The Future of ‘Star Wars,’ Marvel, Pixar, and Disney’s Movie Monopoly. Plus: Our Summer Movie Awards and Paul Downs Colaizzo on ‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’ | The Big Picture

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by M&M's Caramel. Have you tried M&M's Caramel yet? Caramel has been square for far too long, and M&M's is doing their part by giving you that familiar flavor in a package you love, surrounding the smooth caramel and delicious milk chocolate. As always, M&M's knows how to bring spontaneous fun, just like, oh, I don't know, giving out awards for summer movies that we might love.

With M&M's Caramel, we can all agree that caramel is more fun than ever. So go grab some M&M's Caramel today, and let your taste buds go for a ride. I'm Sean Fantasy, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Disney's stranglehold in my brain. I am joined, of course, by Amanda Dobbins, I'm Amanda.

Hi, Tom. And Chris Ryan. I'm going to interview with the writer-director Paul Downs, Calaiso, who's got a new movie that just appeared last weekend called Brittany Runs the Marathon, it premiered at Sundance, it's purchased by Amazon, we had a great chat about that film. And then later in the show as well, we're also going to be talking about our summer movie awards.

This has been a very bad movie summer. However, some bright lights, some dark stars. We're going to talk about both of those things. You like that?

A little astronomy this morning. And I think we have to go into D23 right off the top. Amanda just told me that she read a thorough examination of the announcements made at this weekend event. How are you feeling?

Are you excited about the Disney Plus era upon us? Yeah, but you have to do this as Juliette Badoche from Nonfiction. And I think that there will be many people, including parents and Star Wars fans who have and Marvel fans who have a lot to look forward to, and I will be sending my streaming money elsewhere. Very interesting.

Not surprising take from you. Chris, you are the co-host of a podcast called The Watch, a long-running podcast that looks closely at culture at large, but particularly television. There are a lot of TV shows in Disney Plus. Here's my take on them.

Don't care. I'd like to talk to you guys about the movies that were announced. Sure. Okay.

Aside from The Mandalorian, I do care about that. I just want to say. I don't care about all that. There are two more Star Wars movies.

TV shows, I'm sorry. Yeah, theoretically. The Mandalorian is the only thing I have a clear sense of what it is and what it's going to be, which actually does feel like the Star Wars show that we should have had like 25 years ago. Yeah.

Very like grounded in the dirt, small character look, as opposed to the intergalactic battle kind of TV show. The other shows, I don't even know what are those shows. Isn't there a Ewan McGregor, Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan.

Say the whole thing. Right? I was just like, I think he's Obi-Wan. Even as I was saying it out loud, I was like, oh God, am I getting the names right?

Am I getting the names right? Have you guys ever heard of me like, Amanda, we're going to do a Star Wars episode you should host? And she has to like... Have I ever told you the story of...

This is a fun game to play if you're in a car and really bored, is you can ask someone to just tell you the plot of a movie. My husband and I do this sometimes. Maybe we should just do a podcast of that sometimes because it's really wild what people remember, but famously, I was asked to do the plot of Star Wars, and I gave the entire plot with intense analysis of the sexual tension between Luke and Leia, and then also Han Solo, and the trash shoot, and all this stuff, and just did not mention the Death Star. The sexual tension between Han Solo and the trash shoot?

Either in the trash shoot or in the trash shoot. Oh, I feel like it's a metaphor. And I even got to read it, but at no point did I mention the Death Star of them blowing it up. The central plot of the movie just didn't exist in my brain.

I got a little look at the Lady and the Tramp live action. Yeah, so for most of my life, Disney has been a non-factor. I never really grew up in a Disney household, and a lot of these legacy titles don't really mean a lot to me. I don't know if I've actually seen Bambi, for instance.

A seminal event in movie history. It's interesting to have the doorway into Disney as Marvel and Star Wars for me, but now being introduced to this huge volume play, and that that is going to come in attendance with all this stuff. And one of the things that we probably talk about when we get into the Summer Movie Awards, it's been kind of confusing for me this summer, is having to take things like Aladdin seriously. Have you been doing that?

No, but that takes up a lot of airspace. Have you seen either Aladdin? No. So you're not taking it seriously?

No, I'm not taking it seriously, but wouldn't you say that it plays a larger role in pop culture in general because the volume of the megaphone is that much louder? Probably. Everything builds everything else, and now you've got these three things, the Disney legacy titles, Marvel and Star Wars, the same thing with Pixar and everything else, that take up. I mean, this is what you're saying, the stranglehold on your brain.

It's like 65% of the airwaves, man. It's true, although in 1992, Aladdin was a big deal, too. So if you were hosting The Watch, which I don't know what would have been called in 1992. Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Yeah, exactly. If you were hosting Smells Like Teen Spirit, the podcast. Yeah, you could get it on your Windows Media Player. It takes six days to download, and you would still be forced to talk about Aladdin in some form or fashion.

But you're right, the amount of mindshare that they have right now, obviously, is overwhelming. And I mentioned this is a biannual event. It doesn't happen every year. The fact that it happened at this exact time, while we're going through it, I mean, Amanda, me, and Wesley just had this conversation last week on the show, where we were like, we were being choked out.

You know, Brock Lesnar has come to choke us out with content. You guys get that reference? It's about wrestling? He wasn't fighting with Black Panther.

You're kidding. Yeah, thank you. He's been spending too much time on this podcast. It is interesting.

I could not help but see the announcement on Black Panther 2 and just how far away that is. We are a thousand days away from Black Panther 2. That's a long time. It's become a cliche to say, we're all going to be dead by then, or the world will be on fire.

But it's possible that some things are significantly different in culture at large, a thousand days from now. We may not even have TVs in a thousand days. I don't know what's coming. So to be planning that far ahead for something, particularly something that is so anticipated, yeah, I thought it was so strange.

I thought it was almost like teasing in a way. That's so funny, because I had the opposite reaction, which is like this thing that we have been predicting for a long time, which is Disney's Monopoly is here. We have seen the realignment of the studios and the streaming services and kind of what the big names are going to be. And we've been like, well, Disney's just going to own everything.

And Disney will have this movie. And Disney will have the streaming service, the Mandalorian, and all of this IP. And this was just a confirmation, a certainty of, okay, they have consolidated all of the IPs together. They have the distribution plan ready on Disney+.

And what we expected to happen is going to happen. And I have an easier time imagining how Black Panther 2 is going to fit into entertainment as we consume it than I do, like, basically any movie that a traditional movie studio is releasing, or even most of the TV shows on basic cable at this point. But I think the interesting thing that came out of some of these announcements between Black Panther being 900 days away and Spider-Man being excommunicated from the MCU is that there are a lot of people waiting online, you know what I mean, to get their big screen time. There's a lot of characters, there's a lot of filmmakers, there's a lot of producers who are all like, so this was like a huge hit.

And we've got to wait like four years? And my guy's got to be in like a couple of 30-second spots in post-credit sequences of the Eternals? That's just telling me? It's like that?

I'm not saying Black Panther would walk away from MCU. I don't think that Michael B. Jordan's not going to do that. But the Spider-Man thing I thought was indicative of something like, let's go.

Let's do another one. Most definitely. But I think it's because, while I think what you're saying is right, that the playing field is kind of settled in a way, at least for the next six to 12 months, it's going to be Disney plus versus Netflix, and then HBO Max will come along, and then Universal will clarify what their play is. For the most part, we know what the short-term clarity is around things, but three years from now, I don't know if there's going to, I think movie theaters might close three years from now.

I don't know if we will have 4,500 movie screens three years from now. So getting that far ahead of ourselves, I think you're right, Chris, that there's a desire to kind of plant flags. There has been. I mean, Mark Harris has been writing about this for coming on 10 years now, just sort of like, we clenched our flag on a film that we don't even know what it is seven years ahead of time.

Black Panther 2 in particular, though, struck me as weird, because it might be, after the rise of Skywalker, maybe Avatar 2, the most anticipated movie that exists that we're aware of in the world. Am I overstating it to say that? Well, I think that Avatar 2 is a good example. I mean, not that it's going to go, Black Panther is the weight between Black Panther 1 and 2 is nothing resembling Avatar and Avatar 2, but it is indicative of the fact that I think that, like, without seeing a single piece of footage, I think a lot of people are like, does anybody still care about Avatar?

I was going to ask, who is anticipating Avatar 2 besides James Cameron? I don't know. I don't know. But, underestimate James Cameron at your carol, because this is what happened with Titanic, and this is what happened with Avatar.

People were like, is this going to be good? I don't know if I care about this. And then, boom, biggest movie of all time, and then, boom, biggest movie of all time. Twice he did that.

Twice people were like, I don't know, he lost his fastball. He's a weirdo. He loves to play with his toys. He doesn't understand humanity.

So, I wouldn't underestimate Cameron. You know what I'm saying? I'm going to name some movie characters for you guys. Tell me if you know where they're from.

Fina, Icarus, Cersei, Ajak, Kingo, Druig, Gildamesh. No? So, I'm assuming it's not Icarus and Cersei from Greek mythology. No, though, I suspect that they are inspired by those titles.

I don't know who you're talking about. These are Eternals characters. We got a new Eternals character announced over the weekend. His name is Black Knight, aka Dane Whitman, and he will be portrayed by Kit Harington.

They got two Gamma's friends in these movies. Yes, in fact, two brothers have been reunited. Yeah. And I've got to be honest, I don't really know what's going on with the Eternals.

I feel like this is moving in the opposite direction. It's happening too fast. I'm like, who are any of these people? Didn't you feel that way about Guardians?

A little bit. Do you think that's what this will be? I don't know. Spider-Man is based on puberty and mythology that we all have to experience.

Of all these things that were announced in the Marvel world, that's the one that I'm the most interested in, because it's the one that I least understand how they're going to do it and what they're going to do. And it's very sorry at this point. Aside from the two Game of Thrones alums, you've got Angelina Jolie, you've got Sam Ahia, you've got Brian Tyree Henry, you've got Gemma Chan, you've got a lot of Camille Nanjiani, there's a lot of famous people here. I did want to talk to you guys just a little bit about the two Pixar movies that were announced.

Thanks so much, Matt. Awesome. I know you guys don't care for them, but I do want to just describe the plot. Why don't you go ahead and do this?

Thanks so much. And you left a helpful note here for Onward, which starts Chris Pratt, which is the next Pixar film. Wow, you didn't even put that in the outline. Unsubscribe.

Which will arrive in theaters in the spring. This movie centers around two elf brothers who lost their father at a young age. Why does it always have to be at a young age? Some old elves.

You know? You want a story of old elves losing their father? That's a natural thing to have happen. That's true.

I suppose that's true. I guess I don't really know how elf families work. Well, traditionally, they live a long time, I guess. It's really helpful, guys.

The second feature is called Soul. And this feature fixes on the question, why am I here? And tells the story of how each person on the planet received their soul. Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey will star.

Yes, Tina Fey is what I think of when I think of deep existential questions for children. Didn't she make this movie? The one about moods? I think that was One Country.

No, but what was the one where it was like, I have like a sadness creature? Inside Out. Inside Out. Inside Out.

I'm not in that. And Inside Out's really good. That's Amy Poehler. Amy Poehler.

My bad. Well, the sadness one character is really affecting. I saw that in a movie theater. Really?

Yeah. I just couldn't remember anything about it. Because it's wrong. I'm really bad to ask you guys to be on the show today.

I know a couple of other films were announced. Dwayne Johnson was there with a movie called Jungle Cruise, which is based on the ride Jungle Cruise. Some iconic photographs of Amanda Dobbins at Disney World circa 1992, I would guess. Were you in a safari outfit?

No, just being like, oh, well, there's a fake alligator jumping out. Yeah. Is Jungle Cruise so fake? Have they made Jungle Cruise?

Am I thinking of Safari Adventure? No. Are you thinking of Lion Country Safari in Florida? Probably, yeah.

Yeah. So Jungle Cruise is fake. It wasn't when I wrote it, or whatever I wrote it at Disney World in 1992. I haven't been back to her.

Good night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Jungle Cruise is... When does that drop?

I think it's next summer. So, Zach, how do you think that's going to tie into Liz Warren's campaign? I don't know. I don't get that joke.

What does that mean? Because Liz Warren and The Rock have a mutual appreciation. So Liz Warren loves Ballers, and then... I don't get that joke.

Hold on, no. He was literally reading Elizabeth Warren's book on the season premiere of Ballers. Here's my take on Jungle Cruise. It's directed by Yon Colette Serra.

Do you guys know what movie team is? The Shallows, and The Commuter, and Run All Night, and Non-Stop. He makes deeply fucked up crime movies, and he's directing a Dwayne Johnson romp. It probably won't feature Elizabeth Warren, I guess.

Maybe it'll be Carl, too, and they'll finally investigate how to escape an alligator on land. I smell a crossover event. I love the idea of it. There's also some Fox movies that have been shit on throughout this year, but maybe now they'll get some respect for it versus Ferrari.

How did they use the rest of it? Well, recently Bob Iger in a call about earnings basically placed a lot of the blame on Disney's down earnings on the failure of several Fox films that they inherited, that they've not developed themselves. Ford versus Ferrari, probably the first one that they're really putting their back into. I think it'll be a big-time Oscar contender, and we'll talk more about it on the show later this fall.

Chris, this is on your corner, but there's a Breaking Bad movie? This was not a D23. This was Netflix. If I had to guess.

Actively activating. You can air quote someone leaked? Yeah. Air quote, accidentally air quote that there was a Breaking Bad movie in six weeks?

Yeah, yeah. That seemed to be a very noted jockey back after all this D23. What do you make of a Breaking Bad movie? I can tell.

I hear cynicism in your voice. Well, I'm unsure. We had the same cynicism when Better Call Saul debuted. Better Call Saul is one of the two or three best things on television.

If they want to make a Breaking Bad movie, I am pretty sure it will be pretty good. This movie's out in seven weeks. It's been done for a while. Sorry, I stopped listening to you guys.

Do y'all like Breaking Bad? I'm glad that you had it. Do y'all like Breaking Bad? Too stressful for me.

I just also, like, you know, it's good. It was great. Congratulations. We can't move on.

We're all stuck in the recent past or the past. Let it be Breaking Bad then, rather than Aladdin. That's my take. Would you rather have Aladdin or Breaking Bad?

Books. Yes, I would rather just like... No, that's not what this podcast is about. ...and watch the session.

I would like to watch great stuff. I would like excellence. How about that? Okay.

I think Al Camino has a high probability of being excellent. I'm hopeful as well. They just didn't need to do it unless he had a good idea for it. I'm left with a slightly bad taste in my mouth after the Deadwood movie.

And I'm a little bit concerned about... Yeah, I'm making a circumstance to that. Of course. I don't hold that specific aspect of it against the people, but the idea of returning to a story in this format...

The same problem is true of the Veronica Mars movie. Now, they brought Veronica Mars back as a series, and it was wonderful. When they made it a movie, it felt compressed, it felt fanservice-y, and it didn't really feel like the thing that we loved in the first place. So, maybe a mild layer of cynicism about this.

So, I'll watch it on October 11th when it premieres exclusively worldwide on Netflix. How's that for a sale? Should we talk about some of your movie awards? Yes, but you changed the category.

Yeah, I did, I did. Because two categories that you had were the best performance in a bad movie and the worst performance in a good movie. And I answered those questions honestly. Let's talk about both of those categories then.

Oh. You can't do this. We prepared. No, I'm ready.

I can do your homework. Here's what can happen. I can do whatever I want. And in this case, I've decided to do whatever I want.

Let's hear your answers on those categories. Some of these will be silly in reverence. Some of these will be obvious. We'll talk about the very best movies we've seen this summer.

We'll talk about some of the most ridiculous stuff we've seen this summer. I did want to kind of play with the idea of best performance. So, I originally was positioning best performance in a bad movie, worst performance in a good movie. Worst performance in a good movie seemed like a really mean kind of category, uncommonly mean for what I'm trying to do here.

So, I felt some resistance to it upon reflection. But, if you feel strongly about what you put down here. No, I don't really. I had a joke that started with me putting Cate Blanchett in best performance in a bad movie and then Kristen Wiig in worst performance in a good movie.

Oh, that's a good joke. Yeah, thank you. Okay, but I don't really feel strongly about either of those and we just talked about them recently so we can move on. Okay, Chris, do you have anything you want to say since I changed the categories?

Some bids that you have that you want to make a note of here? For like best worst performance in a good bad movie? Yeah. I had a best supporting performance in a bad movie that I wanted to shout out, but it seems weird to leave awards with it.

But why not? This is like opening Oscars with best supporting actor. Austin Abrams in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Which one was Austin Abrams?

He was a kid pretending to be Kiefer Sutherland from Stand By Me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he was in a bunch of teen movies like he was in Paper Towns and stuff like that.

He's in Euphoria. He plays Cat's boyfriend. And he's just like really doing a lot in a role that does not require it. And he's going to star in the reboot of Less Than Zero on Hulu.

And I don't know, he's playing Andrew McCarthy character. I really, really like him, though. The thing I really like about you is that you really have your finger on the pulse of teen entertainment. And that's not as sarcastic.

Well, actually, it comes from there. That's pretty good range that this kid is Cat's girlfriend and the most punchable person on Earth in Scary Stories to Tell. And he was in The Walking Dead. He's on The Americans.

He's like been around. He doesn't do a lot of interviews. I think he takes his craft really seriously. Yeah, seriously.

Just keep an eye out. I'm skeptical again, but okay. I trust your radar, so I appreciate that suggestion. I also had a best supporting and a worst movie.

Yeah, for sure. I'm an A student and I do my homework. Of course. Keanu Reeves.

Always do my movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was good. That got quickly forgotten.

Not by me. I feel like it really pierced the bubble. It popped the bubble of cultural consciousness. And then we just moved on.

Yeah. move down Chris? I've moved on from that movie I would also say best performance in a bad movie Emma Thompson I have that on my list as well. What about Hugh Dancy in Late Night?

Any thoughts on that? I still need some answers. I need some clarity on that. Is it a gambling issue?

What was going on? You gotta go be in WandaVision? Yeah. He plays the butler in WandaVision?

Let's do a little bit more down the middle stuff. Let's just do best performance. What was the best leading performance that you saw in a movie this summer? Well the obvious one is Leonardo DiCaprio.

I agree with Amanda Dobbins. I wrote this down as well. Yeah. How do we make this not just a once upon a time in Hollywood is the challenge.

I would also say that Naomi Watts and Loose is as good as I've seen Naomi Watts be in a really long time. Let's wait on Loose. I have some thoughts on Loose. We'll hold it till later in the show and also let people listen to more of the episode before soiling Loose.

I think Amanda has been gearing up to discuss this as well. You guys recommend movies and then I go see them and then that's what happens. So it's on you. It's on us.

I also wrote down Brad Pitt. I was compelled after listening to Bill Simmons and Wesley Morris talk about this movie that perhaps Brad Pitt is the star of this movie and should be in the leading actor category even though when the three of us first spoke about the movie I was fairly certain it was going to be Leo Best Actor, Brad Pitt Best Supporting Actor. Maybe not. Maybe it shouldn't be.

Did you guys listen to Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino talk about it? I did. Not yet. I will though.

So on the DGA podcast they had a conversation about the film and it seems that we know we know PTA is a big Leo fan but he seemed quite taken with Brad Pitt in this movie. Yeah I just wanted to say that that podcast made me feel much better about my skills as an interviewer because Paul Thomas Anderson is like Quentin fucking Brad in this movie. I mean he was like the cool version of Chris Farley and I was like oh I'm okay at this. I'm not nearly as bad as I thought I was.

I don't think that's bad. I think that's honest. It's amazing that the fucking lights go on when the neon is like it broke my heart. That's great.

I think he would fit in on this podcast. I think he put just like an inch more sass on PTA. If you think about it it's like you worry so much about like what you're going to say about like the Quentin Tarantino movie and then the guy who made the master in there will be able to be like the fucking lights. It's heartbreaking.

I appreciate that. It's an honest way of talking about movies. It's nice. You don't have to be fancy.

I much prefer that to some film school bullshit. So PTA during D23. Fucking Milana. Okay.

I watched it four times a day for a year. Broke my heart. Fabulous PTA goes right in the Hall of Fame with Bobby Sony and Johnny Green Book. This is really bad PTA.

We got it. We got to memorialize this one. Just know your best of boys work to date. What were we talking about?

This movie Brad Pitt, Leo. Who's the lead and who's supporting? I still think Leo's the lead but Brad is kind of the three quarter lead you know. He's in so much of the movie.

Well I just think like responsiveness is a form of acting as well and he is the person who's reflecting a lot of Leo back. That's the function of the character but presence is so much of what Brad Pitt does anyway and I really do think it's a rare form of acting. So and he does a lot of that in this movie. I mean it's not the type of performance that we traditionally think of as lead because you know dummies want to sit out here like counting lines.

But I wonder if they'll both run. I mean that seems strategically really stupid. It does. It does.

The tricky part is that Brad has not won and Leo has in this category. Now Leo's not going to take a seat on the bench. That would be a very Leo thing to do. But I wonder if Sony in the movie puts a lot of energy behind him.

Anyway it's evident to us that those two guys are not the winners. I wrote down a couple of other people. I did as well. I wrote down Florence Pugh in Midsommar.

I wrote down Himesh Patel in Yesterday which is you know I think a movie that you and I quibbled over a lot and didn't love. But he's kind of going for it and for a person that I've never seen before to be able to sing Beatles songs in front of Ed Wembley. It was like you know it was impressive. I thought he was great.

I had him in good performance in a bad movie. I also wrote down Bini Felstein in Booksmart which maybe was a little bit swallowed up by the conversation around Booksmart and whether it did or did not fail. Also the Andrew Luck retirement of movies. It kind of was wasn't it?

It kind of slipped into that Saturday news cycle. Looking back Booksmart's now made $23 million which was pretty good now that we've seen all these other movies I've made too. So all of that I don't know energy we put in that conversation. I had to scroll for a long time on box office no to get to Booksmart.

It's better than where Late Night went you know it's better where a lot of these movies went. I mean like Brittany Runs Marathon who knows how that movie's going to do but that movie was also bought for a lot of the festival. It's hard to say. Can I also throw out Maya Erskine for Plus One?

I finally saw this movie. I thought it was great. I thought it was very fun. And you know we were talking about Pau Julia Lippin and she was like I thought it was terrible.

Which I couldn't understand what she was talking about. She's one of the queens of the genre. I think I agree with her. I think it's a tremendous performance.

The flaw of that movie is that it's a movie about the guy character and like who gives a shit about him. That's true. Yeah. And she when she is on the screen it's like it's transcendent and it is really kind of a breakthrough for her but it's less a rom-com and more like Mopiel.

A guy has to figure out some really obvious things that he should have known for years. What do you think Chris and I liked about it? Okay. Well it's it's I mean I haven't been single for a while and it was still really too soon on that front.

I was just like move on move on. Also they shouldn't wind up together because she's way better than him so that's tough. I would say that I think her she had some problems of her own. That's we're all flawed was my takeaway from the film.

Yeah but everyone can be flawed and there can still just be a power imbalance. That's all I have to say. Power imbalance? I don't think that's what this movie is about.

I don't think that's what this movie is about. Plus why I was like banging her shoe on the table with the UN. It's love. What happened?

That's great. She is I really hope that she gets the opportunity she deserves because between 1015 and one country and plus one she's had a great summer and I'd love to see somebody put her in a big movie that asks a lot of her. Any other lead roles Chris? No we covered the ones.

Yeah good one. Yeah. This is not the last time we'll talk about this podcast. No I finally read that story too and I couldn't believe that she was cast two weeks before they started filming.

Yeah. In an effort to capture I don't know kind of like innocence and insouciance I guess I couldn't really figure out I got the strategy she was going for. It's kind of amazing that she's so good and she didn't really prepare to do this. It is part of what makes the performance amazing is that there is no performance and that movie is astonishing because it just captures a mood and a time in life and feelings like really in a raw natural way.

And so it makes sense for her being a first time actress if she had a preparation she might overthink it. But I thought it was amazing. What about supporting performances? Can you guys think of anything you love this year?

Hmm. Would you like me to suggest one? Yes. I thought Jamie Bell was great in Rocketman.

He was. I think it's kind of that's another movie that's kind of quickly lost the time. Remember how long we talked about Bohemian Rhapsody? I felt like that was nine consecutive months of Bohemian Rhapsody conversation.

Obviously Rocketman is impaired for Bohemian Rhapsody for obvious reasons but Rocketman just doesn't come out. I went to a Dodgers game yesterday and it was quote unquote Rocketman night which didn't mean anything. There was no representation of Rocketman other than it showing up on the screen. You didn't have free things.

Did you go late? Neither. Was there like little pianos instead of bobbleheads? No.

Sometimes they get set out but only at certain gates which is unfair. If there was any giveaway I did not receive one. I was sitting in fairly modest seats. I was laughing at the cool Rocketman swag.

I just imagine your next door post about like I did not get my Corey Seager bobblehead because I went into gate six. I did get my Corey Seager bobblehead and I gave it to a little kid because that was nice but they weren't giving them out everywhere. That's how I know. The LA doctors did not give me anything related to Rocketman but I am giving Rocketman some love for Jamie Bell.

Hey can I just say that it does seem like there are now two movie years which I'm sure that you guys have talked about before but it does seem like if you put something out in the summer it's just like 99% guaranteed that people just aren't going to talk about it because of all the superhero movies and reboots and cartoons. Yeah I wonder. It's like there's so much of this stuff and we'll talk about this later where I'm like ah good movie interesting. I wonder why we didn't talk about that one or why we only talked about how it didn't do well and it's like all that stuff is gone now.

I think is counter programming dead is an interesting question because it might be. We might not really have that anymore. Um last call for. I have two more.

Yeah go ahead. From the same movie. Uh Diana Lynn and Sasha Den from The Farewell. Yeah they were great.

The parents. No the um at least I believe I'm sorry I got names wrong I'm trying to isolate the mother and the grandmother. Oh yes okay yes yeah. I also had a shout out uh by Kali Ganambar from The Nightingale.

Uh you know haven't seen it. Yeah it's pretty brutal. Okay it's like honestly like a really tough hang but he's incredible. Wesley was reading about that last week as well.

Uh any other supporting performances you want to shout out? Anybody from Men in Black International that you thought really distinguished themselves? You know what I think Chris Hemsworth is charming on screen but that was not his most charming and that was not supporting. Are we counting Endgame in our summer movies?

I think we should. I have an Endgame scene. Okay great. Favorite scene.

I'll share my first one which is the out of time montage in What's on time in Hollywood which is my favorite part of that movie now right when the sun goes down and Cliff goes to pick up Leo from a day's work and they're driving along and we see LA changing in real time. We see their lives changing in real time. Amanda what do you got? I have Brad Pitt on the roof.

What about it? What did you respond to? In addition to the physical attributes of Brad Pitt that just really feels like the lightning bottom moment for what Brad Pitt season. I was having a conversation with Kai McMullen last week and for a different podcast we were preparing awards and she wanted to put Brad Pitt in best comeback and I was furious at her because he never went anywhere in my mind but there is this energy coalescing around Brad Pitt and it has something to do with the fact that he looks pretty shirtless but it feels like that's worth it.

And also I enjoyed looking at it. Chris what about you did you enjoy gazing upon Brad Pitt's 12 packs? Of course man. I loved watching him do old school handiwork.

What about his parkour leap to the top of the roof? That was good. I mean like I read a couple of there was a bunch of interviews with gosh parkour experts? No who's Zoe Bell?

And she was talking a lot about like what he could do to get up to the roof. That was pretty neat. My favorite sequence this is a weird fave. I wouldn't say it made me feel good.

It was the opposite but just in terms of filmmaking expertise would be the cold open opening sequence of Midsommar. Very good. Very upsetting. As punishing as it gets.

I'll never watch it. I'm honestly waiting until Midsommar comes out on DVD or DBR or whatever. VOD? VOD.

That's the abbreviation. So that I can just fast forward through it and watch the rest of it. It's all kind of traumatizing so you may be holding the fast forward button down. But it's like as the way that you two described it there it's just like the real life traumatizing and then the funny stylized traumatizing.

That's true. That's fair. Yeah. So I think if you see it the first 25 minutes and just took our word for it you'd be fine.

I took a trip back to my adolescence at the movies this summer. Mal, Ruben and I saw Endgame on the Disney lot and you can imagine the kind of people that get invited to that screening of Avengers Endgame and they were very raucous and they were very enthusiastic and they were very emotional and the sequence in Endgame when there's a fight sequence between Thanos, Captain America and Thor and Iron Man. Iron Man gets his ass kicked, Thor gets his ass kicked, Cap is kind of the last guy standing and we see a hammer move and then the hammer finds his way to Captain America's hands. I was like I'm 11 years old.

This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. The people in the movie theater were screaming. Like not just like oh shit like whoa like that long. They could not control themselves.

There are people who have been waiting their whole lives to see something like that. Now did that color my reaction and if I were sitting alone in my house watching on my phone would I have the same sincerely emotional reaction? No. But circumstances are meaningful and how we see movies is meaningful right?

Yes. Amanda you did not have the same reaction to the scene to take it. So as you were starting to describe it literally what I thought in my head was like is that when they're all in like the purple scene? I don't know what that means.

You know what it's just like everything's like really muddy and they're in the CGI phase and it's like purple and that means. But once they're in that other world that like I just kind of didn't know what was happening. I think I remember the hammer and I don't think I saw it with Chris. I don't think I had to turn to you and be like what does that mean.

I think contextually I was able to figure contextually. Yeah. I wouldn't say that it stayed with me or that I know a lot of the mythological associations. No one can pick up the hammer.

Oh I texted him. That's what it was Chris. I texted him and I was like what was the deal with the hammer? Oh yeah because it's like is he worthy?

Yeah. He was worthy. But I knew he was worthy. He's really hot.

That would be funny if he wasn't worthy and Thanos won and that was how the MCU ended. The hammer happens. Fucking heartbreaking. Any other scenes Chris?

No I guess everyone is pretty high up there. I would say yeah then I mean that's a put too fine point on it but like yeah the out of time montage and almost upon a time I agree with you. Just really feel like you're leaving your body when that happens. You raise your hand but we're on a podcast Amanda.

I always raise my hand. My erst kind of dancing at the wedding at the beginning of Plus One is it's really the only similar way. I watched it at home and I rewound it and watched it again which is not something I do for anything and it's tremendous. I really felt like it spoke to me spiritually and then Charlize Theron doing a terrorist negotiation on Molly in Longshot.

I thought that was great too. That actually is a good segue right into the why didn't this work award. Because speaking of seeing a movie in a raucous theater, Sean and I saw Longshot at South by Southwest and it was like it was hysterical. Like people were crying with laughter then the cast of Longshot walked out and did like a victory lap and Boyz II Men played and it was like this is gonna be a blockbuster.

This is gonna be a big hit. That's what I said. And it wasn't. Nobody cared at all.

Why did that happen? Theoretically I think I know a lot about this stuff. That one in particular moment. What happened?

Okay so here's the argument is that it's like two or three movies at once. Nobody wants to see anything political. Yeah. And also nobody bought Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron.

Those are my counters. When has that stopped Seth Rogen before? Yeah I don't think people are thinking that deeply about it. It came out a week after Endgame and stars two people over the age of 35 so no one wants to go to the movies to see it.

I think it's as simple as that. I'm sure there are a lot of people who have since like bought it on demand and had a nice time. That's the other thing. You don't have to go to the theater to see it.

You can watch it at home and it's a very fun time. The question is whether or not people will still make movies like that if nobody goes to see them in the theaters. Right. And if they do only make them for Netflix or Apple or whatever what changes about them?

They don't spend as much money on them. They don't spend as much time on the script. They're not as funny. They're not as memorable So that's a very bad thing and I was watching long shot kind of even regardless of the world is going to be a big quality as I was watching I was like this is a good old fashioned Hollywood comedy.

I love a good old fashioned Hollywood comedy. If done well if the writing is good if the performances are fun then matter. Are you unanimous on that? I'm mostly worried that it's actually an elevator pitch issue too whereas there's so many movies now where you can just be like they've remade this.

This is a sequel to that. But this is like okay so he's like a journalist and she's a politician and then they like they knew each other from high school and then they like they won't be to each other again when they're adults and he's down on his luck and she's ascended and then they like hook up and it's just amazing and they're like and you're like but what does that mean? Is it a remake of broadcast news? Like people want like the easy package for it and I'm not trying to be like in 2019 we've somehow broken it but like it does seem like the simple act of trying to explain an original piece of content to someone is more trouble than it's worth now.

I have an example or an answer that's kind of a counter to that which is a movie with a great elevator premise pitch that did not work at all which is yesterday. Sure. And that was one where there was so much talk about it both on the ringer and like in the world of people knew what it was you could understand it's like what the Beatles didn't exist and then that's a large group of people across ages and demographics were like oh huh maybe I'll go see that. I think that was just an expectations game though because it had such a are you saying it did well or did not do well relative to that expectation?

I mean it did okay. Yeah it did pretty well in the context of a movie like Longshot you know it made like 70 or 80 million dollars and like more than 100 million dollars overseas which is not incredible but given that we do feel like as I said earlier we've been choked out by Endgame and Shazam and all this other stuff this summer that's not that's not bad and it probably didn't cost a ton of money to make that movie so I don't know whether like the elevator pitch movie is dead is kind of hard to say um that was one that I think we both felt like this is a $150 million movie it's gonna be a fucking sensation it wasn't that but Longshot made like $14 million like a very very small number maybe less than Booksmart which is crazy to think about but it did. But it almost would have helped Longshot more if people were like nobody wants to see Longshot because of Trump like if there was like some sort of like if Trump had been like this is a bullshit movie that didn't work for First Man though I mean you know I think you were right the first time around which is that it got there's something toxic about anything that's political and people don't want the politics in that comedy right now so. To me it's just a distribution issue.

People don't want to go see romantic comedies in theater especially when they have like a ton of them on Netflix all the time and they're not as good but people don't really care and it's I think also distribution timing because it really did come out a week after Avengers. We're running a long time so we gotta bang through some of our categories here. Worst reboot we had so many contenders for this award. quick thoughts do you count sequels in here or just simply reboots ish i mean i think that reboots were kind of redefined here because of things like the lion king and aladdin where i was like is that a reboot is it a remake is there gonna be aladdin 2 now i i think that all that falls under the same i don't think toy story 4 is a reboot sure okay um i wrote down in black international which is just one of the bigger what the fucks of the year um i have one of those is half the child eligible for this um sort of it certainly starts us off on like an expanded fast and furious universe which we had not had before so i think it probably qualifies the hustle that is a reboot of the of the what is the name of the original scoundrels wow i think the hustle is more successful than half the top personally i mean in the film that is a obviously that's not the spice i still so i can't speak to it i also worked on shaft why was there another shaft movie i saw that movie in europe because uh the rights to it were owned by netflix so it was just on netflix when i got to europe this summer even though it came out in july can you just say this special shout out to dark phoenix yeah i mean that might be the worst movie this summer that was that was truly confounding and also the complete opposite experience movie watching that you had from avengers which is getting a fire alarm the last 45 seconds of the movie and having to wait 20 minutes to see 15 seconds of x-men footage that's a tough beat yeah that was not an ideal experience for chris and i i imagine you'll never see dark phoenix no congratulations to you best reboot i've come around on pokemon detective pikachu i'm putting that out there it's amazing what a little bit of time distance and a very poor summer can do for the way that we imagine these movies now was pokemon's back to be too good i don't know i don't know is anything good anymore i think it's you down on it captain america caught a hammer that was good yeah i enjoyed that aside from that everything is just sort of fine i had the lion king for this no i can't buy that i wasn't able to answer this question best sequel you just added this in what about john wick 3 it was pretty good yeah some descent too long uh i'm not interested in the john wick story wow i liked the commercials for the secret life of pets too that's how i know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel i wrote down best surprise as an opportunity to talk about loose i think i feel like a man wants to uncork on loose right now i don't have to do it right now i know that perhaps it should be a you know what maybe it actually shouldn't be a different it didn't work for me i didn't even like it i just kind of felt like it failed to do the things i was trying to do provoke it didn't really provoke me because the questions that i'd raised were not even unresolved they just didn't they didn't establish me in character they dropped in a lot of hot button issues that they just didn't develop i you know i'm not a parent so i don't need like the parenting newsletter from the new york times in film form which this felt in a lot of ways it's true i and so but i just i didn't it's a good look on the poster i'm not a parent amanda dobbins comma the ringer it felt not even half-baked but it didn't bring together enough of the threads to really uh provoke me think chris and i disagree okay we briefly chatted about this it's the sort of movie that um is never gonna get a wide release so it's kind of hard but what we're gonna do is a deep dive podcast on the movie that's made 1.3 million dollars yeah i really like read anything about it it was just like a kind of random saturday decided to go to the movies that was like the best review thing that was there that i actually want to see and it was just like holy shit that was like genuinely surprising interesting and you had a kind of opposite experience where we were like you should see this it's quite interesting check it out and that's that's right i've seen both reactions i've seen some people say this is totally totally phony bullshit like you know overmanaged playwriting set with a movie i like overmanaged playwriting i do too i think that's probably why i responded to it i think it might have worked better as a play obviously and then i think i know it was like yes i thought most of the performances were great i thought that the center performance of the loose character didn't work and that was a major problem in it um i suppose it's interesting except i think honestly i didn't find it interesting i found it a little like intellectually something let's keep ahead a little bit i don't think we need to horror movie of the season it's got to be midsmarine yeah i wrote that down as well i haven't seen it count i would also toss out people for an iTunes horror movie to watch i think i mentioned it before yeah um i wrote on the dead don't die too which i feel like also just kind of came in one but it was a very fun movie not a traditional horror movie but if you like the jarmsh tone go there what the fuck movie of the season did you guys see Godzilla king of the monsters you know what i have to be completely candid with you i did not and i was like the k-o-m meme lord for like two months i was like i'm fucking the king of monsters when that movie comes out i'll be walking around with a godzilla mask charles dances up in this kyle chandler i can't wait and something i don't know when it came out but like something basketball really probably happened and i was like i'll see it next week i'll see it next week and i was like and i cannot seeing godzilla king of monsters on like my laptop seems idiotic i'm sure i will see it one day but it's just one of those things where no one came to me and said you have got to see this movie yeah the same thing sean will usually go and send out an indicator of yes you should see it or you can totally skip it and this was just a straight skip from you and so i didn't go i don't think i had a single conversation about this movie period i don't know anybody who saw it it's a godzilla movie the features like five monsters already got another godzilla movie planned right yeah it's godzilla versus king kong which is i think coming next summer by adam wingard yeah boy so it's just very strange for a major studio to release an ip thing like this the previous two films in the series did really well king kong skull island and godzilla and people like i'm good i'm all set millie bobby brown cares charles dance fuck it bureau farmiga i'm good kyle chandler no well you said millie bobby brown and i was thinking about it i was looking on instagram this weekend and my friend instagram like a line like a supreme drop and so this weekend just to see millie bobby brown and that's that's what it was but it's like people don't need to go to the movies to see millie bobby brown best indie got a pretty good feeling i know where you're going i thought you would say farewell no i mean i really liked the farewell i i just assumed that the souvenir counts for summer since it's back with the avengers and that was also a surprise in a great way i just went to this movie even though sean had said like i think this is going to be a movie and a couple other people had indicated that i thought about it so much in terms of discovering a filmmaker like an actor just a mood transcendent what was a big mood for you chris sort of trust oh you like that i love that movie and it was just kind of you know it's a lynchell movie starring mark maron mark maron who i never would have called this eight years ago is like one of the most reliably interesting character actors alive right now actor yeah and uh it's just like pretty small movie it's jillian bell michael walkins mark maron it kind of feels a little bit like a 70s movie that you would sort of catch on turn classic or something like that like straight time or something but just it's just it's amazing that they made a movie like that because this should be like a sundance or ifc channel or something like show probably but they just it's a great little movie about weird people living in the south i like that one a lot uh i've also worked on the art of self-defense riley stern's uh i don't know hand-to-hand combat psychodrama starring jesse eisenberg very strange film i watched that movie uh in the kitchen of an airbnb at south by southwest not the ideal place to see it still very effective even in that setting best movie of the summer are we unanimous i think so yes let's not overthink it king of the monsters no kikachu no no once upon a time in hollywood yes anything you want to say about this movie right now that we haven't already said 300 times you know i think everything i've said about in public including working through the discourse and some of the conflict all of that stands i saw that movie twice in theaters and had a great time and still think about it and you just can't say that for literally anything else on this list there are movies i still think about what about cap at the hammer there's movies like certain aspects of that movie from time to time quite frankly but joe biden cap in terms of just a movie theater experience and event which is kind of what we think of when you think of summer movies right is that it's something that you anticipate and a lot of people see it's kind of a blockbuster and it's really the only thing that comes close this summer chris yeah i've been thinking a lot about what you know just about this conversation like what happened to uh that counter-programming idea i'm trying to like describe you know like was there a thrones route like was it because of thrones taking up six sundays or whatever did we lose a day of a weekend for a bunch of movies that may have like people might have been like i guess i'll go see thrones or i guess i'll go see long shot because they're like not stay at home gonna watch thrones i guess people come over in a grill or whatever i don't know i can't figure it out i mean um once upon a time hollywood is like a tier of one to me i agree and two is pretty far down pretty much the same for me i've been weirdly satisfied pleased calmed by the fact that it's been a big hit and i don't know why that is maybe it's more of like last of a dying greed kind of thing but a lot of people have seen it its controversy was inevitable and i think it's ultimately been good for the movie sometimes that kind of controversy can be very bad for a movie i think it's driven a lot more interest in the movie it's kind of a reason to provoke and to kind of play with the structures of history and pop culture arcana um but i agree ultimately with what you're saying which is just like it's just fun to be around that movie for an extended period of time which is really all you want out of a summer movie right you're just like chill me out make me laugh make me smile make me cry and then we can worry about awards when we get into the fall right yeah i was looking at like the 2009 summer movies just to see what because also that was the summer of glorious bastards but also um you know what it had that the summer didn't have and even the movies that like i don't think about much or love like funny people or 500 days of summer or a harry potter movie it just seems like a completely different era you're not gonna get movies like that traditionally in summers to come parting thoughts i think it was just a really bad year for the which is i think one time in hollywood succeeds on its own terms and at some point it's just like a buddy movie it's a great hank that is the lasting appeal of it to me but beyond that i really did like the farewell beyond that i just think it was a very very bad movie i got an email from my dad yesterday i convinced him to finally go see one time in hollywood in theaters because he just doesn't go to the movies anymore he used to go like three times a week and now he watches everything at home and he was like i liked it i mostly like it because there's nothing else to say i think that's kind of it can i can i do a little bit of watch big pick crossover sure did you guys prefer the three or four your three or four favorite movies in the last few months versus fleabag succession chernobyl and take your pick of another show mindhunter i'm really in the middle of mindhunter and loving it i'm just having a spiritual experience with the first five episodes of mindhunter um it's a very very good question once upon a time in hollywood is superior in my opinion to all those things now there's a lot of reasons for that there's a lot of money behind once upon a time out there's a star power there's a genius filmmaker but that experience to me still transcends even fleabag which i think all three of us talked about ad nauseum and just were over the moon for and that was totally singular and great i still would always always always rather have one great movie than an experience like that but that's me and that's why this is a big picture not to watch no i know i was more just and i think even the way that we about those things is completely different people are watching in their own kind of like oh i finally checked out fleabag good move that's really cool versus like man people really try to get to one time in hollywood that first 10 days for six days so that they can talk to their friends about it and it's just a different experience but the you're sort of projecting out 900 days into the future of will blackpather air on a screen or not is like it kind of wonder whether a lot of that stuff is going to start to be grouped together i think so i think we're probably the only people who worry about the experience of a movie versus the tv i think yeah i think everyone else is just like i enjoyed watching this thing and i watched it in the way that was easiest and best for me to do so and didn't feel a lot of anxiety about it and i you know it was interesting that question i loved i think succession is the best thing on tv right now i just watched the boards on the floor episode and that was that moment of just being like oh my god i'm watching something i can't believe this is happening i still feel that i get that more than movies than i do at television i think that's honestly a numbers game it's because people still spend more time and money on movies yeah and you can get a higher level of results when you put that much investment into it and that's what i'm looking for but i can't honestly say that i saw anything at the movies this year that was like better than fleabag season two it was tremendous guys i enjoyed recounting this very painful summer and the few bright spots we had uh thanks for doing this thanks to chris and amanda now let's go to my conversation with britney runs the marathon writer director paul downs calizo i'm delighted to be joined by paul downs calizo paul thanks for being here thanks for having me paul you come from the world of theater you're a writer you've worked in television why is britney runs marathon your first film well because i wrote it first and okay that's the first time you tried to write a film yeah that's right i mean i wrote it i think i had the idea for it in 2011 2012 i'm pretty sure it's 2011 uh and it just felt like this story you know it's inspired by my best friend my roommate at the time and uh it just instantly felt like it should be a movie because the scope of it um and also because the intimacy of it because sort of what you're dealing with is new york city and a woman's journey across that city as she sort of conquers herself and then also you know in the movie that our protagonist is the antagonist and you have to see all that tension in her eyes so that just felt like when you're trying to figure out what meeting the story belonged in it has this huge arc which you know is great for movies and there's an inner demon to conquer which is you know great for that journey and also just getting as close to you can to the actresses you know uh attention for the uh for the dramatic effect so you know you're bringing in real life our close friends how does who made the decision you said i want to do something about this journey that you had oh if only i were that respectful i i started writing first i take it yeah we were having a lot of conversations about life and fulfillment and happiness you know i think it was 25 or 26 and sort of i think it's for standard people in their 20s to be like hey wait a sec my life's a mess you know how do we fix that that's true yeah and so we were having those conversations and out of one of those conversations very early on and when i moved in she went for her first run and i thought this is a movie and i started writing it i started outlining the film and then is this before really really like this before all the other things you were you did to come yes at the time i think i was working on as an associate on sister act on broadway okay before any of my plays had been produced wow so it really is like well early yes early and so a few months into working on it i said i don't know if i should tell you this but i'm writing a movie about you and she said what's it called mess it's called britain marathon and she said how fast did she run it in and then i told her some things that happened in the movie and her life started to mimic the outline so that was scary and weird and i felt very powerful so meaning you were taking some aspects of her life as a jumping off point yeah none of the scenes in the movie are recreations of anything that's happening in real life but uh you know britney and i both britney and i both use humor to deflect uh as a lot of people do we also just love finding the jokes in little moments and i found that that could be a way to thwart a vulnerability and so there's some dna that's shared between the two characters and you know the inspiration came from my friend's desire to undergo this huge life change and you know face face uh face herself and uh and so there are she's sprinkled throughout it but it's not her okay interesting and so at some point was she like you have to buy my life rights like no i mean you know that's the other thing is because i was we were so young and nothing had been produced it's sort of a pipe dream when you're sitting on a couch that you know we stole a couch from a broadway show after it closed and that was our couch and you know you never think that this stuff will actually get made or actually get produced so it's just sort of fun at that point like you know you're making i'm making a project i really care about my love and i'm making it for me and you know it's i want her to see her journey reflected back to her in some way and you know she and i have this beautiful cyclically inspirational relationship um and it was just sort of fun to feed into that but it never got weird we just kept looking at each other being like well i guess you know i guess i'm directing it now i guess we're filming it now you know never thinking that we'd be where we are with it now so this is seven eight nine years in the process where we are now yeah 2011 yeah eight years so you know you've done a lot of things like i mentioned in the in-between time was your aspiration always to be a filmmaker was that the first thing you were going to do no i mean no okay so where did you start what was the perception of what your career was going to be when you're 25 living with britain and talking about deflecting playwright yeah i mean i was focused on being a playwright at that point and that was sort of coming out of college figuring out what i wanted to do i worked in a bunch of different capacities and dramatic stuff um and i edited civil reels for money at college you know um but it's hard to make a living as a playwright yeah and even when you are doing well as a playwright it's hard to make a living as a playwright and that's something i didn't ever look up was how much money a playwright makes and then you sort of get your check and you're like i thought this was a big deal um but uh but i really wasn't until you know the only reason i directed this film was because i wanted to protect the script i believed in the script and i'd been involved in the projects where i saw that if you know a director a director can really elevate something and also they can miss the mark sometimes it's a character journey and they're not quite on the same emotional page as one of the characters or a couple of characters and i didn't want this character journey to get lost i didn't want to get lost in translation so i wanted in wanting to protect this journey of this woman with sort of such a matter that could be done in a really offensive way in a broad way i want to make sure the tone was still fun and funny and entertaining but also we were being respectful and nuanced and sort of digging with pain looking in the pain and looking at the character that we were you know bringing to life so it was only from there that i called and i said can i direct this movie and they said no which was smart and right of them because i'd never directed anything at that point i thought well screw it can we curse on this thing yes screw it uh and uh and i put together a book and a storyboard and i flew out of la and i did a whole pitch about why i wanted to do it and they said yes and then from there on out i just started sort of like cramming like i hadn't been to class all year and i was about to take the final exam i just started watching as many movies i couldn't read as much as i could especially from directors who went from theater to um film so who are your north stars here well my nickels did that like kazan um elaine may you know works as a director as a writer and and you know i could feel that same thing i started looking at sort of their books on how they transitioned from what they knew as theater artists to becoming filmmakers and um it was really uh it was really illuminating to see the difference in how they speak about movies and how people who are more visual filmmakers speak about making movies uh and it's you know it's about character it really all comes about character so for me what i had to end up doing for all the technical aspects of filmmaking that i didn't have any experience with was to translate into that into a language that i understood and the way that i did that was like it was all character so i made the character of you know i made pages on the character of the lighting character of the camera movements uh the constant sign sort of what the arc was all of those things had you been significantly interested in those things before you decided to direct this movie i've been significantly interested no i mean and now i am and i was late to liking movies i didn't really like movies until my early 20s really yeah i i had ad and i always thought they were really predictable and i was never really interested in the moment of it i just was sort of being thinking about is this efficient is this an efficient use of my time it's like you know he's gonna kill the dragon i'm done you know sure but honestly it was after i um fell in love for the first time and came out of the closet started sort of understanding vulnerability and love and romanticism that i started to like movies and that sort of um influenced how i look at things now at the risk of getting ahead of myself do you think this is what you're going to be doing now for most of your professional career i'm gonna go where the fire takes me i'm gonna go wherever the inspiration leads me but i loved every second of it i loved every minute of waking up and doing this job so you mentioned that you had to convince people to let you direct the movie who are you convincing financiers who have bought the script it was really um uh to mcguire matt pluffet material they developed the way this film came to be is who we came to see my play in new york really really we had a couple of generals and ultimately he said what do you do we'll do it and i said i have this movie about my friend who's gets her shit together training for the new york city marathon and uh he said uh okay we'll do that so they bought it off that log line and i developed the script for two and a half years and then uh wait hold on what does it mean to develop a script for two and a half years well it means you turn the script and then you get notes and you turn it again and you sort of wait and then they're out to directors you know and you're like who and they're like you know your business but but they were never like that you know they were they were collaborative and transparent um how are you feeling through that long process where this thing is very close to you is being evaluated and trimmed and added to and going through stages well you know all those stages involved my pen which was great uh and you know i i was very nervous you're clutching a pen right now yeah weird like i'm like yeah i was is that my pen i have no idea that's my i was i did know the horror stories and i you know my uh my agent had told me you know sometimes writers don't get invited to the premiere in the end and it was so different coming from from theater and from playwriting and from you know working on my own pilots on for tv and shooting those because you sort of you're the writer's king yeah you're in charge and your vision is important and people care what you have to say and your words matter and in theater the word is literally god so that's what's driving choices so the idea that i was creating something that was so vulnerable and so intimate and about somebody i loved and i really hoped was gonna be treated a certain way i was scared i was you know hopeful and scared um and then you know and then i just i needed to be a part of the whole process okay so after two and a half years ultimately you convinced them that you are the right person to do this yeah what's the first thing that happens after that uh i had to call an uber i'm remembering i was walking down the street yeah i had to call an uber and get lunch um no immediately i started i flew back to new york and i started looking at the script again but with the director's eye and that's something that is what was has been so valuable to me now in looking at projects in general i find that writing and directing are separate experiences and you should treat each process differently and separately and so looking at the director's eye i suddenly had criticism about my own writing that i wasn't able to see when i had the writer's hat on things like you know things that are overwritten or things that could be more visual when i was writing them i felt like you know i'm gonna die on this mountain i need to protect these words and as soon as it became like i was looking at almost somebody else's script it was so much easier to sort of yeah and um and you know at that point you're looking for flow and and sort of emotionality and that and visual poetry and i was looking for opportunities for that in the script so it was almost like firing myself as a writer and hiring myself to do the rewrite so i'll be honest i was completely taken aback by the movie and in fact it was just because i had the wrong expectations for the movie well that's the intention i got that impression but i wanted to ask you about if subverting was the point you see jillian bell you see a very zippy trailer you see mikaela watkins a little rally full sentence as a title yes exactly um and you expect a certain kind of comedy maybe not a studio comedy but a kind of a zippy indie comedy and that's not what the movie is that's right um it's funny but that's not what the movie is right i mean the idea is you know in the unity of it doing with jillian and doing with the character of britney and doing with all the supporting actors and doing with the movie itself the same thing which is you take something you think you understand which is uh which has promised to be fun and funny and engaging and enjoyable and unthreatening and you slowly and and with detail and precision expose deeper levels as it goes on and so that's where the film starts the film starts where you've seen this character american comedies have played with this character and that's the introduction of the film and you're gonna feel comfortable watching this movie and as it goes on the idea and the execution was about um making it uh more real and more human and giving um depth and dimensions to actors and characters and a story that is not often given uh the chance to breathe uh with its full capacity did you literalize it to the producers to the actors to say like this is my approach to this project and this is the way it's fully conceived that you're gonna think it's one thing it's another thing uh yeah i mean i i i that was part of my presentation in order to like secure myself that spot and so i had that uh lookbook to show actors i was talking about too and the production heads too you know it was very specifically like we are starting in one world and we're landing not in a totally different world but in a world that feels complimentary and harmonious to the world we started in it just has more base notes you know yeah and thinking about you saying like nichols there there was a little bit of a stylistic approach there too i feel like a lot of his movies start one way with the same tonality and then they make a shift and then all of a sudden you're in a different movie and you're like oh this is what this movie is yeah i think i think movies and stories should evolve the same way a main character does it's a it's an experience and you want to have a relationship with the film itself with the characters yes with the actors even yes but really with the film itself so that you have left that theater the way that you know theater in new york theater works is you feel like you've had a conversation with the piece and when you walk away the memory is not oh that time i got lost in that you know crazy fantastical story the memory is oh that that thing that touched me that that experience that i connected to and that's what i'm interested in i'm interested in psychology and in human behavior and communal experiences and you know thornton wilder has this quote i think i'm in sand all over town he has this quote i hope i'm right he has this quote that film is the story of them and theater is the story of us and i have always more appreciated seeing the story of us i'm always like walking out of the theater feeling like i've learned about myself or my family or my world or my friends and in this movie i'm trying to do the story of us but on film how did jillian become britney so uh early 2017 i started meeting with actresses and from our first meeting which was a hotel in brooklyn she had you know i'd always been a fan of hers from 22 jump street especially i remember walking out 22 jump street just sort of like flippantly thinking i wonder if that'll be britney someday and then we're sitting in this restaurant and she was not at all like the characters that she plays she's uh you know typically those characters are very funny um and jillian's not funny so that's not true jillian's hilarious but you know there you get to see one side of her typically and she you know we sat down and she had a real sort of rawness and vulnerability talking about the character and we had the same goal which was to protect the character we knew that stories like this can get turned uh and flattened when the more it goes through the machine of bringing people on making sure you're having some digestible to an audience and so she had personal resonance with the story and she had a real actor's eye for how this character need to be played and in a way that was surprising and really exciting and largely what ended up happening was i started to realize that this was a woman who had been playing supporting roles and was looked at as comic relief who was looking to change the way that she saw herself and the way the world saw her and that she was hoping to stretch herself by pushing herself into something she'd never done before which is literally the plot of the film and i thought well that's a great match because we can do that in real time and that's a recipe for really dynamic and exciting and raw and real performance and she is fantastic in the film it was a privilege to work with her so did she actually go through a similar transformation that the character goes through yeah so the character in the movie loses 40 pounds um i did not ask her losing weight for the role i thought as a guy director i'm already you know i need to tread lightly on the subject matter she uh wanted to own the story as much as possible and she took about herself to lose the exact amount of weight that the character loses so she lost 29 pounds uh while we were before we started filming in the last 11 pounds while we were filming wow yeah how did that work was it was it the sort of thing that once she agreed to do what you guys would discuss it would you strategize and play like are you shooting in no i mean no the idea was i mean we didn't talk about it that way she was she had set that goal i knew she had set that goal i knew that we would have to recreate her own physical transformation in one way or another and we did it with some prosthetics some makeup hair body padding uh and really it was about finding the gradients moves within each of the sort of tentpole looks so that we could make it as seamless as possible on our budget um and she didn't shoot an order and she lost 11 last 11 pounds while we were filming and her prosthetic was made you know custom made and it's not fitting so we had to find solutions to fix that as we were going on interesting yeah i mean that's why i asked because there's a kind of practical element yeah there's so much hollywood lore about actors who lose weight gain weight what that means for their performance yeah i assume that that was a significant part of this as well well i think you know there's she gives a very raw vulnerable um uh compelling performance and i think you can see in her performance in the realness and what she's willing to expose her actual self as a human her own journey in the character which is which is really a gift what about for you what was the thing that was most surprising to you when you got on set having never done this before um every time i'm on set and i go to uh craft services they always send me extras eat over there every single time three times in a row um so that didn't surprise me so you were not blessing your authority then no and i just sort of go over and have those things um but uh no i mean what surprised me not you know it was all sort of go go go we had 28 days to film i felt really excited about the cast we had to whenever there was a problem we just had to find a solution so there was no there was no time to sit down and sort of commiserate or feel anything we knew we had to make this thing so like we lost power for a day and a half and we didn't have a day and a half to lose and uh generator just decided it wasn't a generator anymore it was going through its own crisis yeah so uh yeah i mean really what was surprising i don't know any answer i give you is gonna be a spin that's gonna sound like really positive you know when people do that like i'm surprised by how big the world is you know my biggest weakness is that i work too hard yeah is that i have so many strengths but like you you know but ultimately what i loved about it was that it was it was a group effort and everyone was trying really hard to make this movie work everybody what about the rest of the cast it's a little bit of a comedy murderers row but not necessarily operating like a bunch of comedians do you think that that is what appealed to this group of actors you put together i would hope so i mean i think you know the idea of giving people you know we approached the movie like it was a drama so we approached the script like it was a drama but it was just a drama with people whose tactics are funny and relatable and whose minds are funny and relatable so in looking at how you know mckayla watkins plays catherine the woman upstairs uh who britney thinks has everything going for her but the way that we approached all of her stuff while she had quirks and she naturally is a human is idiosyncratic in a way that i just eat up you know so we were able to like bring in her her her own personality but also find the personality that is still and calm and motherly and assuring and graceful uh very cool subtle performance yeah she's just she really is great in it but i feel that way about the whole cast i don't know if it's because i'm just proud of everybody but it does feel like you know what we set out to do was give these actors and these characters more dimensions in a comedy than they normally have and everyone knew that and i would hope it's what drew them to it but it's you know ultimately they delivered so they knew it was part of it your movie played at sundance as it premiered and it was a big hit i'm hoping you can kind of take me through the hype cycle a little bit what is that experience like i've never heard that hype cycle i like that um here's what happened i finished the movie the tuesday before we premiered it wow right and i didn't i actually made a change after sundance which was a text message and it drove me crazy and i was like i'm never gonna sleep if i don't fix the emoji in this text message um but uh yeah um but i uh we finished the movie and then it was like you're just sort of getting a sundance you're getting a coat i also had double ankle surgery like three weeks before and could barely walk and the doctor said to me before i went before i left his office i said i'm good to walk now right he's like just don't walk up any like icy mountain i was like oh shit bro what's happening so so we uh so when you get there you're doing press instantly you forget to eat the altitude's really high and you can't sleep for a number of reasons and so you know i had this really i was really worried about the temperature in the theater when we started when we knew we were gonna premiere you know in new york it's like very common knowledge that if you have a comedy it needs to be cold in there because people laugh more if it's cold and the beginning of this film is all about laughs and i was like it's too hot in here and everyone was like please go to the green room you know and they were you know they thought i was nervous whenever and i was so and they were right in a way and i went and i was just like secretly opening all of these doors to the outside to make sure that cold air would pour into the theater uh and i to this day think that that helped uh helped the hype cycle but um you're just sort of getting ready to premiere the thing and i was standing backstage with john cooper before i went out who was uh you know the head of sundance and he was like how do you feel and i said i think it's still too warm in there and he goes he said something really lovely and made a really really sweet uh reassuring comment about the film and and what he felt was gonna happen and then he went on stage and introduced me and i went out and in like i guess cliche sundance fashion cried in my introduction speech uh which i really wasn't expecting that's nice though it was lovely and you know there's all these people there so then i sat and watched the film and i knew it was going well in the first three minutes because we had to turn up the audio because people were were laughing so loudly they couldn't hear the lines not to over promise it's not that funny but you know but i knew that the audience was engaging and then when the credits came up you're yanked up on stage for the q a and as i didn't realize and or didn't think about the fact that people would be tweeting as soon as the credit started and so i was walking from my chair to the ramp on the side and i passed the film's publicist and she goes twitter's good on my way up to the podium and i was like what is happening so we did the q a i walked off stage and a woman who i did not know we went backstage grabbed me sobbing sobbing and just kept screaming thank you over and over again and she was like that girl is me that girl is me thank you so much i thought okay well we've done something beautiful for her yeah i hope we've done that for other people and very quickly i started to get text messages that were like you know it's a bit starting uh and by that it means sort of the interest and you go i mean you me me i don't know if this happens everyone you go to a house on a mountain and the buyers are coming in and they've got marketing materials of your movie already made the posters already in the hour and a half since it was done or two hours and they have decks and you know they're it's really great they're so enthusiastic and you know you go through that twice with each buyer really hold on so you've had some success in your career you've won awards your plays have been very well received so this isn't like the first great thing that's happened to in your career but is it significantly different than say working in the world of new york theater like do you feel like i'm in another universe i'm living on another planet yeah i felt like i was in the 70s like i felt like i was in some movie situation in the 70s where people are sort of like you know in a booth at a bar talking about what they're gonna what move they're gonna make yeah i love your picture yeah yeah exactly it felt it felt also like sort of what you hear about you hear about those sundance bidding wars in the middle of the night and i you know at one point i just started laughing i was just sort of like what's going on what are we talking about and then it gets down to business you know and then it's time to start really figuring out what's what's the best home versus in tandem with the financial prospects well what did you want because we're at this very complex moment in terms of theatrical releases in terms of the way that indies perform like you're a very smart person you obviously see the way that the playing field is operating right now so were there things that you went into this process knowing you wanted i wanted to be at amazon the reason i wanted to be at amazon was because the big stick because the way the big stick was handled i thought the big stick was accessible and i thought it was lovely and i thought it was endearing it was based on a true story it was a simple personal true story uh and it had both a great theatrical life and it had you know accessibility in homes and on jet blue lights across the country that's true yeah and i love that love jet blue yeah i love it yeah so they have flatbed seats sometimes that's true so i love for you now yeah so uh so i i went in there one thing amazon but also you know a company is only the people that are there and it was new people and when amazon came they brought 14 people into the meeting and one for each million one for each million they handed it to us yeah like that um like the graduation ceremony um and uh and they all sort of went talked about their personal relationship with them how much they loved it and you know uh and my mind wasn't made up it was just sort of the dream scenario i was looking for um and you know that's where we ended up i'm really happy how are you feeling about putting a movie like this out in the world given the state of theatrical releasing in america um fine i'm excited i mean i'm curious uh but ultimately i made something that you know as an artist things can go so many ways and you have to make little sacrifices sometimes you can't win them all but i've learned that the goal for me at least is to make a piece of art that i can stand behind that i'm proud of and i can say no matter what happens and i made that and i feel really good about that so you started writing this film in 2011 i think you started filming in 2017 right yeah 2017 so it's been a long process have you been working on other stuff during this do you have a sense of where you're going yeah yes but i never haven't even given anything sort of the full attention it deserves uh because everything keeps coming back you know we're still i thought sometimes would be the end of sort of focus on that film and that was the beginning of i mean yes the marketing materials and all that stuff and amazon's been really great about being collaborative but you know part of the job is making sure that this is delivered to the world in a way that represents the film um so i've been able to work on stuff i've been working on screenplay for i did two years of research i've been writing for another year almost a year now on that uh and i'm interested to look at that sort of in a month it's funny as the date approaches for this thing to be released i can feel this other part of my brain sort of electrifying again and coming back to life and looking at um things a creative way and you know uh and as i was you know i read i started reading scripts after something i've never done before because i've never been in this role in this situation and uh and now some of those now i'll be waking up in the night being like oh what was that script you know from march that i read it's really exciting to sort of turn that on would you do that would you direct something that someone else had written i think so i mean i i at this point i'm not gonna say no to anything because i never would have thought that i would have directed a movie you know um but uh yeah i mean i want to look i want to entertain and inspire and provoke and like find create empathy in a world that is losing it by the day and however that happens i'm happy to do it Paul we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen are you seeing many movies oh my god i've seen my movie like 14,000 times what's the last great thing i've seen i wish that you'd give me this a heads up oh it was two nights ago what was it i couldn't sleep so i was jet-lagged and i'd never seen carnal knowledge oh speaking of mike nichols it's fantastic yes this is that was the exact movie i was thinking of when i said to you wait it starts one way it ends another way it is fantastic i was like eating what the hotel has written on this fancy cashews but they're just cashews it's just the way to charge you 750 for them i was just popping those open and watching that movie it was so good yeah and like filled with subtext and the way that was shot was so theatrical it was just excellent that's a that's a perfect recommendation and maybe a perfect uh double viewing experience i don't know maybe not well thanks for doing this thank you thank you to paul downs palazzo and thank you of course to the man that was in chris ryan please stay tuned on this feed later this week amanda and i will be sitting down to do a little fall festival preview which i suspect will be very important for the oscar race and the oscar show is coming back soon so stay tuned to this feed to hear more you