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Get the Hotel Tonight app now to start scoring amazing deals at incredible hotels. That's Hotel Tonight, the only booking app that you need. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to today's episode of the watch on the show today. Andy and I remember Tony Bourdain, the chef, television personality writer, who died on last Friday, very huge figure for both me and Andy.
So we talked about what he meant to us, what he meant to television, what he meant to the world really, and he will be of course greatly missed. After that, Andy and I talked a little bit about the panel we did on Friday with the cast and creators of Atlanta, and a little bit about season three of Atlanta, which has been announced to, it's going to be coming back in 2019. And we also talked about some of the trailers that are coming out for the awards beat, the awards season movies, Widows, First Man, and the Stars Morn. So without further ado, let's get into the watch.
I need support to have to play the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan.
I am an editor at theRinger.com and joining me in the studio is Andy Greenwald. Anybody didn't really feel like getting too hyped up. This is a sad episode for me and Andy to do because obviously we're going to talk a little bit about Anthony Bourdain, who took his own life on Friday in France. It was a really, it was really tough news, I think, for a lot of people to process.
Obviously, we would just like to send our thoughts out to Anthony Bourdain's family. They are obviously dealing with this in a way that we are not as fans of his, but I think part of what made him so special to me and Andy, if I can speak for you, is that we did feel like we knew him and that we did feel like he played such a major role in our lives. Not just in our lives, but I think making us have better lives and approach life better in a deeply, deeply inspiring way. And before we even get into our relationship with him, the man in his work, we should also say that we are talking specifically about Tony Bourdain.
His show is our relationship to him. If anyone listening to this podcast is feeling distressed or in despair, there are incredible outlets to please get help, please talk to people. We don't presume to know what happened. We can't know what happened, but it's always good advice to find someone to talk to, whether it's your good friend with a microphone across the table or anyone in your life that you can reach out to.
People are ready to listen to you. I was just saying to you before we started, this has gotten harder to process in a few days since. It's just simply for me, impossible to imagine a world without him exploring it. And I think one of the reasons why is because this is a man who, in his public face to us, loved everything.
His brand was to be, he had this on his Twitter bio, enthusiast. He sought out joy and pleasure in places and showed us the possibilities of joy and pleasure in locations that maybe we never would have dreamed of, maybe we could never afford to travel to, or maybe we overlooked the humble pleasures of a New Jersey diner. Others, probably more with more time and more reflection, can use on the disconnect between the public face that is so devoted to happy things and we can be on the other side of that. But I think that's really what we're struggling with.
That's the utachon. The thing that he articulated for me, his career articulated for me was this idea that all of the things that you loved, the books and the music and the food and the movies and the people and the places, that could be a lens through which to view the world. That those things weren't just consumer goods, they were an identity kit. They mattered and they didn't have to be siloed off and grain green novels and studious albums and classical French cooking and Sergio León movies spoke to each other.
They were all part of a way to view the world and a way to think about the world and a way to process the chaos you see in the world. And that was very meaningful to me. I think that that was formative for me in the last 10 years to be watching his television and reading his stuff and understanding the world through that way. And I think to take that one step further, what he also did that was both important, I think that word can be overused, but I think in this case, it's accurate and deeply inspiring is that he helped highlight the connection between work and art.
He was the first person ever, or what was doing this too, in other writers of course, about history, but he was the first person in the media age that led into this foody age to remind people that for as much as we laud the artists of the kitchen, it's a work. It has always been an honorable blue-collar job to cook. There's a difference between a chef and a cook. And he was one of the first people to remind everyone that the people who were cooking are fancy French food.
That's not the guy who's pictures on the menu. It's generally immigrants from Pueblo, Mexico, or elsewhere who are doing this work. And what he did was elevate that and make that sing. And I think that for people like us who are also enthusiasts about many different topics, and people who have in various avenues tried to create as well, you don't start whether it's an article or screenplay or whatever else you may do.
You can't start thinking you're going to make something transcendent or make art. You just think about putting the words in front of each other. You think about the work. And I think that he helped remind everyone of that connection.
When he had people on the show, people who, on parts unknown or before that, in the reservations, people that we admired in other fields, whether they were cooks like Eric Repaire or whoever else joined him on his adventures, or people like E.Pop. Yeah, or Jor-Pelconos. Or Jor-Pelconos. Like these are people whose artistry we revere.
But they're also people who like get hungry and eat food, people who struggle, people who feel bad about themselves or feel bad about their work. And he wasn't ambassador for that gray area between those two poles and in a really inspiring way. Yeah. And this is somebody who is instrumental in two major trips I've taken in my life.
You know, like I went to, you know, I mean, if, and to say nothing of like putting American cities on a list every time he would go there and just like writing down every single thing he ate and wanting to go try it myself or check it out myself. But, you know, I mean, major trips to Croatia and to Portugal were based on watching his television. Like straight up. When he would go to Portugal or Spain and just go to the bar where they served the seafood out of tin cans and you're like, oh, okay, life could be better.
Life could be good. Yeah, I had two similar adventures. And I was going to talk about them a little bit. Because I think he taught me, it was like a two-stage rocket of learning.
I first learned about Tony Bourdain with that New Yorker piece in 1999. I remember reading it and thinking, oh my God, I want to read this article forever. I read Kitchen Confidential the month it came out and became the kind of fan that I think people are good at becoming when they're in their early 20s or younger, just completely devoted fan. But, I mean, this is maybe a later part of our conversation, but it was the most rewarding kind of fandom because he grew so tremendously in the public sphere.
And I and many other people got to grow up with him in terms of our taste and interest. But I remember very well in 2008, a colleague of my wife's had a cousin getting married in India. And we were invited to go to the wedding and then travel in India. And they're like, great.
And I was great, but because the idea was exciting to travel with someone who knows the place and to get to travel, it's all stops and incredible privilege. But I had a little Tony-sized chip on my shoulder. I'm like, I got this. I can do this, you know, because I've learned that you can eat the street food.
You can go off the beaten path. And so we flew there. We flew to Delhi. And we were staying with our friends, family, and they were preparing for the wedding.
And my wife and I were like, well, can we go out? They were like, sure, sure. We actually have someone who will drive you around even if you want. So the guy we got in the car with this guy, he was very nice to get some sights and monuments.
And we were like, we'd like to go to the square, this red square. Like that's the spot. And he looked in the rear view mirror at us, sizing us up. And he was like, you don't want to go there.
We're like, no, we do. We do. He's like, why? And we said, we want to just explore.
And he was like, you fool us. So he drove us this place. He barely slowed down. He stayed and stopped the garden.
He just slowed down and was like, I will be back here in 65 minutes. We're like, OK, man, cool. Drove away. And we wandered into the square of teeming with people who live there and wonderful smells and exciting places to adventure.
I would say within five minutes, a woman began following me and spitting at me. And eventually we had to hide in a mosque because, you know what? We weren't ready for prime time. We approached this trip.
We approached it with a sort of cavalier like we saw him do this on TV. And it really influenced an extra by Tony. Obviously in some ways less challenging culturally. But when I finally went to a place that became my favorite place in the world to Mexico City for the first time the next year, I went back and took my Spanish classes again to get the language back.
I reached out to people so that I would know people there who maybe would show us around. I had the confidence to do that. And that helped make it an incredibly transformative, one of the most important experiences of my life. Because it wasn't just that he went around swaggering wearing tattoos.
And he was like, I'm eating this crazy little Hong Kong street cards and being like, bring me the chicken next. It's like, you've got to do some actual work. And you have to listen to the people who live there. And you have to approach it with a sense of the confidence that gets you on the plane.
And then there's the humility that gets you sitting down at the table. And I will always remember that and thank him for teaching those two lessons in the correct order. I had a very similar experience in Porto where it was just like we had flown to Portugal and I'd watched this Porto episode only a couple of months before. And we were going to do Porto, Lisbon and the Algar of my wife and I.
And we'd done a similar trip in Croatia where we started in the more industrial part of a country in the north and they traveled down towards the beach to end. And Zagreb when we got into Croatia was like really cool, but definitely free Soviet. It was just like very it was just Eastern. And you know with Porto obviously it doesn't have the relationship to the former Soviet Black but I was kind of mentally prepared to be very jet lagged and very kind of like this is the beginning, not the highlight.
And I fell in love with that city. And we had a very kind of let's just walk around and see where the city takes us and be like we're drinking these port and tonic drinks in a bar and heard some music happening somewhere and down the street there was like a public dance happening, like a just a neighborhood dance. And it was just one of those magical things and you do feel like I did feel inspired by the way that he seemed to approach travel. The way I wanted one thing that you said that I wanted to mention though about one of the things that I loved about his television was that not all the episodes were pitched at the same frequency.
Totally. And he was more than open to be bored. Yeah, we're disappointed. I watched obviously I'm sure a lot of people didn't watch a bunch of no reservations and parts on this weekend and there is a no reservations from Baja that I was watching.
Oh yeah. And we need to just out of the way for the first time. Yeah. And the first 25 minutes of it is mostly him drinking into Yawana and like enjoying himself but clearly just having way too much mezcal and kind of just like blown out from it.
And then in the middle of the episode, I mean he's got he has some great experiences but in the middle of the episode he goes to Ensenita with a guy and this dude takes him to a fish taco place and Borne has not had a guy say I've been to this place. It's this little lily stockos and the guy who he's with looks like you know Bodhi from Point Break, you know, if you lived spoiler alert says to him that's the thing about food it takes you places in time and then because he's talking about how his dad had used to take him to the same taco place like 20 years before and you can see Bordane's like face light up and then he eats the taco and he's like that's like the best fish taco I've ever had and then of course goes to this sort of this to start a place where he has what he calls a La Burned-in level seafood on a street cart. He was always that was sort of the best part about it. Not every one of his episodes, not every place with the best place on earth, not every meal was the last meal you want to have before you die.
Not every everything wasn't at the same frequency and I think it's actually a very adult way of looking at the world. I think when you're a kid every trip has to be this and you know momentous thing and when you don't have a lot of money you want your life to be okay if I'm going to spend the money to do this it has to be like every night has to be the best of my life and obviously as you get older you just are more used to things being like unjet liked or that wasn't a great meal or this person is really annoying but that all becomes part of what the story is telling about that place is. Yeah the experience you have to have the experience. One of the reasons why this is such a challenge to even understand a processor except is that his television shows beginning with a cook store on Food Network which obviously was him figuring out what to do with the cameras it was even I think I think that was before he hooked up with the amazing people at 0.0 productions maybe he met them on while doing that.
This TV show was like the spine of half of my life whatever the TV show was called. It was rarely in the conversations that we had because we generally talk about narrative shows but it affected me, inspired me, taught me more than almost anything else that I ever watched on television. It was my comfort food sometimes you know this was a if I let a couple pile up on the DVR and maybe there was a hungover Sunday like that would be a great way to spend a few hours. Were there episodes like the Jerusalem episode like the Beirut episodes, the Vietnam episodes that challenged me and made me think about things.
I mean the Jerusalem episode I still think of as one of the most beautiful, honest and powerful explorations of something that most of us included either don't want to think about or just throw my hands up. It's not solvable and you doesn't try to solve anything. His entire show was in this takes me to a thing I wanted to reference I had forgotten I wrote this and someone tweeted this at me that near the end of Grandland I wrote a part unknown appreciation that I think had just come out of either conversation. We were having a ride set in a straight in passing to one of our editors at the time about how honestly part unknown does what I want from prestige TV better than most scripted shows in the way that it understands places everything that specificity is everything tone matters so much and also telling the stories or at least giving outlets of the stories of the people who stories you don't usually see gets you so much more than just repeating the same things you know it would be like going to a town going to the same restaurant every day and that's how TV was starting to feel then and I think some of that still exists now.
I think his TV's got changed over the years. I think when he first started out in the early seasons of no reservations it's very much a cult-of-personality show there's a lot of him there's a lot of him talking over people there's a lot of him doing a lot of voice over a lot of the photography is he's in every shot he's moving around these cities he's like cool guy in the leather jacket and as obviously his relationship with ZPZ deepened as his perspective on what you could do with this kind of show and I think the reason why I can't guess is to his own personal motivations but I would imagine as a challenge the reason why doing this kind of show continued to be so rewarding for him and for his viewers is because he shifted the perspective or the importance of him in the show out and they started doing episodes that were inspired by great filmmakers that he loved. They started doing episodes that were you know he shot a Boston episode that looks like it was shot like William freakin he shot a Rome episode in black and white yeah he shot it was like an Antonio film it was it was the the influences he allowed to have in there and you know even the Hong Kong episode that was the the episode that aired a week ago was directed by Ajar Genteau featured Christopher Doyle the cinematographer for Wong Kar-Wai who did in the mood for love obviously and the entire episode is essentially a love letter to the Hong Kong of Christopher Doyle in Wong Kar-Wai and it's just this delirious kind of intoxicating kind of weirdly drunken and hazy episode that is him trying to find the Hong Kong of his cinematic dreams that's not a travel show you know what that's an internal that's a personal essay and to have that be on CNN on Sunday night is a miracle it's also so hard to process because in this moment and he was I'm not going to say I'm going to shy away from politics because he himself is extremely political it feels so brutally painful and unfair to lose someone who was in many ways our best export to the world who represented America as many of us still hope America can be as humble and fair and curious and outward looking and constantly admitting fault and improving you know he was people you know it's actually less than I thought but you know he was certainly acid-tongued when it came to certain topics although he melded a lot over the years but you know whether it was vegans or racial raise cooking style or whatever but he was certainly that way to himself too and I think there was some really good writing over the weekend Helen Rosner was always worth reading The New Yorker's Memorial Comes to Mind about how he was always improving himself and always trying to be better to see that in the world was a powerful thing especially now and I think I wrote about this at one point years ago it's amazing to watch the affect drip away as he becomes more and more comfortable being uncertain you know the earrings fall away the weird rings the leather jacket you're talking about you know by the end he's just dressing like a guy works on a dock like you know he's wearing jeans and a cable and a sweater the same one and leather shoes and he goes and sees what's happening in the world you mentioned zero points to your productions I've met the people who work there Lydia and Chris and other people like Helen Nari like these people are geniuses incredibly kind and like their colleague Tony they are the real deal and I hope that they continue to make incredible work yeah I mean I think the one thing I would say is that you could tell that he loved the people he worked with yes because I think that you if you love someone and you trust them you can take chances like some of the episodes that he made took chances whether it's literally putting people in harm's way because they're in hot zones or you were making shows that maybe don't have the massive commercial appeal that if you just did Paris and Spain every week you know and just went to the best restaurants in the world and freaked out like that would be that would be a show that people would watch anyway you know it was always fun that every season there would be one episode where he was just like this one's for me I'm just getting past it this week oh yeah I do you have any favorite episodes I wanted to talk a little bit about one that was I still have a hard time articulating you talked about him as an and and charity wrote this you know as a great ambassador for this country and its value and the values that we would hope that people would see in us I really I have a very soft spot for a lot of his episodes in the States yes I used to not look forward to them when I saw they were coming and in retrospect I think they were some of the most powerful ones he did one a couple of years ago I think it's no reservations I think it's the end of no reservations but I can look it up but he went to its cajun country and it starts out in New Orleans yeah and he meets Wendell Pierce you know from the wire and they have a little bit of food in New Orleans and then he drives north towards Baton Rouge and in an cajun country and he hooks up with some village of people I don't even know how to describe it it's a town in the city of Bayou and it's you know has a couple of meals he goes to a cookout the night before like basically a barbecue and he's I think it's the turtle stew that he eats that he describes as the best meal he's had since El Bui and then the next day he and David Simon go to a whole hog where they kill and butcher and cook every single piece of this giant pig with an entire town worth of people all of whom are at different workstations doing different preparations and different things to this pig and meanwhile they're just crushing beers and Jameson and like homemade red wine all day long and it's 110 degrees and he's sweating his balls off and there's zydeco playing and he is clearly in a state of nirvana yeah like complete and total like it's hot I'm eating heavy food all day clearly like it's not easy you know as someone who had like two tacos and some chips yesterday and then needed to have like a two hour nap like I can only imagine how he felt yeah but when you watch him go into that zone that he does and he does it in the spain episode he did it in the leon episode where he did in the Quebec episode where he is clearly entered this nirvana it is one of the most pleasurable things that you can watch and you're not even tasting this food you're not even feeling that heat you're not even in this place but you his ability to convey his passions was actually just it's inspirational for us you know because that's what this show has always been about is just two people who love each other talking about the things that they love and when you see that hit it's peak it's inspiring I agree and I when looking back over the enormous body of work on television we have even talked about his books all of which are worth reading yeah he's a good novelist too his crime books that he wrote before he got famous are really fun and worth worth revisiting as well of course I love places when he visited them that either inspired me to go there or just places that I've always loved whether it was in Mexico or Japan I loved it when he went to Vietnam because he loved yet not really because he loved Italy so much but recent years I think he started to you know as necessity demanded that he started to revisit places I really appreciated and was thrilled by the way he revisited places to show us versions of them we didn't know existed there was an episode Massachusetts that involved him going back to where he learned to be a cook as a dishwasher in Provosttown but ended with just an incredible window into the opioid addiction crisis in this country and the disintegration of the factory belt there yeah but I'm thinking about an episode he went to recently to Hawaii where he was with mostly a native population or he went to the island no one goes to with him Molokai's name or when he was in the Bahamas and you think of the Bahamas one way and hear people who live there what does that mean when he went to the Bronx for an entire episode I mean you and I lived in York for a long time I was there 17 years I think I went to the Bronx twice and both times involved the zoo that's the beauty and power of what he did I'm afraid will be lost you know and well we've set up a four in the show and we'll say it again that when the presidential election happened in 2016 and we were shell shocked as many and we barely could get together to do a podcast the thing we talked about that brought us back from from moment was the recently aired episode of parts unknown in Houston which I have revisited since I'll revisit again it it remains one of the best articulated statements as to why America is already great and what makes it great and he continued to interrogate that you know he did a recent episode in West Virginia that is not objectifying it's not condescending it was this is a part of the country that a lot of people turn their back on this is a part of the country that a lot of people will fully misunderstand and this is there are people here who will fully misunderstand the rest of the country and he went in there with like an open heart and open mind and open eyes and tried to see it and convey what it was and you could tell he found incredible humanity and beauty there and made me it changed the way I felt and that's one thing I didn't want to kind of if I have anything to say to close on this it's that he he died at a time that I think is defined by arguing you know I think even even when we're talking about like what piece do you want to put on the site it's like what's the argument here you know and what is the case you're making but I'm going to always remember him as a champion of the conversation and a champion of listening you know and as somebody who was incredibly sensitive and interested in the world around him and I hope that even though he's gone that the conversation goes on that people learn from his work I really appreciate you saying that because that I did want to say a little bit about the fact that I got to meet him and I said this on Twitter over the weekend but just to say to you in person that what you described is what I was the beneficiary of I mean this guy was a hero of mine and when he did this show called the taste on ABC which was part of this period that really never stopped until he did of just trying things I mean this is a guy who was not famous was not distinguished despite an enormous intellect and enormous appetite until he was 41 I think something or yeah probably about him's 40 is close to the age we are now and then when he got chances after that he took them to travel the world to try things to do comic books to get into business you know who knows he was saying yes to things all the time which is really inspiring in and of itself even when the decisions don't lead to the greatest stuff and so he made this cooking show that was sort of going to be like the cooking version of the voice and I found it appalling not just because he was involved in it but because he was involved in it and it seemed to take everything that made his viewpoint only important and special that you cannot just take one spoonful of food separate it from its culture and have it have any value he was always about seeing the whole picture the whole meal and so I wrote a really long really impassioned piece and impassioned in the kind of way that you only you know when you get angry at someone in your family of course it's like it's really teetering on tears kind of anger because it matters so much it wasn't supposed to be you you know yeah and so I wrote this piece and I talked about other things because I used to write really long pieces as it turns out I really appreciate that at the time and it felt kind of good to get it out there and of course you know it would have been worse now but because the internet is the way the internet was that piece got picked up you know by Grub Street wrote a silly headline that I think they later changed but it's basically like you know Grandlin Rip Sportain's treachery you know it wasn't really supposed to be about that but the headline was what I called him a mean name and I actually don't remember I think he followed me on Twitter I don't remember if he said something but the ZPZ people reached out and they were like oh he read it like you got him and I said well what do you want to talk about it and they said yes he would and he made good on that he came to the studio where he's recorded midtown he had flown in from India the night before he was 20 minutes early apparently he was 20 minutes early to everything couldn't have been more gracious gave me an hour of his time talked about everything with good humor and respect because he listened you know and I think he understood as someone who basically made his name as a punk punching upwards yeah that's kind of what you have to do and you understood his role in the firmament of that and then afterwards I saw him a few more times at events holiday parties with a company and he had a he was exactly like he was on television except quieter because he I clearly treasured his privacy and I will always remember and appreciate the fact that this Christmas party holiday party for his staff and crew whom he loved he came early he had one beer with his family then he left because it wasn't you know it wasn't for him it was for everybody else the last thing I wanted to say was one of the projects that he was publicly connected to over the last few years was this thing called Boardain Market yeah it was the big thing in cities as people in cities know these food halls like curated food halls and it was a passion of his when he would go to Buenos Aires or he would go you know to these other places and he would find them the place where the Mercado where we're where we're real people getting their real food that they would make for dinner and yeah and he bemoan the fact that in this country we don't have a culture like Mexico where they're incredible tacos in every corner although LA is close yeah god or like you know maybe a better model of Singapore where they took all the street hawkers and they put them in hawker stations because everything has to be you know perfectly clean but it's still the same vendors yeah so he always wanted to do that and so there was a now so there was a now he partnered with god knows who funds real estate in New York um terrifying to think about the same succession exactly the way else yeah um and he was going to bring in the tostana lady from Baja and his people from Singapore and it was so ambitious and I think they finally just said this wasn't gonna happen or at least where they said it was gonna happen I hope it happens I don't think it should be a corporate you know it shouldn't be a vanity thing for some high-rise or gonna build on the west side of Manhattan what would be incredible would be if there could be a public space in New York the city that loved him so much that he loved so much that made him in a public building and make a board in hall where people who live there immigrants who live in New York who make New York what it is could take turn you know they could be a schedule could cook in this place yeah so people could go and eat his food because we we treasured his life we've learned from his life and I hope that I know that you and I will be influenced by his life for the rest of ours but listen to what he said do what he did go out and adventure go try things and then talk to people make the food because it's it's it's it's it's a best way to like it's a no something and I'll make your life better we'll be 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there are these events I did it 20 weeks ago Kristina a Netflix one a couple weeks ago it's for Emmy voters basically to you know be reminded of the yeah it's essentially like you come you do you see a panel talk you maybe get some FaceTime with the people watching episodes or you watch an episode and it's it's a for a lot of the stuff that's like you know a black mirror episode from from a while back they're trying to just circulate this stuff back into contention and so FX was cool enough to ask us to do this for Atlanta we didn't hesitate at all to say yes because as people listen this podcast know that it is the best show on television and it was pretty cool man because it was it was the entire cast it was Donald and Steven Glover it was like a Stanfield Brian Tyree Henry a longtime watch listener here MRI great to finally meet him Stephanie Robinson Stephanie Robinson where the writers on the show Diane McGonigol and executive producer and the enigmatic Zussy beats Zussy beats just background guys we pulled people how to correctly say this brilliant actor's name we pulled five people who work with her we got five different answers she herself introduced herself a different way than her publicist did we seem pretty clear it's sussy that's we're gonna go with until casting director Alexa Fogel emails us both in a fury after this episode to say we got it wrong again anyways just to say I'm sorry we can't it's not public some quotes came out from it but I think the takeaways were these people were super cool it was incredible to watch how much they love each other and how much they support each other and how much of that the relationships that they've forged have influenced the show yes I made Brian Tyree Henry cry which was intense yeah it didn't mean to we asked him about the episode the woods which in retrospect I think still might be the best episode of the season I got to reconsider I got to consider it more but the connection that that episode had to the surprise loss of his own mother and what was amazing about that and it just wasn't a gotcha moment is actually kind of beautiful he choked up and he said he's talked about it a lot yeah I asked about it but he had never been asked about it when surrounded by the people who got him through it and everyone came to him and put their arms around it was really incredible moment and what was impressive to me about it not just I'm impressive isn't the right word he didn't actually talk to Stephanie Robinson who wrote that episode or the writers about his emotional journey upon losing his mother he didn't know anything about what they were doing for the season and then it was time to start prepping and he said he turns a hero yeah because they didn't get like he was talking about how they write up until shooting so you don't have the full season you don't have necessarily even full episodes when you might begin shooting that stuff and there was a moment where as it became apparent what this episode was sort of going to be about he turned a hero and said is this about my mother and hero is like yeah and he trusted them yeah I mean it's an incredible act I don't know what other highlights you had from it I think the thing I think the one that got aggregated a little bit which was that you know we talked about this too Donald has I think when the New Yorker profile came out it was sort of peak enigmatic Donald yes we thought we were gonna get baby well no I mean I guess I think after the solo press tour and everything I was expecting it just seems like he's in a good place and he knows how he wants to present himself and how he wants to work he was absolutely charming yeah that's what I thought and he said on stage that you know because they announced that the third season of Atlanta in 2019 and he said our seasons are like Kanye albums and so that means that the third season will be graduation and I saw a couple people say things like you know take my fucking money already like it is interesting it's just like he really knew exactly the right thing to say about to get people hyped for the third season really worried about the Wyoming season but that's a little bit further away yeah just the last note about it that's actually the deadwood movie that makes finally we back to what it was always supposed to be I was really happily surprised and impressed by just hanging with him in person we'd never met him before and he was you know incredibly charismatic like superstars tend to be but and maybe this also was the fact that he was surrounded by his closest collaborators and his brother so he's very much at ease but could not have been more down to earth and nice and we chatted about bottled water and also chatted about afterwards we were chatting about one of the things that impressed us most about the show and basically how from the very first episode the show was fearless and content leaving viewers in a place of ambiguity and uncertainty you know and you and I and I even turned this backwards on myself like I've been on the mic on the computer preaching that the importance of that in writing for years as soon as I'm in that final draft document for the thing I'm working on I'm like and then they all lived happily ever after and yeah because you want to please people you want to tie a bow and things you want to be understood and he said he quoted a I don't know whether it was something Chris Ruckus and public or Chris Ruck said to him and this is the kind of person who you know can say can have both experiences that he said that the trick for black people in media is you have to be able to fail once you know because you generally people don't get a second chance yeah and he had that in his mind from the beginning that he could always go back to stand up yeah this doesn't work out we can always do other careers and he had that confidence and you know that all of this is to say this is a random conversation with a guy in a Friday night in North Hollywood where we work yeah but these people they've got the goods I mean it shows on the screen but but the way they think that it's cool it's like there's there's a time period in a great artist life where you can tell that not only are they making their best work or making some of their best work but they're aware of that and they're able to talk about it in a way and they're able to see the chessboard that's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot with LeBron especially in Miami we would just sort of be like LeBron understands what's gonna happen to place for now and that's why that's what makes him different it's not from it's that ability to sort of understand not only the art you're making but the perception of the art that you're making that's it's a pretty remarkable modern gift because the other thing that he said I want to share with people is he said on stage and then we talked about this more after he knows intrinsically and maybe this is his age thing he's a few years younger than us every image they make for the show has to compete with not only every TV show ever made but everything on the internet so if you're not showing people something that is exciting or trying to be different what are you even doing and yes that answer was in response to the image of naked frat boys swinging their dicks around to Laffy Taffy yes in the episode North of the border but it doesn't have to be phallic for it to be relevant I thought that was a really exciting way to think about TV and I hope more people think about that way yeah so we're obviously like out of our minds excited for the season the third season of Atlanta one thing that we were kind of having a little bit of a I think that you and I were both feeling a little bit fatigued by I never like movies or dead or movies are alive like I move going to the movies is my favorite activity so I went and saw drift last week I'll go see anything did you really oh yeah but we have definitely had that part of the summer where I think that there's a little bit there's a little bit of a drop off it's the second week of June yeah but all that stuff from February to May it's condensed with blockbuster after black but it still is what I'm saying yeah there is more to come but I think that like my anticipation of skyscraper is a little bit lower than maybe it was for solo honest okay that's fair Andy and I both went and saw different movies this weekend yes Andy Sullivan's eight and I saw hereditary I can't really talk about hereditary because I don't because I'm sitting here because Andy sitting here I don't want to spoil it and also to describe what happens to this movie they'd have to give us a new tag because I'd explicit about iTunes I highly recommend people listen to Shaw fantasy's interview with the director of hereditary Ari Aster on the big picture on channel 33 can I just say yes don't read the Wikipedia page of for anything I want to be part of the conversation about like 40 minutes before the movies over and it's like literally the eighth most disturbing thing that happens in the movie I stopped when this happened I was like oh shit I can't believe stuff like this happens and exists guys what are you doing with yourselves what are we doing so I don't even give like a capsule review of Ocean's eight I think the headline of anything about Ocean's eight needs to be about the anasants Hathaway back Hathaway back in a major way yeah and Hathaway is the person in this movie who understands what this movie could have been and should have been a ball good um I honestly my main thing about the movie is just the first 20 minutes I was so happy and I was composing my comment to you in this moment I was like I'm going to come into this the office on Monday I'm gonna do a podcast I'm gonna look Chris in the eye and say Chris I wish all movies were heist movies because I kind of do yeah there's nothing more satisfying than watching a plan come together characters rogue galleries a plan click into place and then the rest of the movie happened and it's just disappointing because it could have been should have been great and I got to say I think it's probably an example of the best intentions um meeting the mundane realities of Hollywood sure um there should be an all female heist movie it's connection to the Ocean's IP I could take her leave I don't care um but it's weird to me that that Gary Ross who is an able Hollywood hand a gentleman in the 60s salt and pepper beard handsome guy c biscuit right hunger games why was he the guy to write in direct this movie I don't know because there was nothing particularly interesting in it that I could see it didn't David Milch's daughter read she she is a co-writer okay yeah so I hope that she added some interesting and worthwhile perspective there are moments but mostly I'm like you have Sandy Bullock a the as plus of movie stars you have K purple rhinestone pantsuit you know let's go let's have some fun here hell in a bottom car it looks like she's having fun okay what I'm curious to know when the story about this movie comes out is I'd like to talk to the editor of this movie like maybe we get that editor in a room you know with a voice altering thing in the dark so that they could be honest because my sense is if Rihanna's performance as world-class hacker nine ball is a garlic clove then this person's job was pulling a good fellas in prison with it and take another razor blade and make like here is a reaction shot wanted to dissolve into the thing you just want all the dialogue they tried to give to dissolve yes that's my note um there's a bummer but it's fun to go to the movies let's talk about some movies that we're excited about because this is it's it's fall trailer season all the big exciting movies that are coming out in fall and winter starting to get their finally starting a trailers from them so we had uh the one that I really really want to talk about is the stars born dude that that ran before oceans eight and you could hear people's faces reacting in real time in at the arc late okay this is either it's there's no in between this one nope this is either going to be uh Bradley Cooper is like the new Robert Redford and he is going to be a director actor extraordinaire yeah or this is going to really really really suck yeah no this is i already can't get some of the music from the trailer out of my head like i don't and and it's definitely like i was thinking about how in the trailer like the cl like whatever the lenses are that they're using like everybody's heads are enormous you know like it is star worship on a level that we don't actually see that much in movies anymore i agree and uh it's such a role of the dice man this movie is either going to win best picture at the Oscars or best picture of the razis and there is no in between yes bc with that like late period christoph or something that that head funk like it's big and sweaty and he's got this beard and you just know i mean that the people start at vanity fair start cracking your knuckles to write that he taught himself how to play guitars pieces or whatever what's here's my counterintuitive pitch as to why it might be good because he is himself a famous person which means that he has relatively no self-reflection and a large ago can i say that we love he may in fact have been the right person to make a movie about stardom he's all you know because obviously something that is very attractive to me like there are people who have been associated with this movie from clinton's wouldn't be on say to you know and obviously it's been remade it's been made a few times over the last hundred years it's been going to variations i don't think anyone else other than a movie star playing the part would have been a shameless as to get that like 70 millimeter panovision lens out to have him finger finger picking at cotella with lady gaga like lying a stride his body staring lovingly like because you know natural human reactions like shame kick in and you're like i'm gonna dial this back yeah they didn't so okay let's go i'm really excited for shipl and sam lea has just supporting cast wow so there's that that's one that's going to be either movie of the year absolute fart uh the other reason to come out of the guy trailer is coming out recently our first man which is dame and chisels follow up to laland starring ryan gozling who's playing mule armstrong and widows which is steve mccuines first movies since 12 years of slave starring vio devis elizabeth de becky the cast of this movie is the greatest cast i've seen the elison colin ferrell brian thai re henry daniel kalu yeah who's one second in the trailer made my blood race dude he's awesome but it'll be i don't know what that movie is is that movie supposed to be fun let's get it's um julienne flim yeah from gongirl roded it yeah it is on for so much great is it like we are gonna handle our business like this is like we're oceans eight with gr with guns or is it this is like a meditation on grief and loss not to make everything either or or a total binary but this is a test case for what i am always saying i want which is i want a tourist visionary people to make genre movies get your get your boots dirty and get down there now you probably shouldn't do unless you have a real love for genre you can't try to pretend it's something it's not you can't be dainty about it and mccuines not a dainty director by any means um but it's thrilling the thought of someone who is a visual storyteller at his level making a story like this you know it for me it's like when you saw that that um storkin wrote social network and venture directed it those two are oil and water right but they made together by collaborating and fighting you know whether literally or at least you know in theory off the page they made probably each other best work together this is that kind of pairing for me so it could be great you know it's not so unfortunate i think it looks great man right yeah i just want them to make movies like that i know it looks a lot like the right stuff i don't you know but curious about whether it's more about space or the time before space or what like i'm just curious about what they decide to do with the movie clurfoy kyle chanler jason clark are all also in it with gosling the trailer suggests that they did something truly exciting and great about it which is well one this movie could have been made by anyone right i mean this could have been a spielberg movie which is not a bad thing could have been a clinise movie it could have been boilerplate could have been a gary ross movie this movie is going to get made about new arms strong come on like a wort season date if you have a big star in the lead yeah what it looks like chasel did that is truly exciting is he made it um physical oh yeah the thing about the trailer is that the everything is shaking and i love you raffling yeah it's not majestic it's mechanical and that is really exciting yeah makes it look really good all right so we're excited about those movies i'm sure we'll be talking about them uh in the months to come let's set up thursday so thursday we are going to be joined by the novelist patrick hoffman who wrote uh this most recent selection for the double-down book club it's called every man-a-menace you hopefully have read it by now patrick's gonna be calling out thursday we're gonna talk something about that guys i've finished this book you know this is a rare one christmas went on a limb and just announced it he was so excited and you know i like to push back a little bit i i i read it guys and let me tell you if you were like me i was a little hung up on the first section because i didn't understand what the book was keep going it is it is a masterpiece of structure and i'm really excited to talk about it yeah so patrick's calling out on thursday we'll talk to him and then next monday we'll be talking about succession in west world so get caught up there and until then uh take care