‘The Sting’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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Transcript
This episode is brought to you by Netflix.
Catherine Bigelow, the Oscar-winning director of the Hurt Locker and Zero Dark 30, is back with A House of Dynamite, a cinematic visceral thriller about America's race to respond to an anonymous missile launch.
Under the pressure of a ticking clock, the film's characters are called to make impossible decisions with implications for all of civilization, while at the same time confronting their own emotions and humanity.
A House of Dynamite on Netflix, October 24.
This episode is brought to you by 20th century studios new film springsteen delivered me from nowhere starring golden globe winner jeremy allen white and academy award nominee jeremy strong i missed that guy scott cooper director of the academy award winning movie crazy heart brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon don't miss the movie critics are raving is the real deal an intelligent deliberate paced journey into the soul of an artist springsteen delivered me from nowhere only in theaters october 24th get your tickets now the rewatchables brought to you by the ringer podcast network you can find the watch with CR.
Still there.
Wrote his first site.
Can't believe you're the showrunner a task.
Can you tell us?
Under the pseudonym Brad Inglespy.
That's right.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Sean Fantasy, big picture.
Hi.
What was physical media, something, council, something?
Yeah, we had a high council meeting, four guys.
You're invited to the next one.
Well, I just showed you.
Make it a big five.
I have a big stack now.
Are you boosting now?
Well, so keep it low.
Are you late to brag about physical creatine?
So CR came to the most recent episode.
He's done one episode a year the last three years, and he walked away with like 40 Blu-rays.
Yeah.
How did that happen?
Because Tracy Letz has lots of doubles.
So he brought all of his doubles and gave them to Chris.
So if you want to double your stack, think about it.
2026.
Double my stack.
Speaking of doubling stack.
We're doing this thing today because it's Redford month, and we actually extended the month.
It starts on September.
We're doing five Redford movies in the rewatchables.
Some that they were always in the hopper to do anyway, but we had to start with The Sting, an iconic movie that won Best Picture in 1973.
We'll be back in a second.
The Sting, 1973 comes out on Christmas.
I think my dad said he took me to the theater for this one.
Really?
Four.
Not a lot of memories.
Oh, there are no babysitters.
There are no rules in the 70s.
So you like Christmas.
It's like, I want to go see this thing.
Let's take Little Billy and hope he doesn't fall over and somebody's.
I mean, my kid is four.
So I'm trying to imagine bringing her to see him kitchen plus Howard Kahn movie.
Yeah.
That would be great for me.
Yeah, I don't really have a lot of memories.
It was a Robert Redford, Paul Naiman, George Royhill reunion from Butch Casting The Sundance Kid.
Has there ever been a more successful Get the Band Back Together non-sequel?
Oh, I actually did some homework on this, and I thought there would be more examples than there were where it's like, Those two guys, I love those two guys now.
They're in this.
Wow, it's really rare, it's rarer than you think.
That's a classic.
You didn't prep me for this one.
I should have prepped you.
Like, Afuck and Naaman are going to try to do that right now with what they did with the last
with air.
It's not, it's not the same thing, though, right?
Like, I feel like well, you could say dogma was a follow-up to Goodwill Huntington.
Dogma is the sting to Goodwill Hunting Butch Cassidy.
For Ben and Matt.
I was worried CR was going to go with Peter North and Christy Canyon.
Well, it had a lot of
comebacks.
That was banger after banger.
Yeah.
So I did the research on this.
And you know, AI now with Google stuff, they'll just serve you a lot of good stuff.
Are you sponsored by Gemini or are you just turning yourself over to them?
No, there were some helpful things.
So it used to happen all the time.
It would happen with like Kepburn and Tracy.
Like we, this was how we did it forever.
Jack Loman and Walter Mathow.
Carrie Grant, Ingrid Bergman.
Yep.
Bogart and now?
Yeah.
Now, like, really, this was the last one.
And then it shifted to rom-coms.
It's like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
They're back.
And now it's You've Got Mail.
Richard Gear and Julie Roberts.
They did Runaway.
one-way bride.
I can't speak.
And then Adam Saint Laura and Drew Barrymore is probably our best.
We got the band back together of the last 30 years, which is both exciting and depressing.
Wow.
But like my, my kids know them as like a combo.
I knew Newman and Redford.
I always considered them like a combo just for these two movies.
I'll tell you what it is.
It's Will Farrell and John C.
Riley.
That's Talladega Knights and Step Road.
That's really good.
That's probably the closest we have where like they hit on something in Talladega Knights.
They were so good together and they were like, we got to follow up this energy as soon as we can.
And within three years, you got it.
Yeah, because sometimes i why do you think more actors aren't like we were great together let's run that back we say with sequels and that's because i think that they're supremely competitive people and you can even see when you read about like the making of this movie is that even though newman is in this kind of you're minted you're in hall of fame you're going you're going anywhere you want he's still thinking like i'm the star I am the, I am the top billing.
Like, how do I relate to this kid trying to take my spot in a, in a way that i think probably more actors think about than they actually reveal robert shaw had a good quote about this because at that point redford was a massive star you know when they did it butch in 69 he was on the way up 73 he's minted he's one of the biggest stars in hollywood but newman was still newman and robert shaw said when they were filming this and they're filming it you know in relatively public places like Chicago and LA,
he said everyone was just going nuts for Newman.
And then they asked, like, what about Redford?
And he was like, nah, it was really Newman.
I wrote, they were just going right after.
I can't do it, CR.
Redford goes in the water.
Shots in the water.
But yeah, Newman had that special something.
But it's funny because this is Redford's most charismatic movie.
How do you, so how do you, like, what's the comparison modern day to that right now?
Because
isn't it Pitt and Clooney?
Or would it be like Pitt and But that would be like if people were going crazy for Clooney if Pitt was present, you know, because Newman is about 10 years older than he needs to flip, yeah.
So you need who is the the older star who's like, you know, less of a hunk, like Paul Newman, one of the most beautiful guys ever, but still, like Redford was the ideal for anyone.
So it's like Brad Pitt and Leo, and then Leo catches up to Brad Pitt.
But like the example,
the most recent example that I can even think of would be Top Gun Maverick, where it's like Tom Cruise with two younger actors who were probably in their dreams.
Like if I could get a tenth of that.
And he's got 20 plus plus years.
Yeah, and those guys weren't, they weren't famous like Redford was for this second movie.
But I think in the conception of Top Gun Maverick, just like maybe in the conception of The Sting, like there was probably a little bit more real estate for the younger guys to take it,
put a flag down on.
And then Tom Cruise is like, actually, this is a Tom Cruise movie.
So like, I mean,
the bigger question is, we just don't have movie stars like this in the same way anymore that are under 50 years old.
You know, in Dune Park 2, Timothy Chalamay and Austin Butler have like a showdown, right?
Like the conclusion of that movie is those two guys fighting.
And it's a Dune movie.
It's an IP, it's sci-fi, it's a big event movie.
But in that scene, I was like, these two guys should make a movie together that is not sci-fi, where they're not fighting.
Like they should actually be joining forces.
But I think there's like two bartenders in early 2000s, New York, right after 9-11 who love the strokes.
Cocktail Legacy sequel, not a bad idea.
Constealing prequel.
Yeah.
Andy Greenwald and CR coming in.
They're like, yo, have you seen the yay, yeah, yes?
I heard you were there.
I've seen Rheingold tonight.
Not the worst I've ever done.
Carrot's amazing.
We can beat her tonight.
I don't understand.
Why is Hollywood failing?
We made a movie for yays fans.
I think the answer is actually, you stumbled on it with Salamay.
It's probably Chalamay and Leo.
Even though the ages are a little different.
Apart, you know, like Leo's 50 now.
But Leo was here and Salamay was here.
Now Chalamet is like very close.
And he is, of course, playing the Leo playbook.
Like he asked him for advice.
Leo gave him the advice.
No superhero shit, no drugs, all that stuff.
You know, that was the advice that he gave him.
Did Chalome actually say that on the record?
I think he did, right?
I think it was like no drugs,
no capes.
No, anything like that.
Don't have something called the pussy posse.
Maybe don't call it like anything like that, but do it.
Just be like my group of friends, you know, me and my buddies.
Leo's like, there's these rich guys that will just fly you on their jets.
Just make friends with as many of them as possible, and then you don't have to pay for anything.
Jets and yachts.
That's where this is.
Tom Brady's like, Yeah, that's in jets and yachts.
Um,
best con movies ever.
I don't know if this is the best, but it has to be mentioned.
It's almost like when we talk about best actresses ever, and it's like, you got to mention Meryl Streep.
Is it the first?
I don't know.
I think it might be the first.
There are,
I think they're obviously the con man is like a staple of crime literature and like fiction from before this, but like this is super, this is definitely popularized, the con man as something in popular culture.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but what I watched an interview with Redford where he talked about the movie and he said that when he read the script, he was like, there has never been a movie in this world before.
Wow.
And that's unusual, you know, like it's really hard to tap into a new unseen space.
And I love con man movies.
I've talked about them over the years, how much I love them.
House of Games, like one of my favorite movies of all time.
But I couldn't think of something specifically set amongst these kinds of guys before this movie.
You know, who's in House of Games?
I wanted to be a nurse.
Who were these people?
Lindsay Krauss.
Yeah.
I can't believe Lindsey Krauss and Robert Shaw are like, we don't have to say what we're imitating.
Quietly unbelievable IMDB for her.
Oh, yeah.
She's amazing.
She's even now the president's been.
Yeah, she is.
Hey, you used to go off with the guy who had the list of creep people.
And then they kind of bullied her into giving her the list.
Are we
not re-presidenting?
So I watched it this weekend and my wife was furious.
Why?
Why?
Because she's like, really?
Again?
Did you know that they put it in theaters?
That it's like in theaters this weekend?
And it was not related to Redford's passing.
It was just that it was, I guess, it's an anniversary is it the it's like the 50 year anniversary of the movie can't be i don't it's back in movie theaters in theaters i think this weekend too or by by the time people hear this maybe it won't be um
the movie's still banging i'm ready to be president criterion the the channel which you you did something for with all men they're they're really they found their stride in 2025 yeah they had 70s like thrillers
whatever and they had like nine of them including all the president's men it's a pretty simple it looks good yeah and there's always like one or two where I'm like, oh, I've never
1979.
I don't even know what that is.
That's Winter Kills, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is that about a president getting assassinated?
Yeah, it's like kind of a satire of those movies.
It's not as like hardcore as the Parallax View.
Could we talk them into Rewatchables movies we can't do because they don't exist month?
Like Eddie and the Cruisers, The Sure Thing, Kiss of Death with Nick Cage
because they're unavailable and irreconcilable differences, just unavailable.
Is Eddie and the Cruisers not on Tubi?
It's not available.
It played once on like Cinemax a couple months ago.
No, it was TCM.
TCM or actually AMC.
One of them, yeah.
And I taped it and was just like, hey, Eddie and the Cruisers literally is broadcast once a year.
But you guys were responsible for getting Pump Up the Volume back onto streaming mainstream.
You did the episodes.
And it was on Criterion 2.
That's what we're just trying to...
spread the word.
But
we've been complaining about Kiss of Death and some of these other ones for a while.
But CR and I have Eddie and the Cruisers recorded on cable.
Okay.
But if we did rewatchables, nobody would be able to see it.
When House and Jacko were here, we're going to be Revenge of the Nerds.
It's not available.
Is it not?
Nowhere.
I wonder if it's because some of the material in that has you think Revenge of the Nerds Anthony Edwards used he some of the used some of his ER movie he's like we're we're getting rid of this one
it's a goner uh best con movies the sting oceans 11 focus catch me if you can call her money house of games trading places
I would start with those seven There's a bunch more.
Yeah.
Like the grifters and like you keep going and going.
Yeah.
But I think that's in the vicinity and it usually involves a swerve.
I think what's interesting with the sting,
it's telling you what the chapters of
snow were the setup.
Like it's kind of walking through it, but in the most fun way possible because they have these amazing cards.
And it's one of many reasons why I won Best Picture.
It's just really well put together.
Such a good lingo movie, you know, incredible.
Constantly dropping little vocabulary words that make you understand that that what you're inside of, and you can never, like, I couldn't tell.
I was like, is this based on something that is real?
Were these real cons?
Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff when Twist is putting together the team of con men is actually drawn from like you know, books and stuff about that, but you don't get usual suspects without this, you know what I mean?
You don't get like the lingo and stuff like that.
So, that's technically a con movie.
So, there's basically two versions of a con movie.
I think Focus is the traditional con movie, and then usual suspects, ones that have a a swerve.
Yeah, right.
Like a crime thriller that has a con at the root of it.
Like Spanish prisoner.
A man that's like really, really, really into this.
So would you,
let me solo with CR for a second.
Go ahead.
By all means.
I know you'll have some thoughts.
Just let's, I'm going to let CR cook.
I am going to put something on the oven for CR.
I've spent so much time listening to just you guys talking about movies.
I feel very comfortable in this space.
If you could write a heist movie or a con movie, and it's like the one script you ever wrote and it it would actually get made and be really good.
What's more appealing to you?
Heist movie or con movie?
I think a heist movie.
Yeah, I'd say I knew that was going to be as honestly I don't think I'm smart enough to write a con movie.
Like sometimes when I watch these
you're not you're not nefarious enough.
Well it's it's just like I don't think that my brain works in five steps ahead.
logic, which all of these movies essentially like they rely on one person knowing like all the different permutations of someone's reaction to a situation.
And I think you can kind of undo the stitching on con movies pretty easily, but my brain doesn't work that way.
My brain works like,
we're not here for your money.
We're here for the bank's money.
Yo, money's in Sean.
I'm trying to be a hero.
Sean would be a con movie.
Undoubtedly.
It would be, and it would have multiple poker scenes.
Well, it's a nice little sprinkle on top that games of chance are often a part of conmen movies, but I also like
puzzles and I like mazes and I like magic.
Like, those are things that I'm actually that sounds maybe the dorkiest thing I've ever said, but I do like all three of those things sincerely.
You know, I'm just a man who likes a puzzle.
Is this a resume to
be in the prestige rewatchables?
I mean, I love the prestige.
That's like by far one of my favorite Nolan films.
It's a good one.
So, but those worlds are really fun.
And conmen movies kind of bring in all of those worlds.
Like, you get to sauce off.
I do, I do empathize, though, with what Chris is saying, which is you have to be extremely smart to be able to devise a good con, especially one that makes sense in a movie.
Like, it's one thing to con a guy out of money in real life, and you can read some of the books that this movie is based on, but to actually make it a coherent, plotted narrative experience, I think is pretty challenging.
It's why there's so few of these movies.
Do you think that
the nature of our digital life experience now has pretty much killed the possibility of a con movie?
Because there's so much conning going on.
Yeah, because the second you get set up, you could just start a Reddit thread and be like, has anyone ever had somebody come up and ask them for nuclear secrets?
And also, so much of like what we would consider conning or a con 30 or 40 years ago is now phishing emails or your Amazon delivery just needs your social security number.
Please call this like
well, what it was, you know, obviously the origins of cons is in confidence and confidence men, but I would argue that it is now about conspiracy.
Like that's really more than the realm of what the cons you find are.
Like, here's the Ethiopian prince who needs $10,000.
Please wire him this guy.
I had to keep telling a story.
Is it possible people are just smarter now, too?
It's hard for me to say that they are smarter right now.
Well,
no, because you have the experience of decades and decades of hearing stories about, you know, that's why like the bomber quippers thing is such a
information.
They have more access to information than they've ever had.
And I wouldn't necessarily say that makes people smarter.
I think it's the same exact premise, though.
Like confidence men lull people into a sense of security.
And we are definitely in a time where we're like constantly being lulled into a false sense of security.
And that's why people like give their money away or fall prey to really influential people or whatever is happening right now.
So I don't know.
I feel like it's all kind of the same.
Like everybody is usually the same.
They want to be feel safe.
The bomber story.
So we're taping this on the 22nd.
So who knows if there's like big revelations in the next week.
But the bomber story, if you feel like he actually didn't try to circumvent the calorie cap, it's basically a con story.
Yeah.
That's what Mark Cuban's been arguing.
He's like, these guys were con artists.
They defrauded all of these people.
They did all this.
We've seen like when, like with the Haktua girl, when she had her
pull the rug move, those are basically these short cons.
So the cons now are just kind of less fun and...
more aggressive versus like something like this where it's like, we're going to do a con.
I'm going to have 30 people in my fake racetrack parlor.
we're gonna call fake game like I don't know it's just more fun back then I think that the great thing about this sting is that it starts out as basically a pickpocket movie it starts out its creative germ is David War the guy who wrote it was it researching pickpockets for a different screenplay but Luther and Hooker's original kind of move is essentially a glorified pickpocket job yeah and then each step he takes Gondorf kind of shows him there's so many levels to this where you can have like a 20 guy team you can have fake storefronts you can have fake wiretaps and that's just that's what makes it so rewatchable is to just go down the rabbit hole with those guys i have a question for both of you guys about this how comfortable are you lying to people's faces because like my wife says this is a likely story she cannot lie like when she lies she's she gives her she has lots of tells i would say that's interesting you know and the big part of being a good con man is never breaking never revealing i feel like there's there's so many bad karma things that go with lying
it's like really aggressively lying i'm always in the back of my head thinking about that but i would have a lot of trouble just lying there's two distinctions though number one is like there's the version of lying that you lie when you're like what time did you get home last night or like why is this broken and you're like i have no idea and you have definitely no yeah then there is the version of the lying that these guys do which is more like theater and also crucially often directed at people who quote unquote deserve it.
Like I never took them, you know, what's Hooker is like all mad that he would be accused of taking up like taking off winos.
He's like, I've never robbed a wino.
Like I go after guys who deserve it.
You like the code of honor of con artists.
Yeah.
Why can you lie?
Well, you like playing poker where all you do is lie and I like that.
I like the way that Chris framed it, which is like in the theater of something, I think I feel comfortable in like the conversation about like who broke the toilet seat or whatever.
That's, you know, I'm not as comfortable with that.
Just wait till your kids get older.
There's a lot of lies that happen.
Yeah, Yeah, I'm starting to feel that already.
Yeah, I didn't leave the fridge open.
It's like you definitely did.
You're on camera.
Heard you at midnight go downstairs, and the fridge was open after you did it.
No, I didn't.
It's a lot of that.
I have no idea who ordered all these Christy Canyon films.
But that person was probably just curious about her work.
A man of taste.
Yeah, the Hotel Pour and Order pay-per-view.
What a great era that was.
I didn't order this.
$74.
What is this?
So this this thing is a triple con movie
there's a what's a triple con movie there's three cons happening simultaneously seleno the waitress who's actually the assassin hired to kill hooker
redford turning on newman but then he actually doesn't and then the feds breaking up the betting but they're actually not the feds so basically everyone in the movie is lying to somebody
and the hardest thing to pull off with the audience is that i have to be surprised at the end that they oh oh, it's like one of those.
Yes, Focus had a great thing with that with the uh, with the Super Bowl when they elaborate in the film, yeah, the Super Bowl and Will Smith and the best part of that movie, pick that jersey.
It's like just an awesome 20 minutes, and then he gets rid of Margot Robbie, but that's like by far the best part of the movie, yeah, yeah.
I mean, they're hard to do because
this movie, maybe because it's so old and also is set in a time even 50 years before that,
we don't, we're not as suspicious of every single decision that's being made.
Like we want to be on the emotional journey with the characters, so we're not doubting them.
The challenge of a confidence man movie now is like, you have to suspect everything that the person says is bullshit.
And a lot of like Matchlick Men kind of undercuts this by having a lead character who, you know, is struggling with something.
And so you're like,
it complicates our ability to trust them or not, but it's really hard to make a present day version of these kinds of movies.
I don't know whether this played this way in the early 70s, but one of the ingenious things about this film is that when you're watching it, it's like
they cast somebody as Seleno who you're like, maybe that's just a waitress.
You know, even now, even after seeing this movie dozens of times, I still forget.
Like when you first meet the waitress, you're just like, yeah, she just seems like a waitress working in a depression era diner.
You don't think that is the one lady hitman.
I have a lot of questions about her, though.
I feel like for unanswerables or picking nits, there's a lot to explore there.
Yes.
A loose waitress is what she was.
Man's knocking on her door at two in the morning.
He's just lonely.
Keep that door locked.
I'm lonely just like you.
She's working strategically, though.
Well, we don't know that when it happens.
We're like, wow, this is Redford.
I know he's handsome, but come on.
Paul Newman,
you've all heard of him.
In a slump since Butch Cassidy heading into this movie.
Yeah.
WUSA, Woosa, what's that movie?
It's a movie about a radio talk show host,
conservative radio talk show host that is eerily prescient about media, but the movie itself is not good.
Sometimes a great notion that didn't do well.
That's very underrated, in my opinion, just for the record.
We just did a Paul Newman episode like six months ago, and I rewatched every single movie ever made.
He directed that movie, and it's really good.
Adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel.
Pocket money.
Bad.
Judge Roy Bean, solid.
Yes.
Pretty good.
By the way, easily just, hey, Netflix, just make that a press dude show.
Just put a judge somewhere.
You have Frontier Justice being
Kyle Chandler.
We don't have to spend a lot of money.
Perfect.
Great.
Kyle Chandler is just going to kill some guys his own way.
And then The Macintosh Man.
Yeah, not as successful.
That's his second movie in a row with John Houston.
And he plays an Irish spy.
That's right.
Well, it gets worse because he turned down Dirty Harry because he thought it was too right-wing.
But recommended Eastwood, right?
Recommended Eastwood.
Would that have worked for you?
No.
I think it worked out great for everybody.
Yeah.
Too expensive for French Connection.
That's one where maybe you've shaved the salary.
He would have been in Popeyed Oil?
Yeah.
Huh.
Yeah.
Cut the salary on that one and just do French Connection.
So perfect.
Supposed to be in Paper Moon.
And did not work.
Did not work out.
Signed on.
The producers gave him top billing 500K and a profit percentage.
But Redford also got 500K.
I don't know if he got a profit percentage, but uh worked out pretty well for Newman.
This was the last of this 50s, 60s era Newman.
And then he starts in the mid-70s, he's moving towards slapshot
Verdict Newman.
That was going to be one of my takes was that this is the first installment in old Paul Newman, you know, where he's like, his hair is more gray, mustache, like it's a new era.
It's a compromise, though, I think, because the original version of the story is like he's supposed to be fat and old, and he's supposed to be like basically giving the keys to Hooker and is not in the movie very much apparently in the original script and then newman was like i'll do it but like i just due to my notes yeah i get a lot more minutes played on i get a lot more time on the court yeah and a lot more shots i mean just the poker scene alone it's worth it that paul newman like that it's like for his time not to mention the movie was a massive success but that nine minutes he's just cooking all-time cooking sorry i was taking a crap
it's an incredible line and then redford um which I guess we probably should have talked about him more at the top since it's Redford Month, but we have five movies to talk about it.
But he's in the middle of one of the best five-year runs of all time.
The candidate, Jeremiah Johnson, the way we were, this thing, Great Gatsby.
They re-released Butch Sundance, That Crush.
Great Wild of Pepper didn't do great.
Three Days of the Condor, all the President's Men, all in five years.
Unbelievable.
And unreal.
And by the time all the President's men, it happens, he's a producer on the film.
He's starting to get his tentacles out.
He's thinking about directing.
You know, I was going to ask you guys, both big william goldman readers and william goldman writes so well about star power yeah and the way that it emerges i don't know you would probably know better than me what the timeline is but these guys essentially are like i know that if i sign on this movie gets made this movie gets a really good runway a really good runway to success were people like that using their power in the 60s is this like kind of a new phenomenon in the 70s that goes along with new hollow
new phenomenon i actually think redford is in the running for maybe inventing it well i I think he, I think, like John Wayne could do this.
Like, John Wayne could say, but what John Wayne 80% of the time would be like, let's just get John Ford to do it.
You know, like he had his teams and stars have their teams and the people that they like to work with and Howard Hawks and George Q Corps and all these like well-known figures.
Redford in particular, this movie, I think, is the perfect movie to have that conversation about because,
and I'm sure you have this in the notes, but David Ward, who wrote the movie, and Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips, the producers, and Tony Bill, basically brought the movie to Redford and they were like, What do you think?
And David Ward said he was going to direct the movie, it was going to be his first film as a director.
And
Redford
was like, Nah, no, this movie's too complicated.
We need a real master craftsman to make this movie work.
And he went to George Roy Hill, who they just made butch casting a Sunday.
Our fucking guy, George Roy Hill.
Yeah.
And he used that power that you're talking about to basically decline on the movie.
And he says that George Roy Hill got his hands on the script.
My theory is that he passed this script to George Roy Hill.
It seems kind of likely.
And that George Roy Hill was like, hey, guys, I'm interested in this movie.
And then all of a sudden, the studio is like, oh my God, we could get George Roy Hill and Robert Redford together.
And they have Paul Newman's phone number.
Let's do that.
They have like great stories on the 4K of this has a great making of where
they have completely opposing memories of how the movie came together.
Like Newman's like, oh, they're at my apartment and they're twisting my arm.
And I'm like, guys, I don't know.
And then an elevator skips a floor.
And I'm like, all right, I'll do it.
And then Redford's like, I have no memory of an elevator.
It seems like Paul Newman wanted to do this movie.
And he's like, his mind is going, what can you do?
Yeah, well, this is, I mean, this was a real problem with Redford and Goldman, one of the many reasons they had such a
feud.
But Redmond, Redford came up with this whole alternate version of all the president's men in the early 2010s.
And basically, it was like Goldman wrote one script and I did everything.
And, um but i do think he had that side of him which i think it was a little prickly in some ways in hollywood because he would just be like somebody brought me this script we'll cut that guy out he's very cutthroat yeah yes
in a way that um i think more actors probably are now he he the thing is the kind of apology for it is he was so shrewd like he really had great taste and when he would take a movie like away from someone he was often putting it in the hands of another really good artist yeah so it's easy to kind of make allowances allowances for it because he just made so many good movies in a row over a 20-year period of time that he was kind of able to get away with being as intense with this stuff as you're saying.
I guess Beatty becomes this at a certain point, right?
Nicholson.
Beatty was way more transparent about it, though.
Yeah.
I think he really frustrated a lot of people and was famous on.
lollygagging around with scripts and being way more cutthroat overtly than Redford was.
I think Redford was way more Michael Corleonish.
Yeah.
Like, we got to get this guy out.
And it's like there's stories about Beatty taking like two years to say no to something.
And
he wanted to kind of lead everyone along on everything.
He, yeah, both of them had the same, not issue, but they always wanted to be the hero.
Redford was very, very calculated.
There, there was that famous story about him in the verdict where he was like, that guy's a loser.
We got to make him less of a loser.
And they're like, the guy is a loser.
That's how we're making the movie.
And he's like, well, I'm out.
Yeah.
Redford, I feel like both in front of the camera and behind the scenes throughout his entire career really really worked hard to burnish this vision of dignity, right?
That he was very
moral compass.
Yeah, exactly.
That there was something kind of moving him forward through the universe that was very powerful.
And that made him a great star, not always a great actor, because he didn't always play characters that you could empathize with.
He always just felt so heroic and magical and perfect.
And
that is probably why he's never been in my personal mega pantheon.
Like he's not a top five actor for me because he makes a similar kind of movie over a long period of time.
Top five choice actor, though.
Yeah, he made, I mean, he made great movies.
Yeah, I think that he's he's Cruz is more part of his lineage, you know.
Whereas I'm trying to think, I guess DiCaprio would be more out of like the Newman lineage of like, I'm really looking for provocative work to work with really interesting filmmakers.
I'll turn my trust over to them and have them depict me how they see fit.
I think Redford was like, if people are going to pay to come see a Robert Redford movie, Robert Redford needs to do these five things.
And it wasn't as
locked in as like Eastwood, but it was, it was pretty, you're right.
Like, I don't remember the names of a lot of Redford characters, but I remember the movies perfectly.
Well, he had a couple moves with the characters, right?
Because for a while, he's playing the 1970s versions of the cruise roles, right?
Like Downhill Racer is a cruise character.
You know, the candidate, you could have seen Cruise potentially in that.
It would have been a little bit of a push for him.
But Three Days of the Condor is a classic Cruz movie.
I think Cruz easily could have been Hooker.
Um, but then he also had that, uh, he arguably is Hooker in color of money, you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, well that, but that's, I think, the thing that Sean's hitting at that he there was a spot he wouldn't go to, even like he does Brew Baker.
It's basically Robert Redford.
It's the thing that I think separates Denzel from him is Denzel every once in a while will just fucking go for it with some
role where you're like, wow, Denzel.
You, I mean, he almost almost never did something morally reprehensible on screen you know no like it just literally not until he was in like a marvel movie i know like would redford have been in out of time would redford have been in flight would
right
yeah it's it i think that the candidate is interesting because that guy is like kind of an empty suit for the whole movie and then that that incredible conclusion where you're like you know what do we do now is is morally complicated, but he doesn't like kill a guy in cold blood.
You know, he doesn't like throw throw a woman down the stairs.
Like in the 70s, all these guys were making Pacino and De Niro.
They were playing these really complicated men.
And he was always like,
he was the spirit of America.
It was a changing America, but he was like a positive force in the world.
He wouldn't have played Neil Macaulay.
No.
He was Roy Hobbes.
He wasn't Neil Macaulay.
He did Rob Roy Hobbes in the hot rock.
Yeah.
He did Rob Banks one time.
One of my favorites of his.
Yeah.
He's really good in this movie.
It's the most,
It's the hardest he's worked, I think, in a movie from a charisma.
Look at my personality.
And I don't think after this movie, I don't remember him doing that again.
Like Waldo Pepper, I think, was a little charismatic, but not like this.
This guy is like, this is the most fun role in the movie.
And you wouldn't have normally, you would have expected Newman to have it.
I can't remember too many movies where he smiles this much.
I mean, this is a real, like,
it's hard to pick nits with this movie because it just looks like the people making it are having the time of their life.
And you parasocially are like, just want to hang out.
Like, if you guys wanted to do an hour-long version of those guys drinking schlitz and trying to figure out what con to run, I probably would have watched it.
Let's take a break and we'll talk about Robert Shaw.
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Robert Shaw, the third piece of this movie.
This is not just a Newman and Redford movie.
It needs Robert Shaw.
Robert Shaw is only 45 in this movie.
Unbelievable.
Are you older than Robert Shaw in this movie?
You're older than Robert Shaw in this movie.
Not quite.
I'm getting there.
I got more gray hair than he does, though.
Robert Shaw, 45.
He polishes his hair with the shoe shine.
Robert Shaw makes the sting.
Pelm 123, Jaws, Robin and Marion, Black Sunday in the Deep in five years, and then just dies in 1978 of basically natural causes.
He dies in 50 because his body was just like, we're done.
Can I take a half-assed internet research and put it up here?
Yeah.
After they finished filming this movie, apparently, oh, I had this in the Steven Segal Shitting Themselves award for George Roy Hill and Robert Shaw go to West Ireland to party and go on like a one-week pub crawl bender that ends with Robert Shaw in his underwear playing a guy in ping-pong screaming
one more game, you bastard.
And then he fucking died.
So Shaw was in that class of guys with Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed who just like absolutely drank themselves to death.
Yeah, just could not stop drinking.
And some of them, like Oliver Reed, made it to like 75 and was drinking shots with the gladiator cast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hill said he kind of like passed out after a day and a half and then woke up and heard Sean in his underwear screaming at some dude playing ping pong.
These guys are like, we did all the Jaws stuff about him daring Dreyfus and like basically like bullying him to climb up to the top of the boat.
And then they had to intervene and like, dude, we're not doing this.
Isn't it so funny, though?
Like, he's obviously a very decorated actor.
He's in a man for all seasons, right?
He's one of the great, great movie actors.
But the more
his like
life physically is getting out of control, the more exciting it is to watch him in a movie.
Yeah.
Like, the more of a mess he becomes, the more like it's just Quentin is intoxicating when he's on screen in that movie.
Same thing with this movie.
I mean, he's like kind of a one-dimensional bad guy in this movie.
He's just angry the whole movie.
Yeah.
But there's just something about him that you can't look away from.
Angry and gullible.
Yeah.
I didn't, I tried to do as much, uh,
as much Shaw research as possible.
Sadly, I couldn't find a lot more than the Jaws thing.
But one of the things was he, Sean Connery was like his natural rival.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
He hated Sean Connery and felt like they were, they were like basically bird and magic.
What was it?
Was it from Russia?
From Russia with Love.
Yeah.
They went up against each other.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was like the Scottish-Irish thing, but it was just like, that guy's in my way.
It's like one of those type things.
And he's like, just having 20 drinks a day.
I've never seen it from Russia with Love, where he's like, like, I'm basically your, like, he's pretending to be his like counterpart.
And it's like, this guy could have been Bond.
This is crazy.
I miss the days when a 45-year-old could look like him.
Yeah.
Like,
Sean McVeigh is like 45.
If you think about it in that context,
Robert Shaw looks like he's in his mid-60s in this movie.
Well, think of the, just the timbre of his voice.
It just sounds like he was born in 1740.
I've also tried to imagine Robert Shaw wearing joggers
and crushing tape and a warrior yeah so he dies in 1978 and let's just say there wasn't like a big police investigation on maybe what happened they're like yeah robert finally died um
just uh just getting after it supporting cast eileen brennan ray walston charles derning and our guy jack keho we have another category for we'll get to later but uh robert earl jones is luther yeah father of james earl jones yeah who was like kind of
in a whole bunch of shit for a while, like 30s, 40s, 50s.
He's kind of playing the James Earl Jones part in this movie.
Yeah.
You know, you can see that they have a connection.
So we mentioned the title cards, and then
Scott Joplin's The Entertainer was adapted by your guy, Marv Hamlish.
What a year for Marv.
Marv had a huge year.
Incredible the way we were in this, multiple Oscars.
He's Barber's guy, right?
Like, he's always tinkling the ivory.
Among many other people's guy, yeah.
And then it was based apparently, apparently, maybe on this book in 1940, The Big Con, yeah, David S.
William, who then sued them, and David S.
Ward was still mad about it.
David S.
Ward, we have that category sometimes where I think you might be involved in the Wikipedia in this because there's a lot of
specific details, but very specific.
Like, although there was no way they plagiarized the book, they had to settle to get to avoid the publicity.
It was one of those wife won the Bel Air Force competition.
Yeah,
really?
Okay.
Very, very strange IMDb, though, because
eventually he writes major league, the program in Sleepless in Seattle.
Just becomes like,
he said he was inspired to write this thing while researching
pickpockets.
Is David Ward's fifth attached rewatchables?
I think it is.
We don't have a screenwriter rankings yet, but.
Well, and when you do the Malagro Beanfield War later on in Redford Month, there we go.
Yeah, we'll have six David Ward films.
This movie won seven Oscars, best picture and director, writing, editing score, costume design, production design, 10 nominations, had a top 10 song and it hits soundtrack.
This is one of the higher percentages Academy Awards-wise.
70%.
Yeah, seven out of 10 is pretty good.
There are a couple movies that have won 11 out of 12.
That's the are you good with this over American Graffiti and The Exorcist?
I'm not.
I'm not.
It's not better than either of those films, in my opinion.
And The Exorcist not winning is a goddamn nightmare.
Yeah.
One of my hottest takes is The Exorcist.
I knew we'd get into it at some point.
And I think we did this when we did The Exorcist.
We all like the sting.
I like the sting.
It's tough because, like, the sting for what it is is perfect.
But The Exorcist is a way more important movie.
How about the fact they came out on the same day?
Fucking hell.
I have a, I have remember when we had movies?
We're coming back.
We're doing great.
Movies are doing great.
We're doing great.
We're never going to have comedies anymore, but we're doing great.
Can I pitch one of my takes at you?
Yeah.
December 1973 at the movies.
Here are the films that were released.
Serpico, the French animated movie Fantastic Planet in the Criterion Collection.
The Wickerman, The Three Musketeers, The Last Detail, Papillon, Woody Allen's Sleeper, Omar Card, The Fellini movie.
Then on Christmas Day, Magnum Force, the Dirty Harry sequel, The Sting, and The Exorcist.
Is that the best month in movie history?
It's right.
It's right when movies probably mattered the most for entertainment.
What do you want for Christmas?
Let me go to the movies for nine hours.
That's insane.
And I mean, you know, the year itself is also amazing.
It's like, that's Paper Moon.
That's American Graffiti, as you said.
There's a ton of other great stuff.
But that month in particular is mind-blowing.
Best directing, George Royhill, wins.
He beats Lucas, Bergman, Friedkin, Bertolucci.
Some scalps that year, man.
Heavy hitters.
And then Redford, only nomination ever for acting, does not win.
This is crazy.
I didn't know this until I was reading about this thing.
I couldn't believe that.
I'll wait for my hottest take.
Okay.
Jack Lemmon wins for Save the Tiger.
How are we feeling about that one now?
I mean, this is part of the long domino history of makeup awards where, like, he probably should have won for the apartment or Days of Wine and Roses or something like that.
And because he didn't, Pacino doesn't win for Serpico, which is a sin.
He should have won for Serpico.
And then Pacino doesn't win until sent up a woman.
And then Joel and Bied beat Jokic that year.
Oh, no.
I'm sorry.
I'm getting a lot of money.
I mean, same problem.
Exact same problem.
Are you so you think Pacino over Nicholson for last detail?
It's okay for me to accept that because Nicholson wins for One Flover of the Cuckoo's Nest two years later.
Pacino for Serpico.
Come on.
Last detail is incredible.
I love both.
We have to do Pacino Month before Pacino dies.
I don't like that we
did Redford.
We needed a death to trigger Redford Month.
Two for the Money.
Looking for Richard.
Two for the Money is I'm Gambling Month.
We already had that one planned out.
I'm gambling.
I'm Gambling Month.
Brought to you by Evangelist.
What else is in Pacino month?
Well, there's a bunch of good ones left.
We have some Dog Dog Day Afternoon we haven't done yet.
We haven't done Scarface.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Wow.
There's some big ones left.
$5.5 million budget for this movie made $257.
That would be like $900 million now, right?
Yeah.
I think they said if you adjusted it, it's like the biggest non-IP movie probably ever.
Although there is a sequel.
We don't talk about the sequel.
Second biggest movie in 73, Exorcist was first.
Graffiti was third.
Redford at two, the top top five.
Our guy, Raj, Raj, Roger Rebert, four stars.
Bang.
Said one of the most stylish movies of the year.
Really enjoyed it.
You know who didn't enjoy it?
Pauline Kale.
We have fuck you, Raj, and now we have Settle Down Pauline.
She wrote, meant to be roguishly charming entertainment, and that's how most of the audience takes it.
But I found it visually claustrophobic and totally mechanical.
It keeps cranking on section after section, and it doesn't have a good spirit.
Cranking on, you say.
These plebs liked it, but not me.
Let me ask you a question.
I mean, this is why Pauline's stuff was so fun to read because half the time you're just like, come on.
Do you think you would be friends with Pauline?
He would definitely have tried to hire Pauline Caleb.
Well, that's for sure.
But would you, because you would have been like, God damn, didn't see this one coming.
You love when someone just curveballs you.
I mean, she probably had the most zags of any critic of all time.
Yeah, but she had her guys, too.
She had her people.
I would have absolutely tried to hire.
I would have been friends with her.
And there probably would have been multiple times where we didn't talk.
Yes.
Two grudge holders.
Yes.
Yeah.
Like she would have.
You would send Sean a note saying you can't let Pauline write this.
I need you to call Pauline and tell her she's fucking talking about it.
Tell Pauline about it.
Tell Pauline this is, we can't have this.
You running the New Yorker in 1973 would be amazing.
Yeah.
I would have been off for the Zags, but there's just some times where she was just, she just got, she just put her, put her shoes in the ground and just still editing Cy Hirsch.
Well, Wesley Zag son, I always loved the Wesley's.
At least he put some thought into them.
A Zag artist.
I mean, her pieces are amazing to read.
They're amazing.
It just seems like they're written from another planet.
Can you think of the best?
Visually claustrophobic is such like a weird.
How do you even come up with that?
Well, so I would say that it's a film where he was inspired by 1930s movies to not have a lot of extras in it.
And there are several scenes where it's like late at night.
There's only three people in this diner.
It's also because those movies were all made on soundstages and they chose to shoot this movie on soundstages.
And so it's a fake world.
Like you're in, you're in somebody's dream idea of a 1935 movie instead of what 1935 actually looked like.
Nothing is worn down.
Nothing feels real.
It's all this kind of like elevated production design.
So I get what she's saying, but I don't know.
The movie's pretty loose and fun.
Like it doesn't feel claustrophobic at all.
I just love that all her takes.
I think.
I go back and read them sometimes.
I really enjoy it.
She just is like, here are my thoughts.
Like, nobody does that anymore.
So, yeah, she would have driven me crazy.
I would, I would have been mad at her like three times, but ultimately, I would have loved having her in my life.
You think Pauline Kale would have liked one battle after another?
I know that she would have.
Oh, yeah.
That's nice.
You know that she would have.
Interesting.
You talked to her in a Ouija board.
There's so many things in it that are like the things that turn her on.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's do the most rewatchable scene.
The first con, the switch in the pants with Luther.
It's great stuff.
Guy comes up to you.
This isn't going to work, though.
and he's like 36 give me
give me all the money in your in your breast pocket yeah and i want to show you what i'm going to do with it
what are you what are you doing what are you doing
carry's cash still
i think i only have 10 bucks in my pocket i used to carry like 500 every day but i don't do that anymore i always had no less than 400 on me yeah i was just in boston for eight days i never used a dollar bill that's what i was gonna say aside from tipping people when's the last time you like when's the last time you handed someone 20 bucks to pay for something?
Yeah, you can't do the sting now because it would be like
stealing somebody's Wi-Fi.
Yeah, yeah.
Give me your social security number.
A Bitcoin Sting would suck.
That's my take.
Wasn't that what?
No, that's not what the Runner-Runner was about, right?
The Affleck thing.
Yeah, that one.
Yeah.
I don't recall.
I really like this scene.
It's a good way to kick the movie off.
Yep.
Fast forward about 35 minutes to Lana game pickpocketed on the train.
Newman showing off card tricks to Redford, the gin trick, which I know CR still obeys.
Every time I do that, Newman playing poker.
I think this whole 10 minutes is just, you just got to like make that one long giant scene.
Always drink gin with a mark kid.
They can't tell if you cut it.
Great stuff.
You want to, you're, so you're, you're skipping over
Hooker loses at roulette.
We can put it in.
It makes me mad because
I know that they're establishing that he's complete a loser and compulsive and but um i just don't think
you would bet the three thousand right away you can't be a good gambler and a bad gambler at the same time okay you're having a night out it's like i had this for nitpicks for later you're basically you're being 500 a hand like you're spreading it out you're not just
also good because it's like even though he's hit this big payday he it you might as well just light the money on fire he wouldn't he doesn't know what to do with it it needs to be a more significant victory than cash.
What about the scene when Hooker gives Snyder, Charles Derning, the counterfeit money?
I like that scene.
I actually don't have a lot of rewatchable scenes, but I do like both of those scenes.
Okay.
They're like world established.
Yeah, I was trying to scale it down for the rewatchable scenes.
I like both of those, though.
The poker, there's some nitpicks with the poker we can get into later, but I really enjoy this scene.
And Newman's hilarious and
so fun.
And somehow ends up with four Jacks.
Hilarious in this.
Give me the deck with the threes and nines.
We think it was all threes and nines.
I don't know enough about poker to even guess.
I don't even know how they could have arranged that.
And obviously, what did he have?
He had his jacks up his sleeve, I suppose,
for the big win.
Yeah, because he kept doing...
Yeah, he's up against his body.
Yep.
Somehow.
His comic acting in that scene is so great.
He's just like...
Looking behind us.
I'm trying to think how many stars ever are as good in that scene as he is.
Like, you really need to have the right amount of charisma.
You got to be kind of a scumbag, but I'm still rooting for you.
He doesn't get his ass kicked, which is important.
You know, he's pushing the line.
There's something.
There's not a lot of dudes.
Leo, Wolf of Wall Street, Leo is a little bit
sure.
There's something
interesting about Newman with that, because he was a functioning alcoholic for like 30 years.
And he would drink like 12 beers a day.
And the whole thing with dipping his face in the cold water.
And
he does it in three other movies.
Ruffilio does it in Task.
Does he really?
Yeah, that's that's a thing that he did every day because he drank every day.
And in that scene, he's playing drunk, but he spent his whole life pretending he wasn't drunk.
So there's like a really interesting dynamic going on there.
Do you think he's like, is he loaded during movies?
Like when you're watching him?
I assume not when he's filming, but I mean, the stories are legion of him just crushing every day.
And now he lives on in the the spirit of my mom.
Sorry.
Not sorry.
Hooker sells Lonigan on double crossing Newman.
It's like, whoa, in the dream.
Is this real?
Is this not real?
What's going on here?
The
fake blue note race that Shaw wins.
Really good stuff.
Yeah.
We're entering this whole other world in the movie.
Newman Redford have a good scene with the Revenges for Sucker scene.
So, why are you doing it?
Seems worthwhile, doesn't it?
I just like seeing them in a scene.
Seleno, the assistant, gets killed.
I think CR was a little sweet on Seleno.
Yeah, yeah.
Not a traditional,
not a traditional Hollywood beauty, but two of them were both lonely.
Blue plate special between us.
Well, she's been around.
Yeah.
Like, she could show you some things.
Sure.
Yeah.
She's got to silence her.
Her getting killed was a good.
Wait, what?
She's the assassin.
Yeah.
And then the final con,
really good stuff.
You're not going to stick around for your share.
Nah, I'd only blow it.
My favorite's the poker scene.
That's by most rewatchable.
The poker's pretty high up there.
I honestly have one.
My most rewatchable scene you did not mention, which is the first time Gondorf and Hooker meet.
And Gondorf's way hungover.
He's like, Luther said, I could learn from you.
I already know how to drink.
Like, every line is perfect.
The two of them jousting is perfect.
The obvious affection that they have for each other, but also like
you kind of can't decide whose movie this is going to be in that scene, yeah.
And you never really figure it out.
And uh, I love Newman in that scene.
That's that's
a great pick.
I would do the poker scene as well for obvious
poker reasons.
Yeah, what's the most 1973 thing about this movie?
It's a hard one because it's said in 1936 Chicago, but I still have an answer.
I have one thing.
So, this is a movie about the depression, but it seems like a charming throwback because we're enough time has passed that generationally
that it can seem fun.
Yeah.
Like, this would be if there was a movie in 2062 about right now, you'd be like, oh, there's some like, isn't that interesting?
Whereas like living here right now, we're like, we live in hell right now.
Is it a weird time to be alive?
But when enough time passes, what feels like the worst thing in the universe has a kind of charming thing.
Yeah, I thought you were going to mention Eddington there.
I mean,
part of the reason why I like that movie is because I've seen very few movies that are like, it's as bad as it seems.
You know what I mean?
I want to do a family rom-com about how much weirdly fun the first two months of COVID was because you just stuck with your wife and kids.
It was the most time I spent with my kids probably ever for the rest of my life.
And now I'm nostalgic for it.
But we were all fearing for death and we couldn't leave our house.
You were at the perfect time in your life though.
I was.
It was great.
Ask a parent who had like a four-year-old and a one-year-old what it was like to have kids then.
I didn't say it was rational.
Yeah.
Every part of COVID was horrible, but the one thing was like, ah, we were all kind of hanging out.
You're trying to get through it.
Really well.
You were like, right at the precipice of empty nest, right?
I was doing some seasonal cleaning of my house and came across like a bunch of the
what we thought were like suitable masks from really early COVID.
But it was just like, some woman made it on Etsy.
And it takes like,
like, it says, like, we'll get through this together, knit across the front.
Yeah.
Air just flying into it.
I had like a fucking Liverpool.
Like, what's the thing on survivor that they get?
Oh, the buffs.
Yeah, I had a Liverpool buff, and I was like, this will keep me safe from the novel coronavirus.
You've had COVID, what?
How many zones have you had?
I think I still have it.
You were talking to Newsome a lot back then.
That's right.
Me and Gav.
Gavin said, stay away from the beaches.
It can really spread there off the water.
How's your pod with Gav going?
Yeah.
Surprisingly, it hasn't been marked on spotify i don't know it's only available that's funny
i have for the most 1973 thing robert shawd not seeming like he's 65 years old because he's actually 45.
i just think that's a different air of actor yeah yeah you see all these dudes and you're like uh and then payphones oh um
how
it's like a nostalgic version of the payphone in these movies and now payphone i just see i notice payphones when i see them in movies now because they're so far removed from society.
There's some sort of payphone.
There is one in one battle after another, actually,
in a pivotal scene in the movie.
But yeah, I mean, when's the last time you saw one in the wild?
I can't even remember.
I've seen them in Philly, but they're like completely stripped for parts to the extent that there are any parts in there.
Did you write any payphones in a task when you were working on the episodes?
What's age the best?
What do you got, CR?
Well, let's see.
You know what?
Sean mentioned something about
like looking back romantically on the on the 1930s.
And I did feel like the thing that's maybe aged the best about this movie is that it inverts everything it's about.
So it's like a movie about the depression, but all these guys are dressed really snazzy and they're like in cool bars and there's money flying
cash.
Yeah.
This is a movie about like an incredibly anxious, tight situation and everybody is cool as shit.
Nobody's like, I haven't had a meal in eight days.
Yeah, nobody's like, man, I'm really sweating this.
What if we fuck up?
It's like, hey, kid, what's the worst that could happen?
He could kill you.
And it's like, that's what makes it work.
The stakes are so high, but the guys are so cool.
And you watch this and you're like, this is just everything from Oceans 11 is just drawn directly from this.
It's a great take.
Good morning.
I have great clothes in this movie.
The three-piece suits and fedoras.
Just really enjoyable.
Apparently, he started a little fashion trend in
the 73-74 range with the suits.
Would you ever do an episode of this show where we had to dress
like the costume from the movies?
We dressed like golfers for Tin Cup.
That was fun.
Yeah, I don't know if you did.
Well, we just were like wearing.
Okay.
I was just dressed the way I was dressed.
We just dressed like cows, basically.
I have
fixing races, counterfeit money,
cheating at poker.
These are all very much still.
All these things that just seemed like they were way easier to do once upon a time.
Yeah.
And now will be way harder.
It made me think, like,
you know, Jante Porter is probably watching this going, man, in 1936, I really could have been cooking.
He would have cooked back then.
You could just be, people would believe anything.
You just give them fake money.
They wouldn't look at it.
It is funny.
It's easier times.
Are you ever on like a group text about a game and you're watching it on cable?
So you're ahead by like a minute?
And so you can't like, because like yesterday I was on, I was watching the Eagles on cable, but Andy and Zach were watching on like YouTube TV.
And I kept being like, Holy shit, and they'd be like, We're not there yet.
But I was like, You could be like, No, not Jalen Hurts.
I just watched them die for a minute.
I thought you were going to bring up his name.
Yeah, that's non-contact.
You hate to see that.
I thought you were going to bring up how easy it was to identify Tony point shaving in blue chips.
You know, it's like that was 35 years ago, and it was like, we just watched the VHS tape, and it was very clear that he was doing it.
No, no, man, not Tony.
Redford running.
He spends a lot of time running in this.
He does.
He does.
Cruz form.
Yeah, Cruz.
I'm just going to do this later.
I'm happy to do it now.
Just best A-list acting runner.
Redford versus Cruz.
I think Redford has a real case.
Also, kind of underrated in the great athlete star.
So we talk about Reynolds and Cruz and all these guys who do a little bit of a skiing.
baseball.
I guess he doesn't appear in the legend of Bagger Vance, but that's a golf movie.
Somewhere Gilbert Arenas is like, Redford was a bucket.
Who's a better runner than Cruz?
Are they in the finals for sprinting?
Cruz versus Redford?
In the sprinting A-list finals?
Is there anybody else?
The question is whether or not Redford can go straight into tumbling the way Cruz does in the firm, you know, straight into like somersaults.
I mean,
the firm for 10 minutes, Cruz is sprinting.
Yes.
He sprints into an office, jumps out of a window, sprints, goes to that tram thing, sprints again.
Sprints to Arkansas, basically.
Yeah, I mean, I think he's still the goat.
He's the goat of running.
Here's another one.
What's it your best?
Pretending to be drunker than you are when you're gambling.
I know Sean's done this.
Have you?
I haven't.
It's not really my thing because I'm just not a big talker at the table.
Yeah, you gotta do it.
I don't talk a lot of shit.
Yeah.
How about characters named Horse Face Lee, Slim Miller, Suitcase Murphy, the Boone Kid, Daffy Burke, Limehouse Chappie?
I was wondering whether you would put this group up against the Goodfellas' nicknames.
They're really good.
Big Alabama, Crying Jonesy.
Big Alabama crucially from New Orleans, though.
Right.
And then we have...
Nothing on Nikki Two Times.
We also have a Leroy and a Luther and a hooker.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pickpocketing.
It's Age the Best.
Has Age the best?
Yeah.
I think it's an underutilized movie device at this point.
Maybe because it should almost be phone pocketing instead of wallets.
Pick up on South Street, Sam Fuller movie, incredible pickpocketing scene.
And then Linus from Oceans 11.
He's like an all-time pickpocketer.
Another 48 hours, really good pickpocketing scene.
Saving it for movies I like to hate watch month.
What's age the best?
Any train trip with stars where you feel like something might happen?
Oh, yeah.
The trading places corollary.
Love it.
It's like, oh, we're going to be in a train for a little while.
This would be good.
That's great.
You and Sal should do guess the lines, but like from LA to San Diego.
Yeah.
Shaw limps in this movie because he injured his leg playing handball that was the official explanation um and they just told him to use the limp for the character i think he just fell down a staircase after nine scotch what we know about robert shaw would you go with door a handball a handball accident or door b
yeah door b 38 drinks on a sunday night and fell down a flight of stairs i don't know uh what's aged the best not only uh schlitz in bottles
uh schlitz was the biggest beer uh in america in the 30s but also guys drinking beers because it's too early to start drinking in the morning so they'll have like a beer for both yeah right right that's what i do do you think that just everybody before like 1964 was housed the entire day i mean that's basically what bad man's about can we talk let's talk about drinking first but then they all died when they were like 51.
so okay this is my thing they got the most out of life though
I know you don't, you don't drink as much as you did when you were in your 20s and 30s, right?
Fair to say.
I know.
So not even close.
Fair to say.
Definitely not.
So neither do I.
And I know you don't either, right?
I mean, you've never been a huge, a tonnage drinker.
I still drink five days a week.
CR is in black tar heroin now.
It's cleaner.
What happens to your body where you get to a certain age and then they're like, if you cross the two drink thresholds, and they're like, no, I will make this really hard on you the next day in a way that you never ever understood it.
What is the because these guys who we're talking about, when I was growing up, I was like, well, this is what men do.
They have eight drinks and it's fine.
But then you learn a little bit more about life, and more or less, you die at 50 in your sleep when you drink this way.
Like, it's just not or playing handbags.
Yeah.
I think it's pretty simple.
The more you drink, the worse you sleep.
And the worse you sleep, the faster you die.
Okay.
I'll go with that because I definitely sleep much worse when I drink now as opposed to even 10 years.
Well, especially if you're having like two, three glasses of wine, just the sugar from that, if you're having a little later, like you know,
I mean, we were talking, I was, I saw a bunch of my uh bunch of buddies this summer for different reasons, including um
my old uh high school buddies.
And we would talk about how I would, we all of us would drink Jack and Cokes,
but then I would have like six Marlboro lights and I'd have eight Jack and Cokes, and then I would wonder why, like, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning.
Well, then I would clean out some Moroccans playing pointer pool.
Um, but I'd wake up at four in the morning morning with my like thinking i was gonna have a heart attack yeah like oh really that that that's gonna be pretty eight cokes yeah and eight cokes and cigarettes it is like a real confrontation with middle age though where you're like i had two and a half drinks and i've awoken at 4 a.m and i'm like sweating yeah whereas in the past that was like work i agree with you but i do think that there's something there is like a
environmental thing where it's like if you're very aware of what it's going to do and everybody's having conversations like this, like, off my sleep, my sleep.
Do you think any man before the Vietnam War talked about what kind of sleep they were getting?
No, that's a good point.
Not that I want to go back to that.
I'm just saying that, like, if you were just like, I have to suffer in silence, right?
I woke up three times to pee.
The Green's generation did not need to listen to the Huberman Lab podcast.
That was not important to them.
Robert Huberman apparently was a huge infrared sauna guy, though.
Yeah, that's what he was saying.
But Redford looks like a guy who's never had a drink in his life.
Yeah.
Newman, part of what's so interesting about him is is he was so so beautiful and always so fit, even though he was drinking a case of beer.
That's because he took pure sunlight
that's right.
Just, yeah, he swam in infested rivers.
I mean, strong constitution.
There's one other what's age the best, and I encourage people to go watch this on YouTube.
Liz Taylor presents the best picture for this thing.
Yeah, Liz Taylor,
I'm not saying she's the hottest woman of all time, but she just, just make sure you mention her from 58 to 70.
Mention her who.
Yeah, just
If the conversation's being had, just bring her up.
Okay.
But she looks 73?
She looks great.
Okay.
This is getting a little like your Sinatra type, but go ahead.
Sinatra was the coolest person who ever lived.
Yeah, definitely.
Right.
I won that argument.
Everyone says that.
Yeah, everyone says that.
For sure.
People are saying.
People are saying I won.
It wasn't an argument.
Liz Taylor still looks like Lights Out of 1973, goes up to do best picture.
The streaker had just happened.
Yes.
And she's frazzled by the streaker and trying to get through the things.
And she stops at one point and she's like,
I'm sorry.
I'm still a little whatever.
And then gets through it.
The sting wins.
And
then one of them is like, I can't believe, oh, Julia Phillips.
I can't believe I'm up here with Liz Taylor.
And you hear Liz Taylor like happily laughing.
It's just like, it's very Hollywoody.
Everything about the Oscars back then, it wasn't as polished as now.
And it's just like, eh, everybody's just going, they're probably all bombed before they get there.
They're not worried about like the red carpet being interviewed by somebody.
Yeah, in 73, Liz Taylor, I think at that point, had been married to Richard Burton, the other world-class drinker, the Welsh Titan of the Sports.
All the dudes happened back then.
So then, Pacino, who was nominated for best actor, he had a whole story about he didn't realize the
category was televised and he was like zonked out and drunk.
He took a Gazan exercise
and thought it was an hour-long show, and it was three hours.
So by the third hour he had the pee.
He didn't know whether he could get up.
How does Al Pacino not know how long the Oscars are in 1974?
I don't know.
There have been two godfather movies that he is the Starbucks.
He's nominated.
They're on value.
You're just like, I guess.
He was saying he hoped they didn't win because he thought he was like incoherent.
When he like he was treating the Oscars like it was a Starbucks drive-through.
He's like, I'm going to wrap this up in like 20 minutes.
We'll be back out on the road.
You've been to the Oscars like five times.
This sounds like the best Oscars you could have gone to.
It sounds like it was the craziest.
The streaker was fun.
Where does David Niven rank in your all-time hosts?
Because he was the host and he was the one who had that low crack about the shortcomings with the streaker.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have him low.
Low.
Because he was British.
Yeah.
David, I think, put close some bars with Robert Shaw.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
We'll take one more break and then we'll do the mini categories.
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okay
big hoonaburger award for best used food and drink the fake gen
who beat that yeah i had the blue
learn something just oh what like have you guys ever had a blue
on it?
I don't know.
He should have had the meatloaf, but she was like, it wouldn't be much better.
That was my dad's podcast that we never gave him at the ringer.
That's right.
The blue plate special.
I was going to call it.
Great shot go toward my cinematic shot.
What do you have?
I actually went off book here and did Wonderful Edit Willie for William Reynolds, Hollywood editor, who did sound and music.
CR Zagging like Pauline Kale.
Father, just the use of wipes, you know, makes the movie kind of feel like softer than it probably would have been.
It's very gritty
content, but it's like a very beautiful, like great edit Willie.
Yeah, that's
wonderful edit, Willie.
Wonderful Edit Willie.
Yeah.
He uses the Iris transition as well, right?
Where the screen shrinks down.
Good one.
Kid Cutty Pursuit of Happiness Award.
It's got to be the entertainer.
Yeah.
Yes.
Chess Rockwell, Brock Landers Award, best character name.
I mean, I mentioned 30 of them.
Johnny Hooker is really solid, though.
Henry Gondorf.
I feel like you hear that name and I can see Newman in my head right away.
I do think if you you were going to close your eyes and think of an Irish mobster, Dale Lonigan is like as close as you could get.
Pretty good.
What do you have for a flex category?
I had Dennethieves, Benny Hanna, War for Scene Stealing Location is the Carousel Whorehouse.
Just you love a good whorehouse in a movie.
Now, is the idea there that you get a ride on the ride?
Like, what's the, is there like some cross promo?
Yeah.
But I also just really love the idea that it was like, the girls aren't busy tonight.
Can they ride the carousel?
Can you imagine just going downstairs seeing a bunch of hookers?
On you really got to like wipe down those horses on the carousel.
I don't think in the 1930s they were working on.
They didn't have like disinfectant that they were transmission that way.
Okay, got it.
There's parts of the 1930s that just sounded great.
Yeah.
90% of people having to clap.
Syphilitic whorehouses.
Yes.
That part, maybe?
Yeah.
Drinking 16 schlitzes.
Yeah, those schlitz in the bottle look.
I'd love to take half a million dollars off of an Irish gangster.
Yeah, that sounds really fun.
Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film.
I have one.
Yeah, I have one too.
So there's like a
it's hard to explain this, but there is a subplot of two other hitmen pursuing Hooker.
It's Cole and Sullivan.
Yeah.
And they're supposed to be taken off the job by Lonigan, who puts Seleno on the job, but they stay on it.
And it just gets confusing and kind of, it's really a hat on a hat.
It's unnecessary to have yet another
team of hitmen chasing him.
And it just really creates more running for Redford.
So on 30th rewatch, I was like, I could do without Colton Sullivan.
It doesn't really do anything for the movie.
Do you have anything?
I don't really think any of the performances are bad.
Do you have somebody that you want to point to that doesn't really work?
If you say Eileen Brennan, I'm walking out.
No, I liked her.
I did have the question, how is there not a 1936 babe in this movie?
What are we doing?
Yeah, well, you said
the striptease dating at the beginning of the film yeah so just some of the people we had in the 73 range we had young jane alexander we julie christie sitting there for one scene yeah we dying lad we tuesday weld
like we had we had the we had the troops we could have pulled something off george white hill was not interested he's like this is a guys movie i want everybody to look like 1936 people and that's it it would be unlikely i guess at the time for a woman to be a more elaborate part of the con, but that's where you want to see.
Yeah.
You know, you want a woman who would kind of ensnare Doyle.
Maybe Lonigan has a girlfriend that Hooker's going after.
Yeah.
Mistress.
Sure.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
Until you get Christy Canyon, you know?
That's right.
Well, maybe
what's Newman's character's name?
Gandalf?
Gondorf.
Gondorf.
Gondorf.
Gandalf.
Gandalf the Gray.
James Gandalf, Andy.
He's an incredible wizard.
Yeah.
And maybe he goes and he's going to get food by himself and he sees somebody who works in a bookstore.
yeah yeah does one of those it's like why are you so interested in what i do lady that's right you just have one of those scenes catherine ross a little reunion from
voices what's age the worst
the sequel you mentioned it earlier it's really awful mac davis is in it jackie gleason the one thing is jackie gleason is perfect for gondorf as he is written in the script yeah aging heavy set
really insinuating and knowing
i'm just i'm just saying like you could have seen a world where this movie was Gleason and Redford, and that would have been coherent.
It would have been a different kind of a movie, but it would have been coherent.
80s HBO and 80s cable, the Sting and The Sting 2 were on a lot, and The Sting 2 is really bad.
And it was on for a while, for a couple of years, unfortunately.
A few racial slurs in this movie, not awesome.
It's slow
in an endearing 70s way, but it is a little slow.
It's shaggy.
Yeah.
Like, for, but I don't know if my son Ben Simmons is making it two plus hours.
After the blue note scene, it kind of takes its time.
Well, because it's like they insist on doing another bet before the sting.
Yeah.
Where he's got to get like more information.
A long time.
Yeah.
There's a lot of Ray Walston helping him set up the situation.
And
who's the other guy?
Twist?
Twist, yes.
Twist.
Kid Twist.
This is what it said in Wikipedia about.
the author of the big cons selling them and settling out of court for 600k.
This is just the Wikipedia excerpt.
Universal settled out of court for 600,000.
Irking Ward, who resented the presumption of guilt implied by an out-of-court settlement done for business expediency.
I didn't know that there was a whole lot of
industry of people who kind of trail behind big scripts to make these plagiarism accusations.
We just saw this, right?
With the Dave Franco Allison Bree movie together, there was a big suit about the plot of that movie being lifted from another writer.
I wanted to sue for to get my 100 minutes back the movie fucking sucked listen wasn't a big fan either I didn't sue when I didn't sue when they stole the purge from me they literally stole the purge yeah I created the purge me purge you you filing an injunction against blum wilds and I have baked half-baked ideas I did the whole idea about leap year interesting what you could claim you know I diaries I said on leap year there are no rules no crimes it's one day I did a whole thing about it and they and then the purge happened don't you Grillo?
I could ask you about it.
No, I did, you know.
No bad ideas in a brainstorm.
But yeah, you're right.
This is a cottage industry.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I mean, if you want to shift the sort of business strategy of the ringer full stop to you
guys who had ideas that you had a story.
You watched the idea of leapier and you watched the purge.
I'm just saying.
I'm just saying.
They also apparently plagiarized some 1958 Maverick television series episode with james garner oh there was some stuff there was also another great con man inspired by a orson wells radio play the three lives of harry lime there's a there's some similarities apparently in the story it's a con movie uh over acting word
redford dialing up like two or three times here and uncharacteristically
for redford wave
well that's his thing though right
yeah but even before he even before he's doing the con, you know, like in the bar with Charles Derning, he's, he's, he's laying it on.
Oh, yeah.
He's like he enrolled in detective school.
Yeah.
I got Lonigan being like, the name's Lonakan.
Don't you forget it.
I did you think CR would be talking like Robert Shaw this whole week?
I was hoping this whole podcast.
I'm just not doing Irish Mob Month now.
What else would be in the mix?
State of Grace.
Similar and Bruges.
Yeah.
And Bruges.
Yeah.
Got a fourth one.
No, not off the top of my head.
Do you?
I guess the Irishman.
Yeah, sure.
That works.
It does work.
You have a flex category.
I'm going to call my own number and do a criteriorgasm.
You know, I had it, just in case you didn't do it, I had it for later, but let's do it.
So the rigged black 22 on the roulette wheel, where Hooker loses in that scene early in the movie, is the same spot that Rick Blaine uses for both Captain Renault and the Bulgarian couple to set them up to win in Casablanca.
A very purposeful homage to Casablanca.
Wow.
Look at Terry Orgasm.
Yeah.
The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford's hottest take award.
I have one.
I have one as well.
I kind of tipped my hand with the this is an all-time classic, but it should not have won Best Picture.
Yeah, okay.
I don't even think that's that hot of a take.
I wonder if
this movie is less re-watchable.
I shouldn't say I wonder.
It's a hottest take.
This movie would be less re-watchable, but more interesting if Gondorf betrayed Hooker or vice versa.
There was some actual real tension, and it wasn't all like
play acting.
I think it's great success is because of the spirited vibe you walk out of the movie.
It's happy and you're like, yeah.
But I did it.
I think
this is not my hottest take, but it is something that I felt watching it.
I think this movie is best seen every 10 years because you made this point earlier.
If you forget a few of the plot moments, it's more fun.
If If you forget that the FBI is fake, yes, because if you know the FBI is fake, you're kind of like, all right, like, or if you forget Seleno, I just forgot Seleno.
Yeah, I just had forgotten.
I forgot, I hadn't seen it in nine or ten years.
I remember that there was an alleyway shooting, like where Redford thinks somebody is walking towards him, and then they get killed, but I couldn't remember.
There's somebody who's every 10 years club, yeah, visual suspects.
Another good example: the more details you forget, the more fun it is to revisit.
My hottest take is: even though it's his only nomination, this wouldn't make my top 10 performances for Redford.
And I think he's better in many other movies.
And it's weird that he was never acknowledged as a great actor because he's so great in a lot of movies.
Can you think of the example of the, I can't believe he wasn't nominated?
Three Days in the Condor to me is one where it's like, that's a really tough performance.
And he's like, he's a guy.
He's like a, if you compare what he does versus Beatty in the Parallax view, Beatty is like incoherent.
That's a super cool movie.
But the performance that Newman gives is or that Redford gives is so interesting in that movie.
Plus, he's, you know, he's iconic in the natural, stuff like that.
That, like, how did he not get recognized for those kinds of movies?
And I love him in this, and I think he's really fun.
I just think he's a little too old, and Newman is a little too young.
And so, him being like the kids, he's supposed to be 19, and Newman's supposed to be in his that's the whole Redford did that for most of his career, always playing somebody he was 10 years old to play,
you know.
Rewatching all the presidents,
he's fucking amazing in that movie.
He's another one he would have been great for.
So, but unfortunately, that was like the most loaded.
I guess he probably could have took Giancarlo Giannini's spot.
Yeah.
Was that for Seven Beauties?
I just thought he was so good in that movie.
That one long scene when he calls,
he calls
Kenneth Gaul, whatever.
He's doing the little but then the other guy calls, and then he has to put the guy on hold, and it's just all one shot, and it's like seven minutes.
Is that I have a wife and a child, and a dog and a cat?
Yeah, yeah, he's fucking crushing it.
One nomination is weird.
It's a tough one, though, because, like, we do this with sports sometimes when somebody only wins however many MVPs, and we're like, how did that happen?
Like, Kobe, they do this with Kobe, and it's like, well, go through.
Yeah.
Because there's probably one more he should have won, but other than that.
I mean, Enbi'd, how did he only win one?
Yeah, I don't know.
My hottest take.
So there's a setup for this.
There's a story about Newman and Redford drove Porsche's and love them.
They're both big car guys, and they became like lifelong friends.
Like they loved each other.
They actually
looked for a third movie forever, never found it.
At one point, they lived like a mile from each other in Connecticut, and they were like legitimate boys.
And one day, Newman stole Redford's Porsche on the set and hid the car and made Redford think someone stole it.
And then it was revealed that, no, no, here it is.
Aha, big laugh.
He also had all these pranks with George Roy Hill that went back and forth and led to him sawing George Roy Hill's desk in half.
And then he basically won the pranks.
Did Clooney get all his prank shit from these guys?
This is my hottest take.
Where did we go wrong where pranks stopped being cool and just became fucking weird?
Because in the 70s, everyone had a great time with pranks.
But it would be workplace harassment.
And now it feels like, yeah, it's workplace harassment or somebody trying too hard.
As you know, my active favorite current meme by far is utter woke nonsense.
And I share that meme as often as I can.
Being anti-prank is utter woke nonsense in my mind.
It's like if CR snuck in your house and stole all of your Blu-rays.
Yeah.
That would take a long time.
Right.
He
stole like whatever he thought your favorite thing.
All my grails, yeah.
And you just lost your mind.
And then it was like.
No, I actually have them.
You'd be like, you fucking psycho.
Why'd you do that?
Something shifted with pranks.
I would call the police and tell them that I was robbed.
I don't know whether the internet changed the tenor of pranks
or was Ashton Kutcher's punked when he made Justin Timberlake cry that time.
That's great.
Yeah.
But it was somewhere between punked and now, pranks stop being cool.
You're not a big prank guy.
I don't know.
I think that would be the level of like I would have a hard time lying, like doing, pulling off a prank.
But I do find it interesting, the idea of like, I think we're all just worried about like, if I just saw the desk in half at Spotify, would I just immediately like not have access to Slack?
You know, like,
just saw Jeff Chow's desk in half.
Like, what is, what happened to Sarah?
I was playing a prank.
Cast and what ifs.
Jack Nicholson offered the lead world, turned it down.
His quote afterwards was, I had enough business acumen to know this thing was going to be a huge hit, but Chinatown and the last detail were more interesting films to me.
Just sucking up to show.
It all worked out.
It's hard to argue at that point.
I do think he would have crushed this movie.
It's the kind of movie I wish he had made in the 70s or 80s that he just didn't.
He just has so much native charm.
He would have been great.
Sterling Hayden turned down the roll of Doyle, didn't want to shave his beard off.
Richard Boone.
Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone also dropped that.
We were going like, yeah, deep, deep back.
Best that guy award.
It's got to be Jack Kehoe.
I think we're probably the only three people who know he's Jack Kehoe, right?
Yeah, the only other candidate I had was Charles Dierkop, who's Lonigan's bodyguard, Floyd.
Oh, the guy who never talks?
Yeah, I have him in a later candidate.
The guy with the squished nose.
I love that guy.
That guy's great.
He's in Butch Cassidy.
That's great.
And the guy who's like on the putting green with him.
He's like, if this guy sees me.
Yes.
So Jack Keogh is that guy from Midnight Run to me.
Yeah.
And I got to say, I didn't officially know his name until I researched this.
So
maybe I better go get some donuts.
The only other guy is Harold Gould as kid Twist, who was the guy from the Golden Girls to me.
Oh, yeah.
He was on, he was on, and he was he on Maude.
He was on another show show in the 70s as well, but I knew him as a guy from Golden Girls.
Better go get us some donuts.
Deion Waiter's award.
That's great news, Jack.
Lonigan's henchman, we'd mention him.
Luther,
basically two scenes.
Selena, the assassin.
Eileen Brandon's eligible, and I really like her in this movie.
She's crazy.
You don't think she's in too much of it?
Maybe, maybe she is.
So the answer is probably the henchman.
Who doesn't, I don't think, have a speaking line.
I I wanted to put up Dana Elkar as the FBI agent.
Oh, yeah.
Hulk.
I feel like he's really good.
Because when you first meet him, you totally buy him as the movie is really good at selling you on the FBI's thing.
Where it's like, of course, the FBI would be set up in this like abandoned warehouse.
That's just what the FBI does.
But then, in fact, you see that it's actually easier to set up a false and Gondor says in the beginning, like, the feds are on to me and all that stuff.
Yeah.
I think my vote goes to the henchman.
Okay.
Because he does, he has no role and no lines and somehow stands out even when he's behind Newman in the poker scene.
And he's just got that look on his face.
It's just, I think it's really hard to stand out with no lines.
Recasting Couch Director City.
Can I offer you Jane Alexander as Seleno the assassin?
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
Just a few years before all the presidents been.
Yeah.
Half-fast certain research.
Hill really wanted this to feel like the 1930s, watched a bunch of gangster films and realized none of them had extras.
And that's why this movie, it's the street scene Paul.
So it thought it was claustrophobic, yeah.
Yeah, um, which I thought was really interesting because this movie really didn't need extras, but now if they made it, it'd be like gangs in New York, there's just like people everywhere.
Yeah, that is interesting.
I mean, I, it never really bothered me, it never occurred to me, why is this not bustling Chicago the way I'd hoped?
It just feels manufactured on purpose, yes, yeah.
The lot of the cars in this movie were uh real period cars, and Tony Bill got a lot of them, right?
The producer found some of them.
Um,
Snyder rejects Billy's drink by pouring it on her hand, and it was an accident.
And they improvved it, and Eileen Brennan was annoyed.
There you go.
The movies filmed in the diner is the same diner that they used for Back to the Future when Marty McFly meets his father and calls Doc Brown because it's right on that universal lot, which I don't know if you've ever been to.
I have.
It's pretty cool.
It's a great tour.
And then
Redford had a broken right thumb from a skiing accident and was supposed to be in a cast, but didn't have one and is using a lot of stuff that isn't with his right thumb during the movie.
Wow, the downhill racer returns.
Yeah.
This is what Robert Shaw said about Newman.
They all recognized Newman, to be sure.
Everyone would come up and kind of swoon over him, but they didn't in Redford's case, not at all.
Do you think he's just fucking with Redford?
That's a weird skill.
Obviously, didn't like Redford.
Marv Hamlish, three Oscars that year.
And he's like, I'm going to dominate the next 30 years.
Who could possibly come in and take my spot?
And John Williams was like, here I come.
So Marv's Oscar for this movie is a weird one because it's best scoring adapted.
Yeah, which is adapting Scott Joplin's music.
Yeah, which is not something that exists anymore.
And you don't hear about that.
In fact, if you're adapting previously used music, you are ineligible for the best score Oscars.
He's like, what if it goes?
yeah, Marv, check that out.
I did like that tidbit that Ward said where he thought this was, should, should be like a 1930s Chicago Blues movie.
Yeah.
You know, he wanted it to be
growing up with like black friends, yeah.
And that, that George Roy Hill was like, actually, no, it's, it's ragtime music.
That's what we should be playing, even though it takes, you know, that music was popular 20 years before this movie takes place.
Julia Phillips, first woman to be nominated for and win the Academy Award as a producer for best picture.
She has a a great and wrote a book.
Yeah, and she has a great anecdote about if you don't, everybody negotiated the font or the thickness of their name in the credit except for the producers, and it wound up being like very, very thin.
Like, so it just seems like everybody else is more important than them.
And then she tried to snort the font.
Um,
Redford, God, he'd laugh out of the hound.
That one, yeah, you like that.
Uh,
Newman, uh,
Newman and Redford had one issue, according to Julia Phillips, because Redford was always late.
He was at least 40 minutes to an hour late every day on the set, which was apparently a Redford thing for his whole career.
And she said, one day Newman tore him apart for it.
Paul was the bigger star, and he said something like, What are you, a movie star?
Um, and then Redford started showing up just 20 minutes late instead of 40.
And, uh, what do you think Redford was doing?
Power move?
Julia said, uh,
it was a psychological flaw, a compulsion to not be on time comes with the mantle being a star.
I did a film with Steve McQueen, same thing.
Yeah,
power move.
Yeah, you like it.
Maybe I'll pick it up going forward.
Sean shows up at four o'clock for our rewatch book.
Sorry, we just finished chapping.
I'm here now.
Apex Mountain, Newman.
No, no,
I don't know what it was, but it wasn't this
cool hand loop.
It's somewhere in the 60s and 60s.
Yeah, 60s.
Redford, I think, yes.
Because this sets up.
And then this 70s run.
Probably.
This wrapped up 72, 73.
I think this is like the specific moment where he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.
He's like, I call the shots on what I get.
What I make.
Who I want, I'll get the first call.
Yep.
Way we were and this movie, same year.
They're both two of the 10 biggest movies of the year, and he's nominated for an Academy Award.
This would be a good championship belt to figure out is first call
who had the first call championship belt redford is now after this thing first call for like i would say three four do you think diaprio is still first call or is he first call for a certain kind of movie no i think he's held the belt for for 25 years i think chalame is first call now i don't i don't think so i don't timed
there's no proof that he can open a movie by himself yeah leo's in his 50s now he's 50 and we're now getting like a real tough test of whether or not he still can but killers of the Flower Moon, which is like four hours long, made over $150 million worldwide.
Like, that's cool.
And everybody knew it was going to be on streaming.
Yes.
So you think Leo is still first call?
I do.
I think the Heat 2 thing is remarkable because I think it was just like this movie literally can't happen unless he does it, if he's doing it.
And it's been true since Titanic that he's had that belt.
So that's almost, what is that, 28 years?
That's how Blood Diamond got.
You don't think Brad Pitt ever.
That's how Body of Lies got made.
You don't think Brad Pitt ever grabbed it for a split second?
Not really.
I mean, Brad F1 is Brad Pitt's biggest movie of all time.
So Leo's had it since Brad Pitt makes a lot of 90-year movies.
Yeah.
Maybe it wouldn't be a good podcast.
Well, it's probably more fun than the 70s, 80s.
The 70s and 80s, I think, is a lot of fun because you've got Schwarzenegger and Stallone, and you've got those battles.
You got Bruce Willis.
Cruz is in there for a lot of fee.
You know, you've got so many people.
But I think Leo has so thoroughly dominated because he's also been able to play anywhere from 20 to 50 in that time.
And he was ascendant right when Cruise became all I do is Mission Impossible and like weird.
Harrison Fort got it after Witness.
I think in 84 he had it and then Coster came on his corner a little bit.
But yeah.
Hanks probably has it for a minute.
Oh, no question.
The 93 to 90, he kind of took it from Kenya.
Kenzell, I think, still does to some extent have it or have
had it.
You ever shaking your head?
Well, I don't know if he ever completely had it.
But he did have the thing where you had a lot of scripts that were written for white guys,
and then they would, then either Denzel got his hands on it, or some agent was like, What if it was Denzel?
And then they would have to refashion the entire movie around him, which is a really specific kind of power, but not the same as Alonzo originally white.
Yeah,
it was originally their flipped roles.
It was going to be Ethan Hawk.
Oh, that was Eddie Murphy with Beverly Hills Cop.
Yeah, it was written first of the line.
Well, anyway, Redford, I think, grabbed first call.
Is it also Apex Mountain for George Roy Hill?
I think it is because he wins best director.
Now he has this and Butch.
He can do whatever the fuck he wants after that.
He has Waldo Pepper after this?
Yeah.
Scott Joplin?
Yeah, probably.
I don't think a lot of people knew ragtime music before this.
Not a ton of people.
And Marvelous Marv Hamlish?
Yeah, definitely.
Probably.
Definitely.
Eileen Brennan.
I always say Clue.
I love her and Clue.
She's amazing in Last Picture Show.
It's weird.
I would say Private Benjamin.
Great in that, too.
Because she was nominated for that.
I think she might have been.
I think she was nominated for awesome.
She might be right, Benjamin.
I guess that would probably be it.
She really just walks up and down a hallway in this thing.
She's incredible, but she doesn't.
She just has great presence.
She's a good screen star.
It's also awesome every time she leaves a room, Newman like stares at the door for like a beep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's his soulmate.
Yeah.
She has a very 1930s kind of face and look, too.
She's a good fit for
the madam in 1930.
1930s Chicago movies.
More than Untouchables, right?
The public enemy, probably.
I would say Untouchables.
Yeah.
How about Madams with a Heart of Gold?
That was Julian.
Pull your list out of your pocket.
Who's on there?
Madams with a heart of gold, my unmade Christy Kenny
miniseries.
So here was an Apex Mountain Schlitz in the 1930s was apparently by far the biggest beer in the world.
Did it have a, I wonder if it had a 70s pop after this, though.
Might have.
Yeah.
I remember
there were a lot of Schlitz commercials in the 70s for sports.
It was like the last hurrah, especially for Bruins games.
Schlitz is still, they still make Schlitz.
Yeah.
Yeah, they do.
Why don't we?
I mean, by the time I was in college, Schlitz was like, we only have 10 bucks.
Let's get a case of Schlitz.
Let's get a case of Schlitch.
I feel like Schmitz Gay, the SNL
kind of like torpedoed Schlitz a little bit.
It probably did.
Robert Shaw, no.
Con movies.
I think, yeah, because
certainly the most successful one.
It's not the one that I would go to first to watch a con movie.
But it kind of created the shit.
It did.
It kind of invented.
Yeah.
And then, yeah, that's it.
Cruise or Hanks.
Cruise.
For which part?
For Hooker.
See, this is my answer.
It's Cruise and Hanks.
This would be the perfect Cruise and Hanks movie.
But using two timelines.
No, Hanks is Gandalf.
Hanks is Gondorf.
Hanks is Gandalf and Tom Cruise is Frodo.
And they have to return the ring to Mordor.
And Lonnigan is put in the volcano.
He's Sauron.
That's right.
See if Hanks is Newman and Cruz is Johnny Hooker.
And what year is this?
Like 1998?
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Late 90s.
Yeah, I think that's the answer.
Our first tie for Cruz and Hanks.
Hanks is older than Cruz in real life.
Yeah.
Yes.
I want to say Hanks is like 68.
Is he?
And Cruz is 60, right?
Is that right?
I thought Cruz was older.
I thought Cruz is older than 60.
Let's look it up.
Cruz is
at least 60.
Hanks was doing...
Tom Cruise is 63.
Hanks is at least 67, 68.
See his bosom buddies in like 1980.
Tom Hanks is 69.
Yeah.
Wow.
So they're actually, I mean, I think Newman and Redford were like 10 or 11 years apart.
So I thought that works.
Scorsese or Spielberg?
I have Scorsese for the grit and Spielberg for the like wonder of the movie.
Should they have made this movie together?
Co-director?
Another tie.
No, I think this is Scorsese.
Okay.
Yeah.
There's a lot more stabbing.
There's something very winning about the tone that George Roy Hill can hit.
I feel like only Spielberg knows that.
Spielberg, you know, he does movie magic when the movie's over here.
Although Spielberg did catch...
No, no, he didn't do Catch Me if it can.
He did.
Yeah, he did.
He did.
I think it would also be Spielberg, I think, would be Adept on the Universal Backlot.
Yes.
For sure.
Because he wants to be in Chicago.
If he did it, it would have had that feel of Catch Me If You Can,
which is a great movie.
Yeah.
Which role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?
Clearly, Lonigan with some toy Irish accent.
It would have been awesome.
Pick a dance.
Some poker missteps, guys.
Let's do it.
Tell us all about it.
There's some splash in the pot out of order.
I thought the calls were off.
You don't think Lonigan could be like, I will splash the pot?
No, he basically is doing that.
They're not going in order.
I have a related picking net about the game, which is if what the conductors is back there for the whole game?
He's the bank?
Who's taking care of the train?
I think he's like a concierge guy.
I think he's the conductor.
But I think he...
No, he's like ticket-taking, isn't he?
Isn't that the whole thing?
Is the conductor running?
I thought he was a conductor, but he obviously had an assistant conductor.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, Well, slacking.
Yeah, just something's off about the
rhythm of it.
I think more people are calling, checking.
Yeah.
You know, that's, but I like the way that Gondorf bullies everybody at the table.
Yeah.
It's a good strategy.
I have a keep pushing the axe.
Lonnegan has had dudes killed.
I think he notices there are no entry or exit wounds on Hooker.
Okay.
That's good.
I have, does Lonigan really have no way of checking whether or not there's a New Hampshire horse race?
Like, these are obviously fake horse races, right?
No, they're real horse races, right?
But like, is it like, would he not look in the newspaper the next day to confirm the results of the race?
Like, there's so many things.
Like, if you go into the cons, you have to assume that Lonigan is like, okay, I guess I got worked and accepts it.
Right.
There were newspapers in 1936.
Ray Walton's reading a real wire, isn't he?
Like, they are real races
or no?
I thought they were imagined because they're controlling the action.
But he's like, oh, we can't use this one.
It's four to one.
We can't use this one.
It's six to like.
I thought they made up the races.
Because Lonigan is going to do
Lonigan's going to do the second bet when he's like, I need to do another small bet before I do the big bet.
And they're like, we don't have a horse that comes in.
Like, if this horse hits, we're going to get cleaned out.
So we have to basically stall him and make it so that he can't place his bet.
I think that's because they're taking real results so that the next day Lonnegan will see Blue Note one, you know,
but it's just delayed.
I, but I don't understand how they have like the whole fake wells,
the fake like wiretapping thing with twist.
So it is, it is a complicated element of it.
But I always thought they're picking real races.
And then that would be the kiss off, would be like, he's like, shit, I guess I just placed the wrong bet.
And then the FBI rated.
Right.
Picking it.
Eileen Brandon's job
to run in a whorehouse day to day.
Yeah.
But also available for to help her friends with elaborate con artist scams.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think Matt.
She's basically Travis Hunter.
She can play offense and defense.
AMPM.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you have flexible hours.
You need a good number two at the whorehouse.
I also feel like the way that life works in that world is that you are up all night long and then like you sleep from like
9 a.m.
to 3 p.m.
It's like bartending.
Yeah.
Yeah.
As a working as a madam?
Or like as a con man.
Yeah.
So not a lot of like, hey, I'm just out here getting some lunch errands done.
Here's my biggest one.
How many extras in the betting parlor?
Like 30?
Yeah, at least they're all in on the conjugate.
He said he needs at least 20 guys.
Yeah, so what percentage do they get from the take, the final take?
I would say
splitting, I don't know, everybody gets 1% of 500 grand.
Yeah.
And then it's a good day's work.
Then the other guys are split in half.
Not one of these people are a threat to just be like, I bet I could make more if I go tell Lonigan this is going on.
It's a good, good question.
You're just trusting these 30 people in the con world.
Not one of them is going to scam you.
I think IMDB did the math where it's, if this takes place in the 1930s, $500,000 would be adjusted for inflation $9.2 million in 2020.
It's a lot of money to be walking around with.
Yeah, I had, I did the same thing.
It was almost 11 million, they said,
which is less than Dorian Finney Smith is going to make on the Rockets this year.
Do you see?
Yeah, I did.
Fred, yeah.
Yeah.
R.I.P.
Sequel, Prequel, Prestige TV, All Bodcaster, Untouchable.
Maybe Prestige.
Are you interested?
I'm interested in them on the run.
I would be interested in like Trump Lonnegan?
So sequel.
Yeah.
Lonigan, also like the temptation of pulling something again knowing that they have like this this skill you know this level of skill i wrote down prestige tv i feel like a burn notice style show every week gondorf and hooker running a scam yeah what about gandalf gandalf and frodo running scams yeah those scamps after you get the ring what do you do next yeah seriously con guys now what like an existential drama sort of like sopranos but
short hobbit yeah middle-earth is this movie better than wayne jenkins danny treo mad dog russo doris burke Buffalo, Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview,
Long Legs,
or Wilford Brimley in the firm?
Long legs.
I was imagining you.
I have long legs in a while, guys.
He would have loved to cry.
What do you have, CR?
Mad Dog hanging out
in the wire, the horse race parlor.
Be like, Mike, everybody knows Blue Notes haven't done much.
He's just in a round out the field.
Like, what's Lonigan doing betting forth?
And Nero gets it.
I don't know.
That's a good bad dog.
Mike and the dog, whenever they would talk about horse racing, immediately turn the channel.
Yeah, immediately turn it off.
I mean, Mike, there's Blue Note.
Hasn't won a race in eight months.
There's Lonigan just betting on him.
Something's fishy, Mike.
I thought for sure you were going to do Wayne Jenkins on that one.
No, I'm saving him.
God damn.
I feel like the guy who would crush in this environment is Byron Mayo.
You've got scams, you've got whores, you've got, you know,
Selena, I know you're an assassin, but there's something lingering in those pants.
Just one Oscar who gets it.
It's the movie.
You think best picture?
Well, I mean, well, George Roy Hill.
I wrote George Roy Hill.
He got it.
He got it.
The movie is tough because of its competition.
In and of itself, that's a good point.
So if we're doing just one Oscar,
Hamlish?
I had Ward.
Marv Ham?
Ward.
Yeah, because they said that after the couple of drafts, like once they changed the amount
that Newman was in it, I think Newman says they didn't change four words shooting it.
That's a good point.
Also, widely considered one of the great scripts.
Yes.
Like that aspiring screenwriter study and the structure of it, everything.
Yeah, I like that.
That's good.
Good one.
Probably unanswerable questions.
We did everything, I think.
I got one.
Okay.
What was Doyle's handicap?
Oh, golfing.
Well, he's putting
in like forest in the, like, there is no role to those greens.
So I don't know what 1930s was.
His handicap was his handball injury from the lymphs when he was playing handball and he tumbled over.
I think he cheated a lot.
Yeah.
You do.
Yeah.
He's like kicking the ball out of the rope.
Oh, yeah.
This isn't an OB.
Yeah.
But look what I found my ball.
I don't know.
It had that kind of crazy drunk Irish strength, though.
Yeah.
I'd probably say like a 15.
Big hitter?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Big hitter, probably swore on the court.
Though, you know, it's not getting as much distance.
Short game a little off, though, right?
Kind of kicking the ball.
Yeah, exploded at a couple caddies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What piece of memorability would you want or not want from this movie?
I went with all the poker chips from the poker scene.
It would be really impressive.
Yeah, I said Henry's playing cards.
Yeah, something from the poker, I think, would be the move.
My wallet's interesting.
Oh, yeah.
Lonigan's wallet.
Counterfeit money in there, the fake money.
I would be,
I think I would feel like my life amounted to something if I could ever pull off overall tank top fedora the way that Paul Newman does when he's going through like how they're going to set up
Lonigan and he's just rocking fucking overalls.
Will I ever see you in a tank top like that?
Don't don't drink.
Don't roll yourself out, CR.
CoachFince.gov, best life lesson.
Revenges for suckers.
Yeah, I wrote, you have to keep this con, even, keep this con even after you take his money.
He can't know you took him.
Just like basically never give away the game.
I have the Lonigan line where he's talking to Floyd on the pudding green.
Take a look at that face, Floyd.
Because if he ever finds out I can be beat by one lousy grifter, I'll have to kill him and every other hood who wants to muscle in on my Chicago operation.
It's kind of how you pod.
That's how I feel.
I also, I wrote down, I don't know enough about killing to kill him.
Yep.
I just thought it was a good line.
David S.
Ward.
Good stuff.
Cranking it.
What do we have left?
We have double feature?
Double feature.
What do you got?
Quitching Sundays.
Go double con.
Do focus.
Yeah.
Focus 11.
You could do the hot rock too because it's a kind of like Redford style right around the same time, kind of similarly breezy and fun.
And there's a you know bank heist that is really cool.
Do you want to give people a hint of what the next Redford and Redford month is?
Well, we got to do who won the movie first.
Okay.
Who won the movie?
Newman.
I think it's Redford because Redford walks out smelling like gold in this movie.
I think it's Redford, too.
Okay.
I think there's a George Roy Hill case, though,
to have this and Butch.
Do you wish they made more movies together?
Or are you glad that they went two for two?
Perfect.
Newman and Redford.
Yeah, and Hill.
Yeah.
You know, I was thinking about this because
there's this weird stretch with both guys post-slapshot for Newman
and then Redford for like three years doesn't really do anything and then does Electric Horseman with Jane Fonda, which is one of the weirdest star movies.
He falls into a weird run, I guess, probably when he starts to get more involved in like his causes and charities or whatever.
But then he starts doing like he does, he directs, he does Brewbaker, he does the natural.
There's some space from 78 to 84 where I felt like they could have been detectives or something.
See, I was going to say a little bit older because I I think if, let's say you just take these movies off the board completely for each of the three of them.
Take Legal Eagles out.
We don't need it.
Take
Wesley loves that movie.
Take Fat Man and Little Boy out from Newman.
We don't need it.
We have Oppenheimer now.
We don't need that movie.
And take out Funny Farm, which is George Roy Hill's last movie.
So you've got 1987.
Hold on a second.
Did you just extinguish Funny Farm?
I deleted it.
I deleted it from Culture.
A horrible take.
Funny Farm's great.
It is not great.
Oh my God.
It is not great.
Funny Farm's amazing.
This is an age gap thing.
No, Van Lathan loves that movie, too.
He's been pushing for it.
I can't remember the last time I saw Funny Farm.
Chevy Chase?
You would rather have Funny Farm over a reunion of Redford and Newman?
Why can't I have Funny Farm and the reunion?
Why do I have to be a pick?
Because George Roy Hill makes World According to GARP, which I know you love.
But somewhere in 85, 86, they could have all done a movie.
Yeah, they could have.
I'm with you on Legal Eagles.
I would get rid of that.
Get rid of that.
They could have done something around color of money.
Everybody's minted.
Color of money, like 87.
Yeah.
How about this?
Could Newman have been Max Mercy in the natural?
Well, the thing is, is that the reason why they're so interesting, though, is that Newman doesn't ever want to give an inch.
You know what I mean?
He doesn't want to be the old guy turning it over to Redford.
I just don't think he would play that part in the natural.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's a weird time for Redford.
His 80s are kind of funky.
Can we put both guys in Top Gun?
Sure.
One of them is the Tom Scarrett part, and then we just create another one for Paul Newman.
The other Newman would be an awesome guy.
Paul Newman would have been amazing.
Yeah, it just never happened.
He overqualified for Viper.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's something where they're aging detectives in the 80s.
And it's there's I where the point of life both of them were is there probably would have been some sort of like moral let's just put them in black rain
i mean or i could have seen redford showing up in something like nobody's fool
oh for sure yeah and he made some of his own versions of movies like that yeah but i think newman had an ultimately more interesting final 10 years but i there are a couple of like late period referred you'd like all is lost though all is lost is great old man in the gun is great but like well old man in the gun was supposed to be newman and he was too old at that point
but redford is perfect for it i mean he's perfect in that what did weren't you tweeting about a company we keep?
Company you keep right before he died today.
And then Bill was like, What are you doing?
Yeah, right before he died.
I was like, It was like right as the football was starting.
I was just on YouTube, just doing my thing, just looking at stuff.
All right, to end the pod, producer Craig Korbeck usually lets us know what he thought of the movie.
He's not here today because
big road trip for the fantasy football show, but he sat in on the whole pod.
And now we're going to get your thoughts.
What were your thoughts?
So I have seen this thing.
I saw it 10 years ago in college.
And so you guys guys saying that you should see it every 10, 10 years, I think really rang true because I didn't, I forgot about the FBI thing being fake or being a part of the con.
And I forgot about Seleno and the diner.
I thought that was just a relationship that Hooker was having.
So it completely worked on me.
But I loved it 10 years ago.
I loved it even more now.
For me, the best movies, the movies that I like the most are the ones that are, that succeed commercially and critically.
They kind of like hit that perfect middle.
And I think this is the best example of that.
I love that the whole thing is filmed on a set.
Like you can tell the whole time, but to me, it just proves that if you have like talented people and a good script, like you can make anything work.
If this whole movie is just like five people running around a set in a back lot and it looks, it looks like a painting.
It looks like an Edward Hopper painting.
It's unbelievable.
It's pretty impressive to be how cinematic this movie feels, considering most of it is just in tiny little rooms and fake sets that you can clearly feel are sets.
Yeah, take that, Pauline Kill.
The of cinema is
too claustrophobic for Craig.
Yeah.
No, no, this movie's amazing.
Also, I, the dialogue, I, you guys touched on it a little bit, but I realized watching this movie, there are like
20 to 30 phrases that I just don't know what they're saying without context, close.
Like, I don't know if it's like every hundred years jargon resets, but I wrote down a couple lines here of things that people say.
I'm going to read them.
Okay.
Dookie, we're setting up a wire store on the north side.
I'm going to need a 20-man man boost right away these men have got to be quill and everything will be jake i love that
i just know when he's gonna run his chum make his sting get the pinch i hear the mark is some big new york wheel like that could be gen z slang i have no idea what that shit means yeah yeah you know what i mean that was the skippity toilet of the 1930s
yeah what is what do we think wheel is like somebody with money i guess like a whale yeah yeah like a whale high roller but like i didn't i've never heard quill these men have to be quill and everything is going to be jake yeah they have to be perfect there's also like plenty of lines that you are you can decipher them but the way that they are delivered is so good like when the guy who sets up the wire store for them and they're like you want a flat rate or percentage and he's like who's the mark and they're like doylonic and he's like flat rate yeah
love that part i uh i missed the nicknames too i don't i just don't think we're good at nicknames in the same way anymore no like if justin fields was jumping justin fields or something you'd just have more confidence in him yeah yeah flopping justin fields they train justin
at ohio state yeah who was the guy giving out suits when he was recruiting them to be a part of the con team was it twist
twist yeah i love that if you if you made it you got a suit that was cool kid twist go pick yourself out a suit you called dana kelly dk even that was an exciting name but think if you had named him twist well but you got to be careful because remember their show used to be called the dantasy football podcast yeah true it didn't hang out one of the worst decisions we've ever had at the ringer i think the dantes of the football podcast.
I got to be honest, I think I was involved in the decision.
Believe you have my name.
I've come out of the affirming vote.
Well, you're the author of the show in some ways, so it's okay.
It was a double terrible idea because it was a terrible name, but it also then you couldn't search for fantasy as you search for pilots.
It would auto-correct you away from fantasy every time you asked it in.
Listen, even the greats can't bat a thousand.
That's right.
Even Gondorf missed, you know, and Gandalf.
Ed Gandalf.
What is the Redford movie you're hoping we do the most on Redford Month, Craig?
Condor.
Yeah, I mean, Condor's sick.
Yeah.
Because it would have been all the presidents, man, but we've already done that.
The only problem with Condor
is if Faye Dunaway is throwing 140 and that she gets kidnapped and slackened.
The only problem is we do need it for 70s conspiracy movie month.
And we just
other guys would have to step up.
It's time to step up or embed each other.
Like Travion Henderson after Ramondre's too funny that's the thing after we wave remondre it's like Trayvion's got to step up now so if we lose Condor yeah do we really like yeah is Black Sunday ready like it's one of those like great question but we could return to Robert Shaw with Black Sunday
one of the final performances so if you if we waste the condor chip
it's you have to decide is it redford or conspiracy what matters more to you or could you have both and they both matter equally yeah but they could layer onto each other the last redford could be the first song.
Oh, that's good.
It's like how Spotify songs now blend into one another.
We could do that.
Interesting.
Goes right into Conspiracy Month.
Yeah.
Oh, I like that idea.
Yeah.
It's a nice way to spend a chilly November with a paranoid thriller.
Good idea.
Craig, Safe Travels.
Thanks to Gehajo as well.
Thanks to Ronic.
You can watch all of these on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel.
And Redford Month, four left.
Maybe it'll bleed into 70s Conspiracy Month.
Really interesting idea.
Thanks, Ciar.
Thanks, Thanks, Sean.
Thanks, Bill.