‘Sinners’ With Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Wesley Morris

This episode is supported by FX is the Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawk.

Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist/slash rare bookstore owner slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tail of his latest conspiracy.

This time, his most recent expose puts him head to head with the powerful family that rules Tulsa.

Meaning only one thing, he must be onto something big.

FX is the Lowdown premieres September 23rd on FX.

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The Rewatchables brought to to you by the Ringer Podcast Network.

We can find Van Lathan.

Yes.

Higher Learning.

Absolutely.

Our friend Rachel Lindsay.

Midnight Boys.

Yep.

Wesley Morris not on the Ringer Podcast Network, although he does have a podcast that he refuses to promote.

I'm not refusing to promote it.

Cannonball with Wesley Morris.

I'm going to get better at it, I guess, at some point.

There you go.

There we go.

I'm Bill Simmons.

We're going to do a rare thing.

Talk about a 2025 movie on the Rewatchables.

Sinners is next.

i've been all over this world

i ain't ever seen no demons

no ghosts

no magic

till now

admit to it admit to what

that you did

sinners only in theaters coming soon This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by Prime.

You listen to this podcast for the movie talk.

So let's set the scene.

Our lead, tall, dark, stranded at the airport.

Hours of delays.

He's scrolled, strolled, and loitered by every overpriced snack stand, but just when all hope seems lost, plot twist.

He remembers he has Prime.

And without a whole library of free ebooks ready to read right from his device, cue the triumphant score.

Roll credits.

Free ebooks library.

It's on Prime.

So we've only done this.

We've had the rewatchable since 2017.

I think we've only done this for three other movies.

Get Out.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Top Gun Maverick,

where a movie was so instantly rewatchable that we said, fuck it.

And we just decided to give the rewatchables treatment.

There's some drawbacks to it.

There's not enough information about the movie with some distance.

We don't know how the movie's going to play out for the next five, six years.

The casting would-ifs, as the years pass, they start making up shit about who almost got what part.

Like right now, there's like nothing.

But this movie, I saw it with Van the day it came out.

Oh, really?

What did I predict to you that it was good?

I said it was going to make over $200 million.

You did?

I did.

Oh, he was all over it.

I was like, that movie's gonna be a modern day.

Like, when we left, I might as well just put a Koofi on Bill's head.

Like,

Bill, like, Bill did that thing where Bill looked.

He went,

it's tremendous.

We're sitting outside the Grove.

He goes, I predict the movie makes over $250 million.

And that was a big deal at that point because remember, all of the talk was around the BS movie.

I mean, all of the what we can now call bs around the conversation around the movie a weird conversation because everyone was fixated on this kugler daily gets it back in 25 years they spend so much money this one title and then the box office was good the first week and then there was like four or five different news stories about

Well, they still have a lot to recoup.

We don't know if they're going to recoup.

It's like, when did we ever talk about that with movies?

It felt like people were lined up a little against this.

What's interesting about it from a re-watchable standpoint is it's completely re-watchable.

And

my son and I have watched it twice together since it's been a home video.

He saw it twice in the theaters and then twice here.

Once they get to the bar, once we're starting the bar, like about 40 minutes in.

An hour.

Yeah, well, they have view me.

Yeah, once they open the bar,

it's about an hour and a half and it could really be its own movie.

But I think as the years pass, that's going to be it.

So I'll go to you second because I already know how you feel about this movie.

You never wrote about this movie as its own piece, but you put it in a Beyoncé, like bigger picture piece.

But what's your relationship to this movie, Wesley?

I find it fascinating.

It is, it is,

I love it when some work of culture or art.

that becomes then culture.

It gives you a new way of seeing a thing that you have always understood to be the case.

You know, get out gave us the sunken place,

in addition to other ways of looking at the relationship between black people and particular kinds of white people.

And here we have

not a necessarily new metaphor for

what kind of lazily gets called appropriation,

cultural appropriation, but you have it so that the metaphor

isn't quite fixed to mean that it's that the white interest in the black music is inherently bad.

It's that the vampires here,

which who are also kind of zombies,

we can talk about this.

Their interest

is

their own interest is confused, right?

Because anyway, so I just, we can talk more about what I'm trying to say, but I just love that

people responded to this movie in the way that they did, both with, you know, intellectually, emotionally, their sense of entertainment was satisfied.

And I enjoyed it.

I feel like there's two things that I truly, that just truly do not work for me after three experiences with this film.

Save that.

Let's go positive first and we'll circle back.

But I just, the first hour of this movie is,

I didn't even need the vampires.

The vampires to me are like dessert

because the first hour of the movie is just a meal.

It is something that you rarely see in a movie about black life and black culture in the South in the past.

And

yeah,

there was stuff I didn't didn't catch the first time we saw it.

Like, even when they go to the stores and how they position the storefronts and the two sides, and even how the stuff in one store is slightly different than the stuff in the other.

There's all these nuances to it that you kind of pick up the more you watch this movie.

It's such a that first hour.

You can tell that there was real sort of intellectual labor that went into recreating

this town and the relationships in it.

This is the Jim Crow South.

The Jim Crow Southness of it is atmospheric.

It does not feel like it's dictating day-to-day life.

Of course, but you know, it's a psychological condition at this point.

We're in the 30s.

And

I don't know.

It's just, what would it look like for black people in the South to just be living a Tuesday?

What would it be like for them to to be living for Saturday, right?

The one day of the week where time stops and you can just dance your ass off and gamble what little money you have and drink.

And then you go to church on Sunday and say, I'm sorry I did that.

I'm going to go to sleep and wake up to work on Monday.

Like Saturday night was the biggest night of the week for certain black people.

And then you went to church on Sunday and some preacher made you feel bad about it.

That's all in this movie in the first hour.

When you saw it twice in the theater?

Yeah, three times.

So, did the first hour or the second hour, what did you respond to more?

I think that I responded to different things in different viewings.

When I saw it, when I re-watched it for the podcast, the first hour by far just had me captivated.

It just like to what you guys are talking about.

I think for a couple of reasons.

One is something that Wesley hit on when he was talking about the film, which is that

this movie does something that I think a lot of period pieces that have black people in them don't attempt to do, which is it treats the black people in the movie like people.

And they have very different experiences.

Like even Smoke and Stack, who are twins, they have two completely different experiences of even love.

Smoke has this tragic, all-encompassing, consuming, identity, reaffirming love.

Stack has a love that is almost divorced of its identity.

It's trying, it's searching for one.

They have all the feeling, but everything else is kind of being dictated by the fact that they're not safe to be together.

For the audience, Stack becomes the vampire.

Smoke is the hero, and

Stack actually becomes, in my opinion, the movie's greatest victim.

Because he turns into Radio Rahim.

Oh, how?

Careful.

Careful there.

I mean, it's interesting to think about him that way.

Keep going, though.

Keep going.

Keep going.

And then the second part of the movie is this relationship to the American South.

I am from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

They filmed in Louisiana.

They filmed in Louisiana.

This movie is said in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

There's something about the American South that is supernatural, and there are a lot of reasons for it.

Number one, a lot of this happens to be the fact that it's the blackest place in America.

And that there's something that comes along with that.

One thing is that all the stories, all the spirituality, all the culture that had to be developed in response to the brutality of America, it exists there in a very distinct and special way, right?

So all the cultural invention, the music, the dance, the spirituality that had to be invented out of survival, it sits right there on top of the South.

And when you see something

that that depicts the american south it makes you think about the carnage and brutality that it took to create the society that we live in that's the economic driver the engine and the people inside of those movies are sort of it's orphans they're the orphans of american exceptionalism and stories about them almost always make you go

shit

Like you always have to sit back and go, look at the cotton.

You always have to sit back.

He's paying for something with the plantation.

Look at the toll.

Look at the cost.

And the movie is able to depict those things without in any

languishing on them.

With like, how do you make sharecropping not a big deal?

How do you make living on a plantation not a big deal?

Well, when there are vampires attacking you,

it seems like it's not as big of a deal, at least in that moment.

And

I have been and remain transfixed by what the movie was able to do and it and he's from oakland i could get it look man

the work to your point the work and the craft and the care that must have gone into coogler's exploration of particularly the delta i i haven't had a chance to talk to him about it but i don't know how he crafted that I've been there.

My daddy's from Maringland, Louisiana.

I know these people.

This is who they are for real.

Like, and this, it was

really, really, really an achievement to me.

You know, we did that video for Ringer Movies when we talked about basically the premise was, why doesn't Ryan Cougar make more movies?

And you could say that about some directors work a lot.

Some directors like take their time.

And I was like, my only frustration with him is, I just wish he.

did a little bit

a little more like once yeah just like just do a buddy cop movie for six months like just bang one out and what man just described is why he does, why, and especially like doing the real research for this,

that's not his process.

Like, if he's going to do sinners, he's going to get every single piece of the movie correct.

And that takes like real time.

It's like a labor of love for him.

I also think that

I don't know.

He got, it worked for him so fast, so early.

You're doing great.

You're doing great, Craig.

I am partying a lot lately.

I gotta sweat.

Look at this man.

He's a picture of party.

You don't know.

You don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

That's the whole point, right?

I just feel like

it all,

he got very,

he was touted very quickly, like out of the gate.

Fruit Vale Station makes him a person of interest to lots of people in the industry.

He's in his mid-20s,

which is not after Fruit Vale.

Yes.

And the question is: what does he do after that?

Like, this is a guy who could be writing original screenplays and making really good dramas for the rest of his career.

And Kugler, Ryan Kugler, is like, nah, I actually have a thing that I've always been thinking about doing.

And it's, it involves the Rocky franchise.

And I think he

had always been curious about what it would would look like for this person to write another original screenplay that is coming from something, some place in his imagination or his, or his

soul, his interests that isn't connected to, you know, some other entities that he's talking about.

Well, that's the thing that Process's first movie with its own IP that came completely out of his head.

Right.

Because I always think Creed, but actually Creed is in the rocky universe, right?

Like he has a couple built-in characters.

That's definitely true for sure.

I think that there is a common thread between Creed, Black Panther, and this.

Oh, sure, a hundred thousand percent.

I think this

what Koogler is really good at doing in my

Michael B.

Jordan, huh?

Well, yeah, Michael B.

Jordan, him and Michael B.

Jordan.

Like, that's like that's his muse.

But I think what he's really good at doing is

the lore development, like evolving lore.

Like Black Panther,

in and of itself, the movie ends up being

an interrogation of Black diasporic unity.

And

that's a hell of a swing for Disney, right?

Like that's a big

idea.

The movie starts off

with the history of the Wakandan civilization, and then we go right to Oakland.

He takes the story and then he evolves it.

And this, in the same way, way, just like the bedrock of Creed is the Rocky franchise, the bedrock of Black Panther is obviously the Marvel cinematic universe and decades upon decades of

comic lore.

This one is really

all of the different aggressions and microaggressions and circumstances that exist in the American South in that part, in the Delta specifically.

Forget about the Delta.

It's the Delta.

It's the Delta.

Because even those

Asian characters, the Chow family, they exist specifically in the Delta in Louisiana, in South Louisiana, where I'm from.

We didn't have, I'm like, when I first looked at the movie, that was even unfamiliar to me.

I'm like, what?

I've never seen it.

But he took that and then he was able to build on that and put the vampires like on top of it.

And so he has this way of taking things that are so familiar to us and then making them original.

Creed should have been stupid, bro.

Creed should have been stupid.

We talked about that when Creed came out.

We were like, how did this work?

The audience was like 20 to 1.

Like, Creed should have been stupid, but it just wasn't stupid.

Yeah, because, well, because he under, like, to your point, though, he kind of understands

like he, it, this isn't a cynical investment, right?

This is an art investment,

and clearly, these worlds mean something to him.

And the question is: like,

these movies operate, and I'm not saying they come from this place, but they definitely correspond with this urge that, that a lot of people who,

i'll like in this case black people go to a movie and you're kind of like well i really what's it like at apollo's house like how come we don't spend enough time getting to know

uh you know what apollo's life is like when rocky's not around there's not enough of that and so what not to mention duke i mean what was going on with duke did he have a condo an apartment i mean i just think there's a whole world that that i mean so many times i'd go go to a movie and just wonder what was going on with a bunch of other characters who clearly are interesting and interesting to the world of the movie we're actually watching, right?

Like Rocky Balboa is friends with this person.

What's his life like when Rocky, like separate from Rocky, who was he like basic instincts?

Roxy.

What was she up to?

I mean, did she have a job?

But I do wonder.

Because Roxy was

Roxy.

I fuck with Roxy.

I mean, doesn't everybody.

like i with roxy roxy i mean

roxy didn't just win at the end waiters she tried to make out with it right but we did

that

what a movie oh but yeah like it's such a great point like apollo is

apollo is the a boxing legend in the film uh the standard of boxing and he really only shows up as rocky's jiminy cricket right yeah and then so there's so much fertile ground we didn't even know how much fertile ground.

Remember Rocky IV?

He's in the pool watching, he's watching a TV of a Drago interview in the pool.

And he gets mad and he's like, what's going on with this guy?

What else is

manners about America?

Yeah.

And then he gets fucked up.

So this movie,

it's a vampire movie.

It's a one-location horror action movie, which is a 50-year franchise.

It's a blues movie.

It's a religious critique.

It's an all-in-one day movie.

Everything happens in 24 hours, basically.

And it's a movie about 100-plus years of black culture, all in the same movie.

Is there anything I missed?

Six things.

Six different movies in one movie.

Well, and it's a little bit horny.

In there, you've got these, these, these other things, right?

It's a father-son movie.

It's a brothers movie.

It's a sex movie.

It's a twins movie.

It's a horny movie.

Yeah.

I mean,

this movie gets its horns on a couple times.

Oh, yes.

I mean, it's a movie about Cunalingus.

Yeah.

I mean, the boy's journey with Cunalingus.

That was the original title.

Yeah, they changed it.

It didn't test well.

Boy's Journey about Boy's Journey to Cunalingus.

From Focus Features.

Sounds right.

Focus would do it.

Tested terrible.

If you got the right studio, Focus would have done it.

Yeah.

I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Is there anything else you would put out of those seven?

I think those, that kind of covers it.

I mean, there's so also, it's a musical.

It's a musical.

That's probably the biggest thing that it's a musical.

So that's from a rewatchable standpoint.

There's a couple of music scenes in this movie.

I mean, including the famous one, but holy shit.

Just like all time, all-time music scenes.

So have you ever been watching a movie where the characters in the film are having so much fun, but they're not necessarily at a party that you would want to be at?

yeah this is this is yes this like so

kugler when they're making this movie he's like i want to make sure that people want to be at the juke joint you that you want to party with them i want to make sure that people look good they're glistening the sweat is good and look something else we in an era right now where people they do this la thing when i first came out to la i noticed how the clubs in la are right the clubs in la are like this how it goes You go to the club, you're in there, and it's a dude.

He's sitting on the couch.

He's doing like this.

He's just saying hi to people.

It's like, there's one dude in that club in LA that all he does is say hi to people all night.

That's all he does.

He's just, what's up?

I always want to know who that guy is.

I always want to know who

that guy is.

He's like, what's up?

The most intriguing person in that

guy.

So every once in a while, he does this thing that I hate.

If you are a celebrity, stop doing this.

Stop seeing people and doing a little prayer hand and then go, thank you so much.

And then it's a girl doing this.

The prayer hands are tough.

I hate the prayer hands.

I like the prayer hands.

Stop what.

If I say

the next time somebody,

I was praying for you to come here and you've arrived.

Prayer hands.

It's like, hey, man, I really fuck with that record you put out, but thank you so much.

Hey, nobody asking for the prayer hands.

Just be like, yeah, man, we work real hard on it.

Break out.

Like, so.

The Superman gets hot as sticks.

We did the bad flare hands.

I mean,

I like that this drives you crazy.

I hate it.

You hate it.

Okay.

I look at, I have two different types of celebrities.

I got prayer hand celebrities and regular celebrities.

I remember one time I went to, I'm just going to drop a name.

I went to a YG listening party.

I told YG I liked the record.

YG was like, yeah, you fucking with it?

That's cool.

I was like, he didn't prayer hands me.

That's a real motherfucker right there.

Way to go, YG.

He didn't give me the prayer hands.

That just made me a huge YG fan.

But I'll say this, in the South, South, at least when I was, I don't know how things are there.

I haven't been as home and partying as much.

Nah, man.

We go into these parties and we go in looking great, all dressed up.

We come out sweating.

Yeah.

We are dancing.

We are more.

I bring two shirts.

That's a Wesley Morris staple.

We are celebrating.

He's the sweatiest club guy who ever lived.

I bring two shirts.

No,

he loses like five pounds of sweat sweat at some of these places.

I've seen it.

So when you're inside a club,

you really have to have a sense of the vampires ruined the greatest day of Preacher Boy's life.

The vampires ruined a fantastic party.

But conversely, man,

the party is so good that even these racist-ass vampires

want to come in.

Like, which is really the politics of the movie, right?

I mean, is it time to get into that?

Because I just just feel like the

sort of

political, intellectual

achievement here, one of the achievements is that, which is that

he found a metaphor that also doesn't entirely feel metaphorical because, in the world of the movie, these vampires are real.

They kill people, convert people,

and grow a little army, but they also serve, they serve a metaphorical purpose, right?

Which is that

the

moment they show, okay, so for an hour, you are watching Smoke and Stack basically gather the resources, human

movie, right?

Yeah,

and

to get the Saturday night hopping.

And you watch them do everything to make the club the club.

And and

the minute after

sammy does his number

and you get the

the sort of metaphysical supernatural it ends with the number the roof's on fire

it finishes and it cuts right to the three vampires

remix like

yeah you mean i can i can get kill all the birds in one i can get 250 years of music in one bite.

I paused that moment for Ben because Ben, Ben's 17 now, and he's in that I'm smarter than everybody else stage.

Like, don't tell me what I know more than you.

Like, he thinks he's, he thinks he's a shit right now.

So, I paused that and I was like, true or false, is this what the movie's about right here?

And he was like, what?

And then I explained it to him.

And it was one of my moments where I kind of hit him with the newspaper.

I'm like, I'm still smarter than you, motherfucker.

He got it.

Okay.

But I was like, you didn't figure this out yet.

See, you're not that.

that you're not smarter than me

you 17 year old little is jimmy iveine yeah

i mean

no i mean take throw a rock right throw a rock because but jimmy ivevein is actually great because he claims to come in peace he

He has an ally.

He forges an allyship, right?

Like on his terms, I bite you.

You fuck with me.

Yeah.

Because you don't really seem to have a choice.

There's just so many things happening once the metaphor goes to town.

One thing.

And all of that,

and in some way, it wasn't alienating.

The thing that I still get that I.

What do you mean by that?

What I mean is, but with this movie and get out, these movies are direct criticisms of whiteness.

Right.

They are direct.

I expect it to come out of the theater

with Bill going, ah, they should have had Wahlberg in it.

I can't do two Wahlbergs.

You know what I mean?

Fuck with it.

The movie is, there's no way around it.

The movie is a direct criticism of whiteness, and only the people that were trying to be offended by it actually were.

Right.

Which tells you just the powerful, the power of the world.

That says more about the person, though.

Oh, 100%.

I agree.

Yeah.

Can I read you something a great writer wrote about this movie?

That Sinners is a nightmare in which black art is doomed to be coveted before it's ever just simply enjoyed.

Jesus, who's that guy?

Wesley Morris.

Oh, wow.

Oh, I really

wrote that.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Wesley Morris.

Fucking just dropping some

knowledge out there.

But I thought that was really good, though.

Real quick, what do you think is more impressive?

A Pulitzer or a Peabody?

I have no comment.

They're both wonderful awards.

May everybody win one.

I think

I have a P-Buddy.

Poets says more important.

I don't know.

They're both great.

Why choose, man?

Can I give you a couple more sinners' themes other than Black Art Doom to be coveted before it's ever simply enjoyed?

The musically talented are called griots in this movie and their gifts attract evil.

We were talking yesterday at dinner about.

why people get so famous that they kind of lose their minds.

Like, why don't we care about this more as a society when we look at the people that has a disease the people that have really flown super close to the sun a lot of times just lose it um

and i was thinking like do your gift do your gifts actually attract evil yeah or is that just like a a theme in this movie because i do wonder you think of all the people who have flown too close to the sun and it went bad That's like I see how you're is this a coincidence or should we actually start wondering

but this is i i mean i think you in the world of the movie the evil that's attracted is not the evil of well let me think about all they care about in this all the vampires care about is preacher boy they don't care about anyone else in the movie i have a thought here they want him that's it they want to take him and bring him into their fold well he's the only music well let me think about this because he's the only musician they would have been

they want everything no but he's the only physical manifestation of the thing that drew them to the club.

Well, he's the only one capable of doing what he did when he went for it.

He lured the ancestors.

He lured the past and the future.

That song brought, you know, I lied to you.

By the way, I mean, we should talk about what a banger that song is.

Have you seen the video of Miles Kane performing that with the guy who did the score?

What's his name?

Oh, Ludwig.

That guy's a genius, by the way.

The two of them just do it acoustic for some crowd as like a sinner's thing, and it's fucking unbelievable.

Sure, it is.

And we're going to talk about my, I have lots of milestones coming.

I think two things.

One about fame, and one specifically about the way fame and

the black part of it.

This coming from

just my TMZ brain.

I think these people go crazy because we drive them crazy.

And I think we don't mean to, but we do.

Yes, we do.

You think we mean to?

That's what I said last night.

Yeah, I think we drive them crazy.

I remember sitting in the office and something very

sad happening to someone and me talking to a producer and going, man, I don't really think this is news.

Like, why would this be news?

And they just went, because the person's a celebrity.

Right away, because you have notoriety, it piques people's interest.

And because it piques people's interest, they have all different types of attitudes and thoughts about what you should do and how your life affects theirs.

And that is just not to me

a natural situation.

No, nothing about it is natural.

It's just not.

I mean, obviously, some people can handle it, some people can't.

I think that

we don't talk about it.

And I wonder, I wonder we don't talk about it as a disease.

You know, there are a couple professional

shrink-oriented people in my life, psychologists and psychiatrists, who

definitely think there's some, that it should be considered a mental health situation that people who are put in that zone should be prepared for yeah oh interesting um i mean if you look at the way influencers operate at this point right and the way that social media operates turns them in and out it completely changes it warps people's understanding of reality well there's their own personal there's three different types of

I mean, three people for this conversation, right?

Musicians, actors, athletes.

When you're an athlete, when you're like somebody like Tom Brady,

and like you win the, you come back against the Falcons and you win your Super Bowl, you become the GOAT and you come back from 28 to 3 and everybody's just like, wow.

Oh my God.

Like this, I don't know how you're normal 10 years later after that.

So there's that.

Then you have the musicians where you're selling out arenas night after night.

and everybody's just losing their fucking mind and that's just your life and you're going from city to city and you just get this crazy three hours of adjuration.

I don't know how you stay normal there.

And then, actors, even there's not only they become famous, like the Leo type of famous, but I remember when I had MBJ on the second time in 2015 during Creed.

Oh, no, the third time it was after Black Panther.

And he was talking about how Black Panther fucked him up because he like inhabited the role and he had to become like a dark person in that movie.

And he couldn't dark.

Like

Killmonger.

Stop.

Oh, oh, you're trying to start some shit.

Okay.

You can't give him any red meat.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

But he was saying he couldn't.

They finished filming the movie and he couldn't get out of the place he was in in the movie.

Like he couldn't.

He had to like, he talked about it.

He had to like go get therapy and it became like a news story because he admitted like I needed therapy to get out of.

get out of that wherever I was.

Killmongers.

So when you're an actor,

you have to like do that.

I don't know.

I think after like 20 years, you fucking go nuts.

What if what you do is not just the best part of somebody's day, but the best moment in somebody's life?

Right.

What if that play that you made, like somebody from Atlanta talks shit to me?

I go 28-3.

Don't matter how many.

Well, what would happen if you met Tracy Porter right now?

I'm going to sit down and talk to you.

You fucking bear hug him.

Like you start crying.

So the Saints won the Super Bowl.

I did not think that that was possible.

It was a ridiculous happening.

So, it's just a weird space to operate in.

And then, this movie talks about something else as well.

Man, when you hear them early recordings, I remember listening to you talk about some of this stuff as part of the 1619 project.

When you listen to those early recordings of

Muddy Waters or the music that was coming out at that time, you think, what series of circumstances and events led to that man making that sound?

Yep.

I always, that's the thing you always think about because they came, they were first.

Yeah, you just go,

made him go, I have to sit down right here and get this out.

And when that sound went everywhere, it was no different than what Preacher Boy did.

The Stones heard it.

The Beatles heard it.

Everybody heard it everywhere.

And they want, I'm not saying that they were vampires at all.

I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying what I'm saying.

You can, you cannot not say that.

I want to say that.

I'm not trying to say that.

No, no, no.

Just keep going.

Just keep going.

So what I'm saying is when like the music actually did in real life

what it did in the movie, everybody went, Jesus Christ, what is that?

I want to get as close to it as I possibly can and let it push me forward to connect in the same way.

I want to make that sound, or at least I want to understand it.

And those early recordings are hard to come by now, but when you hear them, it feels like he is speaking in an interdimensional language with the combination of the guitar and his voice and the emotion.

And so, like, that part of the movie where Remit goes, oh,

that feeling happens.

Like, that, like, that's a real thing.

You, what the fuck is that?

I got to have you.

and then the movie orients itself around that but that's the point at which it like it

the the need to i mean there's so many things happening with remic as both a person who understands the rules of vampirism right like the need to be invited into the club that whole that whole aspect of the metaphor right in order for this to work you guys i need you to believe in me in order for me to take this from you for me to to take it from you, you have to, you have to let me do it.

Um, I mean,

that is how those low-max recordings worked in a lot of ways.

I mean, in the same way that you don't want to talk shit about Nick Jagger and Robert Plant, like, I don't really want to talk shit about, about, about

those, those recordings, those field recordings, but like, I think that there's an aspect of,

and this movie understands that a lot of the history of the creation of black art has had to, in some way, if it's going to proliferate through a system through an economic system, it's going to need a white person because they control the system.

And I think that there's some balance.

I mean, this isn't even about, this is as much about it, about artists, but it's really not about white artists and black artists.

It's about white business and black artists.

And

Remick's offer is so ambiguous, right?

Like, I mean, we understand at the very least that these are vampires who have a job to do in terms of biting the people, but they also stand for something.

And it actually, I take that back because I just forgot the most important thing about Remick, which is he's part of a minstrel trio, right?

Like when they arrive at the club, they arrive as three people.

One's got a banjo, one's got a fiddle, and the other one's got a guitar.

And by the way, they sound sound pretty good.

Wow, I liked it.

I mean, I like

that.

That's the joke, of course.

When with wait, what?

What

that's what you liked, Bill.

But

look at him go, look at him go, America.

Bill Sigma just got bit.

But, you know, Rembert and I had a conversation about this movie for Cannonball.

Well, but now it's Cannonball.

And we talked a lot about Pickpoor Robin Clean as, you know, it's an old song, right?

That these two black women would go around and perform.

It made them very successful.

And,

you know, in the limited range in which two black women could be successful at the turn of the century performing a kind of blues music.

nationally speaking.

But I mean, they were very regionally known.

And this song was no secret.

It was popular.

And to think about what the song is doing in the world of the movie, we picked poor Robin Clean, like that is simultaneously vampirism

of the most literal sense, but also the metaphorical vampirism, right?

Like we are, we are, we are eating at the bones of a thing, and that thing in some case could be

black culture as we know it.

And that's the song that they used to impress these black people who are standing in the doorway, being like,

What y'all want?

And of course, there is one person because there's always somebody in the back who's just like, I wait, I now I can't remember if it's if it's if it's if it's stack or Mary, if it's it Mary who says, We gotta go out, no, no, don't know what you mean.

The person who's like, you know what, they sound pretty good.

That was that,

like, stacks

like this, yeah,

well, ironically, Stack gets bit, becomes vampire.

Right, but I mean, I think that that appreciation, I mean, I think there's something true in that moment, right?

Which is, you know, so much of what is happening

in that doorway is

really about the complexity of the relationship between black art and white music.

or my white musicians, which is like, when you got it, you got it.

We can't, you cannot be denied.

Well, there's a there's a third theme

that we're going to get to right after we take this break.

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So the third theme of this movie that I had written down was something Stack says after he becomes a vampire, because we're talking about the vampires trying to seduce everybody in the juke.

Stacks telling his brother,

No, it's better this way.

You should come this way.

And then he says, we was never going to be free.

Yep.

which is the third theme looming around this like hey maybe this is actually a better life for everybody here in the in the 1930s um which is the most this is the darkest aspect it's about as dark as you get yeah

yeah when you look at what those two brothers had done

to uh find their freedom when you look at where they had gone.

They had gone to fight enemies abroad.

They had gone to be gangsters up north.

They had gone everywhere trying to search for whatever it is that they did not grow up with, whether it was safety from their father,

whether it was respect in their community, whether it was love, right?

One man couldn't love his woman because

she was too righteous.

The other man couldn't love his woman because she was too white.

So

whatever they were looking for and they were going out to find it, they came right back home and still had to deal with all the accrued interests of the horror that waited for them in the south.

And by the way, they were going to die the next morning.

Yeah, the guy was going to go.

Those guys were all coming back to kill them and clean the floors.

I got a nitpick there.

Okay, say that.

Yeah.

I think I might share your nit.

Yeah, I got a nitpick there.

But nonetheless, writ large, the nit aside that I would think I probably share.

I can't wait to hear what it is.

This, it's so crazy this movie is as popular as it is because it is a full-scale comprehensive tragedy.

And no matter like everybody is trapped in their circumstances, all the options suck.

The cosmos of

the Jim Crow Delta means that

there was no way that any sort of

white power structure was going to allow this club to stand, right?

and

i just even once you get to that post-credit sequence which is essentially

buddy guy

as as old sammy

wow

like sitting with the fact that he made it and you kind of can't believe i was like wow sammy made it but also

The what he made was

the blues.

He is now the descendant of, because we haven't even talked about what Del Ray Lindo represents in his strain of boosts.

I feel like he's an overlooked that character is kind of overlooked in the larger.

I've not going to be on this podcast.

We're not going to be overlooking Del Ray Linda's performance.

It's the best performance in the movie to me.

Holy shit.

But, um, and that's not taking anything away from Mike, but

I'm sitting.

You literally took something away from him.

No, because Mike has a lot more to do with this movie.

It's his best performance before.

I'll tell you something else.

I wonder.

So

the movie is a tragedy, everybody dies, everybody gets up.

The child's daughter is an orphan.

Like, all of those people in there die.

They have families out there.

The movie is a profound tragedy.

There's nothing but blood left.

The only person that is, the only people that are left are Stack and Mary.

And I have not been able to understand what we are supposed to take from that because

Stack comes back, and he is now.

I don't want to get too deep into this, but I was thinking

stack comes back, and now stack is a vampire version of actual

black experiences and expressions from the past.

Now, he got the big

coogee sweater and the whole nine, she's got door knockers, she's got door knockers.

I thought it was like, like, literally, Radio Raheem, like, he has the stuff on his knuckles.

Well, I mean, that's just, that's just, but what I'm saying is in that situation, he's there.

And if I was to look at that in my most galaxy brand way, that character represents what we had to give up, which is literally the sun.

Like we had to give up the sun.

We had to exist in the night now.

He's got, he's decorated.

He's ornate.

He is going to live.

He has survived as something lesser and more grotesque not human not human than what the people around him were and that when i saw that because when at the end but he says it though i'm happy stack is alive he says it was the happiest day of his life yeah but it was 60 years ago he's smiling when he says it's the last time my brother it's the last time i saw my brother and it's the last time i saw the sun and i'm like fuck but he's happy and i'm happy he's alive even though he's lesser than human than what he was before um there were compromises made i have been thinking about the the only thing i really think about with this movie in terms of what it means and where it could go i don't know how committed to intellectual property proliferation ryan kugler is he is definitely a master at reinterpreting other people's ip

but i don't know if there's going to be like a sinner's four if we're if we're headed that direction so i've

plenty of time to think about what is going on in that sequence.

And the third time I watched it, you know what I thought of

the bridge from They Won't Go When I Go, the Stevie Wonder song.

People sin in just for fun.

They will never see the sun.

They won't even show their faces.

For them, there is no room for the hopeless sinner who will take more than he will.

Oh my God, I'm going to start crying.

Oh, no.

He got through Brookback Mountain without crying.

I was going to cry.

They got Wesley.

For they will never show their faces.

For them, there is no room.

For there is no room for the hopeless sinner who will take more than he will give.

He will give.

He will give.

He ain't hardly going to give.

Whoa.

And is Stevie like going from up here to down here, from the mountain to the valley, to acknowledge that there are these people

who

have been forsaken or have forsook.

And

every time I,

the three times I have seen this sequence with

Smoke and

what's her face, the Haley Steinfeldt character as

stack, sorry.

And they're talking to this old man who we now we've experienced as a younger person.

I'm hearing this.

I'm hearing that song.

Who chooses death rather than be one of them.

Yeah.

I hear, I hear the, the they won't go when I go.

And that's literally true because these people are never going to go.

Right.

So they will live forever and they will never see the sun S-O-N or S-U-N.

Right.

Right.

When we saw the movie, the movie ends with

Michael B.

Jordan, the second twin dying, right?

And he's going to where Annie is with the baby, and the credits came up.

And I started to get up.

And Van's like, hold on, hold on.

Yeah, don't go nowhere.

And I'm like, what do you mean?

And then that whole other scene came in.

Not only is it the best scene of the movie, I think it's one of my favorite scenes.

Me too.

I just couldn't believe how good it was.

And each time I watch it, it gets better.

And I just can't believe the choice of starting the credits, but then skipping ahead was so interesting that they did that and not do the fast forward to 1992 or something to keep you in.

It's, it's almost like an Easter egg, but it's so much better than an Easter egg.

No, it's a coda.

It's an epilogue.

I just, I can't believe they landed the plane on that.

It probably shouldn't have worked.

But not only did it work, it was, it's the, it puts, it brings the whole movie together in the best way.

And also like to have buddy guy and just like,

I just can't believe they pulled that off.

They were saying he's 88 years old.

They had to film for like 14 hours.

They're in, like, the, you know, it's fucking hot.

And he just was there banging it out.

And that's going to become a big part of his legacy as weird as that sounds because I think this movie is going to endure in its own way, you know.

And he's, he's so crucial to that part.

Oh, yeah.

Well, the idea that that person, I just kept wondering, because, you know, the blues song, like, I lied to you, is not in any way a 1930s anything, right?

The Del Roy Lindo character is the embodiment of like the Delta blues.

And Sammy is something else.

Preacher Boy is a completely, like, I would say, 1980s-oriented blues, right?

Like a Robert Cray

kind of blues musician, like, like, late buddy guy.

That type of guy.

He wants his blues to take him everywhere.

Right.

Delta Slim wants to stay right there at the same club for the next 20 years.

Preacher Boy wants that guitar to take him everywhere.

It's a little bit more accessible.

Right.

And I, you know, but, but what do they say when they, when they find old Sammy in that club that night?

Oh, man, this electric shit.

Yeah.

I don't know about that.

We like the old shit.

Well, I bet y'all would

stands to reason.

Right.

Um,

we got to keep moving.

Michael B.

Jordan, Fruit Fail 2013, Creed, Black Panther, Panther 2,

Sinners.

He needed this one.

Interesting.

That's our guy.

He needed a great performance in a great movie, I think, for the catalog.

Because I just think he's, you know, he's not 40 yet.

I think the talent's there.

He's been in our lives the entire century, dating back to The Wire and Hardball and Friday Night Lights.

And I said this to Van when we did the video about it the last time.

I didn't 100% know he had this one in him.

I think there's stuff he's doing in this movie.

And I feel like Wesley's going to zag zag on this.

There's stuff he's doing in the movie that I didn't think he could do.

First of all, to play twins, I just think is like a whole other level of hard acting.

I don't like to be able to just do that on a set every day.

I felt like the twins were slightly different in ways that the more I watch the movie, I can recognize them.

And I just think there's a presence with him.

He nails the dialect.

There's a physicality to him.

It's like all the stuff he's good at.

And it's just like perfect for him.

And I was just really happy for him because I like him.

Well, it's a movie star role.

Yeah.

And so it

he needed it insofar

every actor that's going to be a movie star needs one just like that.

It's a movie star role.

It's a movie where if that character doesn't work, if those characters don't work, you don't have a movie.

It's different.

And by the way, this is the movie we always wanted Will Smith to make, right?

During his entire prime?

Will it something that actually really said something to a movie star it's a different thing though because Will Smith can do he could charismatic

charismatic I know but I think Will Smith thought like Ali would be his version of this movie and it just isn't no but he is like so many other things that I find I don't know I didn't mean to attack Will Smith you know what I mean

what I mean is this movie shows Mike gets to be a little sinister.

He gets to be smooth.

He gets to be vulnerable.

What you're essentially talking about from my perspective is every movie star needs a film where they show their entire range of talents like everything that they could do it's kind of like leo and wolf of wall street to be honest like like he he didn't need it but he kind of needed it

yeah yeah wolf of wall street yes interesting

at that particular moment in time you think he needed yeah because that that and the revenue combined i think

raised him to just a different stratus.

Yeah, but I think he was already doing great.

This is slightly different because at the point at which Leo

DiCaprio makes Wolf of Wall Street, he had done,

he had already done Django, right?

Like one of the weirdest performances he, nobody, anybody's ever asked him to give.

I feel like he'd already

done enough conventional movie star work.

I'm just talking about a moment, a specific moment in somebody's career when there's a shift and you can feel it and they've elevated in some way.

This to me, well,

the additional tragedy here,

the extra narrative tragedy of this movie, is that the reason that we're talking about whether Michael B.

Jordan needed this part or like needed this movie to work in some way is that

there isn't a lot for him to be doing as a movie star right now anyway.

Well, great.

Part of that was his fault, though.

He does two more creed movies.

He tried like, it's funny because we talked about this when I did power them 10 years ago about let's map out the next 10 years you got to do a legal movie You got to buddy cop movie you got to do your action movie So he did his revenge movie without remorse.

Yeah, he did the legal movie just mercy did Fahrenheit 451 That was like his weird sort of science fiction movie.

So he's checking the boxes

None of them really hit like this

and this just goes

that's I just think that the industry is the industry was changing under his feet, right?

Right.

Like the moves, those movies did not work because of him.

I mean, just Mercy.

I mean, I don't think the movie is great, but I mean, there's so many deep and moving things in that movie, like Rob Morgan and Jamie Foxx.

I mean, you just need him.

Michael B.

Jordan to me is like a Robert Redford, right?

He's not the greatest actor.

He is extremely handsome and alluring.

There's something about Michael B.

Jordan that makes you want to know

what else is going on in there.

And every once in a while, some movie or some co-star will

bring that out of him.

It has to be brought out because he's not going to give it to you.

Somebody's got to like lure it from him, which is why it's so interesting that he keeps working with Ryan Kugler because that is the guy who can push Michael B., who seems to be able to push Michael B.

Jordan into these really interesting zones.

of

both both as an actor and consequently not that he's not that he, I don't know if he knows he's a movie star, but he's got the thing that we want from a person that we would classify as a movie star.

So I was talking to somebody, I was talking to Kalika last night and she was talking about F1

and she was just like, I don't know, I just like Brad Pitt.

She's like, I just like watching Brad Pitt and stuff.

Like Brad Pitt just she goes, Damson is so beautiful and he's such a good actor, but he's in a scene with Brad Pitt, and you're looking at Brad Pitt and you're just going, like, you know, whatever.

Don't make jokes about my girl, like looking at Brad Pitt.

It really seems like she was looking.

Dan seems fine with it.

I'm just looking out for you.

I just see it.

I'm just looking at you.

I just see what you're doing on that.

But watch out for Kalika.

And she goes,

she goes, Brad Pitt just has,

I don't know.

I was like, do you know what he has?

And she goes, what?

I'm like, he has it

and there's really no way

to

really articulate it but some people have it some actors have this thing to where you go hey i like this scene because this guy this gal is in it they have it it doesn't matter what i think you and i this is the one thing we've talked about probably the most since i've gotten to know you in the last 14 years it's how do you determine whether somebody has it or not so this is my hollywood is trying to push it all the time but it's like you either have it or you don't.

You can't, you can't make me think.

It's like with the NBA: like, who's the face of the NBA?

You won't have to ask the question when that face makes itself.

Yeah, we'll know when the face arrives when that happens.

So, and it's not Shade Joseph Alexander, unfortunately.

Okay, okay, all right.

Now, it's just not Mike.

We'll know when it arrives.

Mike, it's Anthony.

Come on, why are we?

What are we doing here?

There's one person, it's Anthony.

Hopefully, Anthony.

Hopefully,

he definitely has it.

Mike has it.

Yep.

But even when you have that, this is important.

Even when you have that, you need

a very flavorful creative gumbo.

And you need the director or the creative that knows how to utilize it.

And there have been very few guys that have been able to get there without somebody going, hmm,

I know

which role this guy needs.

Does Tom Cruise need to smile his way through a movie?

Or is it, yo, homie, is that my briefcase?

And so with Mike,

but either one of them, right?

Both of those scenes, like Maverick smiling bright in 1986 or whatever, you go, wow.

But at the same time, the guy in collateral, he's magnetic in the same way.

Mike, this was the role for him to display the fact that he is a magnetic, unforgivable, unforgettable screen talent.

And he brings it every single time.

He's one of the

De Niro and Scorsese is a good example of this, right?

I think De Niro happens anyway, but he catches Scorsese at the perfect point of his life.

Right.

And that elevates it.

I think, though, there's a couple of things, right?

I mean,

what we talk about when we talk about both the it and the and the star maintenance is at bats, right?

Yeah.

How many, how many times do you get to go up to the plate and like swing at some pitches?

And

increasingly now people's batting averages are based on way fewer at bats and so when you get up to the plate now it really matters a lot more how good your swing is and

i

just don't think that michael b jordan has had enough at bats i mean i've been saying and i still kind of feel this way like Like,

I don't have enough data.

I still

don't feel like.

Well, no, I mean, I think that, but, but the question is, what happens next?

But he's still

38, 39.

Yeah.

I think he's under 40 still.

So this is going to be, this should be the peak of his career starting right now.

Again, I just got to say, we are talking about, I feel like we're talking about this as though it's like 1999 or even 2010.

What, like, if the movie isn't going to win him an Academy Award or it's not going to make $450 million at the North American box office in two and a half months.

That middle zone where the movie star is, the movie star is tested and the movie stardom is given a workout, that doesn't exist.

Well, do we think he can win an Oscar for this?

No, I think he'll be nominated.

He'll definitely be nominated.

I think he could be nominated.

But no, I don't.

But again, a nomination.

I would bet anything he is nominated.

I don't think he'll be nominated.

I'll bet that one.

Like, excuse me,

I'll tell you something.

He better get nominated.

If you guys think 1992 out here was bad.

He better get nominated.

Yeah, I mean, that's the way that I've been thinking about this.

No, this movie is going to.

This movie will win for score.

And we haven't even seen five months of movies, but it will win for score.

Who here is a real chance?

chance.

There, what are we talking about?

Like, there's like 20 movies left to come out before and a lot of regular.

There have been some really good ones, but what I'm saying is that he'll probably get nominated.

This is like that, but that, but that right there is just so insanely important for him and his career.

We go back and we talk about Ali.

Ali was not what Will would have thought that it would have been from the standpoint of number one, the quality of the movie.

I like it.

We're doing on the rewatchables at some point.

We both like it.

Okay, like I like it.

I get that people for whatever.

I like the movie.

I don't think it's too much.

But when you there's some great stuff in that great, great.

When you saw Will Smith nominated for an Academy Award, it was like, oh, okay.

I didn't know that was a thing.

It was a thing.

It was a big deal for his career that him and Michael Mann got together and made a movie that rose to the critical reception to where he could have been nominated for an Academy.

Well, he should have gotten nominated for six degrees of separation.

He definitely should have gotten nominated for.

You know who else has been nominated?

Ryan Kugler.

Yeah.

39 years old.

There's a class of directors.

I want to throw this at Wesley.

Kugler, Shiselle, Greta Gerwig, Chloe Zhao,

Sean Baker, Robert Eggers, Ari Astor, maybe the Safties.

I don't know how you feel about that.

There's no reason to kick them out of the club.

cord is gonna cord's only made one movie that but i think he's jordan's chase being this group well he's older jordan peal's 46.

oh i see under 40 these are all like okay late 30s cord's 43.

yeah these are late 30s early 40s

you could shoehorn jordan in that too even though he's 40 i'd say trey schultz is probably in this conversation but it's right bigger point is we have like a real class of creatives

that i don't feel like you know we talk about all the 70s you romanticize like these different eras of directors i think it exists now

but again like we're still running like well there's two things happening right like i i mean kugler even

if you look at the crazy thing about this movie is look at what this man has done like it it he is from the standpoint of what this town cares about like he's made these people so much no he's no he the man He also he owns some Spielberg shit, though.

Right.

This is what I'm talking about, right?

No, he said probably the best best commercial director we've had in a while and just all of these hits in a row just all of this money he's they they're printing money off him he hasn't missed he hasn't missed yet yeah right he hasn't missed yet and i don't think that people think of him as a person who hasn't missed yet no that i think that the way we've been talking about this movie it proves it yeah right I think that one thing that's really important here, and this is kind of both the point and beside the point, this movie came out in the spring, a dusty time traditionally, anyway, for movie releases.

It comes out in the spring, it's a big hit, it's got ideas, but it's not a movie that was being sold as being an ideas movie, it was sold as a vampire movie that you had to wait an hour to get the vampires, and people stayed and then they kept going back.

I do think there was a buzz to it leading up to it.

I think Googler reached a point where it's like Koogler is a vampire movie.

My point is not that.

And they were selling us Michael B.

Jordan in a tank top.

So, like, I'm in law.

Yeah.

But, but, but the point, the point is, well, why are we pretending that what's happening isn't happening?

The movie is filled with gorgeous people.

I mean, beautiful people.

They're beautiful people in the movie.

You're giving us, you're giving us Miles and Michael.

I hadn't, I didn't even know Miles could act.

Um,

I don't think anyone knew Miles could act.

I mean, I, as a musician, like, I, I,

he wasn't unknown to me.

Oh, look at Wesley fucking dropping.

I mean, I'm not.

I know about Miles.

I don't know that.

He was on my Blues Reddit board.

Anyway, I feel like

this movie

was advertising something to me that was very appealing and not that hard to understand.

Michael B.

Jordan probably.

killing a bunch of vampires or zombies.

What's funny is the movie was so good, you forgot about the vampire part the first time you're watching it.

Yes, for 40 plus minutes.

And then when we finally have a vampire, it's like, oh shit, I forgot.

We talked about this when we talked about the film before a little bit, but there was one thing where I realized, obviously,

because me and Sean were going crazy over this.

When Kugler was able to successfully give a 10-minute dissertation on how the film should be watched, why he shot it in 70 or IMAX or whatever list off all the and that bitch got to like 15 million views.

I watched every second of a 10-minute video about a director telling me the best way to watch his movie.

That was Fantasy's version of a Diddy Freak Off.

He's just like,

he was covered in baby oil watching it.

Just go nuts, dressed it all way.

Oh my God.

So I'm like, I'm like, oh, this shit different.

And by the way, he is not in any way giving the audience a break.

This is the thing that I like about what he does.

Now, he's not giving you a break.

He's making you come to these ideas, these hitty ideas, because they're too delicious for you to pass up on.

He's saying, look, shoot it like this.

This is five perf.

This is 15.

This is this.

This is that.

This is the different things.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And people went for it.

That made people more excited to go see the movie in the more expensive format.

Yep.

In the format that was going to to drive the box off as a movie up.

It's incredibly filmed and directed.

They film it for IMAX.

The famous one-shot scene with Sammy's song.

They couldn't actually, with the IMAX, they couldn't actually just do those Scorsese

nightclub one-shot all the way through because the cameras, so they had to like somehow stitch it together and make it seem like a one-shot.

But it was all stuff designed for this has to look as cool as fucking.

It still feels panoramic anyway.

It's amazing.

i just i want to come back to what i was saying about the directors and what has changed i feel like the industry is we are now more reliant this industry is now more reliant on people that it sort of took for granted for years and years to give it credibility which is basically our our tour of filmmakers right like these people are now more important than they ever were to the to some studio's bottom line so you want joel shoemaker to start schumacher to start making movies again well listen if if if he's gonna come back if he could be if he's one of the fans

but I mean I do think for as much as for as like bad as the Joel Schumacher movie was as a movie he really understood something about American popular culture right he understood what it was an author to do he spoke to Van and I liked it

eight millimeter two eight millimeter I mean the lost boys this is what I'm saying like I mean I we we don't have a Joel Schumacher now.

We don't have anything like a Joel Schumacher.

What a luxury to not like a Joel Schumacher movie now.

We're behind schedule, so I got to move to Preacher Boy quick.

Sammy Moore, who learns how to please woman from Stack.

There you go.

He learns how to stand up for himself from Smoke.

He learns how cruel the world could be from Delta Slim.

And he learns that religion doesn't necessarily make you a good person from Remick.

He takes all of these lessons, has a great blues career, opens a club called Pearlenes, Perline's,

has some scratches on his face, but other than that,

goes through.

And I guess we're supposed to believe he was one of the best blues musicians.

Yeah.

That's how they're setting it up, right?

Like he's one of like the guys, but he's played by Miles Caton, who I knew nothing about when I saw this movie.

I had no idea the backstory.

It's his first movie ever.

Kugler and his casting director get audition tapes from all over the world because he's like, this movie fails unless I find the the right person.

And they're just everyone's sending him stuff.

And Miles sent him something, he was like 18.

Didn't Kuglu didn't know he was a child prodigy,

son of a gospel singer, been performing his whole

life basically, but hadn't wasn't famous.

And Kugler knew right away, this is it.

20 years from now, this might be more of a Miles Cate movie than we we're discussing now.

If he becomes like,

I guess the question is, what's the ceiling for this dude?

Because he's awesome in this movie.

Yeah, but I don't know what happens with him.

It's this, I don't have to keep beating this drum, but like, what are the moves?

Like, give him the work, let the screenplay.

Maybe he's just amusing.

Let's just screenplay floodgate and let him.

But maybe this is the only time he acts in a movie.

I don't like something will happen to him.

I just don't know what it's going to be.

I'll tell you this: anytime Miles Caton's coming to town,

the ticket's been bought.

You know what I mean?

Because if you watch him actually in concert, like he's, you know, he tones it down for a preacher boy, but he's got, he's a charismatic performer.

Yeah.

They don't make him like this.

They stopped making him like this 50 years ago.

I don't know where he came from.

Stop making him like this.

Well, I'm saying like he's like out of like out of like three other eras.

50 years ago?

Okay.

Just stop making him.

Such a dick.

So, okay, so there is.

There is the Stinger, the mid-credits, and then there's the Stinger.

And the Stinger, he just picks up his guitar and he starts singing.

And I'm like, what the fuck is this?

I thought they were dubbing his voice the first time I saw it.

I was like, this, how is his voice coming out of this kid?

Did you like the look on Stack's face when he had never heard Preacher Boy sing

that moment in the same way that I felt?

And by the way, you can get somebody in there to sing them songs.

Had he had a lot of acting before this?

Never.

No.

That is phenomenal.

Phenomenal performance.

And i'm glad you mentioned that because that's my favorite moment in this whole movie in that final scene when he's talking about when he's talking about preacher boy's voice and they have the flashback of him hearing it in the car and now it cuts back and he's the vampire in 1992 and it's just it's just really good like just coogler's just good at stuff yeah i mean but that moment there there are those two moments there are two really

well we can talk about it when we get to all right we'll keep going uh

ludwig koronson I think that's how you say it.

Gorinson, I thought, Goranson, Ludwig Gorinson, Gorinson.

I don't know, I'm gonna mess it up.

Uh, he's already won two Oscars, yeah.

He did Creed, Black Panther, Tennant, Oppenheimer, Sinners.

He's doing the Odyssey.

So, when you're Ryan Kugler's guy

and Chris Nolan's guy, yeah, you're the man, it's a good place to be.

Hey, Ryan and Chris seem like they have a good relationship.

You know, I first heard him, he was

very instrumental on one of my favorite albums of 2010, which was it Childish Gambino?

Yeah.

Because the internet.

Yeah.

Childish Gambino, when

Donald was still finding himself as a musician

and he drops his weird, brilliant, avant-garde,

really sort of masterpiece.

And that's when I first heard of Lil Wick.

I didn't even realize he was as into the movie stuff as he was until about three years ago.

I'd I'd only know.

Well, I mean, I guess I did three or four years ago.

He was basically like New Wave John Williams.

Yeah, I connected the dots between the Donald Glover, the Childish Gambino stuff, and the

movie stuff.

Because there's such different, I mean, these two worlds have, I mean, you know, to the ear have nothing to do with each other.

Right.

And he got a lot of direction from Kugler because Kugler had all these sounds in his head for the scenes.

And one of them was,

he kept thinking of Metallica.

And he wanted like a

certain couple moments in the movies to kind of kick in almost like a Metallica song would.

So they figured all of it out.

It's so interesting the way

rock music ideas figure into

how we're supposed to understand tragedy and horror in this movie.

Yeah.

And

I think it's such a bold choice because it's so not

explicitly, those chords aren't black rock and roll cords.

Those cords are

those chords are metal chords, right?

I mean, you can do a tree that gets you from Black Sabbath to

the Delta Blues, but

those chords themselves,

when you're just kind of banging them out like that, I mean, they're not banged out, but they're essentially familiar from another zone of American popular music, right?

Or, you know, just popular music in general.

And they're used here in this

world

of

exploitation, like forced collaboration, the way that different musical styles are functioning here is really kind of hard to sort of map out and

process because they're just kind of presented.

And you, I'm still not sure, for instance, what to make of the Irish jig that happens in the middle of the movie that turns into kind of like a grungy mosh pit situation, where, like, really, what we're looking at is a kind of Nirvana concert, honestly.

And the way that the turned club goers who are now remic acolytes have essentially become

moshers alongside this guy while also

biscuits.

Well, I mean, actually, that's not wrong.

But but I think first of all, I love that scene.

I think two things are happening.

One, one there.

One, Rimick has his own culture.

That's the first thing.

It's not devoid of culture.

No, it's definitely culture role.

Yeah, like

he has his own culture.

And number two,

once

they

are in with him, they've completely lost any autonomy or objectivity.

They are

loving everything that he is doing.

He is the best dancer they have ever seen.

He is the best singer that they have ever seen.

Like they're the people who they were just before they got bit are completely gone.

Like all the soul that they had, all

the

just their

culture, their outlook, everything is gone.

They are just the only way to be close to him is complete, uncompromising worship and oneness.

He will accept nothingness.

Well, you know what's really interesting.

There's that moment where the last person I think we see get turned is the Omar Benson Miller character who was supposed to be watching the door and keeping everybody from,

you know, he didn't know he was keeping vampires out, but if he hadn't gone to take that piss,

this might not have happened.

But when he gets turned, there's this, the only time we see this happen in the movie.

He he is prone on the ground and he sits up and he goes,

Oh, like he just woke up, oh, like he just like he just got woke, yep.

And just like it is Peabody Pulitzer, yes, just peabody just

big category,

yeah.

Wesley,

Wesley's Peabody Pulitzer moment, Peabody Pol Pulitzer moment, anyway.

The point is,

like, that to me

is obvious.

It's deep, but also opening up this other

line of argument about blackness,

what

people,

what freedom looks like, right?

Because at this point, Bremick has made his pitch, right?

You got to join us over here.

We are, we are about love and peace and freedom.

And, you know, to paraphrase our current president, when he was talking to try to get black black people to come vote for blacks and Latinos to come vote for him, he's like, what do y'all got to lose?

You can't do worse.

That the Klan's about to come get you.

Like,

come join us in living death.

It's better over here than whatever's about to happen to y'all tomorrow.

Because he would have known about this too, because, right?

He turned a Klansman.

One of the mentors showed up at the club.

He tells him, he goes,

he goes,

like, that motherfucker is his uncle.

Like, this whole place is tomb anyway it's like this is a big funeral like you guys that you don't have a future here your only future is with me you're you're precisely right couple actors we have to mention quick hilly steinfeld yeah

josh allen's wife josh allen's wife oh that's right he got married real quick after this movie he married her real quick doesn't he like it that fast

he didn't want

did they speed it up and like change the date like she was immersed in a new audience there yeah he's like

I saw her with Michael B one time and was like, we need to get married fast.

Yeah.

I need to get married.

He's like, there's not a lot of people I can lose

my future wife to, but there's one.

MBJ.

She's great.

I've always liked her.

Always had stock.

Ridiculously talented.

I love that just 17.

I thought she was really good in that movie, but she's just always been good.

I love her vibe, everything.

I love how she lays back in the last scene when they catch up with Sammy.

Oh, yeah.

Because she doesn't have anything.

She's just

presence, she's all presence, and it actually works.

But she, I think this movie is a huge win for her.

Um,

I gotta say,

when she gets off the train, you know, the I mean, most rewatchable scene, when she gets off the train, her first scene, she gets off the train, she comes over, um, Sammy sees her coming, and

I guess,

I guess, Smoke sees

or stack sees

that he's there, that she's there,

and the kid's like, Yo, this is what do you?

And she walks up and she's like,

So, you're gonna fuck me

and then never call me?

Like, you know, I have the line.

What is it?

I heard you loud and clear, but then you stuck your tongue in my coups and fucked me so hard.

I figured you changed your mind.

Yeah, I mean, and talk about the blues.

Yeah, I mean, coming in.

Yeah,

there is a way she she like I'm sorry

to put it this way.

If you give that line to Kim Basinger, who I could have believed would take a part like this once upon a time, and we would just accept it.

She doesn't nail it.

She doesn't like fan, go ahead.

This person lives like

the White Girl Hall of Fame?

Yeah.

No, okay.

So, but complicated.

Because

we found out some things about her.

So what her family does.

I'm just, I'm because I'm trying to to break the news to Bill.

Oh, okay.

You know what I mean?

You just lost.

You lost one.

She's like,

What do we find out?

She's what?

What is it?

Her grandfather is black or half black or something like that?

Her father, I was interested.

Something like that.

Yeah, something.

There's something there.

So, what I'm saying is: I'll cancel the ceremony.

Yeah.

Well, now you got to have a different ceremony.

She was great.

Del Roy Lindo.

I almost did this as my hottest take.

Is it possible the two greatest roles of his career have happened in his late 60s, early 70s?

Are you thinking about the Spike Lee movie?

Yeah.

Interesting.

Talking about the Five Bloods?

Yeah.

Interesting.

Whether you like that movie or not.

I do not.

It's an awesome part.

I was looking back at all of the parts he's played, trying to figure out what his best parts were.

So we got West Indian Archie, which I love.

He's been a lot of stuff over the years.

Clockers.

Clockers.

Clockers.

Great role from him.

You remember Clockers, right?

Yeah.

The dad.

That's why I didn't do it.

He had his take.

I couldn't carry it.

In Crooklyn.

But this one was Delta Slim's pretty great.

Yes.

Get Shorty.

That's really good Delta.

Sexy Dell Roll.

Like, that's really good.

What's the point of being in LA if you're not in the movie business?

I love Get Shorty.

Have y'all done Get Shorty yet?

Rewatchable shit?

Haven't done that one yet.

So good.

So good.

Could be an Elmore Leonard month.

Weirdly timeless, too.

Strangely.

But the thing I love about this performance is that it is funny.

Like, he seems to be completely unashamed of two of the grossest lines in the movie.

Yeah.

Or like most ridiculous lines in the movie, anyway.

And, but he gives the

most powerful, one of the more powerful moments in the movie.

is the speech after they pick him up.

He's recruited basically to perform in the club because he's, he's Delta Royalty.

Yeah, everybody knows who he is.

Yeah.

And they're, there, it's, it's, it's Sammy,

what's this character's name again?

Delta Slim.

Delta Slim.

And, and

smoke.

Smoke.

They're in the car together, and he gives a speech about

essentially

that aligns the blues

with

lynching, essentially.

And

there's a way in which he delivers that

he tells a story about somebody who got lynched, essentially.

I'll cut it short.

But the way that Del Roy Lindo delivers it,

it kind of

is its own blues.

It stands in for the development of a history of an aspect of this music.

but not the whole music, because another thing I love about this movie is that it is blues as a cultural experience, as experienced by people who danced to danced to this music because this was dance music for us.

Right.

And it was a whole life of joy and

excitement and

just jubilation.

It wasn't just my baby left me and I don't know what I'm going to do.

This was club music.

And I think that the story that he tells in that car is a really

crystal clear allegory or parable for how the music as an art, how a wing of the music

as a sort of cultural expression and the expression of a circumstance comes to be.

You almost don't really, if you never heard another song in this movie, you'd be okay because that story as delivered by Del Roy Lindo is so powerful.

And I believe,

I can't remember now.

Does he play?

I think he sings a little bit at the end of the speech.

Yeah.

In the car.

Well, he's banging on the car door.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, that is a great scene.

He's one of those guys when he pops in the movie, you're just happy to see him.

Yep.

Say, hey.

Yep.

Jack O'Connell.

This is a really big movie for him.

And I think he gets nominated too.

I think it's going to be the nominations are going to be interesting for this movie.

I have that because we didn't even talk about Annie yet because she's also really good.

Oh,

she is a force.

William Wasako, she's like, she is,

she is

of all

the

characters in all the movies that legitimately reminded me of the women that I grew up around,

this was the one.

Like, you know, my mother and other people, or my sister, hoodoo, practitioners.

I don't know if you knew that.

We've discussed.

Right.

Like,

they do root work.

I was, I was waiting for Van to dive into Annie.

Yeah, like, figured you'd had some Annie's in your life.

Yeah, I was waiting to dive into Annie, too.

And

so, what I'm saying is, like, and there's something else about this.

Like,

that is a beautiful, sexy woman.

I mean, and

Hollywood has turned their back on

the brilliant beauty of a black woman in,

I don't want to say her natural form, because black women are natural and beautiful in all different types of way.

But that type of black women, we love them.

And when a lot of people were like, you know, when I first saw her and Smoke in that scene together, I heard some people, some people on the line have been like, like, I thought that that was like Smoke's mom.

I saw some people saying that.

Yeah, that's, you've been poisoned by the movie.

Not the uninitiated.

You've been brainwashed by Hollywood.

Like right away, you could see that a man like that.

in that situation had a woman like that and really she grounds his character look at small things he she makes his performance more interesting absolutely a hundred percent look at small things in the movie like

you would think that the movie would be dripping with massage noir if you're talking about male and female dynamics in the movie right when remick is at the not remick when cornbread is at the door and

he is talking to smoke she goes don't talk to him talk to me

and smoke doesn't interrupt her smoke doesn't get in the way Whenever Annie speaks,

Smoke knows

love and wisdom.

Yeah.

Authority.

And authority.

And

he defers to that.

And he is accepting and appreciative of that.

Just very authentic and beautiful.

And, you know, something else I'll say about the movie is the love story in the movie that everybody was talking about was,

or the coupling of the movie that everyone was talking about was the coupling between

Stack and Mary, which has its own

that's a whole other Hollywood history

in the movie, right?

American history.

But

the relationship that, even from a chemistry standpoint, that grounded this movie to me was

Smoke and Annie.

I mean, just thinking about, just think about,

I would, I mean, I don't know, this is probably answerable if you just called these three people up on the phone.

But I mean, Kukler knows the whole history of

like

large black women in Hollywood, what a woman who is built like Annie would be doing in a movie, because we have a hundred years of that

archetype doing that work, often to the laughter, often for the laughter of an audience.

I mean,

the limitations placed on black women to only

do service work

because they were dark skinned, because they were full-figured.

Thick women had one job in the movies, and it was to serve a white person in a uniform.

or to do that work in some other guise, but essentially you're doing service work.

And here, that club, she is running that club.

She is trying to heal from a terrible thing that happened to her.

The thing that I love about this performance is

it's capacious enough to sort of convey the authority, but also the hurt, the vulnerability.

She's the person who knows the entire, she knows what's going to happen.

And she's like, you know what?

Don't turn me or kill me.

The character is like, I'd rather die.

But there's something this was my son's biggest nitpick with the movie:

he didn't understand how Annie knew everything right away,

like how she knew immediately, oh, these are vampires.

And I was like, no, no, no, that's there, there are people like this, like she

fucking knows shit, like, you just have to go with it, Ben.

So she's like, come on, he would, she would know that right away.

That this is, and I was like, yeah, she actually would, man.

But this is my annoying 17-year-old.

Like,

just real quick, my dad,

my dad,

my dad would argue with my mom to a point, and then he would just leave the house.

And I'd be like, yo, where you at?

He'd be like, son,

what you don't understand

is that your mama and your grandmama is some hoodooers.

And I ain't about to stand here

for the next four hours and get hoodooed by these women over no cable TV.

Like you can even,

what's going on?

You would be so on edge about it.

He'd be like, Did you walk outside and see cracked eggshells all over the front?

He's like, That was for me.

Your mama's trying to hoodoo.

And he would be gone for like a day or two.

So, but when you had a question about,

you know, if you were scared or like, if you would, you would go to them, you would go to these women and they would give you spiritual and energetic.

And we see her, like, there's a kid who's like,

when he gets to her for the first time there's some kids whose parents whose mother basically sent the kid over to annie's to like

yeah yep yep she's great uh 100 million dollar budget for this movie made 366 million in counting second highest grossing original is that north america or globally that's gotta be global that's global everything

uh Second highest grossing original horror film domestically behind the sixth sense.

Oh, interesting.

Number two of all time.

Okay.

Pretty good.

Was it sixth sense radar?

It was, right?

Yeah.

Was it?

Yeah, it had to be.

Yeah.

Bruce Willis was alive in the end.

Spoiler.

Oh,

wow.

We're still doing that, huh?

Tough beat.

Tough beat for everyone that hasn't seen it.

Roger Ebert has been

long gone.

Do you want to hear ChatGBT's?

Oh, no, no.

Come on.

We ain't about to replace Roger Ebert with chat, Roger Ebert with T.

Do you want to know what Chat GBT thinks thinks Roger Ebert would have said or no?

Sure.

I'm into it.

All right, let's try it.

If Roger Ebert had reviewed Sinners, his review would have likely been a bold, heartfelt appraisal, blending admiration for its audacity with a critical eye for its unruly ambition.

Expect something like three and a half to three and three-fourth stars.

In True Ebert form, Sinners dazzles.

It overwhelms.

It's a movie you must see for its sound and energy and invention.

Go in, ready for the ride.

Wow.

I found a little Roger Ebert.

Shout out to Chat GBT.

Wow.

And the AI that's going to take over all of us

when we're all dead and the rewatchables is still happening with AI avatars of our voices.

I can't wait.

It's really,

let's, let's take a break and we'll do the category.

This episode is brought to you by Angry Orchard.

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Don't get get angry that you already know the twist ending or who dies or in what order just slash open angry orchard's brand new halloween thriller pack made in partnership with the jason universe featuring killer flavors like berry bewitched and headless pumpkin don't get angry get orchard find angry orchard near you this halloween season Angry Orchard Cider Company, LLC AngryOrchard.com.

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Most rewatchable scene.

Smoke goes downtown, shoots a thief, makes a deal.

We talked about the two sides.

All that is mesmerizing.

Yeah, I like that.

The train scene we already talked about.

Preacher Boy meets Perlene.

Haley comes in, comes in hot.

um

i like that whole this doesn't happen in movies all the time when the the the hero

the girl from the past or and they pop in and just when you see the the life sink from their body for a second like oh boy this is gonna be good

oh

all right i'll put my seatbelt on for this something's happening uh now something interesting about that scene first of all when they're introducing both of those guys because essentially what these two scenes are they introduce smoke with his gun they introduce stack with his mouth because that's each person's respective superpower.

Smoke is your enforcer and your protector, stack is your smooth talker.

You think that Stack is afraid of Annie because she's white, but that's not really why he is afraid of Annie.

Not Annie, Mary, Mary.

You think that Stack is afraid of Mary because she's white, but that's not really why he's afraid of her.

He's afraid of her because he's in love with her.

And he doesn't want to have to confront the feelings that he has for her and the fact that he abandoned her and use the fact that she was white.

Oh, interesting.

Like the fact that he ran out and use the fact that they couldn't have what they were supposed to have as the reason why he did it.

And that becomes very, very,

very apparent as the movie goes on and as she continuously pokes and prods him about the fact that you don't have to be scared.

You don't have to be scared.

You don't have to be scared.

And it starts right there.

Yeah.

I mean, interesting.

We didn't mention, it's a quick one and the research on it's more interesting, but when we first see the twins and they do the cigarette trick,

that was apparently very complicated, which I'll, but it could be, it's a borderline mini-scene for most rewatchable, but the

science of having stack light the smoke for and them doing the lighters.

Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.

But having one actor do that and make it seem seem like it was two was like the hardest thing they had to do in the entire movie.

Wow.

Yeah, I'll go through that in a second.

Split screen technology still has a, it's still hard to do it.

It's, it's the best it's ever been, but really hard.

Vampire Ropadope, poor Bert,

ever had a chance.

Um,

when uh, when I was vampire Ropadope, I know what you're talking about.

When Remick, when he uh

yeah, when he

gets a couple of house, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh,

I'm giving this a special, okay, motherfucker award for the exact moment when the movie goes up a notch.

Oh, when Rimmick drops out?

Oh, sure.

When he takes out the Dude Vampires.

Sammy Sings.

This is the best scene in the movie, other than the ending, for me.

This is my second, my number two most re-watchable.

I want to know what Wesley thinks about that particular scene.

This whole scene, when they bring in, just the way it's shot, the camera angles, everything.

I think it's just a mesmerizing five minutes.

Incredibly, I just think it's amazing.

It's a very polarizing.

I just think it's

incredibly re-watchable to watch, but I also understand the cases against it.

So go ahead.

I just wanted the whole song uninterrupted by the

weight of the future and the past.

I just didn't, I didn't like this.

Is that sequence is so up my alley.

That is my entire like intellectual project, right?

Yeah.

One of the things I care most about as a critic.

And

for me not to like it, something going wrong.

You didn't like it.

No, I didn't.

First of all, Interesting, even with how inventive it was.

Just say it for the first, for the fourth time in this conversation, I love that song, right?

Yeah.

I was falling in love with that song and that, like the performance of the song and just the way it shot.

And then all of a sudden, it's the strange, it's, it's always going to be one of the strangest things, even when I've seen this movie 10 times, which is when the twerking starts.

Who's first?

Is it the twerker?

No, no, it's the first

it's the guitar player,

it's the not, it's the not record scratcher guys in there,

but it's yeah, it's but it's playing the electric guitar.

Um,

and you're just like, wait, what is that?

Andre 3, what is going on right now?

It's all the ghosts from the past and present, Wesley.

Why are you explaining?

Okay,

keep explaining it to me.

I think that the thing that I just, it did not work as a sequence to me.

The argument is beautiful.

I love the argument.

I do like what it's trying to say.

I love the thing that it's arguing for and asserting is definitely true and powerful about this particular person and this particular piece of music.

I am curious about why this song.

Love it as I do is the thing that does the unlocking.

You almost convinced me a why earlier, but I don't know.

It just didn't.

It just, I'm one of the people who just found

an internet guy.

Super Peabody Pulser.

Peabody Pulitzer now on Reddit.

I'm killing Ryan Kugler.

The, the, the breadth of this history that it, that, that is being um

conjured up in this scene is both generous, but also

kind of confusing.

You know, Chinese folk singers, the the the amount of african artists that we are that we are seeing there's it's generous to a fault in some way um but i also there's a part of me that's like oh wesley calm down just this is a beautiful

like watching it though it is arguing for a folkloric timelessness but what about the visual of it though

I like when the fucking roof comes off.

Like I just and then landing on the vampire.

Like, I just thought, oh, it was so cool.

like because what happens what what world are we in at this point but so you know so once the once the club burns

like i just want to cook for four minutes so i have two thoughts that's the first thought and the second thought is that is supposed to be the scene where the movie becomes a supernatural fable kind of it's earlier where where remick drop where remick drops out of the sky but the movie the reason why that scene was so fantastical maybe is because that's the point that the movie becomes a supernatural fable the vampires are woken up yeah and then the the second thing I say is this: no, that's a key point.

You need it because it's the we now move into the different part of the movie where now we're like, things are going to get fucking crazy.

I think my literal brain, though, go on.

I know, I get it.

I get it.

A lot of people felt it this way, by the way.

But I think from also a philosophical standpoint, the movie means something from the creative standpoint, which that scene just means I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want to do.

That's fair.

Everything in this movie is exactly the way I wanted it.

If you thought the movie was two on the nose with some of the messages, I'm sorry.

If you thought the movie was two on the nose with this, I mean, he kills the clan at the end.

Actually, that scene to me seems a little bit more

superfluous.

I never said that.

I love the clan murder.

I like it a lot.

I love watching it.

Yeah.

But, but, but why are you pointing at Bill?

But, but that scene seems like a scene that was just kind of like, okay, this happens almost for no reason but i i but i but also in this movie but there is a reason there is a reason i i get it and there's it's a beautiful send-off of smoke there's a couple reasons though is there is a reason but what i but what i'm saying is and by the way that's one of my most rewatchable scenes i like that it's coming up later but but what i'm but what i'm saying is both scenes all of this stuff is just we're making this movie exactly the way we want to make it And if it was any less authentic, it wouldn't have been what it was.

But a lot of people are back and forth with this.

I mean, it was, we were calling it like a week after the movie, it was being called the scene.

Yeah.

And I knew immediately when people were texting me being like, okay, go.

I was like, oh, I know what you're talking about.

And it was, it was immediately the thing that all the black people in my life who were seeing the movie were just like, okay,

did it do it for you?

And it really worked for some people.

And it really

cause I'm a white person.

I watched it more for the filmmaking part of it and I just thought it was so cool how they did it.

And I was more caught up in that.

I was like, fucking Koogler.

Sean's crazy.

Sean saw the movie before me, a little bit before me.

Sean Fantasy, yeah.

Yeah.

And Sean goes, there is one scene in the movie that as soon as you see it, I want to know what you thought.

Yeah.

And I thought it was something grotesque or.

I don't know.

I thought maybe it was some kind of vampire abuse scene or something like that.

And I was like, but when I was in the theater, I automatically knew that's what he was talking about.

But this is the thing, it's also a great movie theater scene about this about this movie, though, right?

Yeah, like this is a this is, I'm gonna say, officially a vampire movie, but the but the scene is this amazing tribute to the power of black music to lure the vampires, right?

Yeah, like the the movie in the in the movie's understanding of itself does not exist without this scene.

So,

I mean, I know what it's doing and why it's there.

I think maybe I would have preferred a musical number, right?

Like, maybe you get all these different, you get these drummers and DJs and twerkers and folk singers to like just devise a musical number for them instead of this

more

spectral, supernatural, metaphysical way of, I don't know.

But, but again, like it is, I don't know if it's evenly divided, but there are as many people who think that scene is perfect as it is as people like me who think there had to have been a better way to do it.

Can I have the final word?

Of course.

I support Ryan Kugler, and I support True Artist.

I support artistic choices.

Oh, my God.

That is so boy.

Now, you know what I love about it?

Is he on the other side of the door right now?

You know what I love about it?

He knew it was going to be polarizing.

That's fucking why he did it.

And guess what?

I still love that directors are doing that.

He's like, you know what?

I'm going to have this one scene.

Some people are going to not like it.

Some people are going to love it.

And I'm just going to detest it weird.

Yeah.

I'm sure all of that.

I know he got notes.

I know he's not a note.

He got a note.

He got a note.

He got probably a lot of notes.

But I would say I'm glad he didn't cut it.

As a person who is often asked to remove things from things that I think are great and wish could stay.

So you win some, you lose some.

I think he probably, this was a hill he probably died on.

That's your fault because you don't work for the ringer.

Next re-watchable scene.

You really, okay, Zeus, keep throwing the lightning bolts.

The vampires get merry.

Yeah.

Outside is a great scene with a really good jump scare.

Yeah, I love that moment.

I love a moment where jump scare.

A little exorcist three, a shrill thing.

But is it a jump scare or is it even first time I watched it?

I, you definitely made it.

Maybe when he flies.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everybody in the theater went, oh fuck.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just love this scary.

It was so good.

Everybody just like made a groan.

Yeah.

In the theater, it really worked.

It was just so, it was just like, oh, shit, she's fucked.

It's a scary thing.

But then there, but just let's think about like how well put together this movie is.

You get that scene, like

Remick floats down from the sky behind her, and it's a cut back to the club.

So now you've got to wait.

Yeah.

How is she going to, like, what guys is she going to appear in when she comes back to the club?

It's you're the levels of suspense or the suspenses that are happening simultaneously here are really, really effective.

And again, I was happy with the first hour.

I didn't need any of this.

So I'm having an experience now that is more stressful than what I think I signed up to have.

Married Kill Stack is the next one.

I mean, listen, fucking crazy.

Finn would have taken it.

What?

If that kind of sex, but then afterwards, you get bitten and turned into a vampire sign up.

I'm going.

You're like,

that's it, right here.

That's why I'm trying to try.

Move it a little lower so I can wear shirts over it.

Yeah, I'm going.

Yeah, smoke wasted no time.

Smoke wastes no time.

That whole thing where they're this is what I love about the

from dusk till dawn, tails from the crypt demon night style, where vampires are on the outside, we're stuck in the inside movie.

Yeah, I love the moment where everyone realizes that it's vampires.

The moment where

Salmahayek turns and from dusk till dawn to where everybody's like,

fuck

or like in went to where that's what Annie says here.

She's like, you hate now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Says that to cornbread after.

So say it again how she say it.

You hate now.

I said that incorrectly.

So, so,

so,

um,

but like that moment in that room, Smo doesn't know what to do.

Like, he, yeah, Mary just killed Stack and just like the whole thing is, is, is, is.

He says the best thing about me was him.

Yeah.

That is, that'll, I mean, I kind of well, I mean, I, I, that got me.

That got me.

That's well, you don't even think MBJ is getting nominated.

That's not my wish.

That's not our wish.

Whatever.

You already said for him not to be.

He said he was like honorable mention.

Second tier.

I don't want that to not happen to him.

I would love Michael B.

Jordan to have an Oscar nomination.

Next one, Stack Comes Back from the Dead, and he knows what to do right away.

Next one, Vampires Make the Case for Taking Preacher Boy.

And that's when

Stack does a weird run around, look for freedom.

We ain't never going to be free.

The big fight scene heading into the sunrise.

Um, I have some nitpicks on the fight that'll come up later.

That sequence, but um,

Smoke gets Annie, not you.

Um, Stack has to kill Annie.

Well, Stack, true love.

I'm sorry, did I mess that up?

Yeah, we've done it.

We just thought we did it a couple times.

Stack gets Annie, yeah.

Sammy escapes.

Twins have the fight.

We think we know who won, but actually we don't.

And then the sun comes out.

It's always great to see the sun in a vampire movie.

You know, it's awesome.

You know, you're safe.

There it is.

Yep.

Smoke dies after killing 12k KK racists.

This is Kugler, who seems like he's doing, he has that one shot of MBJ coming at the camera with the machine gun, like doing the Rambo.

And it was almost like Kugler was doing the

you guys, you wanted your old school action movie.

I'll give you this one scene, but I'm doing this like to fuck with everybody.

I'll tell you something.

That scene also was a great mind fluck for the trailer, yeah.

Because it oh, yeah, that's a good point.

Because, like,

we hear that it's a vampire movie, and when the trailer first comes, there are no vampires, and then there's Michael B.

Jordan shooting the machine gun in broad daylight.

So, you're like, wait a minute, what is it about?

It's a good zag.

And you really don't know because, and it's not until the movie that it actually makes sense.

No, those ads, I mean, I have to say, this movie was delivered to the country very

seductively, and to give it to us during basketball games and football games

was so much better than the Jason Tatum Superman ad in just a moment.

When he is blown out of Kelly's that just tortured me for four days,

it's going to be okay.

Last scene, the fake closing credits,

which wins the kid cutty pursuit of happiness or best needle drop as well um

only two scenes out of that okay let's hear it one remix dance scene outside with everyone yeah love

it's intriguing because you'll never get to the bottom of it love you'll never get to the bottom i'll just they was cutting up out there and two you know what scene you know what scene i really like river dancing exactly i like the introduction of the child's

where just from a filmmaking standpoint which we might get to in gray shot gordo which that's going to be the hardest to maybe give out ever, to where he comes in and he's talking about the child, so getting everything together, and you're seeing smoke negotiate.

The camera follows their daughter out to the other side of the restaurant where she retrieves her mom.

The mom comes back, like that entire part.

That just, it's a really amazing scene to me, like when they're introduced.

The whole nine.

What do you have from us rewatchable?

I think it's the end.

I think it's that

Pearlene's.

Overall, this probably

is the ending of everything.

What do you have, Craig?

I think it's right when Remic

floats and you're like, uh-oh, and things start to turn up in the juke joint.

I'm not.

I'm not turning the channel.

Okay.

What's the most 2025 thing about this movie?

I'll throw in, I didn't have this originally, but Wesley Morris not liking the most important scene.

I'm putting that in.

The Twins technology being really good.

I'd put that in there.

Koogler asking studios for first hour gross final cut privilege and ownership 25 years after its release, specifically 2025.

But I am going with

this movie premiered on Max, which then turned into HBO Max after it premiered.

was the most 2025 thing because we had to change the name of the max app i like that yet again i like that yeah um the filmmaking technology, the fact that it took high-tech filmmaking technology as far as what they were able to do with the IMAX stuff, how they shot it to make the movie look authentically 1930s.

It took that much to make it look that authentic.

Okay.

What's age the best?

I'll give you a couple.

I always like this movies that start with a distinct scene and then we go backwards, we live a whole movie, and then we circle back to the scene we saw in the beginning yes which some people try to pull off and fuck it up

but they don't fuck it up i don't love that as a it's sometimes a lazy gimmick not in this yeah uh twins technology mentioned the survivors eating garlic cloves to make sure one of them might not be a vampire are just kind of pulled from the thing

um i enjoyed that We mentioned the Chinese couple with the two separate stores that sell different things to different clientele.

um

there's a whole chris rock thing in there that i didn't even notice until i did the research when uh the clan guy pulls up at the end and he said club jute grand opening grand closing okay

chris rock bit

i like the line i know plenty of musicians i ain't never met a happy one right yeah

Any movie character named Cornbread?

Do you like that?

I saw Cornbread, Earl, and Me in the the theater

with Keith Wilkes.

Cornbread, Earl, and Me poster coming.

I love that movie.

I know you do.

You rob banks and trains, but won't steal this pussy for a night.

She's got

that letter.

She just got some fan.

And what in the hell?

And that was her as a van.

Is there a dirty girl Hall fan?

Just

control it.

Alexis, Texas, is an all-hall fan.

Don't make me live in that part of it.

I can see it, don't make me live in that part of myself.

But

yeah.

And that was, you talking about things that the theater was like, because I saw it.

I went to a screening of it, and then I saw it with, you talk about things in the theater.

People was like, oh, shit.

Yeah.

Because everybody, you know,

used to hear her talk like that.

That's when Josh Allen was like, fuck, I got to get a ring tomorrow.

Hey, man.

I don't think we're going to that Travis Scott.

I'm sorry.

Excuse me.

They ran these lines.

Don't think they didn't run.

Josh is running lines with Haley Steinfeld.

You think Josh was dressed up like stacked?

I mean, Josh tried to get her to drop out.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't know Haley Steinfeld's like.

I don't know this Koogler guy.

It's kind of crazy.

He was definitely running lines with Haley.

Kugler, here's a website the best.

Koogler, they asked him if he wanted to do a sequel.

He said, I wanted the movie to feel like a full meal.

Your appetizer, starters, entrees, and dessert.

I wanted all of it in there.

I wanted it to be a holistic and finished thing.

So, his answer is no, he's definitely making a sequel.

No, he can't do it.

He'll do it in like 15 years.

I don't want it.

It'll happen.

This is how the world works.

And sadly,

2038 sequel made.

I hope it's him because if this was 1997, the sequel would be straight to DVD and it would be Sinners 2, the sun, and it wouldn't star like Michael B.

Oh, yeah, it wouldn't.

Yeah,

yes, yes, yes, straight to DVD.

With Shannon Wurray being this, yeah, somebody like

switching everything

So, like,

if he does it,

I just hope that Sinners 2 is not made without Ryan Koogler.

I could give you a whole thing about how they filmed the cigarette scene, but I'm not going to do it.

You can go read that online.

Big Hooner Burger.

Well, what other what's age the best they have?

Anything else?

I'm going to go with the look of the film.

I'm going to give props to a higher learning guest,

Autumn Durald Arcapa,

who was

the DP,

shot the movie.

and she came on higher learning and told us all about how she got the film to look like it did, how she lit the film, everything about it.

So it was fantastic.

Okay.

Any other What's Age of Best for you?

I think that the movie just came out.

It's a tough category.

It's a tough category for what's the best.

You know, Michael B.

Jordan's Michael B.

Jordan-ness, right?

Like, I think that that is,

I think, people came for him

and

stayed for Kugler.

They did a pie chart of who came out for it, and MBJ was like 47%.

Koogler was 43% for biggest reason.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting.

I think, and I wonder what happens.

I don't know how you exit poll to find out like who won the movie, but basically, I think you

would have been satisfied if this movie had just been Michael B.

Jordan kills all the vampires.

Big Hooner Burger were best use of food and drink.

Probably eating the garlic.

No.

No.

It's Delta Slim and the beer, man.

Oh, the Irish beer.

I had that.

That was my other choice.

Oh, interesting.

For me, it was

just that sequence when they're preparing all the food.

Oh, interesting.

Right?

Like that great kitchen sequence, which I could have used an entire five minutes of good.

Oh, that cafe.

Nancy Myers did the kitchen.

Shut up.

I almost

leave it for a second.

I'm going to leave it.

It's just funny.

It's just when, when,

because, you know,

Stack is talking to to him and he's giving stack shit and stack goes okay cool and when he twists the top off the beer the teltoson goes oh yeah yeah

he goes oh like and he performs for the beat right i like the garlic only because i know the actors probably actually had to eat it and i always like when real life intersperses with actors where they're you're

eating garlic 100 oh interesting that's some method acting shit but you're eating garlic you you

you're gonna to act naturally as you're eating garlic.

Craig eats garlic all the time.

Yeah, I'm a vampire.

I feel like that was like chocolate that they painted to look like garlic or something.

I don't know.

It's so hard to eat.

And how many takes you got to do with that?

I mean, for everything Coog did in this movie, like, you got to have everybody eat the real garlic.

I think there's so much other suffering these people are being asked to deal with.

Yeah, they got fake blood.

I think eating fake garlic.

I was in the research, there was a lot of complaining about how gross the fake blood was and having it stuck on your face and stuck on your your chin.

Well, there's an alternative.

So, great shot quarter award for most cinematic shot.

It's too tough.

It's really, it really is ridiculously tough.

I like Rimick falling out of the sky.

I just thought that scene where Remick falls.

It just comes to like lands to the earth.

So that's like magic hour, which it has to be because the sun is going down.

Oh, to get to turn the clans into the city.

So Rimick falling out of the sky, the first time he's he's the sun, sun, he's sun bruised.

Yeah, the we're going to talk about, we haven't even talked about my homies, the Native American vampire catchers.

Oh, yeah,

the smartest people in the movie.

They got one sex.

That's the sequel.

Yeah, that's the sequel.

They got one category locked up for sure.

They do.

But I just like that scene, the way it looked.

Even when he's sitting there talking and it's ducks behind him, it's like time is running out.

Like the whole thing, I just really enjoyed it.

I'm talking to people.

Yeah, I love that sequence because it promises you a movie that you don't get.

But also, I'm very comfortable.

I'm happy to not have had it because I understand

their whole point is like, listen, we're trying to tell you something's going on.

If you got something in your house, give it to us now because we're not coming back.

Like, I mean, also, we're not coming back to this movie because we're here to tell you that this shit is fucked up.

We're not doing it.

The sunset's pretty cool how they filmed that in the end.

But they're probably the movie is just a

phenomenal shots, man.

I think one of the ones we mentioned earlier, but the flashback when they're talking in the end and it flashes back to them in the car and him hearing him play for the first time and how much joy he has in his face, I think is just really well done.

Random new category, or it's you only use it sometimes, the Ed Norton reverse dunk award for did this movie need a random sports scene?

Could we have like a baseball catch on here or something?

Yeah.

I thought about it.

With the old myths, the two twins like throwing the ball for each other, like Delta, like Delta Slim is throwing the ball.

He's like,

fastest man I ever seen with a fastball, Satchel Page.

They wouldn't even let him play in the league.

We just got to be out here throwing the ball around with us.

Just something like that.

Yeah, like baseball, like something.

Yeah.

Weave it in.

Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers award for best character name.

Preacher Black.

Smoke and stack's pretty good.

Smoke and stacks.

Preacher Boy is pretty.

They got a bunch of names in the movie.

Wesley, you have a flex category.

I

You can pass on it.

I thought Van was taking a flex.

You don't need to.

I'm going to pass on my flex category.

Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film?

I have one.

I'm thinking.

I'm thinking.

The fight scene.

It's eight people against 50 vampires, and it makes it seems like it's an eight on eight.

And there's like 50 vampires outside.

And I don't understand how they just didn't all get bitten right away.

So that's a pretty tough one.

I call this the Blade conundrum.

I've talked about this before.

If you go back and you watch some of the fight scenes from like the original Blade movie, which fight scenes are great, but

it's three people rushing Blade.

Yeah.

But really is one-on-ones.

Because one person is fighting Blade and the other person is behind.

And the Warriors is like that when they're in central park and it's three against eight and they come one at a time

it's like john wick versus like 40 people in a room but they all rush them they all just like one person is fighting blade and i'm and the first time you don't admit you don't you don't notice it but then the second time you notice it's like yo why the other person standing behind like twirling the stick like hit blade in the leg or do something like that this movie

there's a lot of that there's a lot of that yeah because like the vampires retreat at all times.

Like

stack one time goes to Mary, come on, let's get out of here.

I'm like, why?

Why don't I just finish killing?

Mary runs out of the juke joint when she could have stayed in there killing.

They don't even know that she is a vampire yet.

So there's a couple of times that you're in a movie.

I take that as they need to be near Remick.

They have to, they're shocking.

Oh, he's like their Delta star.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe.

The Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene?

Mallory.

Oh, you couldn't do.

I don't don't know.

Sorry, Mallory.

The answer is no.

Nah, I don't think so.

Well, you want, did you want more nudity?

Is the thing?

Because there's no nudity, although there's some sex scenes in here.

No nudity.

I don't know.

MBJ in the in the kitchen with Annie.

I don't know.

Could they have kept going on that one?

Gone for the NC 17.

I think the spit.

I think the spit.

The drool spit?

We didn't talk about that.

Yeah, the drool.

I think when she drools into that's when Josh Allen got engaged.

That's actually the scene.

Like, that is so much more than anybody he's asking for what's age the worst already i guess is i guess we have to call that the category um we mentioned already the coverage of uh the first two weeks post-release about yeah i think is this movie gonna make enough money so fucking weird thoroughly thoroughly like how is that this movie it should have been a fucking celebration that somebody made a movie that was a new piece of ip out of nowhere that was super creative a lot there was no other conversation to have a lot of times we overreact on twitter but that's not one of them.

I'm like, all right, man, like, what the, what, what,

what the fuck are you doing?

Is sinners makes 50 million, but is it enough?

What are you talking about?

Is it enough for who?

For what?

I mean, just like, and who sits around?

This is like the NBA ratings conversation.

Same thing.

It's like, who's sitting around like at dinner going?

Hey, Sinners, did you see it only made 51 million?

Do you think that's enough for Cougar?

Like, nobody's in real life is talking about this.

It's week one.

The budget was $90 million,

which

I mean, which I've been told by some people who are doing some work with the studios that we're now in this new place where there's a class of movie that the studios want to try to make, which is called responsibly budgeted.

Yeah.

Right.

And between 70 and 90.

Congratulations.

But responsibly budgeted is like under 15 or something like that.

Or like, oh, shit.

I don't know what the, I don't know if that's an official number, but like everybody's got their responsibly budgeted ceiling.

But 90, like 75 to 90 is the other side of responsibly budgeted, right?

We're like, there's the whole $74 to $17 million

like zone where like nobody can get a movie made for that much anymore.

Like that's money not worth spending or something somehow.

I don't, I don't quite understand the finances on this.

The deal that Koogler made, which became a big topic in a lot of ways, this is future stuff.

Warner Brothers was like falling apart.

They needed the movie.

Like, they were going to do whatever it took.

It's like if you have free agency one year and somebody signs some create, like Deshaun Watson gets a no-trade contract and $230 million guaranteed from the Browns.

It's like they gave him that because they're the fucking Browns.

He wasn't going to go there unless they gave him the contract.

And people always miss that part.

It's like the Deshaun Watson in this scenario.

No, I'm just saying.

I'm just saying.

Tough, tough example.

All right, guys.

We're on the same

Warner Brothers is the Browns.

They're a fucking mess.

They got to do what they have to do to get the movie they want.

Nobody wants to play for Warner Brothers.

There's one difference between Warner Brothers and the Browns.

Boy has Warner Brothers been figured it out.

But part of it was because they did this deal.

It was a crazy deal that wasn't so crazy because they got this movie.

And they needed to lure.

that type of talent away from see Vanilla Vanill, he'll jump off my car anytime, any chance he gets well i'm no it's fun it's just like because you because this is

like

it's just funny they just hopped out of the car

i haven't even landed the metaphor yet i agree with cleveland browns warner brothers but this

but to show on watson also but wait can i wait he was a piece dude just the the question really is

how the like

oh little oh oh ye of little faith right Like, the idea that this was some chance that Warner Brothers were taking on

some guy named Ryan

with Michael B.

Jordan in it.

I just, you know, it's now to be fair to somebody, right?

Like, they probably saw the movie.

They, there probably were some questions about whether it took too long for the vampires to show up.

Do people want to really stick around and just watch black people be black people and regular black people in the Jim Crow Delta?

Like, there are like things I can imagine a studio person having some concerns about, given how out of practice everybody is telling stories about regular humans now.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and Ku was like, nah, but it's gonna work though, cool.

And then that's what's like, he's like, I'm four for four.

Just that I know it's gonna work, though.

Four for four.

You do the calculations for that batting average because it's a thousand.

Um,

the overacting word, the Ruff Lohan or Rubinik Partridge.

I say this out of complete love,

but it's probably Del Roy Lindo who dials it up a couple of times.

But I loved all of it.

I supported it.

I appreciate it.

But if you're going to say if anyone dialed it up in the movie, it's probably him.

Oh, him.

Oh, it's him.

He's he is

at the time of his life.

I want him to dial it up.

He's supposed to dial it up, and then Delta Slim is supposed to be at 10.

Mrs.

Child started getting on my fucking nerves, too.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, well, she makes a bad choice.

She just

makes no emotional sense, she like it makes no practical sense.

We're gonna get to some nitpicks, but she was given it at some point.

She was getting on my nerves.

Dan, you have a flex category.

Uh, my flex category in this situation is going to be the Den of Thieves Binihanna Award for scene stealing location.

What do you got?

Clarksville and the American South.

Oh, yeah.

What a beautiful, textured, gorgeous, heavenly depiction of a place that I am so, so connected to.

I told the story to you guys before of riding through Mississippi with Ryan Rossillo.

I didn't see that coming.

Yeah.

We did something at

O Miss.

We did a Ryan Rossillo.

Got it, got it, got it, got it.

So we had flying to Memphis and then we had to drive to Oxford.

And, you know, I've told this story before, but like, you know, we're in Mississippi and there are cotton fields.

You see cotton fields there.

It's still a cash crop.

And you, you can tell in the car who's not used to seeing that because

they're not saying anything.

And I'm like, yeah, guys, look at the cotton out there.

Just check it out.

Look at the cotton.

How's that make you feel?

Right away, subject change.

But

there's also this brutal beauty to the south.

Things are old.

Things have existed for a long time.

A general store is a beautiful thing to look at, particularly when you're down there in the south.

So they really captured that in the movie.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford's hottest take a word, if you have one.

You don't necessarily have to.

Van probably has one.

Wesley's not a hot take artist.

I, yeah, I don't really have a crazy,

crazy hot take here.

I don't, I don't know.

I feel like, you you know, I just think not liking the scene is about as yeah, you already did your scene.

Wow, exactly.

So,

Preacher Boy

is there,

you know, he's older, and they say, Hey, we want to make you a vampire.

If I'm Preacher Boy, I go, No, I want to be a vampire.

I'll take a shot at Mary, though.

I'm on my way out of here.

You know, I've held it down.

You know, you

were asked to leave me alive.

And, but, like, you know, maybe me and Mary one time with a vampire is that.

Wait, but hold on.

We didn't even talk about a whole other sex seed that Preacher Boy has.

He has it with Perlene.

We have a spot for it.

Yeah, he has it with Perlene, but I'm saying Perlene's gone.

He's named the club after her.

He's an older guy.

I see.

You know,

if you really fucking with me like that,

so age 88, like age 88.

Like, can I just one time with you?

Can I reenact how you died with a sex scene slash deathbite?

One time I, by the way, you can, by the way, since I'm about to be gone anyway, look, Stat, you can stay here, kill everybody in the bar.

Like,

I don't even know this guy.

I just hide him.

I just

hide these guys.

I don't really even know who they are.

Take out everybody in the bar.

It's one time we're married.

We out.

I like it.

Yeah.

Here's my hottest take.

Uh-oh.

being a vampire not that hard i just feel like you just have to bite somebody on some part of their body and and it's a w but this isn't like you come in it's like oh i'm trying to bite him trying to bite him it's like just bite any you can bite anything you bite their calf bite their hip i just think if you have the giant fangs if i try to jump on van right now he could fight me off but i could still bite him

i'm gonna land the bite in a 10 second stretch

vampire movies make it seem like oh

it's just, I just think you're going to be able to eventually bite you.

But I love a vampire movie where the vampires don't like, they're just like, I'll just go around your arm, sir.

Yeah.

I will, I will just, I will just bite you anyway.

Because it doesn't, it could be anything.

It could be the side of your leg.

It could be your butt cheek.

Like, they always make it seem like it's got to be this area in a vampire movie.

Yeah.

I guess that's probably where the most blood is.

But not to

turn, not to trend.

If my goal is to turn you into a vampire, it doesn't matter where I bite you.

It it just has to give you a bloodstream, yeah, yeah, that's fair.

Just don't overcomplicate it.

The new, like, if we're doing like Sloan conference analytics for the best vampires, it's the van, it's the undiscerning vampires, they're just the ones who are like, I don't care what part I bite, yeah, I don't need to feed.

I have it, my job is to create other vampires,

I need a nice group of vampires, then we can go like, then we'll feed, right?

I'm with you.

This is a great point.

Casting what ifs didn't really have any except for Halsey completed a script read

for the Haley part, didn't get it.

Interesting.

That's all I got.

Yeah, 20 years from now, it'd be like every single actor from there.

It'd be like Shalame was almost in this as

best that guy award.

It's got to be cornbread.

Omar Benson Miller.

I didn't know what his name was until I looked it up doing the research for this movie.

Oh, he's been around.

He's been in stuff.

I just never knew what his name was.

How many of your favorite movies

parts in?

Oh, no.

He's, I just never knew.

He was a classic that guy.

I mean, his film, his, his list of, of, his filmography is just like it's a lot great.

Oh, like, right.

Yeah, it was like, all right, all right.

Yeah.

Now, did you, have you heard the story about how he got in this movie really quickly?

No.

No.

Ryan Koogler, he told it at the premiere.

Ryan Koogler was

saying.

Ryan Koogler was either a film student or just graduated SC when he went to a screening of

The Miracle at St.

Anna.

The Miracle in St.

Anna moved to the Spike Lee movie.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That Spikely Lady Benson Miller was in.

He went there and he told him, like,

one day I'm going to work with you and put you in a movie.

Like, I'm going to be a filmmaker.

We're going to work together one day.

And years later, when Coogler was putting the movie together, he reached out to Omar Benson Miller and he put him in the movie.

Like, so I love that.

Omar told the story at the thing.

He was like, We actually got a chance to work for him.

He's like, this kid who came up to me

ended up doing everything that he said he was going to do in his career.

And then we ended up working together all of these years later.

Craig and I have a different story.

Craig just came out here to be an actor.

Yeah, that's right.

Did you?

Kind of stumbled into it.

What commercial, though?

What commercial were you in?

It was a nationwide insurance Gruden Grinder Monday Night Football when he was doing that.

Gruden Grinder.

He had a Gruden Grinder.

Oh, wow, the Gruden Grinder.

I love the Gruden Grinder.

Deion Waiters Award.

It's either Delroy Lindo or Buddy Guy.

I got to be honest with you.

It to me is easily the Native American vampire hunters.

The chocked house?

They are in it for one scene.

They try to warn everybody.

Like, legitimately, they come in, they cook, they look cool.

They're very important.

They tell this woman, look, it's a vampire in your house.

And the guy said at the front, he's like, you know, I really want to help.

Homeboy is like, hey, yeah, we got to go.

The sun is going down.

They did.

Let's get the fuck out of here.

You know, the Choctaws, I like the Choctaws.

Yeah.

I like it.

I like that.

Recasting Couch Director City.

I'm going to explore the studio space on this one.

It's one more more character.

I'm just going to create a new character.

Get our girl Villa Davis in this.

Aunt?

Maybe she's the aunt of Smoke and Stack.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

She's got some special skill.

Like she knows how to make...

We just get one extra scene with her.

I just, I feel like we're one person short with the group.

Okay.

You want more star power?

I just want one more

character.

One more famous person, a little older, somewhere between the Delroy Lindo age and MBJ's age early 50s family member knows some history with the twins and doesn't like marry but doesn't

bring them in

a little bit not a huge part

no not a huge part maybe it's an uncle I was just trying to figure out one more person we can throw in what what if you put in somebody who is Delta Slim's estranged wife yeah because he's the one but you know we already know he's probably got four exes or exes as it is.

She's in there, and there's like, I don't want to see this drunk motherfucker.

Fuck him.

And then, like, you know what I mean?

See, that there's if we're just five minutes short with somebody, I don't know who it is.

Has to be trying to think of a good actor.

I have to be, you need somebody with a little comedy, a little older little comedy.

Yeah, that is

Jennifer Lewis in there.

Dennis, but it's too much.

She is the, she is the brontosaurus steak that tips over the Flintstones car.

You don't want, you don't want just

Jennifer Ludwig.

Half-ass internet research, I'll go quick.

Uh, our guy Ludvig,

he uh drew inspiration from blues music, but more importantly, performed the score in a 1932 Dobro Cyclops Resonator guitar, which was the one Sammy has the whole movie.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Um, Kluger said his two biggest influences for the film, two of his biggest influences, Dustal Dawn,

the faculty with Rob

Rodriguez.

I get it.

Starring Jon Stewart, a movie that I think he tried to buy all the copies of to destroy, but he is not because it's still on cable.

Josh Hartnett.

Yep.

Yeah.

They cast a twin double named Percy Bell, who had the same kind of body as MBJ.

And they also hired twin consultants.

Oh, twin consultants.

Yeah.

Well, also consultants-wise, Rhiannon Giddens,

the great Americana musician, and I guess, I mean, we'll call her a scholar.

Yeah.

His, you know, his person Beyonce turned to to sort of figure out how to think through what Cowboy Carter was doing.

Huge blues presence.

Chris Done Kingfish Ingram is in the band at the end with Buddy Guy.

He's one of the musicians you see in that slow-motion

transition shot.

Yeah,

the Irish culture consultant whose name has now escaped me.

There's a lot of just, you know, let's make sure we this goes back to the this is why it takes Koogler two plus years to make a movie.

When Smoke and Stack return, they go to downtown Clarksdale, Mississippi, but it was shot in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

Oh man,

fans like I dated a girl from there.

Talking about Donaldsonville.

We used to have our horses there.

Donaldsonville, like we used to like we used to, before we had the barn, we used to board horses there.

Donaldsonville is cool.

Girls in Donaldsonville, Downsonville, High used to be fine as hell.

I've been for real.

Girls in Downsonville.

This surprises me.

Downsonville had a nice track.

Girls in Downsville, High is fine as hell.

They had to, um,

they had to make it dirt roads and they had to bring in all this dirt to make actually make the dirt road over the pavement.

Um,

so Remick mentions how Christians took his father's land.

Oh, yeah, but he's Irish, and that actually puts his life somewhere between the fifth and seventh centuries.

So he's old as shit.

Yeah.

The film, there's a lot of like Robert Johnson stuff that I was not really, did not know a lot of about the guitar player blues guy who supposedly

sold a soul to the devil and then died young.

Crossroads with Ralph Macchio?

Yeah.

Oh, no.

What are we?

We were doing so well.

Although, shouts, shouts to Joe Seneca shouts to Joe Seneca but Wesley you like this the working title of this film was Grilled Cheese

Because Kugler

was used to making complicated dishes.

He wanted this to be an enjoyable easy eating experience.

So he named it Grilled Cheese and all the in all the script demo shit the finest Greyer he could find too Apex Mountain hard to do when it's movie just happened, but Ryan Kugler,

I find it hard to believe he's going going to have more power than he has right now.

And if he does in a couple of years, God bless him.

But this is about as much juice as you're going to have for a director, I think.

But think about

like, who's not making his next movie?

He could be like, I'm going to make a movie about Van's left kneecap.

And they'd be like, here's 100 million.

Yeah.

But think about, I just think like how they're talking, how they were talking about this movie.

I know, but now that this happened, it's he could do whatever.

He's like, 90 sight on scene for this, really?

Yeah.

He could literally go to them right now and say, I need 250 million bucks.

I don't know.

We're not even going to tell you the idea.

250.

I'm like, it's not, it's not, we're not doing superhero shit.

We're not doing this.

I need 250 million dollars.

And we're going to go make a movie.

And they would, they would say, it's a movie about the Donaldsonville High girls in 1992.

Right.

The cheerleading squad.

Wouldn't it be 92?

I'm not, you know, but 90s.

96.

Donaldsonville, High.

Michael B.

Jordan, Apex Mountain.

Hmm.

I don't think so.

No, no.

Well, I think for where his career is so far, yes.

Yeah, all right, fine.

He's just

the face of a $500 million.

Where does he go?

What does he do?

Does he have another level to it?

Does he have his version of the revenant?

I think we're at the so,

okay.

You'll get this.

You know how?

No, because you love NBA basketball.

Okay.

But that's probably because you're white.

But like,

I love watching them dunk, dad.

They jump so high.

They jump so high, dad.

You should have seen

the Chief, what he was able to do.

So.

You know how a player has all of these.

They have all NBA.

They have all-star seasons.

But then like 26, 27 is the official beginning of their prime.

So I think think this is the official beginning of Michael B.

Jordan's prime.

I said that earlier.

I totally agree.

I'm not saying these next five, six years will be, this is going to be it now.

I'm not saying he hadn't been all NBA.

I'm not saying he hadn't been an all-star.

I'm saying this is the official beginning of his prime.

It's like a little hakeem in the early 90s for the Rockets where it all starts coming together and he has that crazy stretch wins too tight.

I don't disagree.

I'm just like, I feel this way about so many people.

Timothy Chalamet Pac-Man right now.

Any script is on a table, anywhere, like his people are gobbling up, and

whatever gets excreted that is still intact, is what gets picked up and done, right?

Like, I just feel like, show me the scripts.

I keep, I think, but that changes all the time.

Cause, like, in the Goldman books, which are right over your right shoulder, but he always talks about like who has that alpha C with the scripts.

Yes.

But it flips.

And the years becomes change.

It does change.

But I feel like there are so few people now who are viable both in the minds of the public and in the sort of books of the industry that I definitely think this is the moment for people to be giving Michael B.

Jordan or offering Michael B.

Jordan

really interesting things to do.

Well, he's also at the age now where he can play any adult role.

He can be in a sports movie right now.

He could be the cop who's been on the force for a while.

He could be a detective, like you name it.

He's not too old to be anything yet.

Okay.

I just, I, I, I'm here to disagree.

How about vampire movies?

Apex Mountain.

Apex Mountain.

I can't be.

No.

I'd have to think about it.

So, what is it?

What do you mean?

What's what's the apex of vampire movies?

Oh, it's probably that period where Dracula?

I mean, which Dracula?

Stoker's Dracula.

I think it's that period where, well, here's what I'm saying.

Here's what I'll say.

I feel like this is a great moment in American life, or like maybe even considering where Europe is right now,

to really be thinking about what these vampires are offering in these movies.

If you think about Robert Edgar's Nosfratu

and the way that Eggers is arguing for a vampirism that is hard to resist because it is just too sexy to say no to, right?

The power of the vampire is too strong to not want to have sex with.

And so you give yourself completely over to him.

It's one of that Nils Verazi was one of the most convincing sort of

political, psychological arguments for vampirism I've ever seen.

I think Wesley wants to bring vampirism back.

Well, it's here.

We're watching it happen.

And I think that this.

I'd like to be a conciliary to the vampires.

Just go for any body part.

Well, in this metaphor, stop going for the next.

You don't want it.

You don't want to be anywhere near these people.

But I also think that Kugler has also found a very appealing way.

I think vampire, this is definitely Apex Mountain moment

for vampire culture.

As a metaphor.

It's the Apex Mountain certainly for black vampires.

Black vampires.

How about twin brother movies?

You don't think so?

Have you seen Blackula?

I've seen Blackula.

I've seen, I've seen Vampire in Brooklyn.

Vampire in Brooklyn, but I would say it was between this and Blade.

It was bad.

Oh, Blade.

Okay.

But this is not about.

But okay, fine.

This is fair.

Not enough black vampires, though, right?

Eddie tried during his worst part of his career, my guy.

Twin brother movies,

maybe twin movies?

This is the most successful time.

This is the highest-grossing twin movie almost certainly.

With twin leads, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Haley

Steinfield?

Steinfeld?

Steinfeld.

Yeah, probably.

Why can't I say it?

Haley Steinfeld.

Yes, for sure.

For sure.

So far, I think there might be another moment for pickled garlic juice.

Yes.

Cunalingus advice?

Oh.

Cunalingus advice.

Can't remember a better Cunnal Lingus advice scene in the movie.

No, we're not doing better than this one.

Just look for that button.

Well, I'm sure.

I'm only going to say never because I'm sure there's one I'm missing.

But I can't think of one.

I can't think of it.

The blues, I'm going to go no, Haints,

but the blue.

Well, let me think about this.

The blues in movies for sure, right?

Like the blues, as family say Mo Better Blues, but that's a jazz movie.

This is like fame wouldn't say Mo Better Blues.

Oh,

I think this might be.

Let's think about the blues.

Let's think about this.

This is definitely, at least in the movies, this is the, this is the,

this is the blues.

This is a great blues movie.

How about drooling?

Best drool scene ever.

But there are several good drool scenes in here.

This is a good drooling movie.

Yeah.

Movie characters named Cornbread.

Probably yes.

I don't think Cornbread Roll on me has really had a long shelf life.

No.

All right.

Cruiser Hanks.

So we're talking about for Remic?

Can be for any role you want.

Oh, wow.

But obviously, it can't be for certain roles.

Cruise, I was was about to say, it can't be for any role.

Cruz would kind of fucking kill it as Remic.

Cruz would.

He's played it.

Fucking Remic.

He's played it.

Remic.

That's why we know

this is the better Remic, though.

Mid-90s Cruz.

Fucking cruise.

This would have been like the best part of his career.

Now, he did fuck up

to me as La Sar.

I did not like that at all because

that's not what I'm talking about.

No, I'm talking about.

He would love another crack at that part.

I'm sure sure he's basically

cocktail Cruise as a vampire as a vampire.

He would kill as Rimpson.

He'd get behind the bar and start flipping by.

The dance scene would be so fucking bizarre and crazy.

He would learn how to do the

Irish standard.

Whatever dance would be so.

He would do the Tropic Thunder dance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kill as Rimpsy.

But I think, though, this is raising a sort of alternate series of questions about what Tom Cruise's life looks like after this year, right?

Like, what are his choices?

What's he doing?

If Klugler is offering, let's say this movie gets made a year from now instead of two years.

He's only the KKK guy.

Yeah.

He's the old guy that sells on the

house.

Him and Mike would be smart to get in the movie together.

I mean, this is what I'm saying.

Dan asked for this one.

Denzel or Will?

Pick any age range.

In their primes, ask.

This is not fair to Michael B.

Jordan.

Why are we doing this a movie?

In their primes.

It's a movie podcast of hypotheticals.

Play the game.

Oh, well, that's no, it's a no-brainer.

You're just taking, you're taking like.

So two Denzels, as two Denzels, or two Wills.

I think you're going early 90s, Denzel, like 93, 94 range.

Yes.

Definitely.

And I think Devil in a Blue Drag era.

I think he would have fucking crushed it.

Devil in a Blue Dress era, Denzel, is a no-brainer.

You don't think a little younger?

I would have gone early 90s.

Devil in a blue dress is 95.

I would have gone 92, 93 range.

Like Malcolm X era?

Like right after.

Mo Better Blues, Malcolm X, Malcolm.

Denzel.

Sure.

Let's do it.

A smoke and stack.

Scorsese or Spielberg?

I can see.

Spielberg has never done anything.

It's Scorsese.

Yeah, Spielberg has never done any kind of horror besides Scorpio.

We get some 1930s cocaine with Scorsese.

One of the vampires.

coming out.

Wow, that just gave real big Pacino.

That was my favorite.

Wow.

Never done cocaine.

What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

Oh, he'd be a good remic.

He also could have been the clan guy, but maybe he's a little too young for that.

Not a good remic.

Not enough part there.

Yeah, not enough part there, but he could have been a great remic, too.

special category i didn't even put this on the rundown

how would van lathen get out of this one oh

i don't know which one well the whole in this case

the situation is

um

you're now a vampire and you're trying to convince your brother not to drive a wooden stake through your heart How do you get out of this one?

Okay, wait.

So I'm the vampire.

This is a great parlor game.

I'm trying to

try my brother not to kill me.

And,

like,

here's my plan.

Let's go.

Right.

Okay.

First of all, I say this, Smoke.

I go, Smoke.

First of all, you already killed our father, right?

You killed our father.

You're going to kill me too?

What are you?

Person that kills your own family?

Right.

How many family members can you kill?

How many people can you kill?

Smoke, violent man.

I saw you early shoot two black men in the street.

Don't we have enough going on in this city?

You know who shoots black men and kills black families?

White people.

them not smoke?

Smokes.

Matter of fact, you need to come over here with me, bro.

There's a new dance, it's taking over Clarksville.

It's called the jig.

We ain't never done it before, but you jump high, you flip your legs up around.

When you come down, your credit score would have gone way up.

Let me tell you something, bruh.

You don't want to do this.

You want to come on this side, bruh.

Seriously, don't kill me.

All right, you live.

You live.

You live.

Picking it.

That's great.

Why did Smoke Stack leave Chicago?

They robbed somebody.

They robbed Capone.

They robbed Italians.

They either robbed Al Capone, they robbed someone.

All right, so they robbed them and they leave.

They stole the Irish beer and the Italian wine.

Okay.

But now they're like the deep south is this burgeoning business opportunity.

Yeah.

I don't really understand their business plan.

Well, it seemed like in Chicago, I'm better off just robbing people in Chicago.

There's way more money there.

I think there's such a history of black person.

But they happen to juke and they realize almost immediately nobody has enough money to make this a functioning enterprise.

Fucking money.

But then there's a community argument to be made for keeping it open anyway.

I don't know.

It's a very moving kind of like

naive, like desperation/slash naivete that's happening here, right?

Like a belief.

Sentimental.

This is picking nits.

A belief in your people.

Sorry.

Your nit has been picked.

They say, well, in the movie, they say that they decided to go with the devil that they knew, which is very interesting because there happens to be a devil

that they have no idea about.

But yeah, so that's the deal.

Okay, the reason why they came in.

So first time we see Remick, he's diving into that toward that person's house,

right?

And gets in and he's like covered in whatever.

The sun's out.

So why didn't he just die?

I thought they died the moment the sun was out.

Well, it's like sundown.

He was like about to.

It's dusk.

Or it's dusk.

Yeah, it's okay.

Okay,

it's not high as sun.

The sun is not.

By the way, this is

rules with how high the sun has to be.

His skin is boiling.

This, this, yeah, his skin is boiling.

This varies from vampire movie to vampire movie.

There are certain vampire movies.

We've never established a code here where the sun comes out and the vampire immediately disintegrates.

Yeah.

There are certain vampire movies where the sun comes out, like in Blade.

It's like, oh,

like Canada,

please.

Don't put me in.

So I guess this was more more of a slow

burn.

Okay.

You know what this movie does that I struggled with?

But Vin, you know vampires, so you probably didn't think about it, but I don't know how much you do or you do.

But like the whole you have to let a vampire, you have to invite a vampire in.

They don't really hold your hand through that.

Like they just expect you to know it.

But they, but it's such a plot point

eventually it gets banged into your brain.

I kind of love, I love, I had, I'm not familiar with that.

Like I didn't know that.

I forgot that that was a rule.

Yeah.

But I kind of love how important it is in the world of the movie because it is also serving the metaphor, the sort of racial metaphor.

Sure.

Right.

And the movie really commits to the invitation question.

And watching it, the second time you pick up on how early on they start to ask if you can, if they can be invited in, because originally you don't really think about it.

The second time I watched it, I was like, oh, the invitation is crucial.

Yeah.

So maybe we had consent back in the 1930s in a way we didn't realize.

It's true.

I still like, if you guys are looking for an all-time vampire let me in scene, that's funny.

The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where David Arquette is outside Luke Perry's window, yeah, and he's flying, he's he's floating, and Luke Perry has just like woken up and he's going to open the window for his friend.

And he realizes that his friend is flying and he's like, let me in, let me in.

He goes, No,

like, you're in the air.

I'm not allowed to

legitimately hysterical.

It's a very funny thing.

And otherwise, I'm about to diss the movie.

I love that fucking movie.

I'm not quick nitpicks.

Um, I love that movie.

Fuck y'all.

They built the juke joint in three hours.

Just got that thing right up.

But they're not building it, building it.

Like, they're just pretty complicated bar.

I'm just asking.

Yeah.

They had a lot of help.

A lot of stuff happened that day leading up to the night of the juke.

I still love it.

I don't care.

I'm just here to pick some nits.

Would the three vampires have really turned into an awesome banjo band in two minutes?

Because they're all vampires.

Another hilarious development, though.

No, no rehearsals.

But they have all of Rimick's memories.

Right.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we talked about this earlier.

How did Andy know so much about vampires?

And how did the vampires not immediately win the 50 50 versus a fight what did you have for nipics so okay number one

we all let's say we all in here right now the vampires are outside

craig is like yo man liz is out there craig go go find her bro peace

out like like go go find your wife right i'm not about to be like craig you can't go Craig, you got to stay here.

Man, Craig, you feel like you got to go find your girl.

I feel you.

We in this

good luck, Craig.

We and this bitch till sun up.

Yeah.

Go find her.

And that's what I would have told Miss Child and like, hey, yo, hey, you know what?

You're right.

That's unfortunate.

I don't know what they're going to do with the kids and stuff.

Take your ass out there to bow.

Go find them.

They also didn't seem interested in anybody else other than the people in the club.

Your daughter is probably fine.

They are.

The moment I saw a vampire, my whole life would be changed in such a fundamental, profound way.

Like, it would be so different.

Like, yeah, you want to go?

You're right, man.

Ain't you a soldier?

Hey, he is.

And he's going to stay in here and protect us.

Get the fuck out.

I would have kicked her out.

I would have

to.

Yeah, you can't kick her out, but I understand the urge to because she instantly becomes a very annoying person.

The clan.

Uh-oh.

Why would you come to the Jew joint in the morning to kill everybody?

Wouldn't it be a better idea?

Yeah, why not come at 4:30 at night?

Yeah, when they're actually partying and they're drunk.

Yeah, everybody's in there drunk.

You're going to come in the morning.

First of all, you don't hear any music.

Like, you don't hear anything going on.

The door isn't open.

The clan actually thought that the people were inside there where he thought they all were sleeping.

Have you met the clan?

That's true.

These people are not winning any MacArthur's MacArthur Genius Awards.

They're not winning Peabody Posters.

They're not

they don't even get 200 points for putting their name on the top of the SAT.

It's true.

Like, I don't know.

These are not, these, they don't even have a drop.

They're not a lot of oxygen with the hoods.

I think it does hurt them.

Probably so.

We can't see in these goddamn things.

All y'all do is criticize, criticize, criticize.

Now, last thing.

Man,

I'm for indigenous black unity,

but boy, did our native brothers leave us out there to get our asses kicked by the vampires, man.

They said they were leaving and knocking it back.

I know, but mad respect.

I know, but we are, we are there

and we are getting hell.

There's vampires and our native brothers,

they left us out.

They hung us out to dry, man.

Did they hang us out?

Kind of.

First of all, if I was them, so They're hunting the vampires, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why not go throughout the town and let people know?

But who knows?

Where their other stops were.

We don't.

I mean, because this is the sun is setting, right?

Yeah.

Or send an email.

Something.

Well, there is an alternate version of this movie where the choctiles show up at the end, like right as shit's going down, and all of a sudden they have like additional

additional bodies.

Like, that wouldn't make me this would have been, it would have been more conventional.

One last question.

Yeah.

Do vampires have to ask to get inside of your car?

Great question.

Because if you have to invite a vampire in and everybody's like scattered outside, why just go jump in the cars?

Jump in the, like, just

like, just jump in.

It's a good rule of thumb for people listening when the vampires come together.

Just get in, get in a closed body of something.

Get in the closed, whatever.

Now, Colin Farrell on the fight night, he changed the game

because he wouldn't be let inside of the thing.

And he went and ripped up the gas lines of the kids

and then did like this and put the match to the thing.

He's like, I'm going to burn the fucking house.

I love vampires, man.

I love vampires.

Colin Farrell.

Are you a vampire guy or a werewolf guy?

Depends on my mood.

I should have known you got to ask that question.

Can I pick one knit?

Yeah.

And then Liz has a knit.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

When Mrs.

Chow makes the Molotov cocktail, lights it on fire, throws it at Remick.

He slaps it away, and it hits the barn door and lights the barn door on fire.

How?

Nothing happens from that.

The place does not burn down.

There is no fire.

The whole place would have burned down.

The whole barn door is on fire.

He hits it in the water.

Well, he can't burn the bar down.

He can't burn the barn down twice, right?

Like he's already given you the metaphorical barn burn down.

Yeah.

Well, then I don't know why they include it.

It's a red herring burn.

It's the rush herring.

The barn is on fire for a scene.

He gets it and it ignites, and then they never get back to it.

You never see the fire again.

It's like a continuity here.

Yeah.

Second one from Liz.

She thought Smoke and Stack were too ripped.

Did it make sense?

They weren't ripped.

They were just thick.

I did notice that.

This is huge.

Michael B.

Jordan is extremely fit, like creed fit.

But you're bringing your old,

you're bringing your memory of the old Michael B.

Jordan body to this body.

I think this is just a thick guy.

Oh, come on.

Like, I think like...

with the machine gun, he is like random.

You have like those like George Foreman, Ken Norton-type bodies in the 1930s.

You know what I mean?

Like, but I think

that I actually, I truly believe that that is the body he was trying to get to.

And I don't know, he's not as also, we never see him with his shirt off, right?

Like, we see the tank top.

That's it.

Yeah, that's about as far as

I feel like somebody was aware of like this concern, and he was probably asked to eat as many croissants as he possibly could to like

DM, like to detone himself.

Like, they would have to be working out a lot to be to, and they both look the same.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe there was a gym in Chicago.

They were in the military.

Sequel and they were in the military.

Yeah, that's true.

Sequel, prequel, prestige TBL, Blackcaster, Untouchable.

Interesting.

It's actually in a tougher category than you would think.

Can I test trap the prequel?

Them in Chicago stealing from Al Capone.

Like, I'm in.

I will watch it.

It's not a vampire movie.

It's just like a late 1920s action, Great Depression in Chicago movie.

I'm interested in that.

Yeah.

That sounds like a little godfather too to me.

Think about it.

Fuck with that.

Think about it, Ryan Koopler.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collins, or Daniel Plainview?

Long Legs or Wilfred Brimley.

Ooh, Daniel.

Daniel Flameview is funny.

Did Sam need to be in this movie?

Do you think he was upset?

He wasn't asked?

Bill, don't do it.

What?

He's in the category.

I don't.

I feel like.

Sam's like, I'm right here.

He's done.

Sam has dealt with Slim.

I'm going with a new answer for this that's not in the rundown.

Interesting.

The good doctor.

Oh, shit.

You love this show now.

Oh, interesting.

You like it.

I like it.

I like it.

The good doctor is one of the people in the

world.

And they're trying to figure out what's going on.

And they're like, the vampires are trying to kill us.

We cannot let them in

because they are vampires.

If you open that door, they will cut.

And it's just like he's almost like Spock for the crew.

And everybody's like, this guy's so fucking annoying.

Send him out.

Throw him out.

Let's get rid of him now.

The good doctor.

Yeah.

Craig wasn't expecting that.

Sam made this movie.

Sam Jackson made this movie.

It's called Black Snake Mode.

I did not like that movie.

Many people didn't.

It is not.

It isn't.

That movie's a tough thing.

I try.

I've tried a bunch of times.

I appreciate the.

There is a crazy blues movie for you.

Just one Oscar.

Who gets it?

Ooh.

It's Ryan Koogler.

Just one Oscar is probably.

I have Mike, but probably the direction is probably.

It's probably Koogler, man.

It's Koogler for directing.

I think it's Koogler for directing.

I think if you did this, what's the safest bet Oscar from this movie?

Is the score is winning.

The score is going to win.

I don't even know what the other scores are.

I would vote for original screenplay.

Oh, okay.

I would vote for original screenplay.

How about that new category?

Because

it hasn't happened yet.

What is the over-under for Oscars for this movie?

Knowing, not even knowing what's coming out.

Winning or not being nominated?

Winning?

Well, let's go winning in nominations.

Okay.

So

I'm going to.

Fandall.

Does Fandu set this at three and a half?

So picture

is pictures in play because that's a 10, that's a 10 nomination category, right?

Or did they shrink it?

Oh, for nominate, for nominate, yeah, it's definitely a best picture.

Picture 100%.

Picture you can't get to 10 movies right now.

Right.

Picture Kugler score,

MBJ.

Can I sell you?

Can I sell you?

On Annie's character as a best supporting actress now?

Oh, I think 100%.

Yeah, I can see that.

To me, it's like, can she and Haley both get in?

The only five-year-olds.

I think Womi is much

likely.

I think she'd be the favorite in that one.

But I wouldn't be mad if Delroy's getting nominated.

Oh, he's getting nominated.

Like, lock that in.

He's honestly.

But we've been saying this.

Can I just say, we have been saying lock that in for Del Roy Lindo for 20 years.

Jack O'Connor.

30 years.

And he's never been nominated.

I think Delroy is the most likely to win.

Whoa.

Let's say there's 20 total acting nomination spots, and this movie might

end up with five of them.

I think Delroy is the most likely to win.

Interesting.

That's all fascinating.

I would bet on Delroy right now if Fando had the odds.

Eddington and then the PTA movie are

going to be like

fucking mammoths.

But because Eddington is phenomenal, but it.

But

this is interesting.

this is completely different conversation what about eddington i think eddington's great you didn't like eddington uh i mean i have mixed feelings about it but i feel like there are a lot of people who really don't like it i don't know i can't tell how how many how legs it's an exceptionally polarized movie coming

the end of the year uh probably unanswerable questions

We did everything.

The only one I have left is, did Josh Allen enjoy this movie?

Oh, great

question.

What an unbelievable press conference moment that would be before like the first week one.

Hey, what do you think about the Pats defense?

Blah, blah, blah.

And then Josh, Bill Simmons here from ESPN.com.

What was your least

scene from Sinners?

How much did you hate Sinners on a scale of one to 10?

That's funny.

I have one unanswerable question.

Yeah.

Do Stack and Mary in 1992 still listen to Irish music?

Oh, great question.

Well, the great thing about

that question.

Remix did.

Do they ever just put on?

Because that was around the time that Lord of the Dance, yeah, was starting.

Do they watch, I think they moved on?

I mean, they're

dressed.

I mean, think about how they're dressed.

That the end of that movie is really kind of deep, right?

Yeah, because if we're thinking about this as a music movie, and he has all these feelings about the blues, they are dressed like Keith Sweat and

like some Mary J.

Blige prototype, some like salt and pepper, basically.

Yeah.

And

shout out to Keith.

They're clearly,

I don't know.

I mean, there's something about the vampires being aligned with hip-hop at this point.

It's funny.

Yeah.

And they're going out into the night to do who knows what.

Like, what, if, if they're musically driven, what are they musically driven to do?

Yeah.

And what are they musically already doing?

I don't know.

There's a lot of like, because I mean, they would have had to have figured out these clothes.

They would have had to have survived the 70s and the 60s.

This should have been a good, unanswerable question.

What'd they do for 60 years?

How many people did they bite?

They've had to buy.

Did they have favorite restaurants?

I mean,

here's a sequel or like a frequent

was a big Bulls fan in the late 80s, early 90s.

Really got into MJ, started going to games,

bit the guy who had awesome season tickets.

Just took the tickets.

Like, I mean, I don't know.

There's a whole world of, there's like, what,

five decades, six decades to just like.

A lot of shit going on.

Quickly, let's rip through because we're late on time.

I have to go to the airport.

What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this one?

It's got to be the good.

That's it.

The harmonica.

What about the broken guitar?

We'll love that too.

Coach Finn Stock award, best life lesson.

You keep dancing with the devil.

One day he's going to follow you home.

I have a different one.

What do you got?

White women can come in the party, but not white men.

Amen.

But listen,

a black woman did come in.

Yeah.

No, I'm saying.

We might let we not one of the 53% of white women.

They know who they are.

But we might let them in the party, but white men, y'all bring too much shit with y'all.

Best double featured choice.

What do you got?

Oh, great question.

For me, it was from Dusk Till Dawn.

Easy.

I was going to pick pick a Tarantino movie.

My impulse is to pick a Tarantino movie.

Interestingly.

I had the thing.

Oh, that's cool.

It's a good one.

But I think the answer is fruit fail.

Oh,

say more.

First, go in the beginning.

And follow the journey all the way.

This

fully realized 12 plus years later.

Here are these guys again in a completely different, amazing movie.

I like that idea.

Yeah.

I like that idea.

All right.

Toughest one who won the movie.

Maybe not that tough.

It's not tough.

Ryan Koogler.

Ryan Wayne.

Ryan Kugler won.

I mean, Mike is right there.

Really, really, it's Mike Aaron.

I mean, just think about the way we have been talking.

The afterlife of this movie, which really is still its actual life because

it's only been three or four months.

Like, these are Ryan Kugler's ideas.

These are ideas that are older than Ryan Kugler that he has reframed in a way to make us

think about them in a different way.

And

these are ideas that are exciting to think about as ideas, right?

Like, what does this movie mean?

What is it saying?

What is it doing?

Cougar's answer.

If there's a Miles Caton 20 years,

but

20 years from now, we might be saying it was Miles Caton if he becomes this massive A-plus-list star, and this was the launching pad for him.

You know, who actually won that movie?

I don't see it happening, but we could

see.

Craig, what are your thoughts?

Quick

saw it in the IMAX at the Grove with a friend, loved it.

Incredible theatrical experience.

I think Van comparing Kugler to Spielberg is correct.

And I've thought about that because Kugler really knows how to be theatrical.

He knows how to sell it.

Like, I think this movie is so good because you can kind of just watch it on the surface and have a great time and think it's a 10 out of 10.

Or you could really get into it and all the layers of it and think it's a 10 out of 10 for a completely different reason.

And like him drawing this whole movie up, knowing how to market it, the shot of Michael B.

Jordan with the gun, like building the trailer correctly to get people into the theater.

He has that Spielberg, like, magic sauce to him where he knows how to combine a great movie and also make it feel like a popcorn movie.

So, it's great.

I just had a whole conversation about like all of Steven Spielberg's children in this conversation I had with my friend Eric about the 100 greatest movies of the 21st century or whatever on cannonball.

See, I can do it, Bill.

Um, but we were talking about the ways in which Spielberg

is,

I mean, remains the most important father of an, of like, these tributaries of filmmakers, like his coaching tree.

Who are very different from Spielberg, but like really understand Spielberg's sort of entertainment philosophy

and hold, if held on to some of his ideas while also just being themselves at the same time.

This movie is also just like so shockingly original.

Like, even I watched it with Liz and my brother-in-law the other night.

Liz hadn't seen it it yet.

20 minutes in, she was like, This isn't based off anything, right?

I was like, No,

think how sad that is.

It's just so

honestly, and that's what we did our video about last month.

It's just like original IP, man.

It's still, it still wins.

Even if you don't like the big musical scene or whatever, I just like that the movie feels like it, it's one person's hands all over it.

Somebody had an idea, you know what I mean?

Yeah, somebody had an idea.

Sinners, an all-timer.

Um, HBO Max is now the platform that it's on, I guess, but you can watch it.

But I would recommend if you haven't seen the theater yet, go to the theater.

Wesley Morris, a true pleasure.

Van Lathan, great as always.

Thanks to Craig and Chris as well.

And

one name movie month will continue next week.