Physical Media Strikes Back With Tim Simons

Hey, this is Danny Heifetz from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. For all your fantasy football needs, check out the Ringer Fantasy Football Show with me, Craig Rolbeck, and Danny Kelly. That's the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about physical media.

We are so back! We are so back! We're so back! We're so fucking back!

We did it! About 14 months ago, Tim and I sat in this room, and we talked about something that is very pure, precious, and dear to us, and that is plastic that projects films onto your television screen, Blu-rays, 4Ks, DVDs, the whole shebang. We're back to discuss that topic once again. Tim, thanks for being here.

I mean this wholeheartedly. It is my pleasure. So, we took a little longer than we expected to come back to this conversation. A lot has happened in the world.

A lot has happened in the entertainment industry. A lot has happened in the world of physical media since last we spoke about this. I will just start this conversation by saying to you that my crippling addiction is getting worse, and I'm further down the rabbit hole. I've got so much information I want to share with you, so many recommendations, some personal anecdote.

How are you feeling about this since we did this conversation? I want to say November of 2022. Is that right? Yes.

Well, one of the things that I wanted to say when we were talking about reactions, and this goes into how I'm feeling great about it. Number one, let's just say that. I'm feeling great about it. I remember when it was in November because when it released, it was the week of Zach and Amanda's Christmas party.

Yes. And I saw you this past year at that party, and I remember talking to CR, and he said this, and he swears he said this with great reverence. But I feel like I maybe read something else. We were talking about it, and he was like, ah, what a podcast.

And it was withering. But I do think that part of that conversation that led up to Chris saying that was that week and the continued reaction from it has been kind of huge. I get people approaching me all the time to talk about physical media because of that one podcast. I also don't know if this was your experience.

I also get people saying that was the dorkiest thing I've ever heard two human beings talk about. I have no shame about that. I have continued my very vocal support for physical media since we had that conversation. I definitely have had people provide feedback.

We did a live event for The Big Picture last week, and we screened the movie Oppenheimer at the IMAX campus, which was so cool. Oh, my God. I got a chance to talk to Hoitama and Jennifer Lehm and Libby Gernsson, the composer, the editor, and the cinematographer of the movie. Hey, all geniuses, all super cool people.

Very fun interview. They made a little reception afterwards, and there were like 100 listeners there, and almost all of them wanted to tell me about their most recent physical media purchases. There were questions about organization. They wanted to know, like, what were the best labels.

Like, something is happening. Something is growing. When you said that, I wanted to do, like, the Sammy Sosa, like, just pointing to the ceiling, like, my guy. But you're absolutely right.

Like, there's a writer for Variety named Todd Gilchrist lives in my neighborhood. I saw him this morning, and I told him I was coming in to do this, and he was like, he actually, he wrote the article that was in Variety about how the Oppenheimer 4K and Blu-rays had sold out the first, like, they had sold out, and people were like, we've never seen this before. So we were really, we were out there in front of this. So a lot has transpired that has led to stories like the one that you said that Todd wrote.

I think that the streaming ecosystem has gotten very complicated. There's a fear of consolidation, and there's also been some cutting and some, you know, some shenanigans, I would say. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So because of that, I think that people's eyes are now open to the idea that this stuff isn't going to be here forever in this digital format.

That it's not just that a movie goes out of license on Netflix and goes to Paramount+, it's that maybe it doesn't go anywhere, maybe you don't see it again. Even some of the services that sell digital copies of movies, there's a concern that what if one of those services closes down? Or what if they change their licensing agreement and you can't get those movies anymore? So the physical stuff, it feels like it matters more.

In fact, Christopher Nolan basically said this in an interview that he gave a few months ago where he was like, I think he described them as evil streaming services, I'm not using that footage. I think Chris Nolan said, great filmmaker that he is. But he was basically like, buy stuff, not that fits him, and sales is the Oppenheimer 4K. But still, I think he is right.

I think that if you want to preserve something and you have passion for something, there's a way to represent it by going out and buying some of this stuff. Yes. And it not only, I have, like, there are a million different parts and, like, little subsections of my feelings about this. And, yeah, sure, it benefits Christopher Nolan, but, like, if Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan talks about film preservation, that is not coming from, like, a self-serving worldview.

Like, yes, sure, it might benefit them personally, but, like, I don't know what Christopher Nolan's bank account looks like, but I don't think that that's the thing that is going to decide whether or not he makes a mortgage payment. I agree. I think he's doing quite well these days. And there's also a little part of me that's like, you know what, this is also a version, a distribution method of this media that we do not have to strike over.

Like, we have litigated, from, like, an actor's and writer's side, we have litigated the participation in that. Well, what's complicated and fascinating about that, too, is that Matt Damon is the one who's been on the record about this, I think, most vociferously, is that the dissolution of the home entertainment market is what led to a lot of the complications over the 2007 WGA strike. The most recent strikes that this new economy of streaming has presented more confusion about how money should be distributed throughout the industry. But you're right, physical media, this is already in the books.

Like, we know if profits are made, you know, increasingly, profits are not made at probably 120th of the percentages that they were being made circa 1999. But the fact that that is all codified is one more reason to feel good about it. And obviously, like, it has entered beyond a philosophical interest for me. Like, I am, it's a little bit like baseball cards now.

And I, I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous about where I'm at with this situation. I'm a little bit, like, teetering on the brink of, like, Blacktar Heroin, you know, where I'm like, that new label has that new film I've not seen, but I've heard is cool from one guy five years ago. So where are you in terms of your pursuit of the product? My pursuit of the product, and I will say one of the reasons that this is a little bit delayed is there was the, you know, last year was a hard year for everybody in this business.

And so, you know, expendable income to throw out on new stuff was like, was dialed back a little bit, and also didn't want to come on and promote, you know, especially during a strike, you know, promote, throw people's eyes towards companies or whatever. But since the strikes had ended, and since sort of the industry has come back online, I have, like, really got back into it. And now it really is, like, I think one great thing is that where I'm at is, I think that the big broad strokes are taken care of. And I am always going to be limited by space, just because, like, I have two children, and I also have a very sympathetic wife who allows, you know, allows some space to be taken up by this.

But, you know, I don't want to ask too much, you know what I mean? So I think where I'm at is a little bit more targeted toward thinking, like, okay, do I have all the films from this director that I like? Like, very recently, I think, with finding a copy of Last of the Mohicans, like, I'm now, and I have Ferrari on pre-order, because it feels fucking fun, man. God, it feels fun to hit a pre-order button.

I got nervous when I saw the Oppenheimer 4K sold out thing, and I was like, oh, fuck, man, I'm not going to be able to find it. And then realized when it showed up in the mail that week that I had pre-ordered it, so that felt good. Did you enjoy the film Oppenheimer? I loved it.

It's amazing. I mean, it's truly incredible. I am sort of, I think, a little bit more targeted. And I also, I think I have a good filter of, like, when I'm at a store, and I'm looking through, like, you know, the, like, used Blu-rays or whatever.

I am, like, do I care enough about this movie to have it take up the space that is in flux? You know what I mean? Absolutely. So I'll give you a little bit of personal history, but then I want to go back to Michael Mann.

I've been wanting to have a space to watch movies my entire life. The house I'm in now is the first time I've really had a proper space for myself. It's an increasingly bigger part of my work, so I have this converted garage with a very large television in it. And I, really the only nice thing that I bought myself that would be considered, like, an elaborate expense was that I hired a guy to build shelving in this garage space.

So there is custom shelving all around this garage that is strictly used for the storage of physical media. I also have a vast collection of CDs, something I never talk about, but prior to my Blu-ray addiction from 1990 through 2009, I was obsessively compiling CDs. But, so, anyway, all this stuff is stored in there. But, and I did this three years ago.

I had this all kind of designed and built and running out of space. And I'm, like, down to the last two shelves. Oh, really? So, what I don't want to do is double up the stacks, and I've really found ways to maximize the open holes.

But I'm getting to the same place that you are, which is that my collection is very strong. I've got basically that thing you described from Michael Mann. For most of the filmmakers, I'm like, these are my core people. These are my core 25 filmmakers that I really care about, plus lots and lots of extended collections for other filmmakers or other, you know, genres.

But not extending beyond that. What is the number? I don't know what my total number is right now, but I am starting to think I have to come to a stopping point and then say, I buy 10 really nice things a year, and that's it. And they're on out.

And maybe I start cycling stuff out. But, I don't know, it's hard because this weird thing has happened, which is that even in the 14 months since we talked, more companies have come along who are doing this, and they're treating it like a boutique gemstone. Like, the things that they're making now, we've extended beyond, like, seal book technologies. Yeah.

And now they're, like, what Arrow is doing, like, box sets on single films, they're, like, art pieces, and I want to display them in a meaningful way, which is silly. And so now I'm like, do I need to spend $55 on a True Romance 4K when I already have True Romance in DVD and Blu-ray? And as much as I love True Romance, if I really want to watch it, will I just pull it up on a streaming service instead of breaking out the physical media? So it's a devil's bargain now with where to go with stuff you've already got, too.

I don't know if you're experiencing that at all. No, for sure. I think, well, number one, I have that True Romance era. Of course, it's beautiful.

Oh, it's fucking beautiful. I think that there is something to be said for, I know, I think we probably talked or texted about this at some point, there is something to be said for the ones that have a really strong emotional attachment. I think that's what I go for. So, like, the recent Black Hat 4K.

I'm coming back to this for you. Yeah, I want to discuss that with you. So there's that. So you were not invited to the Black Hat Rewatchable, so this is your chance.

This is my chance. I am, you know what, it's not, like, a wound heals. You know what I mean? You go to the hospital, there's triage.

The scar remains. I did not participate in the creation or planning of that episode, so I have no apologies for you. I appreciate that. We all know there's one person that should be having apologies for me.

There is, I listened to it, by the way, it was fantastic. The movie makes no sense, Tim. The movie makes no sense. You are 100% wrong.

You're 100% wrong. So, like, Arrow has at least, like, a Cloak and Dagger box, and I didn't own Cloak and Dagger, and that's a huge one for my childhood. So, like, of those Arrows, I think, like, Rat, no, no, no, the Vinegar, I have a Vinegar Syndrome Rad. Like, ones that I have this sort of, like, immense emotional attachment to is where I consider cycling those out.

But if it just comes down in a way to, like, box art, then I'm, like, I don't need to spend $30 on, like, as emotionally attached as I am to Mallrats. If I just have, like, a $3 one, that's fine. I don't need to get, like, a fancier custom art boxed Mallrats. So, I literally did this equation last night.

So, right now, this may be over by the 10th episode there. So, there's a Barnes & Noble 50% off sale for all Arrow releases going on right now. Currently? I know.

You better get your wallet ready. So, I looked at it. With Arrow in those boxes, I have the same relationship. If it's a movie I dig, I own all those titles you just mentioned.

If it's something that I really care about, I'll replace something in the collection with a nicer version of it. But I did the exact calculus last night on Mallrats when I was looking at it. A movie that I own and love but also don't watch and loved a lot when I was 17. But now, like, what does it even mean to me?

I don't know. It's also, I haven't seen it in a while. It's, like, immensely problematic. Hugely.

Yeah, the entire Ben Affleck character is comically canceled. But I did buy the Waterworld 4K because I'm planning a massive Kevin Costner episode this year. Waterworld, I don't even really remember it. And I haven't seen it in 20 years.

It could be bad. But for my very specific free purposes of making Kevin Costner episodes of a podcast, I can justify myself the $25 during the sale to own a movie that might not actually be good. But what it is, is it's part of movie history. And it's part of movie history in a time when I was coming of age.

And so there's value there to me. And I don't think, I'm not sure if Waterworld is available in just, like, a traditional format from the studio. But nevertheless, like, the arrows of the world still exist. The criterions of the world still exist.

But I have even started to see a few other brands. And I'll talk about them maybe as we go a little later in the conversation. But the kind of undergirding a lot of this discussion is the fact that while we are getting increasingly emotionally connected to this hobby, you know, Best Buy announced in October that they're no longer selling physical media. I don't personally buy a lot of physical media at Best Buy, but this news was treated as though it was some sort of thunderclap on the industry.

And it was kind of coming right around the same time as that Oppenheimer 4K story, too. So there's some confusion, you know? That was the thing of this article that Todd sent me that he wrote, which was Oppenheimer sold out. But, like, you know, brands are pulling, like, Target and Best Buy are pulling these from their, like, store, from their storefront.

Would you buy anything from those stores ever? I would. You got kids, you must be in Targets all the time. Yeah, I'm in Targets all the time.

I think there is, like, but I think what it comes down to is until, like, the secondary market of this thing goes away, because too many people listen to this podcast and too many people get into it, like, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Yeah, shoot us on your list. That's all we ask. Yeah, we're doing a service here.

I think they're, I'm probably not going to just, like, buy a full-priced copy of, I don't know, like, I'm trying to think of something, like, a movie from the last few years that I liked just fine and maybe would possibly own. But, you know, like, I don't know, I would probably not buy it from there. Yeah. I'm torn because, okay, so I did a little research on this.

On Monday evening, I had plans to go join our friends Andy Greenwald, Chris Ryan, and Zach Barron to watch the Philadelphia Eagles football game. I considered texting them jokes during that and thought better of it. It was nice to not do that. I didn't go to Taunton.

I was there as emotional support. We watched the game in the bar, but before we did, the bar was in Atwater Village. I went to the Best Buy in Atwater Village. Just a little reporting, a little on-the-ground reporting, some shoe letter, just to see what's going on there.

Capital J journalism. So I walked in with my news cap on. No, I had the little press ticket right on the top of my hat. I had my pen pad.

I started to miss them. Sir, is it true, in fact, that you removed all the racks? And they had removed all the racks. Oh, they had?

Everything was gone. I haven't been to Best Buy in a while. I don't think I quite realized what they're doing there now, which is that they've always sold appliances. But now it's kind of like kitchen home furnishings have taken up the space of where I once could have bought a copy of James Gunn's Slither.

You know what I mean? Why can I not buy something like that? I can't. All that stuff is gone.

And as is the kind of looky-loo rack that you'd find right outside the register where you'd be walking past. And you'd be like, oh, interesting. Starship Troopers, I want that. Like, that is gone.

And I can't say that ultimately it made a ton of sense that Best Buy sold this stuff. Yeah. But even though I never bought from there, I felt like a little sadness. You know?

I felt like there was a little hole in my heart walking through that store that I don't care about. And I think maybe that is like as maybe it is more so that like whatever. Like we're absolute psychopaths about this. So we are going to find a path to it.

But that maybe is more of a this is probably not the right word for this, but like more of like a populist thing. Like that's like a way for people who don't. don't know they're into it to be like oh that's cool that's my favorite movie i didn't know i could own it you know what i mean like they're not going to be psychopaths about this so maybe it is a little bit more like that was how we got that was how we hooked them and then they go down the psychopath so does that make you think that we're like screwed long term that like it's just a hobbyist thing now and because there won't be that curiosity or that oh i could buy inception in 4k for 1999 while also buying a washing machine like because that's gone do you think there'll be a less long-term interest in it basically it's a big question i don't think so i mean i guess this just comes down to like the amount of people that i know that are even if they're not like vinyl in like vinyl obsessed that just like have a record player buy records that they like you know they have like a little bit of an album collection you know what i mean like i do feel like people will find it and i don't know maybe it just takes like you know talk to the people in your community like you know donating to your politicians is great talk to people in your life uh about about about physical media this is how caruso operates this is why he ran yeah i've been talking to people in my community physical media is still huge it still matters i'm listening to the people of los angeles and they are 10 they are sir sir we need more physical media and i will say like two year this this popped up in my head about uh while you were talking about like a costume built shells and stuff like that and and 35 like 35 $50 blu-rays for anybody listening who's like okay well clearly this is something that uh that you need a lot of expendable right that's sick rich guys do mentally ill rich people yes i the two of the things that i want you're not we're neither of those things uh you're rich or mentally ill are you mentally ill yeah i'm like i probably like maybe three quarters okay fair three quarters of i'm probably seven eights everybody has a huge problem and he won't acknowledge it i acknowledge it i have a huge emotional and mental problem thank you some i mean like some people go to therapy and some people just run a podcast network uh so uh one thing i want to say is like i like i just recently moved everything like to a new shelf and i went ikea billy shelves which are i think like 60 bucks are those leaners straight up they're straight up okay i got like a double set so i think it was like 120 bucks for the shelves and they're because they're bookshelves they're a little bit deeper but if you get if you but it fits four vhs tapes perfectly if you lie them flat and across it brings the blu-rays like a half an inch out in from the front oh so it's like using an old school physical media to make it look so they're not too deeply recessed in generations supporting each other exactly love it i mean like we if we have stood we have seen far it is because we stood on the shoulders of giants and and also a re i know i texted you at some point about this over the course of the year a real big find for our like los angeles uh los angeles uh region friends like cd trader in tarzana is incredible they have it's it's they have a massive blu-ray and 4k like used section and if you want to build up a library of classics or just there's like great movies there like i found i was really excited to find a copy of first reform which is a movie i didn't see until this past year and immediately like spiked up in my huge one huge hugely amazing movie and i found a copy of first reform there for like 5.99 like you can go in and find like really build up it's not like you know like we talked about pawn shops the last time i was gonna ask you about this where your locale so that is one of them yeah pawn shops in la and i think maybe just because there are too many people like us they can be really hit or miss and you miss a lot i haven't had good luck at salvation or goodwills or anything like that um but again uh i went into a pawn shop when i was on vacation in maine with a family and i found a copy of mean streets for four dollars like cd trader and tarzana is incredible they always get new stuff in and it's not super expensive to start building up a library and you can also find like you know use criterions which are going to be more in the 20 range but you don't necessarily have to go in and pay a full retail price for that and you get to support a local business yes it's all physical media one interesting thing that happened for me personally while we're talking about local stuff which i'm sure most people don't care about they also had their own version of this is you know there's a legendary um video rental store in south pasadena called videotech i don't know if you've ever been there yeah yeah but they since moved locations they moved locations to glassel park they sell used dvds and blu-rays they also have it's one of the great renting rooms that i've ever encountered like it is hilariously brilliantly organized from genre to you know country to filmmaker like it's spread all over the place um very cool people working there and their used stuff is just really good and it's like it's a little bit more expensive than your pawn shop um maybe a little bit more expensive than your cd trader but not that much more and so once we come just in there like looking to see what they have in the event that something is 10.99 it would otherwise be 35 dollars which you know i don't want to be spending that on stuff every week either so the used stuff is important especially when you're in that building out the collection phase you know where you're like i need to get all the kubrick movies i need to get all the michael manh movies like i think when you get beyond that when you get beyond like i've got my 20 filmmakers i like or i love samurai movies and i got all the samurai movies and now where do i go i think there's like a secondary question of how do you experiment you know like for you you know the labels for the most part now you know what you like you know the people that you love to watch over and over again the films you watch over and over again but do you ever just like spin the roulette wheel once a year and be like i'm gonna fucking try out blank you know this is actually a good maybe a good example of this did you read uh cinema speculation of course okay that honestly is probably the stupidest question i'm gonna ask anybody not only that i have spoken with the author about it for like five hours total yeah did i miss this we did an event together yeah oh my god that's what that is that is uh legitimately unquantifiedly cool it was the most probably the most fun i had quote-unquote working in 2022 oh god awesome so my neighbor uh my neighbor johnny lives down the street he picked up a copy of it and and then he gave it to me we both read it we both loved it and i and his uh i had been on a kit because his uh his mother-in-law is an editor named lindsey clingman who just had her 80th birthday and so we're like our families are really good friends so i met her and her husband uh dick pierce he's a director um i have met them richard pierce p-e-a-r-c-e yeah wow yeah right so um so i had been talking to both of them and i really i was like i wanted to go and like see the work that both of them had done and i'd seen a bunch of his stuff but i was like i want to go in and look at the stuff that and like everybody that's on that's listening like go look up her imdb like she's like a monster she like she started out by editing that vietnam documentary hearts and minds which is where she met dick because he was running camera and she edited yes he didn't he shoot don't look back the penny baker bob dylan documentary i think he probably did i think this is a legend yeah he shot like woodstock yeah yeah and she went from hearts and minds and like the next thing she did was one flew over the cuckoo's nest she was fired off of ali by michael mann wow like she's worked with everybody and so anyway what i was doing was i was like i'm gonna watch through she edited hair like i'm gonna watch through lindsey's filmography and as i was doing this that's a cool project it really was it's been sort of ongoing through the eyes of an editor specifically yeah yeah and honestly like hearts and minds is a really like a it came out in 1976 and it feels like it feels uh it feels like sort of ground shifting even now so i can't imagine what the reaction to i know one that i think one best documentary is a very famous speech that birch schneider gave when it won it is a kind of like template setting moment in the new hollywood yes so i can't imagine what the conversation around it was then when it feels like sort of like a righteous thing now um anyway long story short in this kick of like i want to just maybe not be just picking things out of the ether uh my friend jonathan came up with this idea he's like well that's why have you seen all these movies i was like i've seen some of them uh so we started a thing where we were watching the chapter head movies in order and the only time that we deviated from that was we started with a movie joe which both of us have never seen so a lot of this anyway this goes back to your question like do i spin a roulette wheel i started spinning it for that because i was like i'm just gonna i've never seen the hardcore the george c scott paul schrader that's right but i was just like this is something i'm gonna like this comes pretty highly recommended from somebody i know he has problems with the end i know you know our good buddy qt has problems with the ending as i read about but did you hear that this is also something that he's thinking about a lot of what he wrote about with schrader's movies this may or may not play a role in what he does with his next movie with the movie critic yeah yeah no i haven't heard that you want to revisit that one in rolling thunder two movies that he focused a lot on in the book that i guess may or may not feature in the film oh my god this is gonna be so fucking cool i'm so excited the guy gets his hand in the in the yes so like rolling thunder hardcore my first move for all of those was to go see if they were available on physical media um and i think that this goes to a larger thought which was like am i really worried that i'm not going to have access to con air like kind of not you know what i mean like you know okay but in its way con air could become the rolling thunder or hardcore of 2047 yes if we don't create a universe where con air is cared for restored prized as the work of 90s action cinema that it is and like and passed down like hand to hand to our children because honestly i mean this is more true for rolling thunder than it is for uh hardcore but yeah rolling thunder is a borderline exploitation movie i mean it's a you know it's like the real coming home in a body bag like from true romance you know it's like it's a movie about a veteran who whose life is falling apart at home and who reflects like the rage and desolation of the non-veteran and then it acts like a kind of you know violence on the world that doesn't see or hear him the way that needs to be seen or heard in a weird way con air is like kind of a similar story i was not i was really not expecting you to be able to connect those it's about a veteran who doesn't is not respected in a public setting and gets into a physical application and goes to prison but has a decency inside of him and needs to find vindication and reunion with his family like they're the same movie yes so uh you couldn't plan this how many hands does nick cage have in uh in con air i think he's got both hands but maybe he takes other people's hands in con air you know there's a plane crash those are usually pretty brutal right i think that there is a part of me that looks at like that maybe i'm gonna roll the dice and and like spin the roulette wheel on like like this is like a this is a judgmental word but maybe like trashier or more exploitative stuff that really does have a chance of disappearing yeah and so like joe i think it's a great case of that like that movie might be one of the best movies i saw this year did you now did you just rent that did you buy a copy of it like how did you go about finding these movies i mean a lot of it just starts with amazon and blu-ray.com it's like a big thing this is gonna be a larger question i think i made a little note while we were talking uh because it came up because they just released like the the new uh like recolor corrected 4k raid like the raid that just came out and that is like from a tech side i'm not exactly sure like anyway i haven't seen it but you know there's something i want to take you off track there's something happening right now with some of these 4k color corrections that is not good like i noticed the first time i really noticed this was in the criterion edition of miller's crossing which is very green in the print and looks wrong it doesn't look like the movie i grew up watching now it may be the movie that they always intended to make yeah or that you know um technology can now allow for them to make but the bigger controversy around this is the 4k of all the james camera movies yeah everyone seems very frustrated by what the neutralized looks like what the new abyss looks like i didn't go to any of the screens at the abyss but people thought it looked great on film but then when you watch the physical media version it doesn't look very good so i you know that's you're taking a risk there too i suppose and i think that that is sort of something like a few a few thoughts that come up when you're talking about that is like uh number one i don't know what i'm talking about when i talk about transfers so like finding out uh like going to blu-ray.com and like trying to suss out like is like the better transfer like the uk version or the french version like trying to figure out that way how to get a copy of joe there is a little part of me and maybe this is like i'm wondering where you are on this like i love that somebody now has the technology to make the movie that they wanted to make but you made it you made the movie then and in a way like i kind of don't care what movie you wanted it to be now it was the movie it was and once you release it that's kind of what i want to see did you go see star wars when george lucas re-edited them and edit the cgi and were you mad were you happy well how'd you react i think at the time i told myself i was happy exactly and now i did the thing where like i found somebody sent me the link and somebody sent me the link to like the despecialized somebody that like went back and like put them in the original color corrections and it feels better i like i burnt them onto a blu-ray and put them on the shelf because i'm fucking psyched i think i might still have that vhs triple box of the original trilogy somewhere i don't know where it is on it's like sitting face down behind a bunch of blu-rays so that they are only a half an inch from the front of a set of billy idea shelves um i think i had an interesting experience recently this hasn't aired yet but i got to interview ben benders which was very exciting and he was a really really great guest on the show and i don't want to spoil any of that conversation but i was asking him to kind of reflect on the amazing arc of his career and the fact that you know he's a person who's like in his 70s and whenever someone like me encounters him they're like wow you are a legend sir like what that must be like to be told you are a legend and maybe like how maybe his relationship to his work has changed over time because of that and i said have you looked at any of your movies recently like changed the way he thought about them or maybe what people told you has influenced he's like yes no no no but we're restoring all my work and we're restoring i think i believe it was the desire he was saying that they did this for me he was just like the negative of that film was just all wrong and the version that everyone has seen is not supposed to look like it was never supposed to look like this and i me and my dp and my editor knew that it was wrong and nobody else knew and nobody cared and they liked the movie it was fine but the version you can see now is the version that was always intended and of course i respect him immensely but i was kind of like i don't know if i want to see that like i don't know if i want it it's not like he put job of the hut in wings of desire i mean it's not that kind of thing but it's just like a very small critical technological scientific shift that changes things i actually thought black hat when we were having this conversation because you know in that that arrow forecast you're talking about there's a recut version of the movie in an effort to make the movie flow different there's a significant sequence that shifted earlier to the front of the film and it does make the movie certainly more coherent but it probably changes your relationship to the chaos of that scene for the first time it's sort of like a disorienting confusing like what was this guy smoking quality to the movie which it sounded like you really enjoyed which yeah i really enjoyed because it's a phenomenal film that does 10 out of 10 five stars make sense but like i guess you know authors of their work are always going to be the owners of their work but they're also not they're also going to slip away and fall into our hands when they slip into our hands we have our own definition of them and so part of the interesting challenge of physical media is there's a desperation from both a monetary and creative perspective to recontextualize rebuild redefine what a piece of work of art is but also like this like wish fulfillment of creators where like if only i had another million dollars or only two more days or whatever it is that might come along like i wonder will there be a station 11 version of this at some point you know what i mean where you know he gets to be like actually it should have been just like this or like the prestige television where it's gonna have its day with the star wars special editions too like wait till david chasing his hands around the sopranos again like it's gonna happen yeah so i i'm conflicted about all those things i mean like there is that sort of larger sense of like once art gets put in i understand like that somebody's gonna be listening like oh fuck you you know calling it art is a commercial enterprise or whatever like i understand okay it is it absolutely is so when it gets put out it sort of stops being the authors and it then becomes the audiences i think that like the michael mann recutting doesn't bother me as much as as like oh it didn't look a certain way because i went to the new beverly um i went to the new beverly to see a big fan of the sorcerer and i think i ended up seeing it four or five times this past year because i like watched it once and a friend of mine hadn't seen it so we watched it together and then three weeks later i got invited to go see it at the new beverly and they were playing it on like a specific kind of i can't remember some sort of tube but like the guy did say like there's going to be a lot of uh you're gonna see like a lot of like red shifted uh scenes in this okay and that's just because of the quality of the print that we have and like and that is usually more blue okay i can't remember it was i don't know tubes something i think what i'm like where i would fall off that if you know william friedkin like may his memory be a blessing i love him if he was alive right now to be like uh this is the only print that exists but we have the technology now to color it the way that it was i think i would be okay with that because it is like oh this is because of the degradation of the actual material that it was on it now doesn't look the way that it should and it is all too red and washed out or orangey like and we have the ability to make it look like the other reels or whatever i think i'd be okay with that and i think when it comes to michael mann i just like i'm just somebody who like really kind of loves the theatrical cut of miami vice because he just throws you into the club you know what i mean he's just like oh we're just in the club and when i started it when i was watching it for the first time i was like did they forget to play scenes before this because i don't know what's happening and i think didn't you recut like the blu-ray version has scenes before that yes i think so um i think there's a delineation between two things like one is about the way the stories are structured and what isn't in the movie that they're putting into the movie and the other thing is the quality of what you're seeing and now we're in this era basically starting roughly 15 to 20 years ago where the shift to digital comes in and so this kind of emotional cavalcade of we have to restore film prints we have to make all the work that martin scorsese does that paul thomas anderson does that steven spielberg does with the film foundation making sure that great movies from 1920 or 1940 or 1960 can be seen um the digital age is not really gonna have that problem in the same way that level of degradation is not quite the same but i think that the knock-on of that will be because it's so much easier and cheaper to shoot on film or on digital rather that you're gonna see more special editions they're like here's the kingdom of heaven you know four-hour cut like we're gonna have like a four-hour cut of like dude wears my car and like i do think that there's like a huge opportunity to kind of like maximize all the shit you wanted to see but they cut out of the movie you know like the the x-rated cut of bros you know telling dick jokes yeah um and that will extend into prestige movies i wonder how some of this stuff will be impacted by that like the power of the dog going to the criterion right away is interesting but i wonder what the criterion collection version of that movie would be 20 years from now you know when they're they have more to share you know they might be less willing to share with less time done by them this is the sacred version of the film that we have right now and i also am like very hypocritical about this because there are parts of me that think that that checks on power is too dramatic of a thing to say but like that writers and editors working with directors ultimately end up being only or not only but a benefit in that uh sometimes a little less is more and like you sometimes you need other eyes on it but at the same time i sit here and like whenever that four and a half hour cut of Napoleon comes out i'm like i'm gonna watch it and i'm gonna be so fucking so busy you know what i mean i do how about the rest of your speculation viewing experience well we finished all the chapter heads and oh and this is like last night um we we lost our way a little bit after we had the guide of the chapter heads and then we started going into like some of the stuff that was mentioned frequently or referenced frequently um and then we kind of lost our way and we were just kind of getting away from like the grimy trashiness and we were like okay well like we uh wonderful movie but we really understood we had hit bottom and we were like i don't know you want to watch big night you know what i mean like fantastic movie but it doesn't have anything to do with like the sort of grimy shit that we were watching so we got back on track by watching the devils which i loved reading your letterboxd review after because i i went in being like oh because this has been banned because all i've ever heard is about how it got banned this is just gonna be like trash fun trash and within five minutes i paused to be like is this the best movie i've ever seen it is an amazing film um it is an unusual one in that it really did feel lost for a while yeah it was at least for me it was very elusive to find it and now it is just fully available on the criterion channel this is ken russell's i think 1977 yes it's sort of like uh demonic excoriation of it's france right i can't remember it's france france um and it's relationship to the church and it's this kind of like psychotic opera um of horror psychosis and beautiful fun crazy movie way over the top beautifully like every single shot that he throws in in the first 20 minutes is a masterwork so that really got us back on track my friend john my friend johnny when redgrave showed up he shouted redgrave in the kobe voice and then last night uh we watched uh possession like 1981 possession like that sam niel movie so we're kind of back on track but like possession is a movie that like is it my most favorite movie of like the devils is something i'm going to search out and find a copy of it wherever i have to get it from possession is one of those ones where i will look to add that to a library because when i like went on whatever just watch it was like oh it's only shutter i can't rent this anywhere it's only shutter so that feels like in the world of we should i should be making sure there's a copy of this around so uh possession is a good one possession a very similar kind of film to the devils in that for some periods of time it was harder to see kind of an art house classic um has gotten its reputation has grown a lot in the last 10 years it's kind of one of the great freak out movies you know a precursor to a lot of different kinds of movies you know kind of like constantly with david carnivore people yeah yeah um but also but also like an insane story about the dissolution of a marriage but i'm glad you brought it up because um you know i saw possession like i said 10 years ago i've actually read it a couple times i really like it a lot uh but one of the better buys that i had in 2023 was that there is an andres andres zolowski box set that eureka makes but possession's not in it it's three of his other best known movies but they're still relatively obscure films um the third part of the night the devil and on the silver globe which is one of the craziest science fiction movies ever made um and that's the thing where like i haven't seen those movies i didn't know when i would get a chance to see them at a red screening they're not on like amazon you know maybe they are now but at the time they weren't and the only way i could find to see them in this way looking good treated right was i had to wait for a sale to come along for it to dip down under 50 and when it did i went to whatever diabolic dvd or whatever site i used to buy it and i zoomed in and watched all the movies loved them and felt like i'd made a good purchase like my artistic experience had been improved because i spent the money on this thing and not everything chances like that not everybody even cares to think about like what other movies the guy possession makes they may not even think about that person at all they might watch possession and be like i don't care what other movies he's ever made um but he gets so under your skin in that movie that i kind of want to try to go back to that place so that's the thing is like they're portals like the devil is a portal to other ken russell movies like you know right now you can watch like the boyfriend or altered states or all these other films he's made in the 70s and 80s they're all fascinating and in different genres but all have this very specific sprinkling of russellian insanity that is really the most part of this i think and honestly like going and doing that made me get excited about watching more ken russell movies but you this came up the last when we did this last time that you are i think my preference is i like individuals sort of like video store titles and you from the conversations we've had you kind of you don't mind a box set if it's done well okay there's some companies that do it really well and there's something to do a really shitty job i don't like a bare bones box like i'm gonna buy like there's a lost key box set there's a booklet there's writing inside there's special features there's stuff that especially when i'm taking a chance on something with films i haven't seen i really want there to be a lot of context inside the box that's really why i'm looking for education along with the entertainment how does that affect your uh not uh your sort of organization yeah i was gonna ask you about yours too i mean you've already given me so much with your vhs foundation that is so helpful to understand uh so my organization is insane i really need to just redo it because right now and if i said this on like 14 months ago i apologize but it's my director but it's not alphabetical so it started out as like private place you know it's like your your altman's and your coen brothers and your you know spike lee's and your jim jarmusch's like all my guys they were all like at the top and then we go from the top down we start adding and then slowly but surely you know we get down to adam mckay and even further we get to martin breast and then even further we get you know then it's almost like there's like a hierarchical thing happening but now it's just a mess like now it's i started at the wrong place in the room and now it's like winding around and it's like a 270 it's not quite 360 in the room so it's really messy so then when i start acquiring more than one andre zalowski movie where does that go just go over this open space yeah and i've got a little bit of chaos so if i really need to find something that isn't obvious if i need to find something that isn't quentin tarantino or steven soderbergh it might it's gonna take me a minute yeah so i need a reset that i know that like for a while uh the blank check boys i think they were doing directors for a while and they just mentioned that when we were having like a conversation very early on um uh they are definitely listening right now you know who else is listening another person like as i was first getting into this like i remember tweeting something like hey does anybody i know on here like like blu-rays or collect those and carrie coon uh responded like you should talk to tracy about this and i met tracy let's uh because we were in a movie together an indie movie together uh and have been friends since then and my man is like he if you ever have a chance to talk to him about this so i think he may have like even moved like he may have like moved out of the city to have more space and like obviously for like you know he has they have kids and you know whatever they want more space for the kids but like 12% is all your physical media because he's like so this is a true story um i was always gonna do this episode with you and i told you in fact when i last i was like i would never do without you we're brothers for life not the physical media podcast are you saying maybe you're trying to be polyamorous and are we gonna like not only that but carrie coon tweeted a photo did you see this no of all of the films that they watched on physical media this year and it was you know tracy and carrie set whatever all their purchases and it was it was for the real heads like it was hardcore it was stuff that it's like all international region free all the great labels quality shit all over the spectrum of genre and so i did i did reach out to one of our colleagues at spotify and i said you know tim's gonna do this episode with me we're always gonna do it but if carrie and tracy want to come on and talk there's an open invitation for them to be in part two of this discussion i will just reach out to them for part two because i remember we were texting at one point i think he was like i think he told me at one point he's like earlier today i had to tell carrie just so you know there was a keno lover they had a sale so just don't be alarmed when they show up like i mean like i also participated in that sale and bought 14 things they were all 8.99 i was like how can i not do this i need to own you know robert redford films from 1973 it's just something that i need to have all the films that he made i mean like so i know that like i don't think that that griffin and david have the size of collection that uh that tracy does but like i would be really interested to hear what tracy's organizational style is because i knew immediately that i was like i'm never gonna be able to go by director i the only thing i'm thinking about changing up i'm all alphabetical but what that takes away i think and this is maybe something that we talked about on the last one is like the stuff that's on your parents bookshelf but the fact that it's there makes it important and so as a kid you have to try to figure out to do the math to puzzle it together why is that important yeah this is a huge thing for me i don't if you did say that already i apologize but like seeing the book needful things on my parents bookshelf yeah i think like led me down a path yeah like a path of taste that i otherwise have not gotten i don't think my parents really even care about steven king but they had that book they had that book so it meant it meant enough for it to be there and so there is a little part of me that like when my kids start to wander in and like really take a gander i want them to see all the martin scorsese movies together and i want them to see all the michael mann movies together i kind of want to group them so that they don't have to be like okay now i have to look up who this person was they're just all there you know what i mean i wanted like sort of kind of subset directors but i might just have to limit it to when i have all of the shit that they have so the first box set that my daughter ever fell in love with she's never seen any of the films she has no idea what's inside of them but because of the design of the bud bedeker uh indicator box set the renowned westerns which criteria has since made their own bud bedeker renowned westerns box set but indicator made one like eight years ago and it's a beautiful box it's just three uh you know three discs it's five discs but it's like five movies on three boxes and it's so colorful and it's these beautiful images of randolph scott randolph scott like you know painted like a like a like a like a monet and alice was just like this is my favorite toy this is and whenever i come down to dad's office like this is the toy i play with it's just this box set of blu-rays and so in a way and i didn't do this i didn't like put this in her hands she just wandered over grabbed it i was just like this is this is like my elbow right now and so i wonder if over time like is this how you build a relationship to something even if you don't fully understand what it is what you're saying like resonates deeply with me you know so if they you know if your kids wander over and they're just like good fellas matters to dad and so i have to i have to try they might reject it because it matters to you too that's certainly in play but it's amazing how you're just like emotionally drawn to these things that you see and don't quite understand yeah i one thing i want to throw out and this goes back to like reactions i don't i had a lot of people reach out to me about something that we missed and and this um is something i've been talking a lot about recently especially when it came to maestro because i was able to see i was able to see a screening of maestro in a theater and it doesn't work so much better than that it works so much better in a theater because of the sound and i think the last thing that i really understood about film is like how score works and how it matters and i would never have been able to tell you why a score doesn't work or does and i don't even know if i could do that now but at least i'm on a path of doing that and i'm sure every sound mixer or every sound editor that is listening to this is going to be like of course you guys don't fucking think about sound because we're the last fucking guys that anybody thinks about but a lot of people brought up that one of the biggest things about like one of the laura one of the best things about physical media is lossless sound and so i had a lot of questions about sound setup and i was always just like i don't know my tv speakers and so even though i haven't again because the industry imploded i did not buy like a sound bar or anything like i i want to shout that out that that is also like a benefit of lossless sound when it comes to physical media rather than streaming and to then move forward to like maybe pay attention to how that sound is delivered a little bit more that was something that came up a lot after the first one the same way that there's a lot of um unfortunate visual compression in a lot of streaming services there's a lot of audio compression that's happening on streaming services and so you're just losing something it's just a fact of the way we get a lot of our media right now and it can be improved if you experience in a different way for somebody who doesn't really care about that sort of thing you don't have to buy a 500 sound bar but yeah if you do if you want to watch apocalypse now you don't want to watch it with your tv speakers on a streaming service like it's just not going to be the artistic intent and it's not going to be the best possible version of the experience so for some people it's not going to matter you know some people watch football games on illegal links on their laptops right everybody's different and i do think you know there are exceptions to this too i told the story last year but i don't know if you had a chance to see the film skimmering i did yeah um but i saw it the first time i saw it i saw it at home on my laptop on a link by myself in the dark i was like this is one of the scariest movies i've seen in years i can't believe what great experiment this is in the test of patience and the eeriness of black and then i saw a movie theater and i was like it's a very silly movie it doesn't really work very well and it's because people were like chatting snickering and walking out and not buying into the experience and so usually horror is great in a theater with people but a certain kind of horror doesn't necessarily work that way so format timing where and how you see things is always a part of the equation but if you're like a person who's like i want to be a pod tube alone with like a beer helmet on full gatorade and just watch movies all day she gets a sound bar you get a nice television if you can afford to do so you should buy the beautiful 4ks from the boutique distributors like there is a way to kind of maximize the emotional and physical experience you're having with the part that you care about yes and i will say like i i was of course like somebody that went to go see uh killers of the firemen the theater opening weekend and the experience was incredible and i just re-watched it this week because it came out on apple tv and again we talked about this last time like the act of putting in a disc makes it something different because i swear to god i i loved it when i first saw it it only grew in my estimation the second time i saw it it's fucking fantastic but i was at home and i was just like oh i'll throw this on i'll press the button that gives me killers of the flower moon and at some point i was like okay i'm just gonna pause this and finish up tomorrow because i had somehow started watching a car detailing instagram reel during killers of the flower moon like that's a nightmare yeah that's a nightmare give it some weight it's killers of the flower moon i mean furthermore to the best of my knowledge apple tv plus original films are not producing physical media i don't i don't think that any of these movies that they've made since they started making movies in 2019 can be purchased in america i don't i googled this the other day after i finished it the second time i did say like okay when is i am going to pre-order this i want to physically own this and of course there is not a release date but i don't know and maybe this is just internet chatter but most people and i think this is hopeful or wishful thinking on my part like it's martin at some point there will be like a criterion partnership like they did with the the irishman yeah well the thing is that netflix and amazon um have been willing participants in licensing their their films to boutique distributors like criterion there are you can find a lot of good editions of really good marriage stories available okja is available you know there are a number of um the sound of metal and metal is the criterion i think time the the documentary is available on the criterion edition i don't think i don't think apple has done it and apple has a very different perspective on a lot of this stuff you know this is a very um this unbroken circuitry is the whole notion of the apple company they do amazing stuff i'm very happy that they bankrolled philis the flower moon yeah but i'd like to own it as well to round out my wonderful collection of martin's or stacy films which i've worked very hard to compile over the years but there's no way to know and um i completely agree with you that there is a especially like we're getting older man like and the distractions and our attention spans and what we're how we're spending our days and that confusing thing where you know you're an actor you are you care about and think about the state of the art obviously i do this all day long i talk about it all the time but it started out i assume for you and of course it did for me it's like my leisure time this is how i had fun this is like something i got emotionally interested in just wanted to spend my free time on so when you collide those two things you're a little more cynical about those things a little more cavalier about how you're treating them over time even i'm trying to be the most respectful version of somebody who likes movies yeah but like yeah sometimes you got a text message and you look at it while you're watching a movie you know what i mean it's like you're not going to hell because of that yeah but it's just hard when you're especially when you're like holding the streaming service remote like when you're like i'm just looking around i'm clicking from app to app and i'm trying to figure out what i want to do with my time you are inherently not in the moment so unless you put your phone in a black bag and drop it at the bottom of the ocean for three hours you're gonna get distracted this is why i preach going to movies obviously but even in the format of putting in a disc i find that i'm able to focus more like if i pull something off the shelf and pop it in i think i'm actually more invested than if i press there's intent there's intent there there's that thing i remember a i remember like a tech director when i was doing carpentry in chicago was like just familiarity breeds contempt and like the more like and she was saying that as a warning like you're around tables all the time you're going to get familiar and you're going to be contentious of their danger so don't do that or you'll die treat it as if you're seeing it for the first time every time you see it okay and i guess that is that thing like the more familiar we become with the process of watching movies it then become i don't know contempt maybe is too strong of a word but it's just like oh here's the thing that i do again rather than being like oh i'm gonna lock in because this is the thing that i love just cavalier with it i think is what happens um do you have goals for this year what are your goals for this generous question uh i um i think i actually need to tighten the collection a little bit i think there's some things in it that i don't need and so what's the best way to donate is something i'm thinking about i was thinking about like maybe running a contest on the show and just giving all of my like remainder to someone i've also got doubles of things and you know sometimes i get things for free and i want to be able to give those things away to somebody who really gives a shit you are valued listeners would you like a used copy of way of the gun i would never give away the work of christopher mcquarty um but i think actually prioritizing quality over quantity is really the goal at this point like the things i have felt best about even when i was kind of preparing for this and writing down things that i actually spent my money on that i like it's things that feel special like um i bought the 4k hard box of messiah of evil have you ever seen this one no um it is it's widely considered the best kind of unknown horror movie it's a cult film from 1974 uh it's written and directed by willard hike and glory cats who are pretty well-known people they were in the lucas orbit in the 70s they have a screenwriting credit on american graffiti um they are probably best known for working on howard the duck the movie howard the duck much maligned marvel comics adaptation started in 1987 starting late thompson uh messiah has nothing to do with howard the duck it could not be further from anything um it's although i would really like for you to be able to draw those two films together in some way like you did conair well i can do it i don't know if listeners give a fuck about me finding the convergence point um it's a beautiful strange deeply unnerving movie that features three remarkable horror movie set pieces clearly hugely influential on the 80s films that were gonna come after it but another film is pretty hard to see and you have to go to a rep screening like you catch it in beverly like every five years basically um but this company that i had not heard of until early last year called radiance films put the movie out in the 4k hard box i first got hit to them because i was wandering around fop in england are you familiar with fop no it's a it's a video blu-ray t-shirt poster store in london that is just it's like it's a cracked end for us like it is so dangerous to walk into a place like that how many selfies did you have to take there uh i was unrecognized it was wonderful um not even because it was europe but uh i think i think i spent three hundred dollars there which was like it was really it was dangerous and bad but i was like i'm on i'm on a work vacation so i'm just gonna treat myself um but i bought miami blues there which is a really good alec called and jennifer jason lee movie and i'd never heard of this label before and i've since they do this interesting thing where like they issue basically like one or two american or english productions a year and then everything else is wild genre fare from japan from germany like a lot of stuff i've never heard of and you know i've heard a lot of stuff so if you're putting out something in a beautiful edition with all these special features i've never heard of every movie i'm like what the fuck could this be so i feel like i want to get all that stuff i mostly stick to the stuff that i've always been looking for like they put out a great edition of thieves like us the all-new movie um ocean stakes i kind of lost all the movie there's an edition of it but the messiah evil one is like one of the coolest purchases i've ever made it's a beautiful edition the movie looks amazing the features are good um and that's just like a new thing that crossed my path so how do i spend more time on the radiances of the world yeah and less time on like the warner archive edition of a movie that i kind of like from 1994 yes i'll watch once and then never think about ever again and then kind of maybe don't even really like it but it just kind of felt completionist yes yes yes what are your goals i think they're kind of the same it is sort of just like really focus on the things that have like real core emotional value and the good news is is that as somebody who like worked in a video store and spent i like you know growing up in maine we had to drive like 45 minutes to get to indie movie theaters like i've dedicated a lot of my life to seeking these things out and they still continue to have the emotional weight like the good news is that there's a lot of stuff that i assign emotional weight to but i think it is to i think it'll be those two things really focus in on things that have emotional weight and to make sure that i am being completionist about the directors and filmmakers that i really care about even if that means the expense of something that is like oh i like really like that movie but i gotta complete this other thing first i think is there someone on your list who you're like this is the year when i go whole hog on director blank oh god i mean like ken uh ken russell might be up there like i mean this is very new uh but that there's not a lot of great editions of his movies um women in love is in criteria collection okay uh i think that's the only one and he made a lot of films he made a lot of them uh like melodramatic stylish operatic recreations of composers lives like mauler there's a movie like ken russell called mauler shout out my girl tar yeah honestly yes like it's kind of a tar precursor um he's made a bunch of those uh but you guys you guys had to have made the joke about how mad tar must have been about bernstein doing the mauler in the church right yes of course fury or inspired i mean or inspired that's true deeply by his work um and what he brought to her what he taught lydia you know oh you know what to that end uh i think this might be a year of todd fields for me after watching may december something i think clicked with me oh todd hains uh yeah so that is somebody who i am i think i've seen like i saw safe and i've like kind of jumped in and out but like with those two movies like as bookends i am realizing that there's a lot of stuff in the middle i didn't know and i'm gonna be doing a deep dive on him so todd is uh one of my favorite guests on the show he's been on the pod four times awesome um i just listened to the interview that you had with uh with uh with uh he and uh it was great you're really good at your job by the way you you like did a wonderful welcome to them and you hit them with a question right away you value their time you were just like hell yeah we're gonna get you right into a good question i really uh great work thank you that's very sweet it's kind of the opposite of what i've done with you here which is like waste your time and kind of dilly dally around certain questions i want everybody to know you did offer to value my time and i was like my man waste it i got nowhere to be i got nowhere to be i'm looking forward to this for a year um todd hains there's some good stuff there's uh i'm trying to think he's got at least one other movie in the collect in the criterion collection at least to look at is it uh we get far from heaven is on keno i think um dollar underground isn't the criteria it was a covid thing actually that's the one apple movie that has a physical release there you go we've got yeah we've got killers we've got killers coming if velvet underground is out there we've got that is wonderful to see i think from a technical standpoint i think maybe goal for the year now that we actually work in an industry that is back online i do think uh like some upgrades some upgrades to sound and some upgrades to picture are in the future that had not happened and i've been wanting to happen for a while but so i think that's a goal too so just like higher quality additions yeah yeah it was like real thought into like uh matt one thing that god damn man you have no idea the response that this got was driving around the neighborhood and somebody was like uh max mcgela is really into physical media he's like a vhs guy i saw him walking his dog and we just pointed at one another we've never we've never met and we just pointed at one another and and like two weeks later she was like showing me around his office like he was like pointing out all his vhs's and talking about his projector yeah that he had just got and he was like this is the jam like so i gotta i gotta do some research on that i've been waiting for the moment to strike to ask max to come on the show but i don't want to i gotta find the right moment i don't know when that moment is gonna be but it'll be sometime soon but yeah he's a member of the team he's on the physical media team we are we're gonna have carrie and tracy in here we gotta make room there's gonna be a lot of like what do they call it when you're like a emotionally supported polyamory what is it called what's the word for that i if i said like i knew what it was i feel like i would reveal too much about my life uh ethical non-monogamy wow so this is your call though i mean you really you are my partner you feel like the unethical non-monogamous person saying i thought you wanted this no i want this to just be the two of us but if you feel like it'll nurture our relationship i want you to participate in the decision making okay so first of all the fact that you have a relationship with tracy wild times wild times that means you are absolutely joining me in that discussion there's no way i would do it without you secondly um this is we're in we're in this for life like this is this is not polyamory it's a kind of a marriage with the occasional fling but you're there you know no one's being cucked this is just this is straight up this is consenting adults pursuing hobbies you know there's no uh anything else you want to say anything else you want to this one oh um oh you know what i mean like i try not to get like too big into the uh like we talk about like different covers and stuff like that i will say it feels good to get like the steelbook mizyakis yeah like that feels good to see all of those guys together so i don't own those um and i'm just waiting for when i decide to do it with my daughter and i don't guess like it's probably coming totoro will be coming soon you know we will get there um but i haven't i've never made that purchase in part because actually they got added to max right around when covid started yeah and i was like okay so i got him if i need him but now as we see the shifting sands of entertainment it's time to go when max specifically um the aside um the uh that yeah our kids are different ages and like totoro was huge uh and then and then we started moving into the ones that might be a little bit scarier like i hopefully well spirited away the first time we watched it i think it's like a top five family moment for us incredible and and just last weekend uh they requested it yeah like we started a pop a movie night thing i can't remember if it was told me about this yeah so that has continued and uh and i said like it's gonna be a pop a movie night and i think because they wanted some agency they like said okay well what if we chose the pop a movie and they were like we want to watch spirited away but like kiki's gets a lot of play um and we all went out we had like a big neighborhood group of kids and adults went out to see boy and the heron nice yeah like they are could they click with it it's a little it's a little challenging i think i think i think they clicked with it enough okay i i don't i mean this is not dubbed right dubbed yeah there were like some young we like some young kids like some second third graders were there so we definitely had to go see dubbed i will say and this seems crazy to say i don't think it made as much sense to them as spirited away a classic linear movie well it is by the standards of the boy and the heron it's way more it's easier to follow definitely did you see the thing um where leo and marty had a conversation for letterbox did you see this at all uh i saw i did not i didn't see it i saw i know that it exists in the first minute you know dicaprio was talking about how scorsese has seen every movie ever you know all the way up to like 1982 and how he's recommended dozens of films to dicaprio over the years but he was like but you know i did put you on to miyazaki and specifically spirited away and then scorsese's like you did you introduce me to that film which is a wonderful movie i was like wow leo and then i learned that miyazaki is one of the critical influences on dicaprio becoming such an aggressive environmental activist because of the themes of all those miyazaki movies which are all about like the degradation of the planet yeah so leo right there with us oh my god now we gotta get leo here uh you gotta pull with him well no i've never pointed at leo while driving i did work the uh what to well no i do it expect when you're expecting premiere party as a cater waiter and he was there what he was there he wasn't part of the movie that was like a weirdly incredibly well attended like toby mcguire was there leo was there um the whole crew the whole crew was lucas haas there i'm assuming david blaine david was david blaine he was yeah wow okay um i didn't see david there uh jay ferguson who else i mean there's a whole suit um i think uh yeah we're that's the only situation in which i have witnessed leonardo di capri with my own i don't remember me from that he definitely won't he won't remember me from that but i don't think he was a fucking man i was like wow the e-fives are anything so strongly there's a reason you are you you got it and there's very few people that actually got it the way he got it man he's really fucking good i think it's an underappreciated performance in killers of the flower you know i this is probably about after the oscar movies come out i feel like they're gonna fucking snub him and then we're gonna look back like come on man what are we doing there's a moment where he's like trying to act like he's smooth when the murders come up and it's just like what if you were the dumbest man trying to pretend you didn't know what where somebody was talking about okay it's so good and then like and like that's a funny version of it but watch and same reaction the second time through as i had the first time you can't like the work that he does convincing you as an audience that he does love her truly and has somehow separated his brain from the love that he feels for her and also the horrible things that he's doing to her family and then ultimately to her he it's a really brilliant performance it's also one of those things where you know i don't think that movie's gonna win this picture but it's an incredible act of producing for him and scorsese to refurbish the movie the way that they did that they could have made the movie they could have made the thriller they could have made the two and a half hour fbi movie and that he was looking for a new challenge he was looking for a different way to kind of decenter that character in some ways and he i think takes on a part that like he's too pretty for that part and too old for that part and still you believe it you're still inside of it like i still was i wasn't with him because he's so evil and stupid yeah but by the same token you're right you believe that he loves her and still kind of poisoning her at the same time there's this profound paradox inside of this story that really makes it so as as powerful as it is so i'm with you man he's awesome and he loves the environment loves miyazaki so he's a real life and he'll be on the pod soon yeah well stay tuned next week coming up our interview with Leonardo DiCaprio about ponio i mean honestly you might do it if we told us about that uh sam um you're not only just an acclaimed actor but a podcaster as well like where else can the world find you oh that's awesome man you're really good at your job thank you um i uh you can find me on uh television and films uh but matt walsh and i have been doing um like a vp rewatch podcast that we started doing during the pandemic uh and then during the strikes we pivoted to we are a rewatch of our own rewatch podcast where we invite guests on to rewatch our rewatch uh and then use that as a jumping off point um and so that's on like all things comedy you find wherever podcasts are you know what i mean nice i mean like imagine you're listening to somebody being good at a podcast and then like divide it by like 65 percent and like that's us we really found a good sweet spot i know for a fact as a listener that that is not true um thank you man it's my pleasure thank you thank you i want to thank blu-rays for being fucking awesome yeah it's like the the new c national i want to thank me i want to thank blu-rays i don't know how they're gonna say you're welcome they will say it by just being there for me at all times you know everyone could leave me you know cr could leave me a man could leave me my family could leave me i'll always have my plastic i would buy your family and a man leaving you before cr and where is amanda this seems right up her alley she's actually right around the corner so you can say hello once we wrap up here i also want to say thank you to bobby weiger who's not actually here with us right now but is producing this episode of the podcast and uh later this week i don't know what we're doing on the show stay tuned probably something fun thanks protein boys