler. Oh, I like this. And I'll take Bo Cruz as portrayed by Wancho Hernan Gomez. Yes. He's on the board. Great pick. Wancho, need a big man. Obviously, a bit of an unknown coming overseas.

Really needed a strong voice, an advocate for his game. And frankly, we need his size on our squad. Need size, unselfish.

I've got an incredibly flexible roster, but I need an owner.

Somebody who I can really trust. Somebody who's got big ideas, who knows how to continue building out a front office. No Nicos in this business. So I'm going Joe Cabot from Reservoir Dogs as my owner.

You know, we know how he knows how to put a job together. We know he's just a mean bastard. Is his owner a GM?

He's owner. Okay. And he also loves his netball baby son, gave him a job in the front office. Which is very owner behavior. And I'm just really excited about what we're going to do together. And also he loves colors, so he's going to be great with uniforms.

Under two minutes. I knew he'd come up. I was in San Francisco this past weekend and I had tickets to the event and did not go to any of the events, which is not a good sign, obviously. So... Okay, I'll pitch you my idea. Let's hear it. I think they should scrap the game. I think they should scrap the dunk contest. I think they should scrap the three-point shooting contest.

Thank you.

Trying to balance out all that white.

Yeah, I'm going to take... I'm going to slide Shuttlesworth to the three. Okay. And I'm going to take Uncle Drew in the cinematic masterpiece Uncle Drew starring Kyrie Irving, which is a film I've not seen. But I have seen that commercial and that old man can ball out. So he'll be bringing it up for us.

Yeah.

They should scrap the futures game. What about the skills competition? So I think that they should only do the skills competition, but for two full days. I'm not kidding. And make it like an insane double dare obstacle course. Oh, like American Gladiators? Yes. Okay. But... The winning team, and I was inspired by Wemby and CP3, should automatically get home court advantage throughout the playoffs.

Terrence Howard.

Tough one. Got Uncle Drew. Lock that down. Jesus Shuttlesworth. Sidney Dean. We're closing out the Blue Chips Triumvirate. I need a stretch four, so I'm going with Ricky Rowe, the real pride of Indiana, who is the horniest, greediest dickhead in the history of basketball movies, but who has an incredible stroke, as portrayed by Matt Nover, and I'm referring, of course, to his bed game. Yeah. Um...

When I think Ricky Rowe, I think CR. And so we're going to be playing seven seconds or less, Phoenix Sun style. That's what I'm thinking. I like it. CR?

Oh. And who's Shine's dad? I think it's supposed to be, the implication is it might be Doug, right? But it's going to be Ursula.

So there's like real stakes. So you'd have these guys like during practice, during the season, like really working on throwing the ball through that round circle or whatever and all the stuff they have to do there. It's just like the skills competition matters.

I like it. Sean? For my coach, I'll be taking Jack Cunningham from the way back because we know that Jack knows how to fight the good fight and inspire, and we need to find a way to beat 7'6 Brendan Fraser somehow, so I feel like he can really draw up some interesting plays for our seven seconds or less offense.

Yes. I like that. Yeah, you could be like the play-in team at number 10, but you got home court games. That would work for the Sixers.

Well, I see some potential issues, but I'm excited to see what Jack can pull together. All right, Shay, you got two.

Yeah, and I'm going double Affleck. I'm going Tom Redfly Davis from Triple Frontier. So Affleck will be reporting to Affleck in a never-before-seen doubling. in a basketball characters movie draft. Great idea. And Redfly, of course, fails miserably at the end of Triple Frontier. Killed. Nevertheless, I trust him to run this franchise effectively to a championship.

It's excellent.

No, I'm taking... He's kind of the banjo of that movie, yeah.

Okay, so I need one more player and two assistant coaches. Yes. Okay, I'll come back to the player because I have a good idea for that one. I'm not drafting Kazam, you dork.

One of my assistants, I need like a live wire. I need a real mouthy guy. You don't totally know what he's going to do. Wangro? I'm going with Danny Sharp as portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal in Ambulance. That's a deep pull. Ambulance, which might be the best movie of the decade. And featuring an incredible performance by Gyllenhaal. And you know, sometimes there's a guy who's behind the guy.

who you're like, that guy's going to get fired tonight because he keeps yelling at the best player. That's Danny Sharpe from my team.

Fantasy, what do you got? Well, I need another player, and it would not be a ringer-related movie draft without Tom Cruise. So I'm going with Brian Flanagan from Cocktail.

Obviously, he's not guarded in that film. He's taking wide open free throws, barely making them. Barely looks like he's ever held a basketball before they shot that sequence. And yet, he looks amazing. $10 a shot, right?

He's my sixth man, yeah.

I learned by watching you, Dad.

They would have called it Cocktails with an S on the end. Who should have played the hot young bartender, though, that he brings under his wing? That he groomed? CR!

I was going to say Dune Part 2, A Complete Unknown, but you got me.

And now he's a good teammate.

I'm taking Bodie from Point Break. Is there basketball in Boaty in Point Break?

It's Chris's first draft, everybody. Bodie rules. Does he live to tell the tale of his own success? Maybe not, but that's not really what we're thinking about when we've also got Danny Sharp from Ambulance coaching our team and Jack Cunningham, who obviously has a long history of substance abuse. So this is one last season for us.

We're just trying to go out in a blaze of glory, and I'm really excited about it.

I miss the idea of the power that he represented. I also love the idea of him like firing Nico Harrison. You know, like he would have just done that. This guy is out of the paint. And he would have done something like that. So I miss that.

Yeah, just as Billy Shakespeare imagined it. High school basketball player.

Of course, Brian Flanagan from Cocktail. Brian Flanagan. And Sandy Lyle.

From Along Came Polly. Not the strongest bench in the league, but... Weak bench.

Yeah, we don't... Second apron, Jesus Shuttlesworth's contract. It's an issue.

We're actually, I'm really excited to let you know, Bill, we've been working on an eight-part narrative podcast series called Podslut, The Rise of Chris Ryan. It's about all the pods he does over the course of one week. It's like a follow doc. How many ringer pods have you been on? Like over 20?

Yes, sir.

No, it's been going on for six months. I need it to end so I can go to the next thing. But it's okay.

Yeah. I think that they shouldn't talk. Which is not good for journalism, obviously. I think that everyone should be held accountable for their actions. I did have an idea for ownership groups, though, which is I think if you're going to buy a team, you should have to pass like an NBA literacy test.

Like when you become an American citizen, you have to learn about like who wrote the Declaration of Independence. You should have to know the history of the game. So Patrick Dumont? Well, I'm not going to name any names.

What do you think, Fantasy? I think this is the chance to finally get Oliver Stone back where he belongs. Oh, yeah. And I think that we have yet to see the way we can conspiracy theorize about what's happened here. But I think he should do it entirely in the register of the doors where it's just like... Nico Harrison is just tripping on LSD the whole time. He like micro doses every morning.

He's like, yeah, Lucas should go like just losing his mind. But if they do a Native American guy in the desert, it would be great if they do it like JFK.

I think he should make a sequel to the Disney original film Thunderstruck.

Yeah, Phoenix Rising. Just keep following that story a little bit. You know, he messed up. He should have signed with the New York Knicks, but he was a coward. So, screw him.

I agree.

I think they're going to win.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

100%.

I really do.

I do like There Will Be Blood.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're here to bond over love, right? And the possibilities. What are you up to? I do, uh, I do the watch podcast. Yeah.

I mean, this is a huge spoiler alert for a movie that not everybody has seen yet, so if you don't want a Nora spoiled for you. But that ends in an intriguing way in that very specific respect, where you don't know what happens to the characters next. But to your point, it's really rare.

Were you, did you, do you remember if you had a girlfriend, like a long-term girlfriend when you saw this? I had a girlfriend when I saw this.

It was my first real girlfriend I had. It was my senior year of high school. And I was like, I'm pretty into this. You weren't like, she's not the one for me. No, I mean, it wasn't that as much as it was just like... being in love seems so cool. And it just kind of like, it made me feel happy to have a girlfriend. I think if I had been alone, I would have been like, fuck.

Men's health pod.

Yeah.

It's definitely an extension of that dorm room kind of philosophy. Hanging out in the hallway at three in the morning. Like you said, I have five or six things that I think are pretty uniquely cool that I've got going on in my head, even if I'm wrong. Yeah. And I'm just going to keep trying them out on people until it clicks.

That's Linklater's stock and trade through his first five movies. You know, Slacker, that's all Slacker is. It's just people popping into cabs and walking into bars and being like, here's my theory of the world. You know, that's what Waking Life is. That's what Dazed is. You know, think about Rory Slater riffing on George Washington and, you know, growing weed. Like all that stuff.

It's all like he came up with like a thousand theories.

Yeah.

We have to read Dazed at some point, by the way. It's still one of the best movies ever. But he's like an accumulator of people's cool anecdotes.

And he knows how to reprocess them. Which Tarantino was good at, too. Same. But then the other thing, too, that I think makes it so special, I'm sure we'll talk about it, casting actors...

who could write with him to make these people real is like the whole it's the whole thing it's the whole movie it's the reason why it works it's the reason why that sentimentality stuff works like he's just the whole movie just feels like it's happening in front of you for real and there's so few movies that you can really say that about so it just goes a long way it has a real angle on love

Yeah, I mean, the thing that Selene says to Jesse in the alley when they're talking about whether they would have families or what their futures might be like, and she's like... If there's any kind of God, it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me, but just in the space in between. So this idea that it's like the effort to become connected to somebody is where this almost like holy magic exists.

Well, that's why she's the rock of the movie in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

Jesse's doing power rankings.

Yeah, he's really good at the gimmicks, and she's really good at the meat of the conversation.

She's like, it's not about the orbit. It's about the orbit of love. Forget the orbit route.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah. That's the thing. I would have screwed that one up. I think the reason that Jesse comes to life in the movie is because you can tell fairly early on In part because she agrees to get off the train with him. But even before that, that great feeling when you're like, this person's into me.

Yeah.

You know, not just romantically, but just any connection you make with a person where you're like, this person's actually interested in what I'm saying. That gives you like a jolt.

And they communicated so well because I think she's like, they're both reading. And she doesn't like immediately go back to her book. She like turns towards him to like be like, all right, let's keep talking. And he's like, I can't believe this is happening. This is crazy.

Since we're never going to see each other again, I don't think we should sleep together.

Good job, Rick. He's 34 when this movie is being made. This has got to be one of the most wise movies ever made by a person that young. Because it's not that what the characters are saying is wise, because it is very idealistic and very lovey-dovey at times and very like... you know, just ripped a bong hit and started talking about souls.

But knowing that that is how you are when you're 24 and being able to reflect on it 10 years later and like metastasize it is amazing to me. I mean, he's like in the 1% of capturing how young people really are in the world.

It's also really cool to go and look at this movie... And think about like 99 out of 100 other directors would have done so many things differently. There would have been more montages. Yeah. There would have been more cuts. There would have been... And needle drops. There would have been some sort of like...

I don't know, like there would be a crescendo to the film that was, this movie has like five crescendos. This movie peaks like five times, six times. Sometimes it's intellectually, sometimes it's sexually, sometimes it's, but like every other filmmaker, and then when you're watching it though, you're not overtly aware of him doing anything.

It's not like you're like, oh wow, the camera hasn't cut in a while. You're just like completely locked in with their conversation. It's almost invisible filmmaking.

Where was the gimp in this movie? You know? Right. I think the poet.

But I don't think he ever really shakes this off until Turning Day. You know what I mean? I agree. I think Training Day was, in some ways, brought him into adulthood.

It did, but I still think this is his most perfect creation as a character. It so beautifully capitalizes on the Ethan Hawke thing, which is that he looks like the coolest guy of all time, but once he starts talking, you're like, wow, this guy's kind of insecure and a little bit all over the place emotionally and really well-read, but maybe insecure about that too.

It's just like when you talk to Ethan Hawke in real life and you're like, wow, he's really cool, but he's more like me than he is a movie star, which is a unique quality that he brings to movies.

The other thing that's just worth noting is that I think you could put Hawke and Linklater up there with any of the great director-actor duos.

What, they do 10 movies together?

Nine, yeah.

But also, like, they're telling one big story. Like, Jesse's backstory is the story of boyhood. You know what I mean? Jesse's parents divorcing and that impacting how he looks at the world and everything his dad and his mom told him about love. That's just the movie Boyhood, like, a couple, you know, a decade or so later. So they're just basically working on, like, one American male project.

We can take it. I don't... I mean, he's not a careerist filmmaker, even though he does make mainstream movies.

He dips in there to be in the mainstream sometimes, but I don't ever think of him as like... trying to get butts in seats or whatever. But this one is particularly unusual because Dazed wasn't a big hit, but it was an instant cult classic. And it was made for a big studio. And this is something smaller. I really liked that quote.

I don't know if you saw this, that Martin Schaefer, who was the co-founder of Castle Rock. Again, there's like, how many Castle Rock movies have we done on this podcast? It's like the best production company. But he was like, this movie was almost the... rejection of or opposite of what romantic comedies were at the time. Like it didn't fall into any of those traps.

And so when I read the script, I was just like, I want to do this because it isn't like, you know, the Julia Roberts era, Meg Ryan, While You Were Sleeping, like all those movies that were so popular at that time. It was not doing those jokes.

All those movies, like, so high concept.

Yeah, so all the tropey stuff that was in them and the, like, I'm just a man standing before a woman and all that. Like, it didn't, it's not about that. It's about something much more down to earth and also up in the clouds.

Well, it's also just even wild to watch this compared to, like, Say Anything. Where, like, Say Anything has, like, the whole nursing home plot and all these other things going on in it.

Yeah, Joe, Joe, why did you lie? And there's a huge gesture with the boombox. This is devoid of all of that stuff. It's just the talking. It's just these two people growing closer.

Had you seen Killing Zoe? Or Killing Zoe? Because Julie Delpy is in that.

She'd been in a lot of really big art house films in Europe.

She's in a number of movies. But I love that story that Ethan Hawke tells about this movie, which is that when he was in Dead Poets, that Peter Weir encouraged him to write for his character. He was like, write backstory, write lines for your character. I want to hear what you think this character would say. And he was blown away by that experience.

And he was like, wow, I guess this is how every movie is. And then he went on and did like White Fang. And they were like, sir, please keep your lines to yourself. We don't need this. And so the reason he did this movie, even though he could have been doing much bigger movies, is this, after meeting Linklater, they became fast friends. And he was like, I want you to write this with me.

And he was like, that's all I want. I want to be in the creative process of the movie.

These were at Sundance? Yeah.

That's insane.

He died at Sundance. You would have come back and been like, the culture is changing or something.

I mean, this is specifically, I'm sure I've said versions of this on the show before, but this is specifically why I became obsessed with movies. is that this thing was happening in 93, 94, 95. And I was reading all the magazines and being like, how do I get closer to that? How do I... Because if you see Little Odessa or The Addiction, you're like, I don't know. There are movies like this?

You could have never imagined. And this movie is one of those movies too. Party Girl. Our girl.

I saw this and I was like, I just have to... I obviously have to get a Ural pass.

Yeah, yeah. It's a very... Have you ever started an episode like that? Thinking... You didn't start the Godfather episode like that.

I'm sure there was some junkie trauma movies that got sequels.

Are you thinking about maybe asking... Shots fired at Gen X. Ask Deep Seek if Raj has changed his mind in heaven?

Boom, Raj. Roger Ebert was 53 when this movie came out. I think that's notable. Yeah. We've always talked about why are 50-something movie critics reviewing Billy Madison? That doesn't make sense. That movie's not for them. And you could make the case that this is a movie not for 55-year-old men.

It has aged nicely.

I think it... Would you have? Freshman... I would actually say summer after freshman year of college. You want to be aware that people do study abroad semesters slash go over to Europe to go backpacking or traveling around. But I don't think you want to have done it yet. Because then you may have too many takes on what Jesse did or didn't do right.

But if you just are going into college or in college, I think that's the perfect time.

I wrote down 24 because the two characters are 24. I will say, I saw it probably when I was 14 or 15. The thing that it does if you're 14 or 15 is it's almost like a playbook. It's like if you encounter a lady on a train, these are some moves you can make. And when you're 14 or 15, you don't have any moves. You don't know what to do. And so you internalize some of this stuff.

So I don't think it's the best time, but I would say it was very helpful to watch in general, Ethan Hawke as Troy, as this guy, and be like, okay, is this an archetype that can work? Like, full of shit, tall, brown-haired guy? Like, can I do this? So, that was nice. I think being roughly where you were seemed right.

Yeah, it's about... I think they're fighting about money. No. No, there's actually an answer to this. What is it?

It's about drinking.

Oh.

Yeah.

Who's got the drinking problem? The husband or the wife?

It's perfect in so many ways for this film series.

No.

I guess. Nature's way of allowing couples to grow old together without killing each other.

I think hearing gets really bad.

I now can't hear anything when the water is on. Oh, me too.

It just so happens that my wife talks while that happens.

All right, all right. Think of it like this. Jump ahead 10, 20 years, okay? And you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me.

You know, so think of this as time travel from then to now to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and you made the right choice, and you're really happy.

Sorry, not buying it.

I'm sensing a new category coming up. The Shakir what if.

It was great. We paused the movie last night to discuss this for five minutes.

Can we break it down very briefly? Yeah. The pivot is all living things have a soul. Every leaf has a soul, and that's how you explain it. Is that fair?

Oh, so I used to be a tree in Florida.

Yeah. You know, this was in theaters while Pulp Fiction was still in theaters. Wow. So probably incredibly formative moment for all of our lives. This movie is pretty unique in that not only do you watch it and you're like, I remember seeing it or I remember the impact it had on me. It's overwhelming because you watch it and you're also like, I remember who I was. Do you know what I mean?

So I kicked that to my wife last night, and she was like, yeah, but when the earth started, it was all just bacteria. And I was like, I don't have a response. Yeah. She just shut me down. She just nailed it scientifically. Check out the big brain on Eileen.

Richard Linklater's first take would be amazing.

I love that the movie starts where the graduate ends. It was like them at the back of the bus.

Yeah.

She doesn't come into the picture, I think, until 96.

There's just no way. That is the power of this movie, is that you absolutely believe, in my heart of hearts, I'm like, they're actually soulmates. Like, no matter what happens, those actors are soulmates.

She's fucking incredible in that.

Magical.

This poem is great. Written by a real poet.

It is.

Daydream delusion. Coffee shop Bill? This is my favorite, Bill. English major Bill? Yeah.

Like literally there is a degree to which you kind of see a lot of the things that you were feeling at that time or would go on to feel very shortly afterwards, like reflected. Yeah.

I love it. This guy's a homeless poet. Thumbs up. He's like, if this poet doesn't hit, I don't know if I'm going to be able to afford smokes.

Give me whatever you think is appropriate, too. Not putting a price tag on it.

Love that era.

Next one. Wait, so you skipped over the palm reading?

No, he skipped over the kiss.

You said amusement park, which could include the Ferris wheel. Yes. Are you including the Ferris wheel in that?

I love that scene. Stardust.

You know, I believe if there's any kind of God, it wouldn't be in any of us. Not you or me, but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Right. And your answer to that question was, it's one great thing, and it's crushing tape. That's what you do. That's right. You chose that over love.

He's breaking down Spags' defense. Three blitzers overloaded on one side.

on screen it's different than dazed and confused that way you know it's not a period piece and in my mind even though zoe might watch it and be like oh so tell me about what the 90s were like and stuff like that we're watching it we're like this is a photograph yeah of how the way people used to talk and the way people used to kind of act it's so mind-blowing to see these days

Oh, yeah. I like that thing a lot, too.

This is incoherent to like 30% of the audience.

She sells it.

She is so charming and smart in this. She brought it. She was like, I used to do this with my friends.

The way he's going to part his hair. Which shirt he's going to wear that day. Knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.

Does your wife like this movie?

Look at him getting physical media pills. This is where I was going. I mean, this is one of the best ones.

But what will you happen when he's like, now I must destroy Sean and get three times the one?

I was looking at the Daniel Craig box set.

All five? Yeah.

I love it. I support you 100%.

What do you consider part of the ending? Do you go sex scene, statue, train?

It reminded me of a few movies that you guys have done over the years that felt like they were their own subgenre. So Singles was one of these movies. Kicking and Screaming was one of these movies. Reality Bites was one of these movies. They're not all the same. They have like different tones. Some of them are more comedic. Some of them are more sincere. But the...

For the record, I think it's Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Clisse where they do that trick before Halloween.

Yeah, just for the record.

Damn it. There's movies before Halloween? Yeah, I thought that was the first movie. My first is the reverse of that. It's the first train sequence. It's them on the train getting to know each other because I just find it mesmerizing and so naturalistic.

Oh, like, this movie brought back to me that I just functioned off of, like, coffee and cigarettes from 20 to 30.

Or Edie Falco. What's your must-re-watch mark? Well, there was one small one that you skipped over that is sort of the end, but I really love the cut-away... to not showing whether they have sex or not. And then they wander and they see a guy playing a harpsichord.

And they see him in the window and then they do the, let me take a picture of you, which I think is like a mesmerizing moment.

I love that scene a lot. My pick would probably be the listening booth too. I love that one a lot.

Yeah, just Jesse as a takesman. Just Jesse having lots of... I have a bunch of bits. Here's... I have five of them. This is how I'm...

That was like me on my pod last night doing my Emmett Smith. I was like, I'm going to do my Emmett Smith bit. I stepped on this, but it was Jesse's story being the story that boyhood becomes. Yeah. And the way that like his character kind of gets woven throughout Linklater's filmography are two of my favorite things of age best.

I mean, the Eurail. Have you been on the Eurail? It's incredible. It's just an amazing experience. I recommend everyone try to do it, even if you don't do it when you're 22 and idealistic. It's just such a fun way to travel. I think specifically that letting your actors...

casting actors who can write and letting them write with you is such a cool idea and it's you know mike lee does this in his movies too this is like a hack for sophisticated filmmakers apatow does it um a lot of really good directors do this and it's all about making the movie as good as it can be because the actors need to be fully on board with what you're the story you're trying to tell

I think it's a little bit different when you're doing a drama versus doing an Apatow movie. Because Apatow, it seems like they're really working bits. And they have like, let's riff on this or riff on that. And this is like... They have character arcs that they really have to track in this.

Yeah, totally. It seems like they worked really hard on it. And the overlapping dialogue, it was kind of rehearsed to a T, like you said.

Like, emotional, philosophical hangout movie was very present because independent cinema was getting to be a huge part of American movies. And these were kind of easy movies to make. You know, they didn't cost a lot of money. You just needed a couple of attractive people who could seem smart. Yeah. And I'm wondering if this is the best possible version of that kind of a movie.

Really realistic. Like Vienna in the summer.

Vienna. Which is amazing.

Vienna just gets wins left and right in culture. Never been there? Never been. I went there on an Easter weekend once. It was shut down, so it was a lot like this, but it was very cold.

Interesting. Also, French girls, I think that's aged well. You know, just a beautiful blonde French girl on the train, that's like an archetype. Yeah, that would happen in real life.

We got Dr. Loomis. That's one. Who else is on that list?

Jim.

Shine.

Yeah, Shine and Jim. See what happens to Shine now.

Instead of going to the bar with Celine, Jesse's like, I really think maybe if I get to the airport, they're showing Knicks Rockets. Or it's like the car chases on the train station. During the course of this day, someone had come up to them and been like, you guys are not going to believe what's happening with OJ right now. Do you think that they would have liked it? Is Jesse from Texas?

I was guessing like Ohio, but. Oh no, he said, does he say Ohio? I think he... Or maybe he goes to college in Ohio?

Maybe I thought he said... I don't think he ever says that. He's from like Shaker Heights or something. Okay. The other thing is that it's June 16th, I believe, because that's the day that... Well, there's a whole bunch of James Joyce. Yeah, James Joyce's Ulysses is set. Yeah.

That's what I'm talking about with the wisdom of Linklater. That line is insane. Every person who hears that line can understand exactly where it's coming from.

I have Selene with her head in Jesse's lap in front of the Archduke Albrecht statue.

I had the going down the cobblestone streets when there's a big dip and they've all been wetted Michael Mann style.

Yeah.

Bach Sonata No. 1 coming in at the end. Yeah. There's a couple of classical pieces. Like I said that, I just know all the sonatas. I believe it. I'm a ball knower when it comes to sonatas.

There are several in this movie.

My favorite movie of all time. There are several homages to The Third Man.

Isn't that also... It kind of echoes into the future with Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise goes into the listening booth.

Same thing, yeah. Except he's not looking at anyone.

Is that Dead Reckoning? No, it's Fallout, right?

It's the one before that, I think, yeah. Or maybe even the one before that.

It's the first one with Sean Harris.

Yeah, that's not. It's the one before Fallout, whatever that's called. Anyway, sorry. The fantasy word.

Yeah. Criteriorgasm.

Stealth homage. I'm touched. For the movie nerds. What I want people to think when I'm talking about movies is that this is a sexual climax, so I really feel honored.

Is this the place where I could talk about smoking? It sure is. Which one do you want to give out? I think we need to give out the Jesse in Before Sunrise award for the character that absolutely should have smoked but didn't.

Why? Okay, so a college kid in 1995 in Europe where people smoke everywhere all of the time with a French girl who is probably still smoking as of like December of last year. And there's not a cigarette between the two of them. And you're watching this poet who's just like, all I do is smoke. Everybody like, but these two people in 1995 don't smoke cigarettes.

But he probably smoked back then.

It's not like he's like, I don't want to have to take all these fake cigarettes.

Could you make the case though that it's a reverse what's aged the best? The fact that they chose not to smoke and there is no smoking in movies. But now it feels more like a modern movie because no one is smoking.

Not, like there's no actor in the movie. I mean, for the Flex Choice 2, you could make the case as the weak link, but it's a bigger discussion.

Is that a 95 song?

I like where you're at with that, but I think that the choice of music in this movie is to make it timeless. You know?

It's fine.

actor at that point and she wasn't and that's just I don't know none of that stuff bothered me that much but I just wanted to flag it other than that I don't have any what's his worst well it's an interesting movie to put in front of younger people I was talking to Jack Sanders before earlier today about this movie and he said it's one of his favorites of all time and it's a big movie personally for him and that's interesting do you think he's a romantic because he's a Mets fan

That has hardened my soul, so I can't imagine. Although he is a way more optimistic Mets fan than I am. But I think it's interesting because it is a movie that... Forget about whether or not you would have ever met Celine. Even just the way that they go about their day would be radically different today. You'd have Google Maps up and Yelp up and you'd have food guides and tourism guides.

Even if you still had the spirit of wandering, the absence of technology in the movie... And even just asking strangers for help is something that I feel like people don't really do anymore, like when they run into the two theater guys. Right.

It's not that it aged the worst, per se, that there are no cell phones or anything, but it has aged the movie in a unique way because it's right on the precipice of cell phones.

You almost watch it now, and it's more fantastical than it was in 1995 to see it because now you're watching it in almost like a fairy tale.

And there's so many things that they do where you're just like, where he's just like, let's just get off this train. And I would be like, so neurotic about like, where are we? Like, is this the right place to get? Are we going to be in the wrong place? Right.

It's closer to 1500 than 2000. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Tough beat for Tommy.

Tommy is on an unbroken streak right now.

Okay, so we already sort of mentioned with the criteria orgasm that the recent rod at the Prater Amusement Park is the Den of Thieves Benihana Award, I think. It's got to be a scene-stealing location. But the George Ellerbe Two Weeks with Pay Award, which I absolutely love. This is the character who definitely should have been fired.

The fucking bartender who gives away a bottle of wine at a bar because one guy tells basically a lie. I'll send you money. And says, give me the address. And then never even gives him the address.

We have to go straight to the bartender in this table. This is a shocking act.

A million questions. What kind of red was this that he gave him?

How do you get that bottle open?

Did Jesse invent live streaming on the back of that train or the back of that bus in Vienna? When he's just like, I think we should have a public access show that's just 24 seven people all over the world. Like, isn't this basically YouTube?

There's elements of this in Slacker where I think Linklater's idea is you're just going around Austin and these different people are having these different experiences or whatever. He's like, why is this thing beautiful but this thing isn't?

The Gen X. The Gen X multiverse. Talkative multiverse.

Oh, Sheila, yeah.

Campbell Scott's there studying European infrastructure. Yeah, he's working on the Eurorail. Yeah.

Yeah, I was also thinking of the guys from Barcelona, the Whit Stillman movie, maybe finding their way into this movie because he's going to Madrid. You could have seen those two guys. You could have seen Chris Eigerman coming over. There is a really prominent example of this that I can't think of where a character pops up from another movie in a completely different movie. God damn it.

I'm sure somebody listening to this knows what I'm talking about.

Yeah, it's also these people are at an age, that 18 to 25 or whatever age period, where everything that happens to you feels like it's the first time it's ever happened to anyone. And there's a moment in the opening, just a few scenes of this film, where Jesse is talking about how it's been a bad trip to Europe, but he's liked sitting on the train and having ideas.

I think that this movie is more romantic than Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Titanic. To me, this is the most... Because it doesn't need all of the accoutrement of the setting and the stakes. It doesn't need life and death to make this feel so emotionally impactful.

It was going to be against Hawk the whole time.

She was in Bram Stoker's Dracula, right?

Was she married to Jude Law? Dated Jude Law? Was she part of the Sienna Miller thing? Michael Vartan's a weird one, though.

Yeah, I mean, eventually on Alias and Never Been Kissed and a couple of other things, but he's just a little bit more bland, for lack of a better word, than Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke has so much personality.

of the poet great poem and also seems to really take it up a notch for the two of them I'm 100% going Ernie Mangold the palm reader who is a beloved actress in Austria she's 98 years old still alive and she has more than 100 credits in her career I don't think any of them are in American productions other than this movie recasting couch director Sidney I got something here we gotta talk what do you got

The singer in the bar? Oh, no. I'm recasting the city, and I want to talk about what would happen if this was set in Boston. What happens if Jesse goes up to a Boston bartender at 1.30 in the morning and asks for a free bottle of wine? He gets hit over the head with it.

You think you're better than me? Asking for a bottle of wine? Are you fucking crazy? Yeah. Fucking OJ is on the TV. The white Bronco.

Is it still a French girl and a guy from America?

No, it's like a really obnoxious girl from Rhode Island.

And I was like, I don't remember the last time I did that. Like if I'm ever on a mode of transportation or have any downtime, I'm usually like looking at my phone, have my headphones in, texting with somebody. I know like I'm in constant contact with this external world. Right. And I was like, holy shit. I completely forgot being bored out of my mind. Yeah, you have a book.

Us. What's the foreheat status? How far away are we? What kind of scouting has been happening?

I watch it constantly. I started when he introduced OK Motherfucker. I watched that scene and then I watched five other scenes. And I was just like, I'm back.

And I'm like, how did they not realize?

How did he not see? He's back to design. Right there.

Westfield. He's coming right down the left. He's blitzing them with three shooters.

i how responsible do i like to interview you guys about your obsession with michael mann how responsible do you feel for the fleet of young men who are showing up at these repertory screenings of michael mann movies like is that happening wearing heat t-shirts and like black hats it's like it's the new version of the seven thing that you were talking about you know where it's like this guy might murder you but it's the opposite it's like this guy might be your best friend who you rob a banquet these people sound great where are they

I mean, Jack Sanders will tell you, they're all over Los Angeles in the movie theaters. They're showing out. Yeah, they're like, Black Hat is screening tonight? I'll be there. I'll pay $80 for a ticket.

If there's any God in this world, it's between a bunch of men sharing heat with each other.

Can I pitch an idea? Yeah. Nitpick. You guys, for the Ringer Movies YouTube channel, remake Before Sunrise, but it's just you walking around LA.

Doing a heat pod.

I mean, his version of this is like collateral, basically.

And yet, Jesse reading Klaus Kinski's memoir is some real Macaulay shit.

I feel like that's a book he picked up in a hostel somewhere. Because he looks at it and he's like, I don't know.

And a friend of a friend reached out and sent him a letter. There's an episode of Fresh Air that features the three of them, Delpy and Hawk and Linklater, and he tells the story. And I remember the day that that episode aired because my wife listened to it and was just a mess and was like, you have to listen to this immediately because it's so heartbreaking.

I believe it was San Antonio.

We were just talking about this. When I went overseas myself for my semester abroad, I took Ulysses at an Irish university. It was probably the ideal circumstances. It's an incredible novel. It's a lot of parallels.

Kath Bloom, Molly Bloom.

I think he is Apex and a re-Apex, and I think Apex is Reality Bites and then re-Apex is Training Day.

He's been in movies since he was like eight.

I don't know. I mean, I think he had a third wave of

in boyhood well that's I mean it's connected right like the purge sinister boyhood period of his career the other thing that happened is he got really good at doing press really good one of the best podcast guests ever he's an unbelievable storyteller he's just a great talker and I think he like kind of cemented his place in movie history in some ways with that third wave of success um

And so, I don't know. It's like this movie wasn't a huge hit. Training Day is a huge hit, but it's a huge hit because of Denzel. And he did a lot in that, you know, the Blumhouse plus I keep doing Linklater movie stretch that I think confirmed him in a way. I don't know. Maybe that might have been his apex. I mean, Sinister and The Purge made a lot of money.

yeah there's also there's a couple other cultural touchstones there but nothing like the Billy Joel song I think the third man which is also set in Vienna would be a good one yeah Billy Joel that song's multi-generational yeah it's kind of kind of the Kath Blooms come here of the late stage Billy Joel Billy Joel like people love that song what about is this Apex Mountain for first dates it's the greatest first date in the history of love so it's this or Neil and Edie in the finals that's right

And then he takes off in the morning. Then he takes off in the morning.

I don't think I'm well-suited to be the adjudicator of best first dates in movies.

This would have been, I wish we had thought about this more. We should have researched this more. No, you know what best first date is? Best first date in the movie. Actually, Colin Farrell and Gong Li in Miami Vice go to get some movie tickets. That is the fucking answer.

Top that.

You like the burrito? I can't.

Yeah, it's good.

On another hand here, is this Apex Mountain for date movies?

If your relationship is going well, it's a great movie. If it's not going well, it's a confrontation.

You would say, why am I wasting my time when there could be a Jessie or a Celine out there for me?

Well, this is... 95 is kicking and screaming in this, right? Yeah, but I think 94 is fresher, cooler.

Are we sure it's not the election of Barack Obama? For Gen X? Wow.

Is that a Razor Reddick article?

Still the only Gen X president we've had. Probably will be the only one.

No, it's clearly Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Talented Mr. Ripley vibing out to the jazz.

I think it's... I think it's 95% what you're saying. That, you know, it was impossible to distract yourself in the ways that we can now, right? And that there's like an inherent bad for our ability to socialize or be connected to other people. But then it's just, it's also 5% just being 21 or 23, right? Where you don't... And idealistic. Right. And you have not been destroyed by the world yet.

You don't think Hanks... Cruise doing his motor map routine? Cruise would be amazing. Cruise trying to do this movie would be mesmerizing. I think Cruise seems like he's wearing a skin suit if he's like... Think of it like a time machine, okay? You know, like...

Yeah, another fast-talking, emotional, romantic.

Stanley and Iris?

Is that what you're thinking of?

Isn't Stanley and Iris like about two people getting sick or something? Or no?

You guys dunked on me.

I got you on the Cruz side for once. That's great. Yeah, you guys are usually on the opposite, aren't you? Young Hanks. Well, we're in a death war until we die about who's superior.

Okay.

I think that Jesse's neuroses are a critical part of this. And I don't think of Tom Hanks as a particularly neurotic actor.

Whereas Tom Cruise, despite Matt and Idol good looks and the fame and success, there's something kind of nervy and weird about him. Cocktail. Cocktail Tom Cruise.

I just think he'd be trying to do the magnetic smile thing the whole time. Can you imagine Cruise being like... He'd be like... That is true.

I don't know why you're digging a ditch for Cruise.

I think one of the reasons why it shouldn't be Hanks is because this movie is kind of a rejection of Tom Hanks movies like this.

Like Sleepless in Seattle. Like, you know, soon to be when you've got mail.

I'm going to go Scorsese. Test drive. Scorsese. Yeah, because he showed that he can do one long night with After Hours. Yeah.

Is he a romantic? Is Scorsese a romantic is an interesting question. I think he's spiritual. There's some spiritualism in this movie. That's true. There is. The history of the soul. I would say Spielberg. There's the sentimentality.

But then the poet would have gotten shot and fallen into the river. That sounds amazing. There would have been a robbery.

Yeah.

This is a tough category for genuinely great films made by serious artists. Because you're like, well, this is one of the quintessential Linklater movies. Maybe the quintessential Linklater movies. It's a little hard to be like. It's a lot easier when it's like. Maybe this category doesn't work.

Dead of Thieves 2 directed by Steven Spielberg.

oh i had the poet yeah oh i like that but i i will say i did test drive in my head him as jesse in the mid 90s whether that could have worked i think everybody in their mid 90s was like i'm jesse but we probably all looked like felicity moore hoffman yeah you know what i mean like but the poet he would have been i think that's the answer yeah that's good or the or the actor the the cal actor

You don't have a lot of money, so you don't really have a lot of options. So you have to make good with what you have. And you don't have a lot of responsibilities that are otherwise weighing down that idealism. You know, these are people with no jobs, no kids, no boyfriends or girlfriends. You know, their parents are alive. Everyone's healthy. Like they're at this point in your life where like...

And we've already come up with like five. I think racing to the TV to see Houston Knicks would have been a great one.

And then stumbling upon the Bronco.

Did you play Hacky Sack?

I wonder if there's an extended cut or a deleted scene where Jesse sees a bunch of Austrian guys playing soccer in the park and he's just like, this is why football will never catch on in America. Here's my thing. That would work.

Man.

Are you sure he doesn't have you straight to voicemail in his phone?

No, I talked to him yesterday. He's probably like on hour two with Bruce Feldman right now. He's right in now. He's in Vienna. He's in Vienna.

It's got to be like 98. I'm going to say an unanswerable question is, what are we doing with body odor? There's no shower right after the train. It's Ethan Hawke. Yeah, they've been drinking coffee. Not smoking, I guess, but walking around.

Okay, this raises an interesting question. In the 90s, you were significantly there. You were less there, but still there. Were we just a little bit more comfortable with the human musk? Were we less moisturized? Were we less deodorized?

I felt like that was a big deodorant frenzy in the 90s.

Yeah, man. That was like... You get all sorts of different flavors in deodorants. Old spice, right?

Because think about what a man in 1957 smelled like at the end of the day.

Yeah, but everybody smelled that way. That's my point. That's the thing.

That's my point is that would it have been okay if he was just... riding the Eurail hostile sleeping.

We don't know who's going to win. This is great. All the oppo researchers flying around.

That's what I'm saying. There's an odor thing that might have been a non-issue.

just that these guys suck at pinball oh my god Ethan Hawke is so bad I know they're just like he's never played it would be really funny if he was just like can you shut the fuck up I'm trying to play when he's explaining what love is he is atrocious you know we had a didn't we have like a Tom Cruise sports award

They're distracted by each other, and they're just kind of like, what can we do here?

Well, Hollywood stole Ethan's youth, so he never really got to play with childish things.

You can and probably should just fuck around a little bit.

But you didn't find out why they changed the name?

And both literally and figuratively. And the movie really captures this time of, like, no responsibility. The fact that Selene can just get off the train in a foreign land.

Because we've tweaked the category, I do have a request that you do long legs reading the fortunes. Reading the palm reader. Jesse!

But if Wilford Brimley from the firm was talking about Jesse's trip to Spain, here's our Jesse, who has saved up all his money from working as a barista in a college town. And he goes all the way to Spain to reunite with his long-distance girlfriend. And what does he find instead? He finds heartache in the form of a fabulous matador named Gonzalo.

I don't know if I could actually do this, but Daniel Plainview as the poet reading the poem. Oh, no. I'm scared.

I'm looking at it. I mean, you know, it's... Come on.

And wander. And she's getting off the train before a nine-hour trip. And she's like, you know what? I'm just going to, I'll go.

Should we add Tom Brady to this? What is Tom Brady's signature aside from saying KB? Tom Brady would be like, that date went great. Jesse was so poised back there.

Kevin, that's a great date. Seems to be a real connection here, KB. I feel like they're going to maybe connect down the road, KB. That's why it's really important to have a strong offensive line, KB. Right there, he was able to get her off the train, KB, and that was huge. That was huge for what's going to happen to the rest of the state.

You know, we're all just looking for love in this world, KB, and he found it.

For script or for direction?

Well, if it's script, then they share it. Yeah. Along with Kim Curzon. Which I think would be pretty cool. The next two movies were both nominated for Best Screenplay.

I don't have anything going on until Tuesday. I'm booked through February. Think about like when even Jesse just being like, I don't have enough money for a hotel. So I was just going to walk around Vienna all night until it's time to go to the airport.

I got another unanswerable, though.

How many people threw emotional Hail Marys on first dates because of this movie? How many guys out there do you think did insane bits or were like, we're in a time machine or we're stardust or tried to come up with something really overly romantic and some girl was like, it's okay. Like... It's like, it's this fucking guy I met last night. We're not in Vienna. We're in Syracuse.

We're in fucking... Yeah.

You never tried to pull any of this material out for your own purposes.

Oh, I did. I don't know. You did. Oh, yeah. I feel like I made, like, grand gestures when I was younger like this.

Like...

I'll meet you back here in six months? No, but that kind of going for brokenness of it is just a little bit more common, I think.

Mm-hmm.

He does have a writer's mind in the movie though.

He's like, there's no way you could have come up with that on the spot.

Well, he's always protecting himself. Even when he reads the Auden poem, which he obviously loves, he needs to do it. Is it in the Dylan Thomas voice that he does it in? Because he can't totally turn himself over and become vulnerable to her.

That would be like a pretty, something would have gone really wrong if that was like the circumstance I found myself in now. And that was like fucking romantic back then.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. I thought about this a lot watching this movie. So you really don't like the English class guy. You know, the guy who's like, I'm looking for the metaphorical meaning and all these things.

This is what I want to talk about because... you employ some at The Ringer, and you're very drawn to movies that feature these characters. So maybe I just didn't want to admit what was lurking deep inside me.

Well, I'm just asking. It's never too late to crack open Ulysses, Bill.

It is for me, because my brain is leaking out.

Do they have that on iPad in big print?

Yeah, seriously. Do they have a version of it that is read by Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley?

I think human connection being the real religion of the world.

I would want the poem.

I would not want that turtleneck. I could not pull that off. That maroon turtleneck he's wearing at the beginning of the movie. He gets rid of it. He takes it off at some point. He's wearing like a t-shirt when they're at the amusement park. But boy, that would be a tough look for me.

I thought it was Hawke.

It's probably Linklater because if Hawk doesn't make this movie, he still has reality bites.

I also think... You know, you mentioned their collaboration and whether that's great. Like, there's a couple of other interesting examples of this. De Niro and Scorsese, George Roy Hill and Paul Newman. Like, there's some people who you're like, when these two guys get together, something special is going to happen. But Linklater needed to find Hawk for this movie.

And when they're together, even if the movie isn't a success, there's something alchemical that is really working. And... I don't know. And also, it just seems like... I don't know. What is his signature movie now, Linklater? Is it still Dazed and Confused? Is it Boyhood? Is it School of Rock? Is it Sunrise? Sunset? I would argue it's Sunset. I think it's the trilogy.

Yeah, or the trilogy as a whole. Because it's both so crowd-pleasing but also so formally inventive and so breathtaking in its scope.

You know he has two movies coming out this year. Right. one of which stars Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon, which I think he plays Rogers from Rogers and Hammerstein.

Um,

When Would I Have Died didn't get to do that one this time around. Yeah, probably the 40-year-old version of myself is when we didn't have lunch.

They just don't eat in this movie.

It's a great point. Do they eat anything? I think that it's implied that they eat at the cafe where everybody's smoking and playing chess. Or go to the bathroom.

Yeah.

I'll be right back. Eating in front of someone is also a little bit of a challenge when you're trying to seduce them. Yeah. A little hard to be elegant in that way.

One other thing just to note is that he runs out of money with the poet, I think. So she's basically paying for the rest of the night.

Well, that may be true. That may be true.

Yeah. He's reaching out for coins there at the end with the poet.

Zelig, yeah. He's kind of, kind of, kind of, Chalmé kind of giving some Ethan Hawke vibes in the Bob Dylan performance, you know?

Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan in Europe. That's the movie. I mean, they would be amazing. But they're too big.

Yes, but in 20 Excel, he's broke down. It's been eight hours in Boston.

At the last call.

Were you like that?

You know, Wesley's going to come on and do the big picks, which is all of the alternative Oscars. Do you want to come on?

It's not for a month.

No, but you would come on and say what you want to pick. Like, forget about what's nominated. You know, like, what Oscars should Longlegs get, in your opinion?

I think that when I saw it, I didn't see Jesse as cynical. Like, I thought Jesse was just being cool. You know, like in this movie. And then as you grow older, you kind of see him... He's working a little bit. Yeah, it's like, this is like, your cynicism isn't of itself... It's like the thing from singles where it's like, I think your thing is not having a thing.

If Timmy wins, that'll be fun. Will he come on the pod before or after? Can he win? He can win. Yeah, he can win. Who's the favorite now? Adrian Brody for the Brutalist.

It's like, Jesse's thing is pretending like love is bullshit or that because of his parents, it's like he thinks that romantic love is basically a fallacy. But he's the most romantic person in the world. And he's got his five or six bits that he's clearly done with other people.

Hey, everybody.

Please remember, tip your bartenders. Real Jerry Seinfeld. Yeah. I think that's exactly right. I mean, both of them show both sides of those two ideas. They both, you know, Celine in theory, oh, the ethereal French girl should be the most romantic person in the world.

But she's also protecting herself with a certain kind of pragmatism throughout the entire movie. And they both kind of bounce back and forth. I was having this conversation with my wife last night, and I feel like... The movie is like 51% Celine's, ultimately, and 49% Jesse's. And in the future movies, you could say, which direction does it go in?

But this movie ultimately has that drop of romance that outweighs the cynicism that is always being debated. Jesse is always circling back to the palm reader bullshit. Even the poem, there's the hint of like, are we sure about this guy? All the moments that... In the wrong hands would make for, like, the worst movie ever. Oh, my God.

Like, if this was not a Richard Linklater movie, it could have been a disaster because of the sincere, borderline sentimental steps that the characters take. But ultimately, I think they both have... the desire to love and be loved. And they both know that you have to protect yourself and the world because people will hurt you. Yeah, because Jesse's just gotten his heart broken.

So he's going around being like, there's no palm reading. There is no poetry. He's had that poem. Like, none of this stuff is... This is all bullshit.

And I don't remember another movie that nailed it like this. No, I mean, the best part about it is the fact that even though they obviously have an instant connection, which is partially just due to the circumstances of the train car in which they meet and the other couple fighting. Yeah.

They have a pretty awkward first 30 minutes of the movie when they're first working around Vienna and it's like, now what? You know, like, this movie is a series of now what's, which is what's so great about it.

It's like every time they achieve some sort of point that in another movie would have been like, it's all building up to a kiss or it's all building up to sex or it's all building up to this. They actually deal with like what happens next for the most part. And I think it makes it that much more effective because they do. Yeah.

And we also get through this Celtics swoon. It's an alarm, but it's not alarming.

Do you remember having a take on it when you left the theater?

But to this day, the movie drags you back to that feeling of romanticism. I was kind of just laughing to myself watching the movie again. You guys know me. I'm very grounded and very cynical about certain things.

No, I would have been... I've identified with Jesse a lot in this movie. The poet, you'd have been like, oh, he wrote that already. Yeah, I really identify with him a lot in many ways, but... the same way that Jesse can't help but feel lifted up, you know, taken away by this person who he's encountered who is just like filling him up with all of this hope and excitement, the movie does the same.

Like, it softens a hard heart. So what was your, do you remember the first time you saw this?

Well, it's complicated for me because I can't remember the first time I saw it. And so, I didn't see it in a movie theater. I definitely saw it on VHS. And I don't know the circumstances under which I saw it. Did I see it with a girl? Maybe. I don't remember. Like, did we watch it in my parents' basement? Maybe. So I don't have the same... I just wasn't old enough. Just being a little bit younger.

Whereas the next film, I remember everything about that.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know, you're totally obsessed? That's happened to me. Like, I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting. Have you done that, Sierra? I have, yeah. Or buying the soundtrack on vinyl. Kind of obsessed. Whatever it is, Prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into.

All right, I'm Bill Simmons. That's Sean Fantasy, the big picture. Chris Ryan, The Watch. Yeah. What else are you up to? Top three draft picks?

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

It isn't though.

He's carrying older... No sakes, though, for him. Yeah, unfortunately.

Sorry, guys.

She kind of has a look. Somebody could have done it. So Spielberg does his own science fiction film called Firelight, which he made on his own when he was 18, then used some shots for this movie. He wrote a short story in 1970 about a Midwestern farming community and a light show a group of teenagers saw in the sky. So he had all these little weird Spielberg pieces.

Then did the Columbia Dale in 73. Initially, it was about UFOs, Watergate, and a government cover-up. That's how they sold it. As Sean said, it flipped. And then a bunch of writers came in, including our guy Paul Schrader.

Yeah. Roy was into some escort service. Yeah. That's how we met Melinda Dillon's character.

Always like the backhanded compliments from the other directors for him. It's pretty funny. But he went back hard at Schrader. He said it was the worst script he'd ever read. He said it was the worst script that's ever been turned into a studio.

I saw it in the theater.

Yeah.

This is Rick Caruso's problem when he wore a suit every day.

Just put it on a half zip.

Was this a... Not only did I see it in the theater, I think I saw the re-release in a drive-in. Vague memory.

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

Can confirm. Peter Biskind, it was a big month for him on the rewatchables. He wrote in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. He had a whole thing about this movie. And said, Spielberg's movies in particular are colored by longing for the absent dad and nostalgia for authority. His families are often fatherless.

The plots are set in motion by the moral and emotional vacuum at the center of the home and resolved by father surrogates. A little harsh. but not untrue.

Vague memory.

1980 re-release. I think I saw it in a drive-in, but I'm not... Don't confirm. Don't confirm that to the Washington Post or anything.

Or he's making three versions of the same film because that's what happened. He released the theatrical in 77. it did amazingly well. It saved Columbia. Columbia was going broke. Their whole bacon depended on this movie doing well. And it did, but they rushed it and they rushed it. I think six, seven months ahead of when he wanted to do it.

So then when they said they were releasing and he's like, I'm cool, I'll get behind it.

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

Well, but they say to him, you have to show the inside of the spaceship, which they do. So if you get the 4k Blu-ray of it, they have the three versions. So we see the inside of the spaceship in that version. And I don't want to see the inside of this spaceship. I don't either. The whole point of this movie is you kind of don't know what's out there or what's in there or anything.

Yeah, I saw this movie in 1977. I gotta be honest. I was six years old or seven years old. It kind of freaked me out. Understandable. Didn't really love the ending. The dad's going on the UFO at the end. I'm like, what the fuck? Dad, are you gonna go? It was like one of those.

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

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

I would change so many things about it.

Because my fingers don't work.

Yeah, that's the only reason.

The only thing I can identify with, because obviously the dumb NBA book I wrote wasn't remotely like these two movies, but... you get, you go down the line with something where you have a deadline and at some point there's no going back and you kind of have to finish it. Even though deep down, you're like, like in that case, I just should have split that into two books. And it was so odd.

It's so obvious now. Like, why didn't I just do the first book? And then the pyramid could have been the second book. Yeah. But when you're like 75% down the road, you can't stop. And I assume sometimes that happens with a movie too, where it's like, it's got to come out November 77th. And you're just like, all right. And you just put your head down and you try to get to the deadline.

I'm here with my co-host, Jabba the Hutt. That's where you really need a mere Joe House to come in as a special guest host.

Anyway, Dick. Oh, wait.

I think Steven Spielberg agrees with you right now as well. This movie is just incredible. What was the rewatch like for you, CR?

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

Yeah, I forgot about that book. Actually, I want to read that this summer. Because there's an uncut version, too, of the Julia Phillips book.

Speaking of director's cuts. She's got the Uzi help.

That's pretty early to ruin your career with cocaine. I'm sure there's some start of it. Guys out there who disagree. It's like the first year, though, where people were really doing that. Anyway, Dick Dreyfuss. Jaws, 75. Close Encounters and Goodbye Girl in 77. Wins Best Actor for Goodbye Girl. A good example of that category we always wanted for the Oscars.

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

Yeah. No brainer. Passes on Jaws 2, a movie that we will do on the rewatches at some point.

And then from 78 to 81, The Big Fix, The Competition, and Whose Life Is It Anyway, a movie that he says afterwards he has no memory of making because by that point he was doing so much cocaine that it actually burned a hole in his brain and he can't remember things.

Big Dick Dreyfuss comeback, 86 range.

He also passed on the China Syndrome. Hmm. And he left all that jazz during rehearsals. Was he going to be in the Michael Douglas part? What part was he in? Michael Douglas part. What was he going to play in all the jazz? Scheider's part? He left the Scheider part. Get the fuck out. Really? Left the Scheider part and they replaced him with Scheider. Couldn't get the hang of it.

That's so much better. Couldn't get a feel. Dreyfuss would have been terrible. Oh my God. Yeah. That's a rough one. Who's Dreyfuss in the last 25 years? Speaking of they don't make them like this anymore. Mid-70s Dreyfuss. Who is it? God. Because now I just feel like they would have put like Jonah Hill in this movie. No shots fired at Jonah Hill.

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

But it's all people that also could have played a superhero. Yes. It's like Paul Rudd.

Woody Harrelson.

I also watched A Good Bye Girl recently in the past six months. No idea how he won Best Actor. It's just inexplicable. Solid movie, but basically a really well-written rom-com. And Dreyfuss is just... But shouldn't it be Marsha?

Head to Amazon.com slash Prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes. It's big-ass 70s month. On the rewatchables. He missed Death Wish last week.

Dreyfuss just comes in. He's coming in hot.

Yeah, and she's got a kid. But he's like full-fledged Russell Westbrook 2017-ing it. He's like, I'm also going to grab all the rebounds.

So he's got that performance, but then he's got this one, which is so much more interesting of a performance. And of course, he wins for the other movie. But I think he's just fantastic in this movie. This movie was pretty criminally overlooked, I thought. Yeah. I think this is his best performance. I really do. And I think I've seen all of the Dreyfuss movies. I think this is his best one.

He unravels over the course of 90 minutes in a way that, I don't know, I think there's some real art to it. He was nominated for Mr. Holland, right? He's great. Mr. Holland, he's pretty good. He's got... He was nominated for it. He was. How many Oscar nominations does he have? Did you guys do that? Yeah, we didn't invite you because you don't like that movie that much.

That was when Van... I think that's when Van... That was his initiation to get into the rewatch. Was that the first one? One of the first ones. Yeah.

I want to talk about that right after this break because this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is about choices. including the Oscars when they screw up some best actor stuff and some best movie stuff. We love to go back and wonder why they made the choices they did, which as we get in the 70s and 80s is pretty crazy with the Oscars.

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Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer availability. Amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Okay. Annie Hall wins for best picture. We covered this in Star Wars. Star Wars is nominated. The Goodbye Girl is nominated. Julia and The Turning Point.

And it is... It's just the way it worked back then. But... Close Encounters was like too popcorn-y and too... But this movie got nine Oscar nominations.

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

It's the third biggest movie of the year. So Goodbye Girl got for Best Picture, not for Director. And Spielberg got for Director, not the movie. Turning Point got both, which I think is the year's pass. And then Dreyfuss doesn't get nominated at all for this movie.

And I guess, is there a rule you can't be in the same category twice? I don't know. Or has that happened? Has anyone ever been best actor for two movies out of the five spots?

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

Yeah, and he has to be best actor. You couldn't have squeezed him. And the only actor that got nominated was our girl Melinda Dillon. Yeah. Can't wait to talk about her. Yeah. Anyway, Dreyfuss, he ends up winning, so it works out great. Truffaut's in this movie? He is, man. Hell yeah. Frank. Your boy.

Obviously wasn't understanding the significance in 1977 as I was holding on to my dad, terrified, wondering where... The dad of three kids was going on a spaceship.

Jules and Jim?

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

Yeah.

and also half of the acting he has to do in this movie is basically like just look at that wall over there because we're gonna put these special effects in later yeah and uh i don't know i like him he's tremendously effective in this movie he's really good helps that balaban is just like like that's a great interpreter to have for him yeah what is is there any other equivalents of this

of Truffaut being in a Spielberg movie you know like the fourth Spielberg movie ever made well David Lynch was just in a Spielberg movie that's true David Lynch was in the Fablemans playing a director yeah um

But not for a director who's 29 and has had one hit. It's just a weird choice. But I like it. It's cool. He's like, what if Roy has a threesome with Linda Dillon and a UFO? UFO alien. Just kind of ride it. That would be very true foe. It would. John Williams did the score for this movie.

And then Spielberg edited the film to match the score. Insane. Because you said John Williams was blacked out during Star Wars. He might have still been blacked out. Yeah. Just like fucking grinding it out.

Yeah. John Williams, 75 to 78. Jaws, Close Encounters, Star Wars, Jaws 2, and Superman. Pretty good. Just five of the highlights. Pretty good. Then he's like, I'm going to come back in 81 and 82 with Raiders and E.T. back to back. This is low-key been John Williams month too, I guess. Yeah, and then he's like, I'm going to rip off another 40 plus years.

Would you be surprised if John Williams had an alter ego, though, like Garth Brooks did? No, I would not. I love low-budget horror movies.

Will Joniums. $19.4 million budget made $306 million, third biggest movie of 1977. Sheesh. Raj gave it four stars when it came out, then another four stars in 1980 and wrote, I thought the original film was an astonishing achievement, capturing the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life behind the earth. This new version gets another four stars.

It is quite simply a better film. So much better that it might inspire the uncharitable question, why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time? Settle down, Raj.

How do you go from higher than four? I didn't realize that went through the Spanner's announcer's table in this new match.

I still think it's Jaws. degree of difficulty of Jaws is 99.9 out of 100 I still don't understand how they made that movie There's a lot of... He's in the ocean for like... How many months when we did that? He's in the ocean for six months.

Well, it's a different question, right? Degree of difficulty, it's got to be Jaws still. Just how fucking crazy that movie was. This feels like the most majestic movie he made.

is probably the most relatable. E.T. was a phenomenon. Raiders is maybe the most fun. Raiders is the most fun, and then Schindler's List is the most meaningful. Jurassic is like he learns all the lessons from his earlier movies and just throws into that. And then Saving Private Ryan is probably the best.

How about that? Yeah. Very few movies have ever hit upon this combination of fantasy and amusement. The Wizard of Odds, perhaps. In a plainer, down-home way. She's a big fan. Steve.

I wrote my notes. They don't make them like this anymore. That's why you're you. We say this sometimes with the rewatchables. They don't make them like this anymore. The pace is just not like it would be made now. The actors, the patience that he has with the wide shots where now they would have just CGI'd shit. But I watched with my wife and daughter last night, the second time in a week.

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

Yeah.

This is really important to say. When do you want to do this?

Do your three movies.

The three movies that have three different versions of them?

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

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

Most rewatchable scene. I really like the air traffic controller scene. Oh my God, it's awesome. It's good. TW517, you wish to report a UFO over?

Ares 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind? Over. I wouldn't know what kind of report to file, Senator. Ares 31, me neither. I'll try to track traffic to destination. Over.

But everything about that scene, which shouldn't really be a good scene at all. All the actors are really good. The way he does the camera, he's building suspense and it's just like a guy on a radio.

And my daughter was like, did they put those stars in? And I'm like, no, they couldn't really do that back then. I think they were just caught lightning in a bottle with Muncie, Indiana in this house. And just everything about it, just everything the way it moves and watching Dreyfuss just lose his mind over the course of 90 minutes. And you stand aside somehow.

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

The little kid, Barry, waking up with his room going bonkers.

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

Really great Boston University shirt on that kid. Sure. Yeah. I really like it. Like getting Boston represented.

You see what he just indicated? This is his movie about child abandonment. It's true. Dreyfuss' UFO encounter all the way through the highway chase, the fake out with the second car that I mentioned, where it turns out the UFO is clearly the... Okay, motherfucker!

him almost hitting the kid in his truck yeah it's a great oh no you just think the kid's gonna get pancake and then the UFO's going by and then them chasing him the one guy goes off the cliff like that's holy shit that's a great seven minutes all through the toll plaza do we still have toll plazas we do I assume I don't remember anything about seeing this in the theater other than being scared at the end but I assume when the lights go up behind him that was probably a noise made by the audience yeah

Right? Like, sinners had that a little bit when... when she walks away, Josh Allen's wife, when she walks away from the group.

When Josh Allen's wife walks away. Drake May would never allow his wife to be in the film. No way. And all of a sudden that vampire. Bill's won the AFC East like nine times in a row. Definitely thought about that. Drake May's not marrying an actress. He's got a seventh grade girlfriend.

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

It's fine. I knew it was coming. The Northern India scene. My God.

And then the last 20 minutes is unbelievable. It's like the ultimate payoff where they go over the mountain and then they look and Melinda Dillon's face kind of does the jaw drop. And then it's like, wait, what's going on here? It ties into a bunch of 70s shit that we'll talk to. But it's just such a cool, constructive movie.

Yeah. Unlike when Jason Tatum went down. It wasn't a dream. It was real. Well, perspective matters. The Northern India scene.

They come from Linda Dillon's house and take Barry.

Right through the dog door. Don't have a dog door is one of the lessons of this movie.

Just open the door, let your dog out.

First of all, it's like just an invitation for burglars. They're always like just big enough for somebody to squeeze through. It's a pretty small burglar. Yeah. Well, but if you have a burglar crew.

No, I think Richard Dreyfuss could have.

Yeah.

True.

Dog doors don't exist anymore. Like, if I went to somebody's house and they had a dog door, I wouldn't know what was going on. You wouldn't trust them. No, I'd just be like, what are you guys doing?

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

I thought it was a good idea.

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

I enjoy the big air Air Force town hall. Yeah. Just because I like town hall scenes.

Yeah.

It's cool. Well, one of the best scenes in the movie is the mashed potato scene.

I wrote down Spielberg is the goat of these scenes.

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

praise for this movie as like the great kid actor with the kid who plays uh near his eldest son is really yeah he's excellent yeah i have uh i have three left roy loses his shit and starts throwing things into his house yeah when they eavesdrop on the ufo communication before they go down and then the whole ending i don't know how do you separate We get Barry back. Roy gets his own red jumpsuit.

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

I really like the mashed potatoes in there. This is turning into my favorite category. What's the most blank thing about this movie? In this case, the most 1977 thing.

This wasn't like Star Wars. This was kind of its own thing. And the cachet of it was that the guy from Jaws made it. That's the only thing I remember. But it tapped into all this UFO stuff that my experience with UFOs, and I think everybody's was up until this time, was aliens were potentially evil. They're coming to get us. They're going to invade us.

He would want to debate Lacombe.

A McDonald's sign with only 24 billion served.

Rotary phones, the TVs, neighbors hanging out in the street. We don't get that anymore. And if we get it, you assume that, um, Something bad is about to happen? Come over to my neighborhood.

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

Here are my two favorites, though. A three-year-old kid named Barry. Yeah. It's just never happening.

Maybe the last year you named your kid Barry. Yeah. And then... This is the number one. They're eating dinner. There's just a thing of whole milk in the middle of the table. Well, whole milk is back.

That was where I learned on how to take. We're doing Close Encounters this week, a movie that... Maybe needed more time in the oven, but we're pulling it out anyway. Like a beautiful thing of banana bread. This brioche is a little soft in the middle. Just hoping it's delicious. Holy shit, was this an undertaking. But Close Encounters of the Third Kind is next.

That's, like, the most un-American thing. We need Trump. Maybe Trump can use his powers for good. Save Applejack's. Trump coming out for Count Chocula.

That was like all the programming from the radio stuff in the 30s and 40s. The movie shows in the 50s and 60s. And it was all like, watch out, they're coming. And this movie just flipped it. And they're like, what if they're not coming? What if they're just really interested in finding out more about us? Which now seems like the easiest flip to make, but back then was like a crazy movie.

Not gonna be Trump. What's aged the best?

CR's like, I still believe in the long two and no UFOs.

Okay. I don't think that's controversial anymore.

How do you explain Giannis and Ted Akupo?

Oh, yeah. What else do you have for what's aged the best?

Unfortunately, it leads to Zemeckis making contact.

So Craig's pro that and dog doors so far.

Yeah. Written and directed by Steve Spielberg. Yeah.

There's been movies since where the person only he can see The thing. I feel like it's been ripped off every time we've ever seen a movie. Man on Fire. Yeah, Field of Dreams. Field of Dreams is a really good example. Morwood's age is the best for me. Royce Sunburn, I always thought was really smart. Really funny. The half-faced Sunburn. The little kid is just incredible, Barry.

There's a good casting what if with him, but he just makes some great faces. Very likable. I never feel like he's in total danger. Did you read the story of how he got that performance out of him?

Steve. I like the giant globe.

Well, but think about 20 years later, we're in Armageddon Independence Day mode, where it's like, the aliens are coming, they're gonna fucking get us again. Yeah. And that's kind of the generational response to whatever was going on here, where it was way more hope in outer space, I think.

I love it. And then they have to roll the globe down the hallway. Any movie with a plot involving Devil's Tower, I feel like you're just in good hands. It's like, oh, shit, Devil's Tower is involved now. 1970s big family moms calmly navigating their crazy husband. Perfect. That wife is out the door now in five minutes. I wouldn't say Terry Garr is terribly calm in the movie.

No, she melts down once or twice.

They called Carrie Guffey one-take Carrie, by the way. No relation to one-take Jean. One-take CR. So little kids wearing numbered football or baseball shirts that don't have a team. This was a total thing in the 70s. I have pictures of myself in those shirts, and then it just went away.