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You know what it's talking sources say with Joey Edelman. Also, you guys, please watch After the Thrones. It's on Sunday nights, basically really late Monday morning, it's supposed to be me and Andy Greenwald, and it's available after every episode of Game of Thrones on HBO. Now go even HBO proper, where it's on tonight, Monday night.
Winter is here, and me and Andy are here to break it down. I need support to have to play the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed.
My name is Chris Ryan. I'm editor at TheRiggo.com, and joining me on the other line, Nixon, Vodka, and Emotions. It's Andy Greenwald! Whoa!
Hey, buddy. What's up? Views from the six. Views from the six came out.
We're recording this on Monday, so it's only been a few hours, since America saw both of us take the plaid, and air a second episode of After the Thrones, a lot going on. Yeah, you can catch After the Thrones now on HBO Now, Go, and HBO on Demand, and then you can watch us tonight, late night, 10 PM Pacific, 1 AM Eastern. And if you are watching us, or if you are recording us on DVR, at a little time, at about 10 more minutes, because we went over. Just like the last verse just went on and on.
You need that bonus content. By the way, can we, on episode 10 of After the Thrones, can we do Kanye's last call, where they just run the theme music, and we just shout out everyone who's been a part of our journey thus far? Or just like a classic cannabis freestyle? I think, listen, if we can end the show with a classic.
We just start talking about how the moon landing wasn't real. Because let me be clear with you. If we end our show with a classic cannabis freestyle, we are definitely ending our show. I mean, that in a very literal sense.
Just by choosing to do that, that would be quite a way to go. Yeah, so we're going to talk about Drake, right? We're going to talk about, I got some airplane movies to unpack. I know people are excited about that, because hashtag is a thing.
But we've got to talk a little bit more about Thrones, right? All of our big ticket. Let's repackage airplane movies to what we're really going to talk about. I think airplane movies is great.
But we're also going to talk about the creeping television efficacious of movies and the back and forth dialogue between the two mediums. OK, but I think hashtag is a thing. It's a far set. I just feel like as a brand expert.
There's like three people who have done that. As a branding expert, I just feel like it's zippier. You know what I mean? I think people want to know I'm on a lot of planes these days.
And so I'm seeing a lot of movies. I'm having some big cultural thoughts. And it's probably worth noting that any other cultural opinions I share in the podcast for the next eight weeks are probably a little shard nice, Augie. I'm trying to think of what the Drake line about you taking lots of planes would be.
Taking a flight like Denzel Washington in flight. Oh, I think that would definitely be like his bars about it. But I thought even like the creeping undertone of just sadness and self-pity underneath it would be the Drake version of it. But that's how I fly.
Oh, listen, I was flying like Drake before Drake was flying like Drake. We should talk. Can we talk a little bit about the Thrones? I mean, I know our big ticket thoughts are on the TV, but there's more out there, man.
This is a big one. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's sort of the more meta conversation that we didn't talk about after the Thrones, which is just the mechanics of having a character be quote unquote dead for an entire off season and won and seven eights of a episode. And then kind of being like, and you know, Alison Herman who wrote something in our newsletter today for the ringer, she made a point where she was just like, usually the big moments on thrones are quite the opposite of what happened with Jon Snow. You know, it's like usually losing someone, not getting someone back.
That's what we thought. I thought that was a really good point. You know, and I think it was very cathartic, you know, a very nice episode to watch in so much as there can be a nice episode of television in which a woman and a baby had eaten by dogs. But yeah, it is interesting.
There was like a secondary storyline here about the wave that Kit Harrington was like out on these streets, just being like, I'm out. Side note, if I had pulled you aside just like five, just four short weeks ago, and I was like, Chris, and a prestige HBO Sunday night show is going to show, is going to, for the first time show, explicit horse fucking. Like you would have thought it was Game of Thrones, right? Like at no point would you have been like, oh man, Silicon Valley's really kicking it up a notch.
No, I would have been like, did you get the sex episode of luck? Can I get it? But that's right. That's actually, you actually just out did my joke because the bigger joke is that it's really pick them.
When it comes to which prestige HBO show, what if that except ours, I guess? At least our budget doesn't allow like full horse penetration yet, right? What do you think the reaction was at HBO when my judge was like, so exterior, we open on two horses and they're like, wait, no, wait, just don't go any further. I just did it like.
Or whose job was it? And we could ask because we know people now the company, like were you able to secure the services of the horse, the same horse you lit on fire and Belfast last year and been like, look, look, look Mr. Ed, I know you've got to run over this time. Can we make it right with you?
Because we'd like to put you to stud on a popular comedy this season. The bigger thing is, when Stephen Tobalowski got his notes for the season, how did they describe character? Or was that green screen? Or did they just tell him, Stephen, like you're in front of something astonishing, something beautiful and majestic.
And he's like, oh, like a wall on Game of Thrones? And they're like, sure, definitely Stephen. That's what it is. I couldn't help to think about his Groundhog Day character when I was watching that scene in Silicon Valley last night.
If you haven't seen it, this exchange is probably grotesque and probably sexually troubling to you. But in last night Silicon Valley, Stephen Tobalowski's character while talking with another character on the show, they watched two horses meet. I think it's worth noting that I realize now the era in my ways people probably maybe thought I was being metaphorical when in fact it was explicit. Equine, intercourse, like on the TV.
And so soon to Kentucky Derby Day. Well, right. You just think about the theatrical tradition of horse love. And you think about great plays like Equus and War Horse.
And these plays have really always been more figurative, like they built a paper, a wooden horse, and let the mind do what it wants to do. We live in a different era now, that's all I'm saying. There was a lot of suspension. This is definitely the weirdest thing we've ever talked about.
Buckle up. Right. So let's all the way back to Allison's point, which I agree with. And I think you and I were both a little bit thrown by this, too, which is that this episode, this second episode of season six home, is essentially a heroic episode, which is very much not in keeping, as she said, with the show, other than the Ramsey stuff, which in many ways was almost there as a counterweight to everything else.
It was a lot of uplifting scenes. And to end on a note like that suggested, we talked about this on the show. But are we being lulled into a sense of comfort before the real hammer drops, or has the show turned to corner and having knocked everything down? It's now about to start building things up again.
Yeah, I think that the thing about that cliffhanger, because it is more of a cliffhanger than I think we're really allowing it to be, because he took that breath. But we don't really know what's going to happen next with him. There's really, we're in somewhat uncharted territory, obviously, on after the thrones, we talk a lot about the resurrection of Berit Dendarian in this third season. But let me ask, let's look at it this way.
Do you think that they could have played? Was there a way in which this could have been played differently that would have built up suspense? Do you think that this was treated as if it was a miracle? Because that's what Davos calls it.
But outside of the world of the show, is this a miracle or is this something that was a little bit, could have been drawn out a little bit more? Well, I think that's a question a lot of people have today. And I said this on the show. But I think that I was surprised by how much I was OK with him staying dead, not permanently, but for a few more weeks.
Because I really liked the way this spotlight was then shared among the other characters up in Castle Black. And we just had Tormundarive. And there was an almost surprising bit of kindness demonstrated by the show this week, because there were so many characters spread out over the world map referring to John and Sansa's going to see him. And everyone knows where he is and talking about him up there.
And it would be very much within keeping the character of the show for them. All of that moment to receive a raven. You're thinking, news flow is dead. So a lot of characters didn't experience that tragic arc.
But here's the thing you have to think about it. The show is very much not being made in a vacuum. And I think that given the real world demands placed on this production and the real world scrutiny placed on the show, two episodes, or as you put it, one in seven eighths is about as far as you could stretch this thing. And I've been finding that reaction fascinating.
Because I'm fine with the storytelling of it. Because it seems quite clear that John Snow's story within this television show is one of Death and Rebirth. That this had to happen for the next thing to happen. But we were very much in a world where the TV show part of it.
And we're part of it. We perpetuate this by having a TV show to talk about it in a podcast. The TV show is one hour of the week. But the phenomenon stretches 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year.
They just simply couldn't keep up a ruse. And I said, and we said this on the watch a few weeks ago, actually, now it was a few months ago, when the first promotional image just came out. I thought having that first poster be a picture of John Snow was about as classy as you can get in terms of winking, but not winking. Being like, we know you're waiting.
We all know this is coming. But we're letting the story play out. I don't know how else there is to do it in this world. Because you can't live in a world where you, it's hard to imagine a version of fandom where you want 24 hour access to the imagination, to the characters and the actors and the creators.
And then be upset when you sort of see the way that the strings are being pulled behind the scenes. I don't think that it was as, I understand if some people were just like, I went through this traumatic loss of a character. And I found out that that wasn't real. But I don't think that there was as much of a bait and switch here.
I mean, I guess it sounds like I'm carrying water. But I don't think there was as much of a bait and switch here because they never did anything with the body. I mean, they washed it and they gave America. But they kept that body around.
They didn't bury him. He didn't leave the show. He never went away. And I think that there was something almost earned in terms of storytelling by keeping him present on the show.
If he had gone away and then shown up at the end like Dr. Doug Ross or something, I think that that would have been a little bit more chintzy. And you would have probably been like, oh, this is, you can kind of see the contracts being ripped up and re-signed here. But this was a storytelling device.
And this was about pushing the boundaries of what is possible in this world. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting to see, I mean, we're obviously very involved with this season and thinking about it a lot. And you and I are talking about it a lot on and off camera and on and off the microphone.
But I'm very curious. And we'll talk to Jason and Jason Steppzion and Nauti Rubin about this on a podcast soon. But I'm curious if the book readers share the feeling of momentum that I think you and I are feeling and other people, other fans of the show might be feeling. Like, is this a new sense of momentum because we're finally turning the corner or we're finally quote unquote off book?
Or is it just where we are in the story that that sort of feeling is inevitable? I get from, it's been clear to me from people and from fans that some characters who have been viciously stabbed to death by close family members over the last few weeks are still living in the books. And so, but I'm curious. One thing that has been clear to me is, is there fate feel like where it was headed in the books?
Or is this basically the TV show asserting itself and clearing the decks for this end game of how many seasons of which we don't know specifically, but we could imagine there's at least one more that it's been renewed for and potentially one after that? I was kind of curious about how you felt. Because when I watched these episodes on Sunday nights, I noticed more than on my first viewing about how these first two episodes have had so much work to do in terms of story. Now, we haven't had a scene where a character like leaves the room that they're in.
Do you know what I mean? Davos being in two rooms at Castle Black, where he was first season the room where John is and then he goes and sees Melisandre and then he goes back to the amount of action that happened at Castle Black this week was the most sustained animation and action that we've had in an episode. So far, which is, I know it's a small sample size, but as it's just another conversation topic with the show, the storytelling that they have to pull off right now and the way that they have to structure these episodes. Because we were talking a little bit before about the idea of doing bottle episodes or having something like Blackwater or Hardhome that has huge set pieces, which I know are very hard to pull off and expensive and everything like that.
But give that, you're talking about momentum that we're feeling and I do feel that momentum and I almost wonder whether we're not even ready for the momentum we're really gonna feel once this show gets into like third or fourth gear. No, I think it's true. I mean, one thing that we've talked about a bunch is the unprecedented scope and it's interesting. I think that we've mostly had been lulled into a sense of expansion.
I probably chafed it at some points in my recap. I know I did in my recap of the last few years that everyone wants Daenerys to like start moving west and she keeps going further east or she gets bogged down as Quagmire. But basically we've come to expect this in Game of Thrones and there's going to be dramatic changes and shifts and reversals and reveals. But the breadth of the show essentially stays unchanged, right?
But the fact that it actually does feel- I don't know if I would have felt that way about Daenerys and that idea that there is an end game going on if there wasn't this, if you were writing a recap about Game of Thrones, would you necessarily have this sort of ticking clock on when is this gonna get to its sort of- No, you for pitch? I think we were getting it as a really good question, which is if you're watching a normal TV show, this is very much a normal TV show. Characters go on journeys and stuff happens because the whole point of the show is to spread out and stay on for as long as you can until suddenly you know, until the bells run, basically. I don't watch The Good Wife, but people seem to have a lot of opinions about Alicia running for all of this.
I was just gonna bring that up. In season five, season six, right? But I think one of the reasons why people have become, so attached to Game of Thrones is, okay, dragons, but one of the other reasons why they become so emeshened and were able to fell in love with it so intensely, is this feeling of one story is being told. Yes, there are a million little stories, but there is a bigger story here and we can trust it.
It goes all the way back to the things that people felt about, the resentment that some people in my mind ridiculously feel about loss, where they were like, I trusted you and you didn't pay it off, my investment, but the reason people felt okay about not getting burned when they went all in on Game of Thrones, they were like, well, there's a roadmap and there's a book and this is one story, even though a lot of this might feel digressive, right? But otherwise, for 50 years of TV drama watching, yeah, it's just like, of course, Alicia has a side quest this season because what's her business gonna be in season five, otherwise she has to have something. Well, even as The Good Wife sort of is winding down now and we don't really talk about it that much on this show. It should be clear we never talk about it.
Except for two seconds at the end when I shout out to the microphone. But this has been, and I know that they did this series this season without a total amount of clarity about whether it would be the final season that they wrote, they sort of wrote the finale of the season as if this would be the end because the kings who do the show were leaving and there was a possibility they were gonna do a sort of John Wells West Wing thing where someone else was running the show. But they didn't, and I wouldn't go so far as to say it's anticlimactic as much as, it's totally in hand with the rest of What The Good Wife is, which is so not what so many cable dramas are in terms of the way that their plot works, that there's really not a whole lot at stake here. I mean, there's a degree to which whether or not Alicia stands by Peter through what will maybe be his worst defeat ever is in play, and if she does or doesn't, what that means for the rest of the show.
But it's not exactly like Russian nesting dolls, it's really more a group of people who have been on the air for seven years and have come to an ending point of sorts. I'm gonna, you mentioned one show I don't watch, I'm gonna one up you with a show You Don't Watch, which is The Americans, which is just, sorry, it's just incredible this year, it's absolutely the best season of the show. I've watched this week's episode next week's and it's just astonishing. But what I wanted to say about it was, as I've been watching this season unfold, I've been feeling the sort of two poles of TV drama watching, the old traditional one and the modern one in conflict.
Because the traditional mode of TV drama watching was the illusion of change with the assurance of stability. Yeah, yes. In the same way we watched Cheers because we wanted to hang out with our friends and everyone knew each other's names, like dramas, I don't know what I'm reaching here, but like LA Law or St. Elswear, like things happen.
Friends is even a good example because it's like the will there won't they, but with the actual bedrock of these six will never change. And the reason why I showed like I mentioned LA Law, but if you think about ER, the star of the show was the hospital. So the characters changed, but the rhythms of it and the uplift when people were cured, that was always the same. And so when I actually read a really interesting interview with the Kings in the Times this weekend, the Kings who made for the show.
Yes, the Michelle and Robert King. Not the five kings of Westeros who went to war. No, I was really reading a great interview with the Drown God in Ironborn Weekly. He would be an onion, I think, but please go.
I will cut off your tongue. No, I was reading, and so they were talking about why networks always love hospital shows is because you can always end up with one on the floor. And how tough that is for any other show is like if you kill someone, that doesn't happen a lot. You know, in real life.
So it's difficult to work that in, yeah, it's cops and doctors. You can have the stakes are so much higher. And so when I'm watching the Americans this year, it's playing out for me because the show is pretty aggressively moving things forward, not necessarily towards the finale because there's going to be at least one more season, at least that's what the showrunners told me when I have them on the podcast. There's definitely going to be a season.
There might even be a six in final season. It's unclear. But they are moving things forward, and I'm starting to realize that as much as I'm eager and excited to see how they play out these things, because the show is just excruciatingly tense and always has been, I miss the status quo. I start to have a feeling of regret that I'm not spending time with these characters in these familiar places anymore, which is an interesting way to be interacting with the show in this modern era when the whole point of it often seems to be, let's just get to the end, let's tell one story and move it, move it along.
We spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the value of miniseries because that's what, or limited series or events series. This came up so much with Sol. Exactly, exactly. And here I am maybe contradicting myself because that show certainly dug its heels in to a very specific place this season and I found it a little frustrating.
I think potentially because that place still feels like so many steps behind. And I mean that in all senses. I think there's also a little bit more to bring in that. We perceive it as that show having, trying to have a cake and eat it too with the mic D plot.
It's just so intoxicating to watch Mike and know where that is going and know who he is about to be associated with. Whereas the Jimmy Saul stuff, while having its good parts anyway, it just seems much more obtuse or not obtuse. It seems so distant from something. It seems so distant from its end point, which is weird that I would be on a season, a second season of a show, be like demanding to know where you're going.
Well, I also just don't know, and I'm sure this is a conversation that Vince Gaille and Peter Gold had and they had with Joel Solarman and AMC and others involved in the show. Like is someone becoming Saul Goodman that interesting? And I'm not saying it's not, I just don't always know if it is. And I think they're certainly aware of that.
And that's why they're doing the best to ground it in real emotional stakes with Kim, which is a total success. And then with his brother, Chuck, a character that I think I could sort of take her leave. Like I think the way that the pieces fit together in the season two finale were just very telegraphed and ultimately not that meaningful. They were designed to give you the same emotional wallop.
Like, oh, wow, look how twisted this has become. Look how he's got him over the barrel. Look what this is pointing towards. It had the same sort of ticking clock mechanism that worked on Breaking Bad, but the stakes were just so, so, so much lower.
I kind of disappointing. So we're having a broad conversation about TV. And I think we should probably note that unclear if we're gonna be able to do to travel schedules and stuff started up this week or next week, but we are gonna start doing some forward looking Game of Thrones re-ups. Right, so we will get back into the conversation.
Yeah, we'll do some preview stuff going forward. It's just today is not the day for that. And let's take a quick break and come back and then we can talk a little bit about airplane reviews. We should talk about movies next.
Yeah, yeah, hashtag it's a thing. We'll be right back. Just wanna take a second to talk a little bit about one of our sponsors, DraftKings. Experience the thrill of one week, Fantasy Golf every week at DraftKings.com.
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That's DraftKings.com. So as long-time listeners, I'm sure no. Andy does not get to the theater as much as he would like to. I mean, the movie theater as much as he would like to.
But in the advent of doing this after the throne show, has just been inundated with some recent classics. Yeah, but good. You know, we... Thank you for carrying the water on this bit.
I know you're fighting against it, but I really appreciate it. And also, I would like to say for people who are curious, I get to the actual theater just enough. You know, in case people are confused. Not the movie theater, but like the great way way I'm good.
I'm fine. Good, please. And Andy, we just use this as a jumping off point to talk a little about the movies. Yeah, I don't really feel like we should.
Actually, some of the time in the theaters right now, I mean, I talked a lot about Green Room. I didn't get a chance to see Keanu yet. And we don't need to look forward to louder than bombs. I'd like to see that.
You don't necessarily need to know how I felt about the night before, or sisters, or some of the other great choices I made on recent cross-country, John's. You know, I could go on about how, ultimately, I'd just keep wanting to watch Hannah and her sisters. And I did again. It might be his best film, really a masterpiece.
Nice to see the three I'd raven, you know, on two legs, not in a tree, and, you know, domestically, a separate point. So this strip, along the way out, I watched Black Mass, which is the weighty-bulger biopic that Johnny Depp was in. And it seemed like a real prestige ocean liner, right? The cast, if you are a strong-jawed white dude between 35 and 45, and you weren't cast in this movie, then you probably should get a new agent, because the cast was his.
Kevin Bacon, Joel Edgerton, The Pepper Batch. Adam Scott, the boy, Jesse Plennons. Really? And then it was written by Jez Butterworth, who wrote Jerusalem, which was like this huge play in England, which did a lot to sort of popularize Mark Ryland's to the 100 world.
Butterworth's kicking up in Hollywood. He did Spectre too. Yeah, he wrote a skiffle, but he writes something. He's Spectre.
Yeah. Because I watched some of Spectre on this recent flight. And whoof. Yeah, I was a, anyway, the thing about Black Mass, it was interesting.
My favorite thing about Eddie's airplane movies is that the initial take is so rex-read. It's like, hey, now, I do not know about that one. Well, I got to say, there is something to watching these movies just completely devoid of context, like a year later. And just, you know, there's an element.
The reason all of us love going to the movie theater is because it's an experience, and there's a spectacle. And seeing things, you know, when you're at this nice popcorn, maybe you're reclining a little bit. If you're in my neighborhood, you're just feeling like the rhythmic nibble of bed bugs on your back. No, like the big screen, like seeing a movie is a fun experience for the most part.
And it can excuse a lot of things, like maybe some clunkers in the script or whatever. But if you're at 30,000 feet, whatever, it's maybe not as forgiving. So anyway, so I watched Black Mass. This is what I want to say.
And it's really, really bad. Because it cannot decide what it wants to be. And it's a fascinating way. Like all the pieces are there for this to be good.
And not even in a world in which Boston, the movie, on Fun Your DiExists, right? Like there's still a way for this to be something. When the movie begins, it begins with a close up of Jesse Plemons. And it seems to be like, oh, so this movie's going to be like, good fellas with Jesse Plemons as the Ray Liotta character coming up with a Whitey Bulger gang and then finding out about the betrayal with the feds.
And then it immediately forgets about him. And we don't see him again until the end. And then we meet Johnny Depp playing Willy Wonka, playing the gangster. And it's a very bizarre choice, of course, because he likes doing bizarre choices.
But this is his movie where he was like the spite wearing ghostly makeup and weird blue contacts he was acting in this one. He wasn't performing. He wasn't doing Michael Jackson impression. And he's very charismatic.
He's very compelling. But this was the wrong movie. The thing about the movie, and the thing that clearly maybe Butterworth or the other credit screenwriters or someone at some point in this was like, look at the Whitey Bulger thing. And it was like, well, we already made the departed exists.
What is the story here? And the story here is not just that Whitey Bulger, Boston crime lord, was an FBI informant. The story is that the guy who was tasked with investigating him in the FBI grew up in South E. Worship the Bulger brothers and basically made him an informant to protect him and take down the Italian mob.
So it's this really interesting story about misplaced affection and loyalty and neighborhoods. And that's the Joe Ledgerton part. And my feeling is, and I hope someone who knows can call in and tell me this, someone wrote a script about the Joe Ledgerton character in relation to the Bulger brothers. But to get the movie made, they offered it to Johnny Depp.
And he was like, great, the movie's about me now. And so they made this weird lumpy biopic that's also supposed to be a psychological drama. They made 100 movies and none of them are good. And that's my review.
But what I wanted to ask you, because you go to all the theaters all the time, you love experimental black box theater, you love movie theaters. Don't love bed bugs, which is why you moved away from Brooklyn. We talked, and I apologize to the monologue, but we've talked many times about how TV thinking has invaded the multiplex, especially in relation to blockbusters and shared universes and how the Marvel movies are essentially each year there's just a new season of the Marvel movie TV show and movie is a great piece in New York magazine about how the Russo brothers, TV directors are the perfect people to be directing these movies. They can manage budgets and keep things moving on time.
All of that. Watch this movie made me wonder. Our boy Jim Mickle, who does happen Leonard and has directed a couple of really good small independent films, said, I'm paraphrasing, Hollywood deserves to be kicked in the dick for this one. For black mass?
No, for the Russo brothers are the platonic ideal of Hollywood directors. I think this is what you want. That's pretty interesting. And I feel like that sort of stuff is getting all the ink in the spotlight.
That's how movies are becoming TV. But I watch black mass. And I'm going to take my answer off the air. I'm going to step back, I promise.
But I feel like you're better equipped to say this. This is like watching Joe Johnson dribble for five minutes. Let's see if you can do this. I'm walking away.
I promise. I'm leaving the arena. That's what Joe Johnson says every day. And that's why he's a proven winner.
Movies have to be about a specific moment. You pick your story beginning middle end and you get out of there and you do the best you can. It's the opposite of TV, which can spread out the story. Black Mass felt like they were worried about if they were telling the right story.
A star was involved. So they decided we'll just tell all the stories. They tried to cram five seasons of a TV show about the Boston Mob into a two-hour movie, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do. And I wonder if you're seeing that sort of it has to be everything all the time thinking in movies separate apart from summer blockbusters.
I'm done. I'm done. I'm dropping this mic. I'm going to take a lap around the block on this one and get warmed up.
Yeah. I do feel by starting a little bit earlier in your point, which is just I want to type in and say, Johnny Depp doesn't make good movies. So Johnny Depp has made Edward. That was pretty good.
So good. I like public enemies, but he is not a very good part of it. I agree with both of them. And some people really like Lone Ranger.
And I defy you to someone. Who likes Lone Ranger? Who likes Sean Fennessy? Sean Fennessy and Quentin Torentino, both like Lone Ranger.
Listen to me, Chris. When you invoke the name of the troll, you have to say the name of the troll. It's like people just, you know what I mean? You can't just be like, there's a dude under the bridge who likes Lone Ranger.
You have to say, John Fennessy. Skyped up 101. Other than that, he has not made a good film. And in fact, seems to excel at making other piles of shit, AKA Transcendence, Mordecai, Dark Shadows, basically anything that's in Burton other than Edward.
I like the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but come on, Charlie and Chocolate Factory, you get out of here from hell. I thought it was OK, so it was below, but that was like a weird run. What about a Halo, Astronaut's wife, Nightgate, was kind of whatever. Johnny Brasko, I know people like.
Yeah, Brasko's good. What about what's eating Gilbert Grape? Early stuff. No.
No, you don't mess with Parnin June? Hard pass. You don't have any June? I like to have fear and loathing.
I like him as that in that. Did you really, though, dog? Did you really like it? I mean, did you just like the fact that it got made?
Have I thought about it since I did this scroll through the Wikipedia page as you're talking? Yeah. Yeah. OK, that's a pretty good point.
All right. Yeah, OK, so I'll accept it. He also might. I mean, people mock Adam Sandler.
I would be interested to know whether or not Johnny Depp has the highest box office receipts to the lowest rotten tomatoes. Well, there's a I mean, we could do and maybe we will at this point. Like, there's definitely a Johnny Depp podcast to be done because to go from someone who had all the talent and had this like manne looks to someone who basically wanted clearly like just wanted to hide and play dress up and be a weirdo. I mean, I would start up kill Tate right now if I could look like Johnny Depp.
His looks are not listening question. I would get it. I would shave that fucking Dartanian, but I would be happy to look like it. He's got a great wig, great hair set of hair, set of hair, great head of hair.
That's like the basketball ring. You like to dunk on it? He like to just run a cruise moment. That's my dad Cruz moment.
Run a cruise to the air. Good. Do you know that Johnny Depp is in London Fields? I was about to tell you that and see how you felt about it.
How do you feel about it? London Fields is your shit. London Fields by my name is a very important book for 21 year old Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. They probably, you know, I feel about it like one feels about a lot of one's favorite books, which is they probably can't make a movie of it.
So it's cute that they're trying and I don't have very high hopes for it. Okay, you have I know you have a hard house. Let me get back to your original question, which is about focusing movies and making them about this 90 to 130 minute sort of series of events and just really like telling a single story as well as possible. Yes, it's a little box.
Like Lawrence of Arabia and all these, the ways that films can just jump back and forth across time is, you know, sort of singular experience you can have in the movie theater. But I do think that the more that I read about, especially modern filmmaking, the Russo's is a really good example in Marvel and everything like that. You know, I've been thinking about this a lot because the Captain America Civil War press has been so good. And I am pretty resigned to the idea that I am going to go into Captain America Civil War much like I went into Winter Soldier, which is expecting some sort of comic book version of all the President's men and coming out with a pretty good Marvel movie, you know, because I think that more and more with the more corporations and venture capitalists and money that's involved with movies, it's just kind of a miracle when a movie is good.
And even when a movie gets made with the best of intentions like same-night special, which is a lot going for it. I really, really like Jeff Nichols. And I think he makes really cool movies. The ending of that movie is nonsensical.
And you could say, oh, you know, get it or the endings of movies don't matter or something like that. But I think that that end of that movie is not good. You know, and Jeff Nichols has everything going for him as a filmmaker and that movie had everything going for it as a story. And so I think that when you talk about something like Black Mass, which I know that they were competing, Whitey Bulger films in production or at least in development, you have to wonder about every single thing that went wrong along the way.
And it was interesting to tie this into what we were talking about earlier. Listening to the Kings, Robert Richelt, King Angelina Margolis talk about how there's basically no amount of money you could pay us. Well, this is Margolis who said it to do a 22-episode season of television. If you're a person who has a pretty good idea for a story, aside from the thrill of seeing it on a big screen and just participating in the cultural legacy of being, having your movie distributed, it's increasingly hard for me to understand why you would want to put your story through that process.
Because the chances are much higher that it will wind up getting compromised or whatever along the way that if somebody lets you make, you look at this Richard Price miniseries that's coming out on HBO, it's like, that couldn't be made into a movie. They wouldn't let, what's the night before? Night of the Steven Zillion thing? Night of.
Yeah, it's Steve. People are telling you it's amazing. I'm excited to see it. Yeah, because the Steve Zillion Richard Price finally gets to do something where nobody's messing with it.
Yeah, I mean, you really hit on something, which is that, this is something that I think any piece of whatever that seeks to cover the entertainment industry, there should always just be a little caveat, a little footnote, just always say really loudly, he does an impossible crazy miracle that anything good ever gets made in anything, honestly in any field, but I think you're especially right in movies. You know, where it's just, there's just a thousand demands and a thousand cooks and you're just really trying to steer away from disaster. Yeah. So Black Mask was directed by Scott Cooper, who got great reviews for a movie he made with Jeff Bridges called Crazy Heart.
And I don't know him, I don't mean to cast any dispersions on his character or anything, but you see people who made very well regarded indie movies get tapped to do symphodic movies that they might bring some perspective to, but they are hired specifically because they're a couple, right? Because they can't, they can't win in the end against the other forces of play, whether it's Johnny Depp's agents or the studio. And so their vision gets just, you know, they're basically there to be Russo brothers, even though they have something more to say, they're there to be stewards of the brand. Yeah.
Now, I know we got to move on another topic, but the flip side of that, and if I could just bring it back to the airplane movies one more time, is that on another flight recently, I fired up to Oscar contenders from the past year and Carol, I keep threatening Chris. Every time I sit down, I see, I just tell him I'm gonna do the Carol Brooklyn double feature and just blow his mind and shatter all his fingers. I saw both those movies and enjoy both of the vices. I saw the Brooklyn apologist and I, you know, you can always talk Rooney, Mary with me.
You're Carol Stan? All right, I'll watch it. But listen, I'm not like, I thought the movie had issues, but I was very in a room. It was the issue being that Kate and her should have been in it.
I fired up two other Oscar content. I fucking podcast over and I made it like full stop. Chris, I made it 10 minutes into both of these movies. A lot of we said, get the fuck out of here and turned it off.
We'll see. This is why you need to go to the theater because sometimes you need to challenge yourself and not just drink Chardonnay and watch house hunters. I think I had a gin and tonic that day, but look, it was, it was, that was a remnant and joy. I, both of them, I just thought were so ridiculous immediately and just phony nonsense.
But the reason, the phony nonsense thing about them was the strength of the directorial vision. Right. So I probably was premature because, you know, is, is in your view as just like letting the bullets whizz through the pelts, you know, up in, up in Canada and Tom Hardy, I don't know. You have the surround sound on that flight.
I literally don't know what he was doing this one. Yeah. Like I don't want to see this. This is, I don't want this, but he is, he's flexing because he's one of the few people allowed to flex and so is David O'Russell being like, you know, it's a magical, camera spinning fable about little girls and mops.
Someone just come out and relax, everybody. Relax. I'm like, this crime movie, Hollywood. That's my, that's, that's, that's my airplane comment.
Airplane coming in for a little bit. We should keep talking about this. I like, I like the, you're, you're a major idea about TV, the effect of TV on movies, how these things talk to each other. I also think it's just really fascinating to watch Carrie Fukunaga's career coming out of TV or he's getting that, that TV boost and he hasn't been able to really, like, you know, obviously the beast of no nation was, was a very powerful phone, but off of it, you know, like, I feel like he's had a lot of stuff that's almost been popping off.
It hasn't, hasn't really rocked anything yet. Let's mention that beast of no nation was made due to the largesse of TV because Netflix wanted to, right. Netflix was basically like, we need to, we want to start making movies and the way we're going to get noticed is we're going to throw a lot of money at a attention getting prestige project that, you know, real talk no one else is going to make. And that's what I got made.
Thanks, TV. Thanks, TV. You're the best. You want to talk about Drake?
You want to climb the old, the old CN tower or whatever the tower is called and dangle your Tim's office. You know that, that image now has so much more resonance after listening to that record. So we're talking about views and just your boy on just sitting on the top of a tower all alone. High as can be.
So alone. Higher than his expectations. And now you look at that picture and it's like, oh, look at a lonely motherfucker on the top of a building. This didn't go the way he thought it was going to go.
I don't think this album is not being well received. I don't think that this record was first of all built for event listening. No. It didn't come with a movie.
It didn't come with a Madison Square Garden collective celebration that Pablo did. It doesn't have the force of will that butterfly did. Not that you can only be one of those records. In fact, that's what this record really is.
It's a throwback to like these 20 song expansive skits. I don't know, man, but it's to be like putting so much this record is, you know, people have been following Drake's career. He's just had a lot of weight on it, man. Like he's been talking about views for a few years now.
He put out what it's time to be alive. And if you're reading this, it's too late as sort of stop gaps. And now you're just like, did you, first of all, no shots, but shots. There's definitely been a brain drain in Drake's ghost writing camp.
Yeah. Yeah. So this one has some effing clunkers on it and also feels very like improvisatory or like he's just making it up as he's going along for as sculpted and beautiful as the beats feel to have so many things where somebody could just tap them on the shoulder and like, hey, man, that one sucked. Like, like no one calls you chain and chain.
No one did that. I just say to my G, no one, no one does that. No, I don't. I can't do that.
Too, too, too, too. To operate a slight counterpoint. You are correct that this album was not made for the event era. Though it had all.
Which is, I guess we're in the event era. Yes. It was radio head out here racing the internet part of the event era. And we were going to do a radio head putt soon.
And I'm excited for it. But it was not made for the event era. However, I would argue that it was made precisely for draining the fourth glass of shard while flying over Omaha because I had a moment with this album flying home the other day. There is something remarkable about the weirdly shiny, like thousand thread count sonic precision and beauty of the music here that 40 his dude has made.
And there are times listening to this record, which is way too long, absolutely. But where you suddenly, you can sort of chemically bring yourself to the point that maybe they were trying to communicate and it's so specific. It's like, oh, we're in syncing now and I get it. And there are the moments when, particularly when he engages with dancehall and Caribbean music, which he did work really well for a Mon-Hod line bling in moments, too good and definitely the single one dance, which is Loki amazing and controller.
And it's like, he's communicating something here that is pretty unique and pretty special, just musically, purely musically in terms of rhythm and melody and it's really intoxicating. But yeah, 40 is. 40 is. Well, but Drake is able to work together.
Yeah, Drake can have all the authorship he wants over the musical contours of this record. But this record definitely suffers from Father's Fresh My Hands disease. Meaning you only want to listen to Father's Fresh My Hands? No, meaning it's got like incredible, like these moments of musical beauty that are followed up with now I fuck this model, like type lyrics.
But not even imbued with a sense of humor or self-parity that sometimes I think Kanye has. Drake, I would love to think that there is some self-parity in here, but he's getting weirdly humorless as he disappears up his own ass completely up in the top of a tower all by himself. And I think Ryan Dombel mentioned this in his pitch work review where he was talking about like Drake's his no new friends attitude has sort of isolated him. And I think that that's true because people have talked about how this is just such like a, it's got this, it's obviously about his relationships to women and his inability to sustain things.
But actually there's a lot of stuff in here about his inability to have like meaningful male friendships. There's a lot of stuff in here where he's just like, I did this all by myself and like this push pull between wanting to rep Toronto and keep it with his friends and just be like, but then there's a lot of like, but then you fucking ask me for money or like you didn't do this, I did this. Or like now you need to take a pill to feel something. You also X out J and Kanye from The Record in a weird way because they're on pop stuff.
Well I would too, those guys sounded like they had flip-flops on while they were recording that beat, that reverse. Jadon Diggas got off, shout out to that since he has the funniest thing on the internet all year. Look, there's, after I listened to this three or four times, I put on Take Care and that album, which I loved at the time is even better than I remember it, it's just amazing. And that's not started talking.
But the thing I wanted to say about Take Care is, he is such a quintessentially 21 year old person's album in the most exciting way because it is the sound of someone like feeling their limits when they still feel limitless and there's a joy of discovery and acceptance in it that is really, really special and it's kind of universal, right? Because like one of the best songs on there is Underground Kings and maybe that's my favorite Drake song, Period. It's intentionally named after UJike. And there's a whole part on that track where he talks about, he and his friends discovering little Wayne mixtapes and just going crazy to them.
And it's not about going on tour a little Wayne or being co-signed by little Wayne or being more successful and little Wayne, his records probably subtext are now. It's about being like, oh my god, I'm here in Toronto, I'm on top of this, not even on top of this building yet. I'm in Toronto, which is not known, no shots, the chaos or cardinal official is not known as the hotbed of the stuff. And I felt I can be made to feel alive through music from the South, which I can't even imagine is like a foreign plant.
And you and I talked about this on the 96 pod, like that's how we engage with hip hop too, in a lot of ways. That's how we engage with a lot of music at that age when you were most excited to engage with music. And that was, there was an openness to that feeling that allowed his kind of, you know, hermetic emotional state to at least recede from view a little bit. That was there, but it was also about being excited by things and I guess whether it's fame or his own issues with women, which are no jokes serious as evidence on this record, that there's no more, there's still discovery, but as you correctly said, it's all in the music that's being brought to him to Drake's Jain and Tatum over.
We could wrap this up, but I wanna say that I'm very interested to see what Drake does next because he has sort of mastered the modern content pipeline with her, showing up at the right shit and being funny while doing it, like the stuff this weekend with him at the Raptors game was actually semi-tragic to me, where he was, there was one play where I think Kyle Lowry scored and Game 7 against the Pacers and Drake got up and started clapping and getting hype, which obviously would be a big Raptors fan, but it was like, he definitely made it so that he couldn't sit back down and as he was freaking out and happy for Kyle Lowry, Paul George came down and drilled a three and Drake was just kind of like standing there while everybody was like, damn Paul George was a killer and it was sort of very emblematic of this week where it was like, you should be really happy, but then you get caught out there kind of, and he's put out this very confessional record and I think people are sort of, for some extent rejecting it. Drake is very good at course correction and he's very good at giving people a variety of stuff to chew on. And I would be very curious to see how long it takes before he puts out something. I mean, I know he talked a little bit about this mythical Kanye mixtape, but something, I wonder what Drake comes back with some HYFR stuff pretty soon.
It's pretty telling that Hotline Bling is on this record as track 20 bonus track because someone looked at this and because he's a very smart dude, someone was like, you need to hit song on this record. Like, you need, even if it's, you know, your biggest hit ever from a few months ago because clearly the intention was for that not to be here. And the other thing about it that I'm interested in is as we've tracked the event era for albums but also basically the kind of, when we were talking about sign of the times in Princeia that we were talking about like how everyone in a very rockist era was waiting for the album. Like, oh, what's Prince's next album?
With this next artist, the next artist up is gonna have to wow us with something. Like after the bends, we were like, radio had better delivered with okay computer because that's their next statement. And we are now way out of that era in a place where, you know, artists like Drake can just own a year without ever releasing an official album. And you can make one album that is specifically, these kinds of rap songs.
Like if you're reading this or collaboration with Future, both of which, you know, in many ways are gonna end up being more popular than views. Whereas an album of the best tracks of all three in a different era might have been one of the greatest albums of all time. It's been, or when we've also talked about it in relation to Kendrick Lamar, right? Who will jump on a Taylor Swift single or an ASAP Rocky song, but be resolutely anti-commercial with his own music.
And the album is the place where he retreats to do what he wants to do. It's weird to see Drake basically still subscribe to this very rockist sensibility that like, he'll jump on other people's tracks and dance with Rihanna in the video. But when it comes time to craft his masterpiece, he has to go in his lab, which is located on the 50th floor of this tower or whatever. And he has to create something that's challenging and personal, but you can just disappear up there.
I mean, it's almost like a prog rock understanding of an album at this point, right? Like this is an artist who is nimble and fun being like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not really a way to enjoy music, even though I am enjoying this record. Okay, well that sounds like a good place to any to stop. We will be back next week.
You can subscribe to The Watch through the channel three podcast feed and Andy, it's always a pleasure. Yeah, and we'll be back with podcast next week, of course. Maybe we have this week, definitely we have next week. And after the thrones, episode three will be live on all HBO platforms beginning Midnight Pacific, Sunday night, Monday morning.
And that's always fun. And I'd like to say, on behalf of myself, Chris Ryan, the Kings and the Queen Julianna Margulies. Great job, Rensky! Peace!
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