Ella McCay with Richard Lawson

Blank Jack with Griffin and David

Blank Jack with Griffin and David.

Don't know what to say or to expect.

All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Jack.

I'm not going to talk yet. I'm not comfortable with podcasting, so I guess you could call me a reluctant narrator.
But I just wanted to show up for blank check.

I owe her a lot, so let's just thank you, start.

At first, I was like, that's a horrible Albert Brooks.

And then I was like, oh, it's actually a good Kafner. Thank you.
Late, late period, Kafner. Yeah.

There is no quotes page for this movie. I mean, it hasn't come out yet in its defense.
I'm sure it'll be new releases. People usually are adding things

from the trailer, or you can find other websites that have it. And instead, what I just had to do was go back to the script for Ella McKay,

which I will talk about, I read

in April of 2023. Because you read for the Cavner Part.
Exactly.

And they were like, you don't seem reluctant enough as a narrator. So what I just said might not actually match word for word what is in the film, but it's along those lines.
Something like that.

I'll say this as well. Hi, I'm the narrator.

A listener of the show messaged me, sent me a private message, I guess, like a year and a half ago, that they had gone to a test screening of this film in 2024

teleone messaged you yeah yeah exactly

and then uh like four months ago messaged me again i got a flyer for another test screening i want to go and see how much they changed and there were reshoots i believe at the beginning of this year that were fairly extensive and he was like the single biggest change was on-screen cavern narration and oh like like her sitting down in front of the camera which was not part of the script on paper and was not part of the original cut they don't do it a lot.

She was always meant to be narrating it and a character in the movie, but then they're like, to tell you the truth, I'm nuts about her. This is a pretty good Catherine doing.

And so she's 75 years old. She is.
Which is the age that she should be as a woman who's been in our industry for a long time. I think she's earned that right and she's a living legend.
I love her.

I, I, I, and I was honestly kind of happy to see her. Agreed.
Yeah. Well, there's a lot of

people. Marge is

a grandma and yet on The Simpsons permanently, you know, 37 or 30.

Well, it's also as someone who is still very slowly pursuing the Herculean task of having watched every episode of The Simpsons, and I'm still like 10 years behind in that, even though I knock out like 30 plus episodes a year.

So only 220 episodes. Truly?

Like, I feel like, man, their voices have all really gotten bad and they're sounding really old. And yet when I see a clip from like a new episode, it is astonishing.
and it feels really uncanny.

But seeing her on screen doesn't have that same effect. The problem is that Marge still looks the same age and now sounds like this.

Seeing oldie

oldie, excuse me,

Oldie Kavner. I'm like, yeah, no, she seems, she sounds healthy.
Yes, it's just her voice.

That's that's who, and in some ways, you're the brain does a trick where you're like, that's what she was always like. Yes, and it's like, no, that's not actually true.
Right.

I read something that Brooks has known her since she was 19. Wow, what was a 19-year-old Julie Kavner like?

I already saw her. Basically that.
So James L. Brooks is 10 years older than her.
So he would have been 29. Oh, I hope he knew her in the proper context.

There was no hanky panky back then.

The tagline for this film, Griff, that you couldn't find, because I think one of the posters just says a new comedy from James L. Brooks or whatever,

is. Is this the original poster that's her and Jamie Lee Curtis grabbing each other? Jamie Lee Curtis is sucking her life energies via her neck.

A poster that that was thankfully replaced with the main marketing image. The iconic image.
The stickiest

posture, the stickiest. The suddenly I see it.

You know, like, I don't know how she does it. Yeah.
I nailed that fucking pose. It was astonishing.
Gen Z's favorite thing in the world is the Ellen McKay challenge.

And we want to make sure all of our listeners know. There's still time.

Just because the episodes come out, just because it's like past opening weekend, you're not too late to contribute to the Ellen McKay Challenge. Do the pose in front of the poster.

but ben and i took pictures of each other doing it and mine was so

smashed by ben's success yours was fine i'm gonna say we shouldn't even post mine

i was like ben let's like try it and i'll give you notes to adjust it and on the first try

lined up perfectly well junte cozley they've always called and it's a tough pose to do because it is a standing on one foot No, I mean, it's,

I physically don't think I could do that anymore. Like, I don't know how she does it in my decrepit.
I don't know how she does it. And Lieutenant Governor,

the tagline was a story about the people you love and how to survive. Oh, which is so like, yeah, generic.
A podcast about the people you love and how to survive. Ben just showed me the photo.

It is actually.

It's like a perfect match. I have to say, it's better than your cavern.
It's really

good. Because you look at it and you're not even like, oh, he's close.
You're like, no, it's exactly. English is identical.
And it's a tough pose to maintain. What's this podcast?

This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.
And I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers.

And I give it a series of blank checks. Yeah, I did the Julia Kafner aging.
Give it a series.

Oh, me.

An hour into this. Crazy patching projects they want.

An hour into this podcast, it's just going to be me talking because you guys will have destroyed your voices with Kafner.

Many years ago, we did a mini-series on the films of James L. Brooks.
Yeah, when was that? It was shockingly long ago, actually. 17 or 18? Yeah.

And what was it called? It was called Podcast News. Oh, yeah.
I wanted to call it as Pod as a Cast, and that was one of the early we're going to fight about the title in every episode miniseries.

But Podcast News, that was a great little, the nice art of us all on the TV and all that. And you made the argument, which was fair, of cast.
He made a movie with the word cast in the case.

Beyond that, he made a movie with podcasts.

That's right. You were like, even more.
Come on, we can't not do this.

We covered it. It was in 2018, early 2018.
And I would say, so at that point, we're eight years passed. How do you know? Yep.
Which felt comfortably like the last movie he will ever make.

Right, right. It was like, I guess James L.
Brooks, the man is approaching his 80s. He's basically retired.
The size of the flop. Survey his career.
No one's going to let him do this again.

Does he have the energy to even try to do this again? I had heard stories from people who worked on that film and people who auditioned for that film where they were like

noticing how much, since he takes such a long time in between films, he was like, I forgot it takes this much energy that he was seeming worn down by trying to get through another movie.

And yet here we are, 15 years after, how do you know? 15 blessed years. James L.
Brooks returns a follow-up new release to a miniseries I thought would never fucking happen.

I will say I probably would have put the odds about the same as the directors we've covered who are dead. Right.

It is astonishing. Luckily, there's a new Buster Keaton movie that you're.
Yeah.

And, you know, he's a blank check guy. He had a couple massive successes.
He'd also be among the blankest of checks in a way. I got you this character poster for Steve Zahn and Anaconda.

What do you think? I don't want to see that movie. Oh, too.
Everything about it makes me angry. And yet.
I see

Zahn. I see Zahn over the shoulder and I'm like,

she doesn't get to do this that often anymore. It's about them making a remake.
So they're aware of the movie Anaconda. They were kids.
Oh, they're not just aware. They're big fans.

They were kids who remade Anaconda in their backyard and then now as adults in a sort of tag-like,

let's pick up our childlike traditions.

Let's go back and remake it again, but this time go to the real jungle. And when they get to the real jungle, something actually goes wrong.
Correct.

So it's like Tropic Thunder plus Be Kind Rewind plus the fucking Raiders kids documentary plus, you know, the Eighth Circle of Hell.

But we don't let Steve Zahn do broadcast studio comedies anymore, so I guess they have my $20,

32 and 40x or whatever, so I can feel some fucking snake spit at me. The point is, Ella McKay is getting a wide release from the folks at 20th Century Studios, now a division of Walt Disney Pictures.

Yep. A move that just like shocked.
everyone when it was announced and the scuttle butt had been quietly for the last three years

there this is a quid pro quo it's a very specific type of blank check which is

we will let you make another film at a capped budget yes maybe not 120 million dollars maybe not yeah they learn their lesson if you can successfully convince everyone to make a second simpsons movie and like clockwork the second simpsons movie was officially announced one month ago It is like a sort of a like hostage negotiation blank check, but he was holding valuable cards for them i mean i remember reading about when they were like because my parents live in providence rhode island where this movie was largely shot and so there was like local news about like james l brooks terms of endearment director casting you know locals in providence and i was like oh my mom was like that's so exciting what do you know and i said oh that's probably not going to happen you said how do you know well exactly but i was like that's that seems like something that spanglish

Well, I was speaking to my mom in Spanglish, but

I just assumed that like, oh, it's one of those things that that gets announced and then it just sort of disappears. It felt like that.

And it was like, you know, he was very hands-on with these two Kelly Fremont Craig movies, who's like his mentee. Yes.
Good movies.

Very excellent movie. Yeah, just 17 and already there, God is to be Margaret, to be clear.

And you would hear these kind of rumblings or he'd give like interviews and promoting those two films where he's like, you know what? Watching Kelly work has kind of reignited a passion in me.

So I previously thought I'd never make a movie again, but I've been noodling with some ideas and you're like, will never happen.

Even if he finished a script that he wanted to make, no one's going to let him do this again. How do you know was just such a fucking calamity that one could argue kind of killed the studio comedy.

I think that's like as serious a culprit as anything where that felt a bit of a blow. Yeah.
I think it also like hastened the end of Nicholson's career. It hastened like everything.

Yeah, it was, it, it COVID. It certainly

stopped. It stopped Owen Wilson from being a movie star.
It sent Reese Witherspoon to television. It's, it was like a Chernobyl level.
It did a lot of shit.

The way it like poisoned everyone who came within

a thousand miles. Rudd,

no, he's just fine. Yeah.

I mean, it's like, thankfully he had Marvel coming up soon. Like truly, you know, which kind of like bounced him back.
But then you're like, right, here's Paul Rudd.

Like one of our greatest comedy stars doesn't really get to make comedy movies anymore unless they're an Anaconda reboot or a Ghostbusters Lega sequel.

Nobody fun or Ant-Man, the comedy version, you know, the closest claim that Marvel has to pure comedy. So fun.

This is what I'm saying, but like he's become a big budget IP comedy guy where you're like, well, he's got a little off-the-hump energy. But like the role models days are far over.

And how do you know? I think was supposed to be a transition moment for like Paul Rudd from role models to like,

I would say almost equivalent from Tom Hanks making the switch from Bachelor Party to Sleepless in Seattle. Classy.
Right. He's a classy comedy story.
Elegant, expensive, elevated comedy.

He comes out of it the most alive and yet has to totally pivot. There's like years true between those movies, yeah.
Yeah, um, what I was going to say is that, no,

okay, fine. What were you gonna say? No, just to get ahead of this, I read this script several years ago.
I did not audition for it.

My rep sent it to me and said, Do you want to read this to see if you're interested in playing the brother? And I get to the brother character, and I'm like, This character is supposed to be like 23.

I'm in my mid-30s, and Ella McKay is a character that exists across like three temporalities, but at her oldest, she's in her mid-30s.

If they cast an actress who is like late 30s and age her down for the earlier stuff, then maybe we can put a fucking wig on me and a thousand pounds of makeup and you would stay waving through a window for some reason.

This is the exact part I would have wanted to audition for when I was 22. Of course.
Like even reading it, I was like, fuck.

And the second they were like, it sounds like he wants to cast Emma Mackie, I was like, I'm not putting myself on tape, this is embarrassing.

Um, if Julie Kafner had played the Emma Mackie part, yes, I could have played the younger brother, but when I read the script, I was like, Are they really gonna make this?

And it was like, It hasn't been green lit yet, but they're letting him do casting to see if he can assemble the right people.

Then the writer strike hits like a week after I read it, and then the sag strike. And I was just like, Fuck, if this thing is now slowed down for six months in casting, this is never happening.

No, yeah, and you saw it's really long, right? The script, the script is longer. Yeah.

But

who's our guest? Oh, yes, right. Our guest today and talking about Ella McKay, a movie starring Emma Mackay.

So true.

McKay, the great Richard Lawson. Hello.
Now, usually, when you come on the show, we introduce you with the same old tired bylines. Yeah.

So I was let go from Vanity Defair because they found out I had been sleeping with Congressman Barney Frank for a number of years. Ooh, hiss.
Nipples visible.

While reviewing his films, his many, many stag films.

And also, remember that tweet about Barney Frank? Yeah, yes. No, the real problem was that you were sleeping with him in the side

apartment of a government building.

Yes, come on, it's a simple trail to

these narratives, are distinct and clear, Griffin. There's no question.
I swear I'm not going to do this. What was different in the script thing?

And I even went out of my way to not reread the script so that I wasn't being personnickety about that.

But I feel very confident that in the original script, the affair was happening in the phone call center. Which would make a phone call.
Which stuff.

There's so much time to set up in this movie and then it doesn't really impact anything.

But instead, they're like, you know, it turned out there was an apartment in a government building that no one uses that we snuck into. Because I guess if the affair happened in the phone call,

it wouldn't have been a crime. It wouldn't have been a crime.
I mean that, look, the entire quote-unquote scandal is

engineered in this way to make it nobody's fault and nobody's really done anything wrong. And you know what I mean? Like, it's like

calibrated in this, like, really, you know, inoffensive way. If anything, kind of one of the big conceits is that.
It's funny if she like shot someone.

If, like, what if someone got caught in a scandal that actually doesn't mean anything to anyone, but technically could be used to take them down, even if there's no real offense being committed here?

Right. Like Watergate.
And in my memory, exactly. So true.
They just want to read the files. That's all.
Let them look. Why not? What have you got to to hide, Democrats?

In my memory, it being said your strategies

in the like campaign phone bank center

was explained through like 15 additional pages of how Byzantine that law was, that it wasn't illegal, but it affected campaign finances. Like it got deeper into James L.
Brooks.

Is it possible it's based on some real scandal he like, you know, noticed? You know, quote, quote,

you hear this shit about him where he was like spending five years researching retired female softball players for how do you know? Because he's just like, I got very caught up in their lives.

And like, no one talks about this. And I had to research for five years before I could even write a single word.

And this feels like there is some case he heard about of like, that's weird that there are laws like

an imaginary one sparked by that idea or he based it around a real thing. I don't know.
And he, he, he did like interview a lot of politicians like in the writing process, right?

And so like, I wonder if he talked to a lot of female politicians who were like, Yeah, when you're like that busy, it's and you're, but you're trying to start a family, it's actually really hard to find time to do, you know, what, you know, and maybe that, I don't know, but it, it's something

it's like there was a better way to include that idea in the story. I feel the way about almost everything in this movie, a movie that I did not hate, yeah, but is certainly Ghastly Cinema.

Yeah, is you sought David and came back to me and said, I kind of liked it. And I was like, That's exciting.
And you went, I mean, it is like handily handily by default his fourth best film. Right.

But that's a, there's a, a big gap. Even people who hate this movie, I think, will need to concede it is his fourth best film.
Does that make Spanglish? Or? No.

Well, someone in this room is probably going to wait.

As long as it gets to me. I re-listened to the Spanglish episode and I'd forgotten how endearingly Ben really likes them.
I think it's fun. It's a great.

And your contributions in that episode are lovely because it's like tempering my disdain for

it with Ben Hosley earlier this week and he turned to me the second it was over. And you know what he said?

Ben? Kind of liked it. Good.
Excuse me.

Excuse me. No, you said, I loved it.
I did. While doing the post.
Yeah.

No, I really did love it. I don't know.
Oh, I'm glad. And I'm not sure.
I've been thinking about how to mount a defense for it.

And it's, I don't know how even to other than, and it's the same thing with Spanglish.

I just, I like these small stories about regular people that I find somewhat endearing, though often at times annoying, but that feels authentic.

And even the tete on tete kind of reporte dialogue kind of stuff, it doesn't grate me, even though I would like

expect it to. I actually just like, I lock in.
We sat next to the great Bob Marshall and Ben's, what are you guys talking about? I loved it, was in response to me saying,

Yeah, it's kind of bad, but it's the type of bad movie I've really missed. And a type of bad movie I greatly prefer to most of the shit that studios are putting on.

I miss that genre of movies so much.

Your, you know, sister-brother podcast, this had Oscar Buzz, did an episode recently on used people.

Like a very forgotten, you know, Marie. Ruling.
Like, who's in that Shirley McLean, right? Yeah. Kathy Bates.
Yeah. Tandy.
Yeah, that's right. Tandy.

That's the principal summoning Jessica Tandy to the office. And they're all playing all

Marcelo Marcelo Mastriani, Marsha Gay Hardin, Joey Pants. I'm actually not noticing a lot of Jews, but

sort of this is where I leave you. But anyway, not a good movie.
But like, man, they used to just make movies about like a quirky family or like someone trying to like.

We all live in a neighborhood and we yell at each other. I mean, it's sort of a moonstruck runoff.

I'll also say, like, having a couple days sitting on it, I'm like finding more and more reasons to put up tiny half-hearted defenses for elements of this movie. Oh, Mike is good.
Ella Mance.

We should plug things. Yes.
But before that, I have to tell you the dual tagline of used people.

It's a float, you know,

let's see, I'm seeing Marsha, Kathy, Shirley, Marcelo, and Tana. It's first names only on the post.
No, I wish it were.

But they're all sort of grouped together. And then Shirley's kind of like got her, she's like leaning on the moon, you know, so it's very moonstrucky.

And then there's a boy playing the accordion below them. Not sure why.

But what I like about the tagline is it's it's like me saying i'm done talking about something here's the tagline a story about love family and other embarrassments used people here's the second tagline life's tough so laugh a little

come on

you had a problem with us making the why don't you watch it laugh funny we promise

It's so defensive. But it's also a little, like where it's not giving you expectations, like big expectations.
Life's tough. What are you going to do? Not CUs to people?

And then at the very end of the closing credits, it says, you didn't like it. What do we care?

We got our money.

Go home.

Richard? Yes.

The shocking news. So I got booted for my congressional sex scandal.
It shook the nation. Yeah.

But, you know,

from every disgrace comes opportunity. Right.
I've written a book called American Canton.

It's actually called American Canton. It's a ghost

Mario's. And you're re-releasing your EP, Jailbait.

Yeah. You could not

say that. That is spelled.

We found her fucking MySpace.

I could not believe that movie. It's spelled G-A-O-L, like the British.
Yeah,

yeah. Very Victorian.
Very Victorian. Yeah.
I sing it in a cockney accent. It's actually

no, I started a newsletter called Premiere Party that it's on Beehive. It's not Substack, it's Beehive.

It's going to be movie reviews and other things, recaps. Probably the recaps will live behind the paywall, like Traders recaps, maybe some other shows, reality shows.
Very excited about that.

In the glorious days of recapping, you were one of the internet's greatest. People make it a lot of people.
Thank you. It's the only reason I have a career, frankly.

Truly, your whole generation

basically are the people who made it out of the recap industry alive.

I got, speaking of this at Oscar Buzz, Joe Reed, I got hired at Vanity Fair because of Gossip Girl recaps and because I knew the person who eventually like put me up for the job through Gossip Girl.

So anyway, I'm excited to get back to that. I hope that your listeners, whom I love and, you know, I've been with for a long time now.
This podcast is one of our oldest and girls friends.

Will subscribe if they have the means to do so. I'm excited to read it myself and I'm very excited for this new endeavor.

You're plugging here that in no way affects my daily stress level or amount of responsibilities on a weekly basis. That's it.
Wait a second. a second.

What's in this door, Creep?

What's in this congressional apartment?

Yeah, there's one other thing that we're doing. There's one other thing that we are incredibly excited about, which is

we're testing the water of expanding the blank check productions umbrella a little bit. And we are excited to announce that there is going to be a mini-series.
running at the beginning of next year.

It will be on our feed.

The same feed you're listening to right right now, there will be a second release episode later in the week, every week, two a week. Richard, do you want to tell people what the show is?

Yeah, it's going to be a recap of the second season of Designing Women. So, get watching now.
We've heard your cries. We're finally answering them.
Yep.

Can't wait for it to talk about, you know, Gene Smart back when. It's called Podzigning Wimcast.

It's called Meshach Taylorcast.

No, the show is called Critical Darlings because I am a film critic still, even though I'm just an independent newsletter person. She's alive and well.

And just darling. Well, thank you.
I'm a little darling, a little cutie. And my co-host, the great Allison Wilmore of Vulture, is also a film critic.
And she is also even darlinger than I am. Yes.

But we're also...

second meaning going to be talking about movies that were for the most part some of the critical darlings of the year it's yes as as we're in you know top 10 season award season all of that we're going to do a show throughout January, February, in March, a new episode every week that is you and Allison, produced by our friend Ben Frisch.

Yep. Producer Ben 2.
Yeah. Well, because you have to have a, it's in your bylaws that you guys wrote.
It's in the bylaws. And for a while, it was going to be Shapiro,

but I, which, you know, but you guys didn't really want to partner with Daily Wire for whatever reason. But yeah, why is it going through March?

Is there something happening there that would somehow forward?

We'll be handing out, how do I describe them? Miniature,

miniature,

metalized

human males. Yeah.

Yeah. So it isn't, it is in some ways an Oscar podcast because we will primarily be focusing on, you know, the 10 movies or so that are best picture contenders and then later nominees.

But I'm sure the conversation will expand past that. And we'll talk about more critical darling movies of the year that maybe didn't get nominated.

Yeah, we're just going to kind of take the temperature of this year's quote-unquote prestige movies in a way that this podcast, as expansive as you guys are able to be, can't always do because it's not, they're not attached to a specific directory.

Occasionally, we'll get an Ella McKay, which I assume this is an Oscar frontrunner, right? It already won. Yeah, yeah, they called the ceremony off.
Yeah, we all know where this is going.

It's kind of a bummer for our new podcast, but whatever. We'll make do.
It's like the race is over. Other candidates have announced they're stepping down.

Hamnet has pulled out of the race out of deference. Hamnet is throwing its delegates to Ella McKay.
Jesse Buckley committed Sepuku in front of Julie Cavan.

But you and Allison are two of the best and two of the dearest friends of the podcast. And I think are people I'm always excited to read or listen to in any format talk about what's going on.

And our show obviously is often recorded very far in advance.

And people love when they get to hear our new release episodes where we're talking in a tighter window and can speak more about current events.

I think this show will also serve that function of being able to talk about what's going on in the movie world that week, how the sort of narratives of a year of cinema get formed.

That's really what happens at the beginning of every year is we start to basically assemble the yearbook of how that year that just ended will be talked about.

And that ends with the awards, but that's obviously not the end of the true conversation. No, no, the conversation can go on and on.

So, but yeah, I think that it's going to be really fun to talk about these movies that

for the most part, you guys have not covered on this show, but also like, you know, we're going to do like an episode about the nominations. We're going to do some predictions.

We're going to do, you know, lots of other stuff that's sort of related to this class of movies of 2025. We will guest,

other friends, the Blank Czech Universal guests. We're very excited about it.
Thank you. And thank you for, this all began to peek behind the curtain right after I lost my job.

I was at Barney Frank's house crying. And I texted you guys.
Barney Frank's still alive.

I don't know. He's from my home state.
Was he your congressman?

No, he was, he's more of southeastern Massachusetts. So actually

where I spent summers. He's the same age as James L.
Brooks. 85 years old.

But I texted you, I think it was like a couple days after that I got the news, kind of like not serious, like, hey, anyone want to do a spin-off podcast?

And then lo and behold, all these months later, you guys took it seriously. And that is the honor of a lifetime.
So thank you. It's been many months to figure out how it happened.

We should mention it's going to be a co-production with Vulture. Yes, because Allison is at Vulture.
And so we're going to use some of their fine resources. And it's going to be great.

And actually, actually tremendous support.

You got both of Jesse David Fox's arms. You get to use them.
That's right. Not the rest of them.
Yeah. And Alison and I will solely be talking about stand-up sets we saw the night before.
Right.

And Rebecca Alter will break through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, but only once. You won't know when.
Right.

She will have a segment each episode reviewing the popcorn bucket for that specific best picture of Canada.

And I'll just be like, Allison, name and Jamie Lee Curtis movie that starts between the letters R and Z.

The LMK popcorn bucket has not been selling super well, which is the shoe turned sideways. It's hard to fuck.
That's the problem. It's actually Woody Harrelson's confused head.

What? Less hard to fuck, but

maybe you don't want to. Very excited for Critical Darlings.
Yes, thank you. Critical Darlings, I think we have January 1st as a premiere date.
You guys look dark that week, so we figured.

We'll say that that's the other fun thing is we obviously take this like

this, the gap between kind of Christmas and New Year's off every year from our main feed. And that's when we're going to drop the first one for you to kick off 2026.

And then it will come out every Thursday after that. That's right.
And yeah, for now, we're running through March, but who knows what the future holds? Who knows? Yeah.

David,

this episode is brought to you by Mubi, the global film company, the champions great cinema. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.

And with Mubi, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema. True.
And that's right. In particular, The Mastermind.

One of my favorite movies of the year from one of my favorite filmmakers alive. The great Kelly Reichhart.
It's streaming on Movie in the U.S. from December 12th.

Kelly Reichhart, first cow showing up, lots of great movies. It's directing Josh O'Connor, the unforgettable Josh O'Connor, in her latest canned triumph, The Mastermind.

In a sedate Massachusetts suburb, circa 1970, unemployed family man and amateur art thief J.B. Mooney sets out on his first heist with the museum cased and accomplices recruited.

He has an airtight plan, or so he thinks.

Yeah, you like this film, right? Along with this one: Gabby Hoffman, John McGarrow, Hope Davis, Bill Campbell,

a Kelly take on a heist movie. Yes, it's like

loose and quiet and noodly and kind of political. Elusive and yes, incredibly funny.
Jesho Connor's amazing in it. Just really good in it.
He's the guy right now, as far as I'm concerned.

But this is a really fascinating vehicle for him. And I feel like it's Kelly Rikert kind of dealing with a movie star persona in a way I haven't quite seen her do before.

An excellent movie, one of my favorites for the year. And that's not all they have.
Obviously, Mubi has an incredible selection. Yeah.
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It is funny that there were a couple things. It's like raining on your wedding day.
No, that's ironic. Sorry.
Carry him. Yeah.
It's funny, like TBS.

When we've covered covered Director in the Past, and they have a new release, we circle back and put it on main feed.

There were a couple things on paper, if you were looking at this schedule a year ago, where we're like, huh, some of our past subjects might be back in the Oscar race. Such as House of Dynamite.
Yeah.

Ella McKay.

House of Dynamite. We have

Avatar Fire and Ash. Is this thing on? and no other choice still to come

but certainly uh no none of those movies feel like significant frontrunners frontrunners. No,

no, no, certainly not. But they're all films that were certainly positioned and have been released in this corridor for that purpose.

They are very much fall to Christmas movies. Yes.
The original announcement was that Disney Fox was putting this in September.

It was like, that feels like the obvious place to burn this off if you don't have a lot of faith in this. Everyone was saying, like, oh, it's messy.
And you're like, sure, it's James Hill Brooks.

Like, yeah.

And then they pushed it to the week before Christmas and people were like are they feeling good about it like that's not an obvious place to bury a movie no played zero festivals uh not even like afi or anything no yeah uh we will not know uh at the time of this recording uh how it's performing at the box office

but i'm i guess yeah well is it going to be 40 million 60 million we're just not sure yet friday oh i'm not sure yeah yeah yeah china is going to be enormous big in zootopia too i said with zero disrespect i could see this being the first movie to open to negative movies.

I don't think it's going to make a lot of money, and I don't think it's going to get good reviews.

And a lot of that is, you can just see Disney being like, we don't even know how to fucking market this type of movie anymore. Plus all of the people who used to are retired or dead.

It's also the audience for this kind of movie seemingly, you know, is not really there in theaters anymore. And

I like this movie. I think it's an interesting little thing, but I'd be the first to admit that

it's kind of hard to explain what it is. And it's messy in that James L.
Brooks way.

It's got a lot of ideas and a lot of characters. And I mean, the poster has

nine people above the title, some of whom are famous. I mean, it's so funny to this point.
First poster is Jamie Lee Curtis grabbing her shoulders, the tagline you mentioned.

And that's clearly Disney being like, people look Jamie Lee Curtis now, right? Right. Let's really sell this as Jamie Lee Curtis.
She's been winning awards, right? Right.

We have Freakier Friday coming out the same week. Right, right.
And then they translate.

They're playing a brassy brassy matriarchal figure right an ant actually but right in a supporting part yeah then they transition to the the infamous pose poster yeah on just a stark white background trying to position it as like this is james le brooks trying to make another star making movie a vehicle for an actress leveling up

and then as it did for tea you know and exactly this final poster has been that same image but now with like 27

floating heads they put some square floating we need every recognizable face in this movie they got six heads next to ella so they got kamail jamely curtis woody harrelson in the most normal regular wig ever uh that's a real

wig albert brooks io our friend io debiri who's a debory a debury sorry who is

almost a spoiler to put on the poster just the way the movie treats that character and then jack louden so they're not putting spike fern on the poster despite him being i suppose a big character because he's not very well known i would argue he is the second lead i mean he sort of is and but i mean whatever surprisingly big part for someone who doesn't show up for a while or know how to act and i'll also say from having

your brother texted me about him i will say from having i'm sure he did yes read the script yeah the part feels bigger in the final movie than it did in reading it because it feels like the stuff they cut out was in the other plot lines versus every single second of the brother plot line is in there.

And also, I remember it being a little more dispersed. And it does feel like the middle 30 minutes of the movie are all her and the brother.

And then this big de Noumont with Io, who this movie was cast long ago enough that she basically agrees to do this, like right after season one of the Bears. Yeah, it was like James L.
Brooks.

And now they're marketing it with her face on the poster. And Ben was like, did they cut most of that character out? I'm like, no, it was always this one scene.
It was a big scene.

Not including Rebecca Hall, but I guess she's only got the one scene. Yes, in my memory, there was a little more that was also cut out.
Not including Kavner. You don't want Kavner up there?

Crazy about her. Not including Troy Garrity?

I'm nuts about her. I think Garrity's not in the final cut.

I'm seeing him on Wikipedia. I'm nuts of an older lady saying I'm nuts about her, about like a kind of a younger woman.
That is the most like Brooks.

I think that might be the Brooksiest thing in the movie, and it happens within the first two minutes. It was, it was just like being put in a warm bath for me.
I was like, yes, please.

This is an ultimate, they don't make them like this anymore.

And possibly they never did, except for this one. The argument can then be, is that a good thing or not?

But you watch it and you're like, this is an experience that does not exist in our movie ecosystem anymore. Certainly not coming from a major studio.

And the watching this in a theater feels uncanny because you're so used to every version of a movie like this being punted straight to streaming.

You know, I saw this film at Disney's headquarters. Which was a weird experience.
Yeah, you were there, right? Yeah.

Which is, they have a fairly new building down in downtown Manhattan with a gorgeous theater. And also for a studio screening room, enormous.

Like you go to like Universal Screening Rooms, pretty small. Even their old one was small.
Yeah. Warner's screening room small.

This is like state-of-the-art tech setups. Did you see Mickey?

I didn't see Mickey. Pluto.
I didn't see Minnie. You know what's sad is that all the Song of the South characters were in love.
Yeah, they they were there. And that was kind of unfortunate.

I've heard Pluto still largely work from home. Yeah, he's

comes in like one. He's got a reception.
Yeah, he's been fighting the RTO policy with the union. It's a whole thing.

And so, yeah, it was one of those like, there's 200 seats, like, take your pick. And I was like, right here, baby.
And I watched it with several other members of our critics

organization, which is why we were seeing it. And

chuckled heartily and heard no other chuckles around me. Here's the thing about it: I didn't

screen. I didn't, I wanted more for it.
But the thing is, and yes, you're right, David, it probably will get some negative reviews.

And if I were reviewing it, my review ultimately would have been negative. But I don't, I'm really dreading the snark about it.
I am too. Because it does not merit that.

Was that, you know, kind of like it's an 85-year-old guy trying to harken back to a wonderful, as Ben pointed out, wonderful era of movies when a lot of movies like this existed.

And I find nothing wrong with that effort. I agree.
The The execution,

maybe,

you know, desires, but like, I don't know. I just, I, I can't, I really am dreading that people being like, can you believe this scene?

No, it's, it's a problem with a lot of our discourse. And I do think when this movie likely flops, it's going to inspire a lot of really annoying headlines.

from just sort of industry handicappers who are not even talking about the artistry behind it or lack thereof.

You know, either won the defensible position, but are more talking about like, it makes no business sense to make this movie.

And it's like, well, this movie got made because he has this fucking control in The Simpsons, but also we should not be discouraging studios from trying to make movies like this.

It is not a big risk on their part financially. Sure isn't.
No, especially now, you know. Yeah.

You know, and I, so I don't want to snark, but that doesn't mean that there's not a lot to make fun of. You know, like, that's the thing.
It's, but it's a, it's a loving mockery. It's a lot odd stuff.

Yeah. Do you remember me texting you when I got the script? No.

I was, I was filming Alex Ross Perry's Pavements, and there was like many hours in between setups or I wasn't needed or whatever. And I'm like sitting on the set, which is just like an office, right?

On a couch. And the script came through, and I was like, oh, I'm going to read this immediately.
And I texted the blank check group text like halfway through it.

And I'm like, well, first I texted and I was like, holy shit, because the movie had reading new James L. It hadn't been announced yet.

And I was like, there's a new Brooks movie. They're casting.
And I have the script on my phone right now. And then I read it.
And halfway through, I'm like, guys, some of this is great.

And it very much read, while not identical to the finished movie, like the movie, where I'm like, there'll be 15 pages where I'm like, what the fuck is Brooks on about?

And then there's like 10 pages where you're like, oh shit, there's an idea here. And the dialogue's crackling.
And this character's fun.

And I said to the group when I finished it, my big question is, this reads like the best movie he's made in 20 years. Sure.
But it's again a little messy and not perfect.

It feels very kind of vomit drafty and even still, faint praise, better than the last three or last two, I guess. And my question is, is this how like

broadcast news read early

before he massaged it and got it perfect? Or did how do you know half work on paper and then he totally lost it in the process?

And you hear about how long and drawn out every Brooks production is, how he reworks things, how he rewrites things, reshoots things. And you're just like,

this clearly isn't a final document, but which direction does this go in? Which is why, like, after I saw it, I was like texting Bobby Finger and Dan Didario and someone else about it.

And I was like, they were like, did you like it? And I was like, I don't know.

But I was like, honestly, I would watch the version that's 45 minutes longer, even if it's also a mess, at least I'm seeing the complete mess, you know, and I'm just endlessly curious about what was cut and what it would have added or taken away.

Because yeah, you're right. Like it maybe,

I don't know, like his, his, his, he can turn his vomit into something really remarkable, but. Yeah, I think this movie also has like four or five major concerns.

And Sims, I think you have a very good take on what the larger project is here of what he's trying to say.

And

I will tee you up for this in a second, but I, it felt like in the script I read, it was like, there are five kind of major plot lines or themes in the movie, which all got an equal amount of attention.

Right. And it's sort of like, this movie is flittering all around.
Scandal, dad returning, brother problems. Yes.

New job. Marriage.

Yeah.

Okay. Right.
So I would say, like,

and then I was this girl that's nuts about it. I would say like

three parts about the job, right? Like public relations scandal. Yeah.
Relationship marriage. Yeah.

And like her actual beliefs and aspiration and trying to fight a sort of like stuck-in-the-mud system.

And then there are the two main family plot lines, which are the dad and the brother. And it felt like those five things all kind of got equal weight.

And it was still messy, but it felt a little more cohesive to me because I was just like, I understand all of these are feeding into the same larger idea.

And this movie in the final edit puts the thumb on certain things that maybe they thought were more marketable, specifically the kind of more romantic relationship things that does make it feel like, what is he trying to say here?

David, your take.

Well, so my take was that this is a masterpiece and five stars and there's no issues with it. No, that was not my take.

My take was if Spanglish is his sort of like white guilt movie about like, I can't believe, right, that's clearly him processing like the situation. I'm this rich guy.

I have this complicated dynamic with these people I employ and they're real people too. And I don't want to, you know, like minimize that.
And then you

feel himself like hyperventilating, like working himself up. Like, I mean, it's just ridiculous, right? The chef movies mangled.
Yes, my favorite chef movie.

This is the other unique thing about James L. Brooks is that, like, he's not a guy who starts from, like, I got a great log line.
I got a comedy. Right.
No, it's like, I big, what am I thinking about?

What's troubling me, right? Theme that's been like sticking with me lately.

This is his boomer guilt movie of just like looking at the generations, you know, beyond him, his kids, grandkids, or whatever, and being like, we've left you such a mess.

Like, you're not prepared for anything because we've like modeled nothing well. Like, both of her father figures in this movie are disasters.
Woody's a real villain.

Albert isn't so much a villain as this kind of well-meaning, you know, politician who is kind of fucking her over, like, or whatever, you know, right? And like.

That's the exact thing she doesn't want to become, even though she considers him a friend and a mentor. Right.
And it's like, you have to save the world. You have to put all this back together.

He's setting it right at the 2008 where it's like the time of promise, promise, but also the time when everything fell apart and the recession happened and everything.

And he's just like, and you know, you're supposed to have functioning relationships. We never, you know, we never helped you out with figuring out how to do that.

And, you know, we basically have put it all on your plate, Ella McKay.

Cause it's like this parody of a, I don't know how she does it person where it's like, yes, not only does she have the bad dad and she lost her mom and She's now she's in this marriage that's not totally working and she's trying to fix it, but she's literally becoming the governor and having everything put on her plate and she's like i i'm i'm ready for this i want i you know i've been waiting i want to fix things like i i'm eager i'm like you know i'm an idealistic person and it's like no the world

how do you maintain principle and idealism when the when there's no more infrastructure for it that's a big part of it and i also think you know he pointedly sets this movie in 2008 and i think there are a couple reasons why he does that but i also

it felt reading it like there was a little bit more of a direct mirroring between her father's scandal and her own. And this sort of like James L.

Brooks working through me too and cancellation culture, whatever the fuck you want to talk it in a way that I thought was more interesting than most people who have tried to tackle it, because he's not talking about what's actually happening.

He's talking about like a culture.

and like a media that has become more obsessed with narrativizing thing and judging things and like putting people under a microscope and this notion of like how terrible things can be downplayed and how innocuous things can become.

Right. A sticking top of the business.

And if you are in politics and you are, and I don't think he's saying like, we should just ignore sex scandals or whatever, but, but, but he is saying, if, if, if you are a politician trying to work in a system that is where your job is that precarious,

is it, does it behoove you to just get cynical and just do things that will keep you in office? Or do you still try to maintain your idealism? And she's ultimately failed by her, you know, by that.

She doesn't succeed in politics.

Like, we're talking about this.

It's sounding like an interesting movie.

Like, this thing is 100% an interesting movie, but you're like, there are real fucking ideas in this and like tough questions with no answers that at times he dramatizes very well.

And other times you're sort of like, what are you?

When was the last time you went to a grocery store?

Well, it's like watching,

I think I've said this even on this podcast, but like in the movie WE that Madonna directed, where um, Abby Cornish goes, she's staying with Oscar Isaac in Brooklyn after leaving her husband, and she walks under the Marcy J stop, you know, the overpass and looks at like there's a Hasidic person and a man selling like bird cages out of a store and a tear drips down her eye.

And it's like, oh, Madonna has not talked to a real person in 15 years. Like, it's a little bit of that with Brooks, but it's not as, um, it's not as like snooty or um,

I don't know, i don't mind it in his case it's like your grandpa being like oh what's you know like kind of using old colloquialism no and how do you know feels like a movie made by someone who hasn't talked to a person in a decade this is so much more yes

recognizable a thing that and brooks has talked about it in the couple features i've seen written about this you know him for this movie you know and we must have talked about this back in the day but his father abandoned the family before he was born he found he has like an older sister but his father found out his, James L.

Brooks's father found out his mother was pregnant and literally like blew town. And he never knew his father after he was about 12.

Like he occasionally would see the dad, but had no real, and like Brooks has said, the Harrelson figure, very inspired by that. Like this sort of bad dad, you can't quite shake.
And also,

what has James L. Brooks done? Been married a bunch of times, had kids with different women, gone through divorces, you know, clearly not totally lived up to whatever promise he might have wanted.

Just remarried last year. And I'm sure they're getting it on.
And he's a stallion in the sack to this day. No, I have no idea.
And when he comes, it goes

after he comes. He goes, That was the crazy one.

That's him going immediately to bed. God, that's.
I hope to God James Brooks is not listening to this podcast. Seeing that logo on the big screen and surround sex.
I yelled like Thanos at a piece.

It was truly incredible.

There is little that is more Pavlovian than that feeling of like

me starting to love filmed entertainment. I mean, I know Christmas wasn't filmed, but like, you know what I mean? No, this is filmed as well.
Art, all right. Yes.
Popular media. Yeah.

So yeah, he's still thinking about himself. Yes.

All these years later, which is interesting. Here's an interesting thing I think about other stuff that I think is a little lost in the soup of this movie.

And it's sort of like when you're talking about what are the animating ideas behind these films at the different points in his career, right? And like James L.

Brooks, when he makes soup, when his movies are soup, it's like there's lobster, there's I was going to say, this is more of a chowder. Oh, that's chowder.
Well, is it, is it New England?

Okay, so I have thoughts about sort of a non-

It was filmed in Providence.

I kept thinking it was like Michigan. Yeah, the Amtrak station is right across from the statehouse.

So I've seen that statehouse many a time, but otherwise it's set in a neighborhood of Providence that's not where my parents live. So I didn't recognize it.

But what I do recognize as someone who grew up in Boston and has spent his entire life living in the northeastern united states there's no way you can fake that that's like illinois i really don't think it's just topographically the architecture i mean it was it was a chilly place you know chilly place it's certainly i mean it's obviously not santa fe but like i just think that like he's kind of dining out on the assumption that a state that looks like this is probably blue but i don't have to say it is true that's you know so it's that kind of like

broadly like, is this Harrisburg, Pennsylvania? Could be, but that's maybe too much of a battleground state.

So in a way, I'm like, just said it in Rhode Island then, because that is a solidly blue state within everyone would have to be like, you owe 50 grand to the mafia. Well, that's whatever.

That's, there's a mafia film. The fact that this movie was shot in the last five years and they didn't force him to film it in like Belgrade is even anomalous.

Hello, Ella. I am your new press secretary.

But you're just so used to these movies being like, this is a story about a specific American city, and we clearly shot it outside of the United States of America.

Yeah, no, I mean, it definitely has, I love, I love a movie that, that like is in a place that is, you know, like the Gracie logo, like, like recognizable to me.

I have a Pavlovian response to that kind of home that like she lives in or, you know, those kind of streets and that particular state house.

And I don't know, I kind of in a way like the anonymity of it, even if it forces Julie Cavner to say, and she's the governor of the state she was born in, you know, it's like, okay, that's not how you would phrase that.

James L. Brooks is very interested in career women, right? It is like the majority of his movies are driven by how does a woman have a career? Sure.
And I still don't know.

I don't have. You know what? That's most of the new podcast is me asking Allison that.

How do you still have a career?

But how do you know feels like what it was supposed to be was, well, female athletes, even if you get to the top of your field, that's a really fucking low ceiling.

And being a professional athlete is an occupation where there is an early retirement age.

And if you are the best female softball player in the world and you're forced to retire at 36, what is the rest of your life because you don't have MLB millions to bank on? Is this thing on?

Yes, there we go.

We will talk about similar themes here in a couple weeks on this. And I would argue that a volleyball career is even less lucrative than the softball, although Olympics, there are Olympics.
Olympics.

Softball is at the Olympics too, but I don't think as many people watch it anyway.

But if someone is focused on their career and now they don't have much to take away from it and they're trying to figure out their love life, maybe at a time delay from other people who are having more of a work-life balance, it feels like that's what that movie was supposed to be about.

And then the fucking 2008 financial crash happens and James L. Brooks is like, actually, I want to talk about all of this.

And that movie is sort of neither fish nor foul because he can't decide what the main thing he cares about is.

Well, it's, you know, it's my theory about the newsroom and a number of other things that have come since then, which is like rich guys who don't have to do anything else project-wise, but they've been at dinner parties at their house and they're talking about an article they half-read in The Atlantic or The New Yorker, and they feel that they really have like

talked about it well to their friends at the dinner party. And they're like, But wait, no one else in America heard that.
Maybe I should make a TV show about what I thought about the last 18 months.

You know, this has a slight tinge, or how do you know, rather, had that in spades? This only has a little bit of it. And like, I still have an overall deal at Sony, I have a bungalow.

They would like for me to make make something to justify the money they give me to maintain an office here. Exactly.
Like, stars still want to make my movies. You know, I got three A-listers.

And I've got things to say about this thing from a few, you know. Yeah.
They'll let him get into this with a rougher draft.

In this movie, it felt like they made him prove himself a little bit more while also perhaps giving him more latitude than most people would get, less latitude than he usually gets.

But I think one of the big animating ideas here, David, is sort of what you're talking about, which is like, if you are so defined by the failure of your father and you try to live your life in the shadow of that in opposition to that,

is there a kind of cruel irony of you ending up in a situation closer to him than you ever imagined you would? Right. Yeah.
And that's just sort of like, here I am. I, I, my marriage is failing.
I'm

about to deal with a scandal. Yes.
Right. The circumstances are very different.
The behavior is very different.

Her father is defined by being someone who absolutely acted in the wrong and has taken no responsibility for it for decades. And she is the opposite.
Why is this even a scandal?

And I'm maybe taking too much responsibility for it in a way that is not politically savvy. But am I also fucking up my marriage at the same time in the way my father did?

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I also ended up with a guy that's kind of like her father, and that he's extremely selfish.

Kind of a charming-ish, selfish loser who's like clearly getting by on being kind of a cutie. Yeah.

And to the Rhode Island of it all, I kind of think that Loudoun and Becky and Baker are supposed to be a little mob-coated. Like they have a pizza restaurant, but like, why cast those people?

I was about to say Louden, who is an actor I really like, is not the right

casting. I think he...

He's not bad at playing like a weasly guy in this. But I'll say this, and

it's not me blaming the performance.

I think this is, in a way, the most disastrous part of the movie. It's because that feels like the victim of it.
It feels a lot more runway.

It feels like it was the worst hit victim victim of the cuts.

Yes, absolutely. But I also think his performance...

Well, I'm speaking in the argon of the film. Needy children, by which I mean Jack Louden, are being cut to the bone.
Look, James L. Brooks gets exactly what he wants out of his actors.

I'm not throwing Louden under the bus here, even if he is obviously a man who exists at the absolute center of my dartboard, just for having the exact domestic situation I dream of.

Yeah, Griffin's jealous of Jack Louden because he's married with a a child with Sir Ronald. You know who's a big Jack Louden fan is

Bobby Finger. So he has a Sir Sharon in Dartboard.

We need to team up. He's a harpy.

Two podcasters arrested in a bizarre murder plot that actually, if you think about it, made no sense because

what was their ultimate part in here? Yeah. No, there is some broad comedy where Bobby and I are trying to figure out how to make them think that they're breaking up of their disabled

but switch with us

and that Jack Louden should switch orientation. Unfortunately, Bobby's plotline would involve some sort of Clockwork Orange conversion therapy.
Reprogramming. We don't know.

Maybe Jack likes everybody. No, no, no, no.
We don't. It's true.
Come on the podcast. Come on.

Address me.

I'm predisposed to be bone-deep jealous of this man's existence, right? Anytime he shows up in a movie, I'm like, him? Fuck. Right.
I don't actually blame him for this performance. I think...
James L.

Brooks really misdirected him. I think it's really unbalanced and the limiting of the material hurts it it a lot.

But it's also like, I don't think the movie ever makes a compelling case for why she was with him in the first place.

And reading the script, I felt a little bit of tension in, is this guy hiding something? This guy is so good at charming people in a way that feels genuine.

He's a little too likable. Where what's that covering up? And he's kind of guileless.
And it takes a while to be like, no, he's strategic about what he's doing here.

And this movie, he's so slippery from the moment you like see him kissing fucking Jamie Lou Curtis's hand as a teenager. Yeah, no, exactly.

And I also think that, you know, I don't know if you guys watch The Diplomat, but like. I'm just, I do watch The Diplomat.
I'm just remembering the teenage stuff. Sorry.

Oh, well, we should actually talk about that. But just real quick, like the diplomat, Bradley Woodford plays

Alison Jenny's husband. So he's like the first husband.
And, you know, oh, it's a man doing that role. You know, I guess he's the Doug M Hoff.

but I also but also like Selena Meyer's husband in V or her ex-husband

I think that this role suffers because I'm like I've seen this before recently you know

some version of it I could sort of buy that she ended up with this guy because she's such a driven person she's got her career that he just like is like yeah he's nice and like that solves that part of my life to have this kind of nice guy all sewn up and I don't have to worry about it.

But that needs more. I don't think they sell him being nice enough.

I think the movie needs to rest on the idea that she is a person of such clear, unbeatable morals that her not being able to see him for what he is.

And I understand people get blinded by certain things and whatever, but I'm just like, he feels like a Scooby-Doo villain from the beginning.

I also think that in a way, not to like try to make a movie that doesn't exist, but like, I do think in a way that if you wanted to complicate Ella's character a little further, you could be like, there was some cynicism in her getting married so young because she was like, I can't achieve my political ambitions as a single woman.

I think that's a better way to frame it. If it was like...
No one quite says anything like that.

And their flashbacks seemingly cut out, I believe, that establish more of the bedrock of what their early like, you know, this was like childhood sweetheart space.

And we're going to take over the world together. And, you know, totally.
And like what soured along the way? And instead, you get like one scene of him being too slick as a teenager. Yeah.

And then you're like, this guy sucks. In a crazy wig, too, David.
It's not just woody who wears a crazy wig wigs it's the

wiggy movie but this is also a problem with the film has to rest on the idea that she made a stupid choice that is now jeopardizing her ability to actually affect change in the world that was driven by i can't let my marriage fall apart

Right. That she was trying to keep him happy.

That it's not a marriage of convenience, that it's not a, you know, your role, you play the part of the good, upstanding guy, that she's like, I need to reorganize my whole life to make sure that I'm giving him enough attention.

Which is that a commentary on how women in the workplace are treated? Or is that in some ways a dim view of a woman in the workplace? You know, we're in the fucking JLB suit now.

We're in the chowder where you're like, things in this movie that feel dramatically sloppy.

If you actually start pulling apart what's he trying to say here, you're like, this is an interesting thing to talk about. Right.
Oh, I just got a piece of potato.

He still has like powers of observation, even if he can't totally stick the landing on all of them. And like some of them, he sticks the landing, but not the takeoff.

It's like such an odd mix. I just want to shout out Jack Louden on Slow Horses.

Do you watch Slow Horses? I have not seen it since the first season.

In Slow Horses, Gary Oldman plays, you know, the farting spy. And like the whole.

Well, he plays like the head of this like shitty division of MI5, like the British spy, you know, division, right?

And the whole thing is that he's so bedraggled and he's farting all the time and drinking and he's this like garbage man but it's as you watch the show you realize like oh right it's a little bit of an act like he knows this means no one takes him seriously he's smart it's an anti-smiley exactly he uses it to kind of get people you know off and then jack louden plays this spy who ends up in the shitty division because he's the opposite he can't help but enter a situation like waving a gun around being like i am a spy

i can save the day i could save the day and he's so good at that i admittedly have not seen a ton of his work. Oh, really? You haven't seen.

Well,

My Policeman, isn't that him? No. No, that was Harry Styles.
But what's the conversation that wasn't called 76, but was called 87 or.

If you're talking about the film 76, which is a film.

No, that's not what you're talking about. What was that? I know, is it 74? Yes, that's not.
That's not him. Jesus.
71.

Is that him? You got there. No, it's Jack O'Connell.
You're talking about the sort of IRA drama movie? Yeah, that was Jack O'Connell. Okay.
Jack Loudon emerged. I mean,

he's in little parts in British movies and stuff. Small part in Dunkirk.
He's in Dunkirk. Yeah.
I would say more than a small part.

In Dunkirk, it was kind of like, who's that fucking hottie driving a plane? Like, alongside,

you know, Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy.
Okay. Right.
And then he perishes. Excuse me.
He is in 71. He's just not the lead.
Oh, you're right. Well, I mean, he's not even in the, like, he's the 17th lead.

Who's that? Jack O'Connell is the lead of that movie. Who's that fucking hottie driving a plane? Is what I said at the end of Train Dream.

That's nice. I used to say that about Joel.
Yeah, he's hot.

He's in Fighting With My Family, which you have seen. Oh, yeah.
And actually, he's good. I like that movie a lot.
And he's, I think, quite good in it.

Playing her brother, who's like, you know, the original aspiring wrestler. Sure.
I saw that. But like, I never saw Denial.
I didn't see the War and Peace miniseries.

No, I never saw. I didn't see Mary Queen of Scots.
He's fine in that. That's where he met Sersea, obviously.
He's a if you can get it. Right.
He's somewhat villainous in that.

I didn't see Benediction. That's it.

Benediction is the thing where you're like, okay, so this guy's like a gay. And I know that's a blind.
And it has this like extra sadness or sweetness to it because it was Terrence Davies, like

re-engaging with gay stuff for the first time in a long time, and then he died, and he fought, but he finally did it.

Also, it's like, oh terrence davis made a movie about siegfriezon who was a british world war one veteran who's a poet and you're like oh okay so is this like is this like an elegaic sad movie and you're like no no no no it is about gay guys talking shit yeah like that is most

it's the cattiest movie of that year they are all so mean

but he's really good in that he plays sauron and the rings of power only in one episode he's the original sauron because the whole thing with sauron is that he keeps turning into new hotties to distract people so he's young sauron who fucks it well i mean mean, not that the old, the new Sauron is, they're all young and hot, but yes, you know, Sauron keeps, you know, being like, hi, I'm just a.

Got it. I'm a cool guy.
Is he on Instagram? I look at him. He is on Instagram.
Wait, oh, Fran Hoffner highly recommends Jack Loudon. I was talking about Sauron, but okay.

He's sort of your type.

Wow, Sauron really likes the Netflix deal. Yeah.

Well, I guess that tracks.

But yeah, a lot of the big ones I've missed, and I know he's always on these lists of like these are the exciting features.

Is the thing, right, that he's consistently been he's always I feel like one of these shortlisted guys for like the big parts that are coming up right I do feel like he's good at earnestness and he's bad casting in this for that reason yeah where him trying to play a little too slick comes off as like transparently untrustworthy.

And I don't want to sound limiting, but I do think it's hard. And I think that Emma Mankey suffers from this too.
It can be hard to do comedy while also trying to juggle an act. An accent.
Yep.

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So here's my question. Who is Emma Mackie? Who is this? Sex Education.
Right. Which I've never seen that.
Me neither. Yeah.
So basically. So that's Asa Butterfield.
Marga Robie got a Temu clone made.

And

that's always been the thing that, oh, why is how is there this other actress that looks that much like her? Sex Education is her main project. And that has run for like fucking five or six seasons.

I think it might have sort of petered. You know, You know how these hit Netflix shows

like five, I think. I think four seasons.
Four or four okay. But I feel like these Netflix shows, they kind of peter out.

I also feel like there's a lot of cast turner on that show, but she basically stayed as one of the consistent elements for a while.

She's, you know, all the seasons along with Asa Butterfield and Amy Lou Wood. Uh-huh.
Who's that?

And, you know,

Jillian Anderson and Doctor Who's in there and,

you know, lots of people. And they're learning sex education.

And she, and Emma mackie is also in babylon with marco robbie or is emma she's in the other it's samara weaving who's the other one they say has the same face as them right so she's in babylon as fake robbie and emma mackie is in barbie as fake barbie right okay right i never saw the emily bronte movie that's is that deirdre o'connell uh it was frances o'connor that's what i mean i'm sorry i wish it was deirdre o'connell that'd be great i never saw uh she's in death on the nile apparently I did see that, but I'm going to be honest with you guys.

That one kind of bounced off.

I think she's actually kind of a big part in Death on the Nile. She might be.
She's like the young lover. Yeah.

I remember this part where one of the actresses says something about the Nile and champagne. I'll say this.
She has very few credits.

Like, you actually look at it, and it's like her first movie is 2020. She's in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven movies total.
She's Ella McKay was 29 years old.

Like, she's playing younger than Ella McKay. And I would say it reads.
This was shot two years ago. I mean, this goes back to my original question of who are they casting as the lead?

This is built to be a Deborah Winger, Holly Hunter type thing, but this movie has the three timelines.

Well, over 50% of the movie is her in her mid-30s. Yeah, I think.
And then there's a little bit of teen and a little bit of early 20s, and they cut most of the early 20s stuff out.

There was more college stuff in the script I read.

Well, that's good because at present there is already way too much flashback stuff because it just looks so crazy i think all the flashback stuff should go except for the stuff at the beginning the opening is all you need which is really profound like and really got me but in the script i read that stuff was circled back to many times

there was more sort of going back and forth it's and i part of what i think is lost i will say even though i i don't think it worked dramatically part of what the movie doesn't communicate well is that the idea of the Woody Harrelson scandal is that it became a news story.

Which makes you get us the briefest sense of that, that like he's about to go face the media.

And like, that's what's happening in the first scene that like that the family needs to prepare for on top of the, that he's done something. Monica gate, right? But it was the...

the kind of thing that became a weird news story that captured people for a couple weeks of like, oh, this high-level person was doing all this bad shit.

And so it's not like he's still remembered by name necessarily, but like the level of exposure and attention in her childhood, or, you know, certainly starting in her teen years has like absolutely affected the way this person behaves in every area in opposition to it.

And that she's aware of the fact that this legacy is attached to her, that people know her as the daughter of that guy, as she is now fighting to try to like fix our broken culture.

And I think that doesn't totally come across in the movie. Like her dad sucks and then she grows up.

Well, because the dad stuff feels like we're taking brief detours to a different movie that's about that right where woody harrelson is a much bigger part and jamie lee curtis's relationship to everybody becomes much more apparent than it is in this version of the movie dad stuff also feels way cut down it was clearer that it was a sort of like making the amends

i i need you to grant me this because i'm trying to forgive myself in my life I also think that there would be, if there were, if you flesh that dad character, that dynamic out more, that backstory out more, it would explain some of ella's goody two shoesism that yes that throwaway line about how she vehemently opposed legalizing marijuana yes that was one of the the the planks of her platform when she ran it's like wait what no that totally tracked me because of the 2008-ness it's like that's how much the world has changed that that was considered so radical back then a progressive democrat would have run on that

no one supported legalizing wean in 2008 like it was truly seen as like you're gonna to sound like a

whacked out hippie or whatever.

God, do you remember?

I watch it all the time when the former governor of New Mexico, who's a Republican, who became a libertarian, I fucking forget his name, ran for like the Libertarian presidential nomination, I think in 2016.

And he's at like the libertarian. Gary Johnson is that? Yeah, Gary Johnson.
Yeah.

And he's at the Libertarian Party's like presidential debate, right? With like the other whackers. Which is just people milling around a room screaming.

And someone, someone's like, the next question is: Do you support

people being licensed to drive? Right.

And like, it goes from like every, it's like, no, like, what, what, what next? A license to make toast? You know, as like they go through. And then Gary Johnson's like,

I mean, I think maybe you should have to perform some sort of proficiency to learn. And everyone's like, boom.

There's no winning. I watch it all.
The guy's just clearly like, what am I doing? What am I supposed to say here? He gets interrupted by a giant bullet. Yeah.

uh

sorry i know i think so funny i think you're right though that like

what you don't get in this movie is that she has so wildly over corrected right for her father which is why no one can stand her like well it's because it's become rigid and and and it's not just experiential but it's also like her trying to fight the optics of how she's going to be perceived every time she enters a room or something yeah do you know that she's the daughter of that guy who 20 years ago and not just that but that she's young she's this prodigy she needs to overcompensate for being a young prodigy and all that shaped her moral worldview and then on top of that it shaped a defensiveness in how she lives in the world to try to be able to push her moral worldview through without ever bending albert brooks is too old to play her dad right when i but is there a world right where it makes sense that to have Brooks be the dad and Harrelson be the governor?

I read the script. They announced the cast.

I went, holy shit, Albert Brooks is going to crush it as the dad. Right.
And Harrelson makes a lot of sense. Makes a ton of sense as a kind of like folksy governor people like him.

People like him, but also there's an element of like

has he leaned a little too much into showmen and he's just kind of like a corporate politician now and whatever. I don't think Brooks is bad in this movie.
I think Brooks is actually quite good.

Yeah, and he nails all his scenes, but he's a little bit, I was kind of like, why do people vote for him? He just kind of seems boring. Like, he's fine.

Here's another thing that I liked about the idea of Brooks playing this part.

Not just that obviously, like, it's an inverse of his broadcast news character, but that it's almost like a souring of that guy.

In that, like, I think the Jack Louden character is an unsuccessful attempt to make another

William Hurt, right? Where you're like, ultimately, this guy is a problem. Yeah.
And yet it's really hard to resist his charms. Or a little bit Jeff Daniels in terms of endearment, kind of.
Exactly.

No, I think truly. Yeah.
And watching it, I was like, who could have pulled this off?

He's obviously never going make this career move at this point in his arc but like if it's glenn powell you know and you're like there you go glenn powell is so good at playing kind of a bag and being like god but i can't hate this guy which is what you need him to be that i don't think like the kind of guy who would genuinely think that even though his wife is lieutenant governor will now governor that he's actually the real celebrity yes and without making any larger statement about this you put woody harrelson in this type of role and as you've said many times on this podcast david you're a slut for woody Woody, I love him.

He's so much fun. Almost anytime he shows up in anything.
And yet, introduced in this movie, you're like, of course, this guy's fucking everyone. There's no tension to that, right?

Like the whole Woody Harrelson thing is like, come on, what are you going to do? You mad at me? There's no fucking thing. There's no shock and disgrace there.
But with Brooks.

With Brooks, it would be this kind of warping of a broadcast news type guy who, in ascending to career power,

takes abused it. Yeah.
Yeah. Out of like vindictiveness of women used to never pay attention to me.
Right.

I think part of the problem with a lot of this in general is that like, I think the movie is afraid of becoming too dark and cynical, even though it is set in the most dark and cynical, like, well, the beginning of a really dark and cynical era, but also just like politics in general since forever have been that way.

And that the movie's basically about that battle between cynicism and optimism. But I don't think we've seen nearly enough of the true cynicism.

You have the Julie Kavner line early on where she's like, this story is set in 2008. Remember when people still used to get along? It's like, well, what are you talking about?

I mean, like, it's a glib line. Yeah.
It's overly reductive, but it also feels like part of why he chose to set it then.

I think he once again wanted to talk about the fallout of the financial collapse

and what that did to the citizens of this country and the politicians who were not thinking about them enough. I think

he was making some comment on

Clinton, where he's like, oh, she had all these policy ideas, but like she wasn't likable enough. And it's like, sure, that's maybe true, but also that's not why she lost that point.

There's also an Obama optimism of, is this guy going to come in and actually fix everything? And then you're like, he starts to play the game

really hard. Fantasy.
And makes some terrible decisions. Yeah.
It's this fantasy of what she does of

like, rather than play the game.

She cuts the deal of like, okay, I'll go away if you, and we don't really know what this is, but like do everything i want to legislatively happen a thing that was also very spelled out in the script and has long dialogue scenes where she's like going over what the points are and everyone's being like oh my god why are you so annoyed with that in the movie right there is but it it gets a little yada yada yada imagine if this movie was called one cat

i mean that's true

But like, I found the scenes where she's like, you know, excitedly trying to explain policy to whoever.

Like, the idea is cute of like everyone being like you know oh ella yes yes i think it needs more of that of the idea of like what is she actually boring like it's just this is brooks where he's like i want like five minutes of policy discussion that fox was clearly like cut cut cut cut cut

i just think it's boring like it's just like

You know, like, it's what the characters don't like. She's haranguing you where you're like, yeah, I agree.

It's good to help moms or it's good to have dentists or whatever, you know, know like it's also what's tricky about this part is it's it's going for the holly hunter thing of like god she is so annoying

can't she get out of her own way with this and yet you're still on her side i liked the gag of you know, the legislative meeting where it's like the sun has set and everyone's asleep.

And she's like, and then we're going to do this. You know, like, like, that worked for me.
Him passing the note saying, mention me, and then please don't mention me. That was funny.

That's the best bit in the whole thing. There's stuff like that that's good, but I think casting a 27-year-old for this movie is fundamentally a mistake.
Okay, who should he have cast?

I was doing this mental exercise, right? And I always think about like the generation of actresses who basically didn't get to have a movie like this. Like Emma Stone.
Who seemed tailor-made for it.

Although Emma Stone got more comedies than some. Sure.
But I mean, thinking about the people who truly didn't get anything close to this, I was like... Like Alison Bree, Gillian Jacobs.

Gillian Jacobs sprang to my friend of the podcast, Tatiana Mislani.

Like people who are like both heavyweight dramatic actors and have incredible comedic touches but like so much of their best work had to be on tv can do screwball with depth which is what you really want you know you need someone who's like got a double-barreled shotgun of like tonal control And I think that McKay is a good actor, but I think that she seems overwhelmed by the juggling that this thing requires.

Wow, but Ella McKay is overwhelmed.

Have you seen the day she's having? But also, why is this movie casting based on like, well, she'll be more believable as a teenager than if we hire someone in her late 30s? And you're like,

I truly think it has to be. I truly, that was, I'll just say, that was the explanation I got when they cast it.
Right, right, right, right.

But they just cast a younger actor to play the younger person. Truly, yes.
Whatever.

And it was like, well, the brother has to be three different actors at different ages or whatever, but they want one person to play her in all the scenes, which I guess makes more sense if there's more of those other scenes, but obviously they should have limited those scenes at the script level.

Look, I clearly you didn't like Emma Mackie. I thought she was okay.

I was kind of quite charmed by her. Why do I keep saying McKay? Because the movie's called Ella McKay.
Right. Okay.

I thought she was all right. I just think the movie is putting an unfair kind of

task on her shoulders. It's a lot.
It's big. I mean, look, it crushed a titan like Te Leone.
Yeah. Granted, a very different kind of partner.

But no, but it's a big, verbose, like you have to hold a lot of ideas that are sort of ineffable, you know, hard to hold at all. Stylized Stylized dialogue.
And be charming and be this and be that.

Stylized dialogue. Although I think the Brooksisms are kind of at a minimum in this.
They are. There's moments.
It's a little more grounded. But

I think a lot of it is just

the age because this movie isn't framed as the crazy story of how like a child became the governor of a state, right?

Like it's supposed to be like she's pretty young for a governor, but not like

an aberration. To give people the plot of Ellen McKay, maybe they didn't go see it.
Why not? What the hell?

She's the lieutenant governor of her state behind an experienced governor who she used to be the chief of staff to. Clearly, she was a prodigy chief of staff, given her age.

And because he gets a secretary job in the U.S. cabinet, he resigns.
Why he has to resign day of is

that's ludicrous. No one would do that.
But what that's required for, required for the movie. In real life, he would wait to be confirmed before he fucking resigned.

And so she gets the governorship thrust upon her very surprisingly. And an idea I like is: here's a person whose platforms are too radical and is not good at like

comforting people.

If she had to run for public election, she would never get it. It's the same that Albert Brooks says.
She's not someone who's good at campaigning. No.
She's not good at PR.

She's not good at being on TV.

She's not radical, but she's a technocrat who has all this kind of like good government stuff she wants to do that's boring and she doesn't know how to horse trade for it or all that.

And obviously, you know, they're, they're of a different affiliation, but it's like, if you have an AOC or a Mamdani who doesn't have the PR skills. Sure, right.
Right. Right.

Like the only way in which they're ever actually getting to get into a seat of power is through some weird fluke moment like this. And he says like, congratulations.

They're going to run you out of town. But for at least a little while, you are the governor.
Right. And what are you going to do with that power? Now, that's the main plot.
Also, she's married.

Her marriage is sort of on the rocks. And she was having lunch dates with her husband in the state office building.
And it turns out that's a misuse of government funds, technically.

So she's worried she's going to get in trouble for that because a reporter found out about it.

And also, her dad, Woody Harrelson, who had a scandal in the family when she was young, was a prominent moment.

They don't get to

it at all, right?

But was basically caught uh he's across sexual lines with a bunch of his patients he's he's a serial philanderer right he has decided to re-emerge to ask forgiveness yeah okay jamie lee curtis plays her brassy aunt who her mother dies shortly after the scandal of cancer jamie

curtis the brother the sister of her shitty dad became her den mother and her voice of reason and yeah camille nanjiani plays her bodyguard uh you know security detail guy who she likes and spike fern an actor i don't really know no uh has very few credits he's a young british man plays and british another why is it so many brits player plays her brother

who seems to be like sort of agoraphobic possibly other things he's divergent in some way but has become like a computer whiz quote unquote who's become maybe a millionaire because he's sort of a sports gambling expert and he just sits inside all day on his computer

in some way and he also somehow managed to bag io fumble io that all happened about a year ago and he's been ruminating on it ever since and that's the while she seemingly waits in her apartment like a board waiting to be activated that's the brooks he is writing is when he's trying to explain how he

sort of asked

he asked her to be his girlfriend and then they all freaked out and because it's all this like circuitous it's like a 10-page scene of like dueling monologues that is such a kind of classic Brooksy high wire act.

And I truly was like, in real time, like it felt like watching a boxing match where I was like, okay, that one landed, that one whiffed, you know, and it's coming so fast and furious.

And I'm like, is he pulling this off or not? It's hard to tell. It's really hard to tell.
That's the thing about sometimes when his dialogue is whizzing, you're like, okay, you're like the Max L guy.

And you're like, you have to sort it out later, whether it actually made sense. The idea is that the family history, in the same way that it kind of like turned her into a Terminator, broke him.

That him being at a younger age and not having a sense of self at the time that he has to watch his mother die and his father become a public issue, all this sort of stuff.

They say that they shipped him off to military school because his dad didn't know how to deal with him. Ella kind of raised him, but then she kickstarts her career.

That he is just kind of crumbled as a guy. Which is also, you know, in terms of Brooks wanting to, you know, make manifest things that were spoken about at a dinner party.

He's like, I heard that young men are in trouble. Yeah.
A little bit. There's a little bit of that.
They live on computers now.

A little bit.

And I think a little bit of the like a curse of the gifted child thing of like, was a pressure put upon this kid who was so sharp at such a young age that now he lives in terror of not living up to what was projected for him?

You know, the flashbacks we see him, you know, as a kid struggling with all the scandal. Yes.
So it's a lot. It's a lot for the people.

You didn't mention that Becky and Baker plays a richly bejeweled pizzeria doyen.

They make an additional $300,000 a year by watering down the tomato sauce. That's their

big beef with them. It's like that documentary collective about the Romanian hospital that watered down the antiseptic.
It's the same exact thing. Becky Ann Baker is kind of on fire in this.

And it is like a beef performance, but yeah. Until she falls into the pizza.

I've seen in a movie all year. Like, it's like you're suddenly cutting into like this, like...

What feels like Jane Austen's mafia?

Is this like a parody of mob movies done in the low ceiling?

When I wish

it was their favorite movie, I love you to die. It does.

But like, oh, this is like a fucking like pizza. Pizzeria Goomba.

Hey, I'm Italian. You can tell because I have an apron on.
We didn't get enough time dealing with the pizza business. Sure.
Again, right. Maybe this movie should be

seven-hour officials.

Emma Roberts, Hayden Christensen. It's called Little Italy.

It's not about the Little Italy you think. It's about the Little Italy in Toronto.

Rival family pizza restaurants. And how is that movie? Oh, boy.

That's what I'll say about that one.

Because, you know, when I see Hayden Christensen, I think it's.

Well, it's also insane because

he's like 38 and he's playing like a 21-year-old. Yeah.

Is the rivalry between the two pizzerias like, hey, we here, we make thin crust and that dirty family, their crust is a little thinner than ours. Yeah.

And then they, so Hayden and Emma, while they have to do pod races

to fall in love over pizza. The only way to really settle it.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's quite a movie. Yes.
I think the way.

Sounds great. It's streaming.
Check it out. I think both of them.
It's very much about pizza.

The nature of Woody Harrelson's performance and the way his character is deployed in this movie, and especially because, as we said, the first 10 minutes of the movie are really front-loading.

This is the defining event of this family that will have the ripple effects on all of them forever, Right.

And that is a thing that was like, the first trailer did not convey at all. I remember when friends would text me after the trailer and be like, what the fuck is this movie about?

And I'm like, they're hiding the ball. It is entirely about sex scandals.
Everything in this movie spins out of how do people react to sex scandals? And how does it affect like.

the civic understanding of like public figures.

Right, but also our personal relationships and all these sorts of things.

So So if you're like going to see this movie being like, it's like a, I don't know how she does it.

The first 10 minutes, I think, to a general audience, any audience are going to be like, what the fuck is this movie? When is it? What? Like, when is it? How old or young is she supposed to play?

Where is it?

And then every time he shows up in the movie after that, it almost feels like he's like Paul Betney in a beautiful mind. Like it feels magical.
Like he's a ghost of a memory haunting him.

He leaves the family and then gets killed by Anton Shiger.

Right. So he's a ghost.
Yeah.

He.

We're all making this movie sound bad when, in fact, it's a delightful romp.

I think we are alternating between making it sound better than it is and worse than it is when it's in a fascinating middle. It's another element of the movie that I could almost stand to lose

because

those scenes don't really, you know, link in. to the main plot that much outside of the larger, like, again, she's sort of just been failed by the role models in her life.

This almost feels like, like, where she's like, I'm in the middle of a scandal. Jamie Lee Kirsty's like, just one second.
Let me yank you in here for a second.

Woody Harrelson's like, please, baby, I'm sorry. And she's like, I'll see you later.
He's like, okay. And then she leaves again.

Because he's like, he's appearing in this movie in a like Gene Carlo Esposito in Brave New World and let's salute our president, Red Hulk, right? But where you're like, this is late reshoots.

And because it's stuck into scenes that already existed, she has to like turn a corner, talk to Woody Harrelson, who interacts with no other primary characters, and then she returns to her previous scene.

The very ending of this movie is like her resolving her political career. And then he just happens to be standing seven steps down the block and is like, so can we resolve that plot thread?

I mean, and she is like, no, yeah, which I kind of like. That like, it's not a movie about her learning like, okay, you know what? Everyone's flawed and like maybe you're flawed too.

She's like, no, you're bad. Like, don't need you.
Don't need you in my life.

And I like that the only thing she wants out of him when he's like, please, please, please, like, my new wife's a psychiatrist and she says I have to make amends with you or whatever, you know?

And she's like, I will talk to you if you promise not to bother your son because you're troubling him. And he's like, okay.
And she's like, promise? Okay, fine. I'll see you later.

Like, that is all she really wants from him. It's like, don't bug.

What's his name? Casey. Because he needs to learn how to walk to a bakery that Io lives above.
And you've like fucked him up so bad. Right.
I'm trying to help him. Just go beyond, right? Right.

Undo the damage.

And then once again, once in a while, she gets in the car and chats with Kamal for five minutes. And I'm like, this is interesting.
I guess this is going somewhere.

But I assume many audience members are like, what the fuck was that? You know, what's that now? Right.

And, and Kamal also is like, uh, not an inappropriate age for how old Ella McKay, the character, is supposed to be. Right, but he's a little older than Emma.
You're right.

Which I do think is like an issue. And you're like, he is 20 years old.
He's 20 years older than her. And he's supposed to like

reading it. I really were.

Camille's, you know, looks younger than he is. She looks older than she is, I guess.
Right.

But it does like start to feel like a weird power imbalance thing in like both directions, you know, where I think like,

in theory, there's an interesting tension to

this guy who's so thoroughly charmed by her, but knows there is a line he cannot cross. Even if he sees, like, this marriage is bad news, and I wish she was with someone who respected her.

Right, he's not gonna, yeah, right.

I have a professional obligation, but when he's 20 years older than her and she's in the backseat of the car, like stoned, you're like, is he about to take advantage of her?

But also, the bad marriage is not apparent enough. I don't know.
I don't know. No, I mean, he's just, he's kind of a jerk.
Maybe everyone.

But I feel like the jerk, the real jerk turn where all of a sudden it's like, oh, he's going to fuck her over and she's going to like, whatever. That's like, that feels like something got cut.
Yeah.

Because it happens so that he doesn't play enough. Like

it's, it's like, it should be really portrayed as so fucking evil. He has ruined her.
He betrays her. Yes.
Out of out of basically like.

Spite and kind of feeling slighted by her. Because even what he's asking for is preposterous.

Well, I think, which, and it's done in a way where it's like kind of like light and just like being like, isn't he silly? He's literally being like,

I'm going to be co-mayor with or co-governor with you.

That's not a fucking thing. No, that's.

It really made me mad. I'm like, fuck this guy.

Especially if the backstory of the character isn't like, they met as like poly sci students together and they hold the same values and she became the candidate. He's the heir to a pizza fortune.

What does he care about being fucking gives a shit? Yeah, he's got way more power than any governor.

And I think for this,

I think for this character to work, he has to be so guileless that he doesn't know what he's doing, is fucked up rather than this guy feels like he's making checks.

He has to either be like, yeah, a calculating, equally politically ambitious guy or is so good at pretending he's a normal dude. Or badly bumbling doofy.
I bought that he was stupid, that he...

tips off the reporter by being stupid, right? And pays off the reporter because he's stupid. And then when he's like, so you will you give me more cred and more to do? And she's like, no.

And he's like, well, then I'm just going to have to divorce you and say it's your fault.

And she's like, okay.

He's doing it because he's like, well, I guess I just have to do that now.

I guess.

But then there's a week. Then there's the scene where it implies that like Becky and Baker is like Mama Mia Macbeth.

And you're like, well, wait, but that, that, that, that's not necessary because that's a difference for

Mammia Macbeth.

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It's interesting. I feel like you will hear often filmmakers and screenwriters talk about, you know, where did the idea for this movie come from? And they're like, you know, it's funny.

At first, I was trying to write something like this. And then when I got 30 pages in, I went like, oh, this other thing I've discovered is more interesting.

And you rewrite the script and you take out the original animating idea. Yeah.
that's the crucial part. You take it out.
James L.

Brooks is the guy where every time he makes a new discovery, he adds it on top of the original thing. And you saying, like, could you just drop the Woody Harrelson thing? Right.

And it's so clear to him where he's like, well, that was the whole idea. That's where this all started.
That's the start.

I hear you, buddy. He wanted to make a movie about a really good breakfast sandwich and then he discovered Spanish, which is writing it.
But I mean,

it's the flashbacks thing, which obviously some of them were shed. There's also, it's like,

I think James L.

Brooks, if you were Kelly Freeman Craig and you gave him a screenplay, would give you the sort of smart, like, I know how movies were made and I know how movies work and what's successful, the smart notes to help you streamline your script.

Same story with Wes Anderson and Cameron Craig. Yes, the guys he mentored in the 90s.

And like, whereas this, you know, if I went up to him and I said, like, hey, your movie keeps stopping in his fucking tracks for these flashbacks that like completely kill the momentum.

He would be like, no, no, no, but you don't understand. Like, you know, like, that's all part of this, you know, idea I have, right? You know, he wouldn't maybe take his own note.

But that's kind of what's magic about James L. Brooks.
There's nothing like these movies. Well, it was what was apparent reading it to me of like, huh, these threads all don't really come together.

It's not like by the end, you go like, oh, fuck. It was all building up to, you know, this moment of character catharsis or whatever it is.

And like, maybe that's a thing he'll find while shooting it or he'll find in the edit.

And instead, it just feels like rather than excising certain elements from it entirely, certain elements have just been minimized so much that you're like, why is this even still in?

I don't want to be ageist, but I feel like a 35-year-old James L. Brooks is like a bit more nimble to be on set and be like, all right, this isn't working.
Let's try this, blah, blah.

Whereas 80, whatever-year-old James L. Brooks is like, I don't know, I wrote it.
Let's just shoot it, then we'll go home. Which is also maybe the area where no disrespect to Emma Mackey.

You need someone who is going to be so comfortable in being the lead of a movie and has carried a movie of this size on their shoulders before and is tested in like comedy and rom-com and all this sort of stuff, where they're also being a little bit of a taste gauge rather than like, what do you want, James?

You know? And I understand the, you even see the interviews that the cast has been doing for this movie. And they're like, why did I agree to do it? Cause it's James L.
Brooks. Of course.

To the ends of the earth. People will still be like, wow, I'm interested.
Jamie Lake Curtis is like, since the 80s, I've been like, when is this guy going to give me a call?

And for someone who has been, I bet she said that.

I read an interview with Brooks in THR where he basically, it's a paragraph, a quote paragraph about each of like the 10 stars of the film.

And he calls Jamie Lee Curtis one of the best people I've ever met in my life. Has he met like two to three people?

Has he met Te Leone?

I'm simply referencing that apparently Jamie Lee Curtis can be a bit of a tough cookie, guys. I'm not saying she's one of the worst people in the world.
James L.

Brooks was a magic worker for a time, right?

And it's like, if you're an actor, whether you're new or you're a hyper-established legendary movie star, if you hand yourself over to him, good things are going to come from it.

And you look at a script and it's just pages and pages of dialogue and dialogue. And you're like, it's like doing a play, but I'm getting paid way more.
You know, it's like, that must be so wonderful.

You know, and even when he whiffed and you were like, okay, so they're danger zones. It might not work every time, but it's worth the risk.

And we'll have, we'll have an interesting time on set trying to find the piece. And if it doesn't get found in the edit, then whatever.
We at least got fulfilled on set. Right.

I mean, his first four films get like 10 acting nominations and three wins. Yeah, it's pretty impressive.
Yeah. I'll do anything got most of those, right? Yeah.
Absolutely.

Well, terms of endearment, of course, won best

actress and best supporting actor. And got two additional acting noms.
Broadcast news. Three acting noms.
And got three acting nominations. Sadly, one zero.
I'll do anything got 17 acting nominations.

Of course.

And Scott's a guest got three noms and two wins. Yeah.
Pretty good. Yeah.
That's quite a track record. Right.
In Spanglish, I was nominated for war crimes at the

Saturn Awards dated. Yes.

You know, my old review of Letterbox is like, if you made this now, you go to jail or whatever. It's like a jokey review.
But the problem with Letterbox is people just will find reviews.

And they'll be like, why did you say this? And I'm like, I don't know. I was just kidding.
It's like, you know, it's a silly thing.

Letterbox vlogs are what happen in between sandwiches you know it gives a

um you know what spanglish doesn't want to you either

that's fine yeah it's okay it doesn't need to want me we we walked out of the theater you said i like you either yeah tell me spanglish we walk out of the theater you say you loved it you you nail the pose outside standing next to the post well i loved it and then you got more sober and you looked at me and you said i'm really gonna have to do some thinking before we record this episode.

And I went, what way? And you went, I don't know. It's just interesting that I click so much with these late period James L.

Brooks movies and I haven't quite figured out what it is that's speaking to me. I'm an out-of-touch white guy.
Is that the conclusion you've come to?

I think for this.

What if Ben said as means of an explanation is if you guys do like, all my Simpsons money.

I'm fucking rich. I don't even know, but I'm one of the producers of the Simpsons.
You know that I'm Sam Simon's son, right?

You just signed Martin Prince and we're baked into a contract that will never, ever end.

You guys haven't noticed I'm sitting on a golden throne with a cape, your solid gold house, and your rocket car. Oh, Jester J.
Lampwick. I locked into the local politics of it all because my dad.

uh was heavily involved in local politics in new jersey and in my town and i just i really loved that aspect of the film so I don't know, just enjoyed that

part of her character

being really like wanting to make a change and wanting to do good in a hyper-local way.

I'm connected with that. I also think to go back to him being so interested in telling stories of how does a woman actually maintain a career of consequence.

in a society that's not necessarily built to be conducive to that activates your Kiki's delivery service thing of like a person out there who really really cares about what they care about and want to do something.

And the whole world's kind of pushing back on them. You, you do really spark to that kind of underdog, especially when that's driven by like an optimism and a humanism.
Right. Right.

And I support that. And they push through adversity and they come out on the other end.
And it doesn't always work out,

you know, the in the exact way or the dream way they would want it, the ideal way.

But I, I kind of like that you're seeing the character find this compromised future for themselves, running their own nonprofit. And it's a little hokey even to like see Kavner and Kamale working.

Like, I don't know, but I just, it's a warm bath ending. It's a warm bath movie.
Like at this point, watching this movie in the year 2025 almost feels like you're watching like,

an SNL digital short parodying this type of movie. It feels more pastiche than a real thing.

Even what you're talking about of like the idea of casting two familiar faces in a big budget studio dramedy where the comedy isn't set piece driven. And it's like,

how can you throw the lines back and forth? And how well can you like hold a close-up and shit like that?

It does, there is a warm bath feeling to this, which is why I think we're all like a little protective of

how hard are people going to trash this thing. This sounds corny, but this is the kind of movie.

It's the kind of movie that's the kind of

a thousand Rylaws points. There you go.

That it wants you to care about people because they're people.

And it wants you to care about its story because it's a story about people.

And that is like in such short supply because everyone has to have like an added thing or, I mean, to be honest, like a sort of issue grafted onto them or a power grafted onto them.

And this is just like the kind of movie where it's like, well, it's a family. Don't we care about families?

When you see power, you mean like the powers of Superman? No, the power book for us, the book of David Harmon.

But it's something you said earlier. Kiki's in Dimes Square has a deliver.
They deliver

that looks great, Greek. No, it's Kiki Dunce and Jesse Clements deliver their baked.

I saw someone on Twitter the other day when the Spirit Awards were nominated nominations were announced and Kirsten Dunce, which is exciting, got a nomination for Roofman. Hell yeah.

And I saw one quote that was like, I think totally serious, being like, I thought she retired. And it was like, what?

She was that, was that a story? No. No.
I mean,

she took a bit of a break, but at this point, that was a kind of a while ago. She was nominated for an Oscar like three, four years ago.

She talked about that all the parts she got offered post-power pissed her off, where it was a lot of suffering wives. Right.

And so she didn't make another movie until Civil War because that was the first thing she got that was like, right, right. This is different.
Yeah. And Roofman is also different.
So good in Roof Man.

But I think she's very much like, I'd rather not work than do shit I don't want to do unless you're willing to fucking pay me. Right.
Put me in a superhero movie. I got kids to pay.

Yeah, she's got all that. Whatever.
Kind of the Michelle Williams vibe. Yeah.

I think James LeBrooks, when he is in the pocket, his magic is, to your point, Ben, being able to

have

very,

very lovable characters do deeply, deeply unlikable things and having kind of contemptible characters win you over at times.

And in that way, he can like capture the messiness of like, people are are complicated, you know?

And when he gets that right, it really feels so wise and well-observed and that he can handle those tonal shifts, you know? I mean, like, broadcast news is the peak of this for me.

The scene where Albert Brooks goes from the kind of charming version of a ducky monologue to actually being evil.

And yet, the movie isn't framing him as like, well, obviously, this guy should go to jail, you know? And I feel like this movie

is a little more cut and dry in terms of who the bad guys are and who the good guys are.

Yeah.

And I was kind of trying to develop this theory of like, you, you watch terms, you watch broadcast news, and you're like, terms, obviously, like what you can, you can sell that on like, well, Aurora is a really larger than life character, but I don't know.

You watch that movie now and you're like, no, it's a movie that's just about a family and about a mother and a daughter who have these, whatever.

Broadcast news is just about the people who work in broadcast news.

And then it gets a little bit, then like, I'll do anything, whatever, but then with, it's good to guess, it gets more character driven, like high kind of concept character driven.

And I think that's where, as much as I like that movie, I think everything post struggles to kind of regain the, it's just a movie about blank. Totally.
Totally. You know? Yes.

And this is trying to return us to, it's about a, it's a movie about people in local politics. It's, it's the closest he's gotten back to what he's really good at in such a long time.

And my excitement for this movie was like really being held in moderation of just like, A, I'm just so happy he's back. B, having read it, there are elements of this that excite me.

But I'm just like, if this thing has moments, I will be happy.

I've talked about in other episodes, but I like gave, how do you know, a rewatch in the last year to be like, now that we don't get this kind of movie, will I be warmer to it? And there's the

occasional defender. It is repellent, I think.
I've come around to so many of the late period crow movies that I'd struggle with. No, I agree with you.

And how do you know it just fucking clangs off the backboard and it like makes it break out in hives?

And when people were like,

it's got like a couple performances, or like some lines are good, or this scene is good, or whatever.

The one scene where he's filming Catherine Hahn in the hospital. No, I'm saying about Elementaria.
Oh, yeah, sure. I started getting so excited where I was like, if any percentage of this

is in a good pitch, I will be thrilled. And like, some of it is.

Yes, I, I did not hate it by any means. I wanted more for it, but didn't expect more from it, if that makes any sense.
I just like,

I, I think I'm, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm leaning more towards Ben's side of things where it's like, this is just like a nice kind of movie I wish that existed more.

And sure, it has flaws, but like, again, I'm dreading the snark about it because, come on, like, and also, like, Disney is dumping it so hard that now, like,

you know, a week before its wide release, at the time we're recording this, uh, the like Simpsons is marketing this, and that doesn't feel like Disney strategic synergy. That feels like James L.

Brooks three months ago was like,

Yeah, yeah, truly. It feels like it's the email you send your friend saying, Can you come to my show? You know, right? They're not giving tapering the house now.
He's like, I'll pay for the target.

Any support? So, can I use the one thing I do control? And now, Marge and Lisa are standing outside the theater being like, It made me feel good,

you know, and like

I mean, she is a bit of of a Lisa, right? Like totally, you know, she's a big, more than a bit of Elisa.

What, which, like, that's a great analogue for what this character is in the best case scenario, right?

Where you're like, even when she's being strident or annoying, there is something so human to her in her vulnerability, you know, in her trying to figure out.

how to manage being a person in the world. And I don't think like the movie completely fails on that front, but it doesn't find the magic of

i i'm nuts about her well there's nothing peppery about her like there is holly hunter and or or deborah winger or

little cup pattea little cup

i mean that's that's a cup of straight pepper

not even pepper and water just pepper to the brim god bless her

This film is coming out next. Although her political career was more successful than Ellis, she became secretary.

That is so true. She did.

This film's coming out next weekend right next friday uh the 17th no the 12th or the uh when does this episode air yes this episode airs on the uh 14th what i think it was okay okay sure um so it's coming out two weeks before avatar one week before avatar got it um so you know coming out this weekend at the box offices uh five nights at freddy's 2 which seems like it's just going to stroll to like 50 million dollars a friend told me a funny thing about that what's that well he texted me he said isn't it interesting that there are are about 20 negative reviews out for it

that are on

Universal-owned Rotten Tomatoes, and yet they haven't posted a score yet for the Universal film?

Yeah. They didn't do the

thing where the numbers are like, what's it going to be? What's it going to be? And then it's like 12.

It's weird. I'm seeing here it's the first movie to be 100% Freddy.

We've been given a score of Shelby Oaks. Oh, God.

Like, what if they just create a different, like, oh, it's not a tomato?

It's a Hutcherson.

So, Five Nights with Freddy's, Zootopia, and Wicked, I guess, are all hanging around. There's nothing else in the box office mix until Avatar, right? Like, there's no other big

player swinging in. Am I right that Avatar and

Marty Supreme are the same weekend? You're wrong. Avatar is...
the 19th along with, of course. Oh, no.
Oh, no, yeah, no, no, along with, well,

is this thing on? But that's the limited release. Marty is getting like very limited 19th, but Marty is launching on Christmas.
White is Christmas, and that's also Anaconda and Spongebob.

Indeed. And The Housemaid, I think, is also coming up the Avatar weekend as well.
That's being projected to make a lot of money. That thing's crushing in pre-sales.
Really?

The book is like huge. Is that all it is? And just counter-programming.
And this is the kind of stuff that people want to see, Sidney Sweeney, and not dour movies about abused boxers.

I do find it fascinating.

I mean, it speaks to the we all live in different realities thing now, where like, I'm someone who's fucking on the prowl for movie shit and trying to stay tapped into everything.

And there is not a single iota of marketing for the housemaid that has hit me. I would agree with you.
I'm not seeing much. There's bumps in theaters.
I'm not seeing shit online.

And like, they're clearly selling it successfully to the people it's made for. I guess so.
What were you going to say, Richard? I was just going to say that,

you know, the people, well, we were talking about this off mic about Pillion, but the people that are seeing housemaid ads are the people who want to see Pillion, you know what I mean?

But

I'm just assuming box office-wise that this movie is going to be the sort of soul-wide release and open like number eight. You know what I mean?

Like that it'll be like Five Nights of Freddy's and Zootopian Wicked continue to do pretty good. Ellen McKay also opened.
It is this thing that is

spinning the industry into a state of panic that is entirely self-created, where they're just like, well, if LMK is the only wide release that weekend, I guess it will have to do okay.

And you're like, that is some fucking 1997 thinking. And there was even still like faint traces of that in like 2017.
People are inevitably going to go to the movie theater. So

they will go. Default, they check the show times on Friday and go, we'll just see whatever.

My sister, when we were in Rhode Island, in the summers, we would just call the repeating phone answering service and write down the times and whatever fit we saw that's why i saw like the leave it to beaver movie in theaters because it was the one with the right show time it was why it was valuable to have a movie open on 2000 screens because saturation would just basically short of an atomic disaster that was usually driven by like intense negative feelings

right right that like you would just get default walk-up business let's go see a movie right and i don't think that's gonna happen here and you were wrong maybe it makes 40 i hope i'm so fucking wrong but the fact that it's opening without competition and then we're going to get some headline of like, this is the worst weekend before Christmas or two weekends before Christmas in like fucking 10 years.

And I'm like, what do you guys want? You like didn't release anything commercial for two months and then put three billion dollar movies within three, four weeks of each other.

They're like sucking up all the oxygen because you didn't spread them out. Were you funning me or is the Ella McKay Post thing actually an online thing?

We're trying to make it a thing.

A lot of people are doing it in a jokey way on Twitter, but I think it's more of a film Twitter. Like film Twitter people.
Okay. It's not like, it's not like TikTok.

It's not like ungentle minions or anything.

I don't think so. How great would it be if it had some fucking

but you lip lip sync TikToks? Yeah, you know what I mean? Like some weirdly surprising viral thing that somehow sells it. Like what if it performs like fucking

Greatest Showman? Like it opens to three and everyone's like, oof. And then weekend two, you're like, it's up 250%.
Is that that circus musical? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

What were you going to say, David? Oh, just that it opens to three and then makes three for 29 more weeks.

Small drop. Three, three, three, three, three, three.
Ending up at a robust domestic total of 30?

It's how kids learn basic math. Like, what's three times seven weeks of elementary? Oh, boy.
No, it'll probably open to a black hat or so. Let me, let me.

Let's, I just want to circle back to two other things.

Cause I feel like

the younger brother is a total dud is the sentiment I keep hearing from everyone who's seen it.

And I came loaded for bear, especially having read that script and been like, fuck, this part is interesting, if not incredibly tricky to pull off.

And I kind of liked him, if only because I think the worst version of that character is someone doing 8,000 fucking really loud ticks.

And I appreciated his choice to be too unwilling to. Well,

they tried to get Justin Bartha to reprise his Gili role.

That feels feels like the nightmare of what I was worried it was going to be when people told me the kid was bad, where I'm just like, he's going to be like fucking touching the doorknob 20 times and like screaming.

He's just like pouty in a way that people don't like when certain young male actors do that kind of role. I don't know who would be good.
I don't know. I don't either.

It's a little bit of an impossible part in how he set it up. Yeah.

I do the performance I quietly really like in this movie. And a scene where I was like, this feels like fucking classic James L.

Brooks magic is the other part of her security detail who's trying to get overtime because he's going through a divorce and needs money to raise but that scene I mean is truly out of nowhere yes and one of those things where you're like did I forget that I went to the bathroom or something and this guy was set up earlier?

Because it is James L. Brooks magic.
I agree. It's the classic James L.
Brooks thing. But everyone's got a story.
That's a movie We've been in.

I know.

And who do you want to know? Can I reveal to you? Please reveal to me who it is. That is a young actor named Joey Brooks.
Joey. Who is the son of James L.
Brooks?

Who I how the hell the what to get cast in his dad's that is such a weird coincidence that he ended up in that movie when his dad was the director I know that's so crazy I really like him And he

doesn't work that much, but he's got one scene in the big shorts. Yeah, I remember, I just, I'm looking at his IMDb and I remember that scene.
And I remember being like, who is this guy?

He's got interesting dialogue rhythms and an interesting energy and

big short. It is John Magaro and Finn Whitrock try to go to take a big meeting.
Yeah. And their receptionist comes downstairs and gives them the polite brush off.

Oh, that's him. Was sent down to like test if they're worth his time.

And he's really good in it. And then he was like, McKay clearly likes him a lot.
I think he's got a small part in vice or don't look up. He showed up on winning time.
He's like my age.

He's like mid-30s. There are a couple other things he's been in, but I always think he's interesting.
He's in Molly's game. He's in Molly's game.
He plays like one of the young. Yeah.

He's in 17 episodes of Winning Time, a show I watched.

It does feel like McKay always casts him,

probably through some connection to his father. But

I think he is actually the rare case of like... That scene is wild, man.
It's a wild scene, but I think he plays it beautifully. Sure.
Sure. Yeah.

And on paper, you're waiting for the explanation of why is the scene in this movie? It's the director's son.

But also, it gives Ella a chance to be kind of a little annoyed about it where it's like, oh, she's really principled, but also principle is not taking into account that sometimes people need extra money.

Again, I don't know. It's also working in this pseudo-romantic plotline she has with Camille that does not actually come to fruition, but

I feel like there's the vaguest hint in that final scene of like, oh, maybe there'll be something there. Because they work because he quits his job to work with her, which there isn't.

There's also a reshoot, by the way, the movie was supposed to just end with

go ahead she steps down i'm stunned to learn that that bizarre scene was a reshoot the scene where they're like do you want to tell her i'll tell her okay here we are we can announce that you have fed a very specific number like 9482 moms or whatever it was like it doesn't it's very strange but it also feels nice but it's nice it feels like a test screening note of the movie ends with she's resigned and she's 34 with them what does she do with with the rest of her life?

Exactly. She's doing something.
Right. I like when people help moms.
Okay. Sorry.
Sue me. I liked the movie too.

I like that she wants to help people. It'd be funny if she was like, she takes power and she's like, okay, great.

How can we hurt them?

We took food away from 9,000 families. Doesn't Two Weeks Notice end with Sandra Bullock also working at legal aid? Possibly.
I mean,

I feel like going to work for legal aid is how people resolve like a lawyer story. Yeah.
Where it's like, don't worry, they're not evil anymore. They've left the poisonous system.

Yeah. I met someone the other day and I was like, what does your wife do? And she was like, oh, she's a lawyer who works at a nonprofit for like

fighting eviction. And I was like, oh, so she's a sellout.
And she, this person I was making friends with didn't realize that I was joking. Oh, they thought you were just true.
Yeah. Yeah.

I was like investigating this woman.

Okay. As much as I liked that it ended with everything working out and her being, you know, the nicest lady, it would have been kind of cool if like you see the back of a chair.

she turns around she's smoking a cigar she's in the mob now that would be good she went totally and then even then a pizza comes flying at the

screen

it drips down and then cheeses as the end exactly that would be good and then a question mark in tomato sauce that is

i think if audiences reject this movie they can add that ending no i was gonna say that's probably the reason why you know the monday morning quarterbacks right are gonna say like it really needed to send audiences out on a high note of seeing the end spelled out in cheese splattered against the screen.

The ninja turtles needed to be vaguely.

Ella McKay, how can we help? Like, Leonardo and Raphael show up. This movie is neither radical nor bodacious in Alpha.
The Ninja Turtles are from Rhode Island.

Ella is sort of a hero and a half show.

Look, this is, and this is why Ben is in a good mood. He's got a big smile on his face.

Our last record of 2025. It is, in fact.
Oh, wow. That's significant.
Yes. I don't think I've ever been here for the last record of anything.
Griffin is going on a work vacation.

I'm doing a little work vacation. He's doing a little work.
We're not going to talk about that. I know what it is.

Because it's top secret.

I just want to remake up the film Top Secret. I don't want people speculating too largely about it because I feel like Ben has been doing some windup because it's an exciting time.

I think it will just be a fun surprise to people when they see it. You're going to be in one of Barney Frank Stag films, and I think that's great.

you say the same thing on the good part the script is good you say the same thing on next week's episode which covers the film what's it called avatar colon the way of water no fire and ash i just know already it's going to be like wait a second is herbie talking in doomsday is that why

it's not yeah it's not it's not but it will it'll be a fun thing when it when it uh is made public so next week on blank check we're talking about avatar fire and ash then we're taking a week off then we're talking about is this thing on?

We're going to take a week on to talk about this week, that movie. Yeah.
And then we'll talk about Park Chenwick's No Other Choice.

But to remind people in our week off first episode of Critical Darlings on this

very theme, and then it will come out every Thursday

after that. Yep.
Through the end of March. Through Oscar's stuff.
Yeah.

Yeah. And then after that, as you said, we're doing Lynn Ramsey after

Park Genwick. And Peter Weir after that.
And Peter Weir after that. And after that, I don't know.
I don't know. Lynn Ramsey from Something About Mary? Yeah.
Yeah.

I looked that lady up the other day because I wanted to use her photo. The tan lady from the family.
Yeah, she's great. Anyway.
Eleven. How's she doing?

She's all right. It's got a lot of

thoughts about it. Yeah, she's the governor of an island right now.
Great. Cool.

Great.

So, I mean, updated James Lilbrook's rankings. Ben, do you like this more or less than Spanglish? No, Spanglish is still

my top. That's your number one.
Well, no. No.
Between the two. Okay.
Yeah. Because I feel like I go broadcast news, terms of endearment, as good as it gets.
This,

then I go

Spanglish.

How do you know where I'll do anything? What you pick your poison. Well, and also it's like, which cut of I'll do anything am I prioritizing?

I think there's more in I'll do anything I like, even if the worst of it is more disastrous versus like, how do you know kind of just making me feel bad from beginning to end? Making my teeth.

Yeah, I think any ranking I would do would have to put how do I know at the bottom. Yeah.
Because again, as many accents, the work you did. Thank you.
Great stuff. Thank you.
You are the best.

Remember that?

You can do anything.

I mean, I do. Yeah.

Well, that's

a now

an epilogued end to our James L. Brooks mini series.
I don't think I'm ever going to come back for another James L. Brooks movie.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

It would be astonishing. Simpsons 3 has to come, you know? They got to make Simpsons 3.
But the Simpsons 2 thing is interesting.

We appreciate him.

For all the pause, we appreciate him. We do.
I mean, yeah. And we appreciate you, the listener.
But of course, this isn't the last episode of the year, so I shouldn't be too

over the top about all this. It is for us.
But it is for us.

Subscribe to the Premiere Party newsletter, please. Please do.

Paul Newman's going to have my legs broke.

And stay subscribed right here for Critical Darlings. Yes.
And next week, we're going to get all fucking horned. Oh, yeah.
We're going to meet Varang. Varang.

Richard, have you met Varang?

Oh, I've met Varang. Yeah, I sure have.
Do you want to throw out a quick Verang take, just since you're not on that episode? And what are Pendyce Sequel's parties? Pendy Sequel. Fuck.

I think it's a great performance that's

underused. Yeah.
Like it could have been more Varang. Here's what I'd say.
They left me wanting more. Potent.
Leaving.

Red means bad.

Fire. Fire bad.

Fire bad. Film is direct.

Well, there's some racial stuff in that movie that I'll be curious to hear you guys talk about. Anyway.
Oh, we don't.

You think that movie is disrespectful to Thanators?

Pretty much. That's, yeah.

It treats them all as savages. That's right.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me.
What a treat as always.

And now that I'm, I don't know, almost part of the family, I'm very very careful. You've always been part of the family.

You've always been part of the family, but now you're like married by law into the family. Now I own the Pizza Empire.
Yes. Married by law to Rylong.

Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

And as always,

Emma Mackey is Ella McKay.

I'm nodding. David's nodding.