transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This episode is brought to you by TikTok. TikTok gives parents the visibility control they need to help shape the right environment that makes sense for their teens. Teens under 18 have a 60-minute screen time reminder in place, and with family pairing, parents can set their own screen time limits and link accounts to see their teens' followers, who they follow, and help restrict content that's not right for them. When safety comes first, discovery can follow. Learn more at tiktok.com/guardiansguide. Before we start today's show, I have an announcement. It's been a while since we've done a live rewatchables on the road. That's my fault. I'm just, I'm just lazy, I'm sorry. But we are finally, it's never happened before, we're coming to San Francisco. We've never done a live show in San Francisco. And that's all about to change. Because I am bringing CR, I'm bringing Van, I'm bringing Mallory, and we are doing a live episode of Basic Instinct, which we did a million years ago, I think during COVID. We're running it back. It's going to be way more fun. We have more categories and one of the more fun movies to talk about from the last 35 years for a variety of reasons. I'm not even sure it's legal to have Van and Mallory in the same place talking about Basic Instinct. We'll find out. We will be at the ACT's Tony Rembey Theater Wednesday, April 8th and you can join us. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 1st, 10 a.m. Pacific. All you have to do is head to theringer.com/events for more information. theringer.com/events and you can see us Wednesday, San Francisco, April 8th. There's a Giants game that day. There's a Warriors game the next day. We're right in the middle of it. We're going to see you in San Francisco. This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by TikTok. The online world moves fast. That's why TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind. From the start on TikTok, teens get over 50 built-in protections right when they join. Their accounts are private by default. For those under 16, direct messages are turned off. Only friends can comment on their videos. When safety comes first, discovery can follow. Learn more at tiktok.com/guardiansguide. The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We are in a new studio we have in Hollywood, which allows us to have four people on the Rewatchables again. Four people who have never done a video podcast together, even though we have all worked together really sincerely. 2010's Sean Fennessey posted the big picture. Andy Greenwald, Chris Ryan. You guys did a little podcast called Hollywood Prospectus in the Grantland days and now we're here. You do the watch together. Greenwald's always doing stuff. It's the end of CR month. We couldn't have CR month without you, Andy.

Speaker 2:
[03:03] I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3:
[03:04] This is the only thing I wanted. This is the quartet.

Speaker 2:
[03:06] This is really meaningful to me.

Speaker 3:
[03:07] This is my LA quartet, actually.

Speaker 4:
[03:09] I have to say, there are not three men on God's earth who have done more to celebrate the greatness of Chris Ryan publicly than these three men. We have really gone above and beyond.

Speaker 1:
[03:21] It's like a CR celebration.

Speaker 3:
[03:23] I want to stand on ABC news.

Speaker 4:
[03:27] Chuck Closterman, he loves you. This trio, we love Chris Ryan.

Speaker 2:
[03:31] Are we bringing Berntal in now or after this?

Speaker 1:
[03:34] Well, to go back to the start of the Rewatchables, the first, the early seeds of The Ringer, which was basically my back house, 2015, and we started my podcast and we started the watch with Chris and Andy. And it got to the point where they would just kind of go through my house. My dogs wouldn't even bark anymore. You were doing the watch. And that was also where the Rewatchables started because we did the anniversary of Heat, December 2015. And now we've all circled back. And this is the last episode of CR Month. What did you think of the choices, Andy?

Speaker 2:
[04:06] I thought they were amazing. I thought they were representing the man himself. I thought it was a little, we were just discussing, it's a little chalk at the end. We could have gotten a little more creative.

Speaker 1:
[04:15] What was the one you really wanted that you didn't get from CR Month? Like, what would have been the craziest, wildest one for you that would have been realistic?

Speaker 2:
[04:24] Rise of Skywalker? Just run it back?

Speaker 4:
[04:26] That would have been good.

Speaker 2:
[04:28] Some of your favorites? No, I mean, I think we all thought you were going to do Heat again. But I don't know if there's anything left to say there.

Speaker 3:
[04:35] No, we'll save it.

Speaker 1:
[04:37] There's plenty to say.

Speaker 5:
[04:38] I have a lot of thoughts.

Speaker 1:
[04:39] I have more thoughts than I've ever had.

Speaker 4:
[04:41] Was the live show that you did about Heat considered?

Speaker 1:
[04:44] No, no, no.

Speaker 4:
[04:46] That's not canon.

Speaker 1:
[04:48] That was just an excuse to have Chris do Pacino impersonations for an hour and a half.

Speaker 3:
[04:52] Just me screaming. I think I have to go back in the lab with Pacino.

Speaker 2:
[04:56] Do you think you're going to take a step back for the next month?

Speaker 3:
[04:59] I asked him about this and he was like, what are you talking about? I was like, am I getting put out to pasture?

Speaker 4:
[05:04] Money never sleeps.

Speaker 2:
[05:06] This isn't the gold watch. Are you going to be petty if you have to put belts?

Speaker 4:
[05:10] You guys are the gold watch. That's right.

Speaker 1:
[05:13] Well, coming up next, a request from CR, LA. Confidential. 1997 Sean, Titanic, Boogie Nights, Good Will Hunting, LA. Confidential, and Jackie Brown. We used to make things in this country.

Speaker 4:
[05:42] I'll have you know I have the exact same list right in front of me. 1997 movies, Boogie Nights, Jackie Brown. I have others, but we can talk.

Speaker 1:
[05:48] But those five specifically, it just feels very rooted in 97. And then this one, Greenwald, the revisionist history of 97 now is that they should have won the Oscar and not Titanic. So why don't we just start there?

Speaker 2:
[06:02] For sure, yeah, this was definitely the critic's pick. It was definitely the burgeoning college student who wished they were critic's pick. We all felt very smug for loving this movie and caping up for it. But I don't think there was ever a moment when it seemed like it was like, I mean, it was never going to win against a juggernaut like Titanic, but it wasn't even like a hit, was it? It was more of a critically well regarded modest smash, the type that they don't make anymore.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] They made 126, which I was surprised by.

Speaker 3:
[06:27] It's the kind of hit that people used to be satisfied with.

Speaker 4:
[06:29] Yeah, it did pretty well, but it just was up against the most successful film in the history of movies, so by comparison. But you were in the Academy at that time?

Speaker 3:
[06:38] I mean, I was a huge Titanic supporter. I think my work speaks for itself, the way I whipped votes during that time period.

Speaker 1:
[06:46] Big call girl guy, so this movie resonated with him immediately. Why this one? Why did this have to be in CR Month?

Speaker 3:
[06:53] I think that this is kind of a perfect Hollywood movie. It's interesting because I have a kind of different relationship than people may assume or you might assume, which is like, I love it, but I love it conditionally because I come to it from the novels. I come to it from the Elroy books, and it's quite different than the novel. Elroy has like a weird relationship to it. I think he knows it made him a lot of money and made his name go even further than it already had, but I think he also is like they left out a lot of the plot and a lot of the sort of soul of the book and kind of sanded down the edges. But that being said, like we said with Fargo, I think I was like Fargo is a five tool movie. It's like this is a five tool movie too, where it's the acting, the writing, the cinematography, the direction and the music are all like completely in sync, completely in harmony. There's not a bum scene really in this movie we can nitpick about it, but like you're watching this and you're just watching the best that Hollywood can make I think at this era.

Speaker 1:
[07:52] Do you agree with that?

Speaker 4:
[07:53] It's like an amazing plate of chicken parmesan.

Speaker 3:
[07:56] In a good way?

Speaker 4:
[07:57] In a good way, yeah. It's like it's not that complicated.

Speaker 1:
[07:59] Like the dantanus chicken parmesan?

Speaker 4:
[08:01] I love dantanus chicken parmesan.

Speaker 2:
[08:02] It's gone downhill a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[08:04] The protein to sauce ratio.

Speaker 2:
[08:06] I'm coming in here, I'm coming in here throwing cheese.

Speaker 1:
[08:08] Andy, no, save that for how to say it. Dantanus chicken parm is wonderful.

Speaker 4:
[08:13] It's just, it looks on the surface like it's gonna be simple, but then when you cut in and you look at the layers, you look at the depth, the way the sauce meets the cheese meets the chicken, there's a lot going on here. It's deeper than it seems. And it's only $29.95 on the menu, you know?

Speaker 1:
[08:31] Well, we also have...

Speaker 2:
[08:32] Not a Dantanus anymore.

Speaker 1:
[08:33] We have chicken parmesan prices for Crowe and Pearce, which is one of the things that really helps us. Crowe's not even Crowe yet. He's barely Crowe. I knew him from the One Denzel movie. Didn't know him from anything else at the time.

Speaker 2:
[08:45] I think it was Romper Stomper, right?

Speaker 4:
[08:46] That was his biggest movie to that point.

Speaker 1:
[08:48] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:48] Have you guys done that yet? Romper Stomper?

Speaker 1:
[08:50] No.

Speaker 2:
[08:50] That's a good pick.

Speaker 4:
[08:51] That would have been the final, yeah, the final edition for the show.

Speaker 1:
[08:53] That was gonna be CR year.

Speaker 3:
[08:55] CR 27.

Speaker 2:
[08:56] That's a fun one.

Speaker 4:
[08:57] And you wanted to do an entire Nazi month? Is that what you said? Nazi adjacent? The Believer? What else could you do there?

Speaker 2:
[09:02] That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[09:03] Coming out of this movie, would you have bet on Pearce or Crowe being a bigger star? Because that would have been on Crowe. But Pearce is, it's a great movie for him.

Speaker 2:
[09:13] I thought that they would both be big stars.

Speaker 1:
[09:15] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:15] And Pearce is actually a little bit weirder. Like the parts of the character that, the reason why he gets the part, right, is because he has the cheekbones and he looks like a leading man.

Speaker 6:
[09:22] Straight jaw, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:23] But he's kind of a freak on the margins. And I think that that served him well in the later part of his career. But I thought that he was like, yeah, he's going to be the more handsome leading man type coming out of it.

Speaker 4:
[09:33] I guess I thought Crowe, the movie really loves Crowe. It's really, really interested in Bud White in a way that I find even the book isn't as interested in Bud White. And you can tell, and Curtis Hanson, the director, talked a lot about how most of the executives wanted the movie to be Bud White's movie. And they wanted it to be like...

Speaker 3:
[09:53] Guy kicking ass all the way.

Speaker 4:
[09:54] Yeah, almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like the toughest cop in 1950s Hollywood. And obviously he wasn't going to let that happen. But I mean, Crowe went on to have the bigger career. I'm not sure if this is in my hot take or what, but Pearce as an actor is just a fascinating guy. And his career is really, really interesting and where he's gone. And the fact that he's still cooking, like he's still doing his best work right now, says a lot. Crowe is in a way different place. So the legacies are kind of perfect, right? Because one guy really went up, the other guy did fine. And then they kind of traded places somewhere along the way. So it's really interesting in that way.

Speaker 3:
[10:27] He's a little bit... I don't even know if he's a little bit older. How much older than DiCaprio is he? Like maybe five, six years, right? For him, it's not LA. Confidential. That's always the big question mark for me. It's memento because I think it would be relatively easy to project him into a number of Christopher Nolan leading roles going forward. And at which point you start to get into like, could that guy have been Batman?

Speaker 1:
[10:49] Well, there is like there are a bunch of Bale movies you could have thrown him in and he probably would have been able to drive the car.

Speaker 4:
[10:54] That's it.

Speaker 2:
[10:55] We can save this for the casting part, but this was a question I had too, because obviously the casting makes this movie and the casting was kind of not controversial, but more challenging because Curtis Hanson said he wanted unknown so that the audience didn't have preconceived notions. But if you think about, I'll defer to the film experts here on this, but like, who are the other 30 year old people that they may have been trying to put in this movie?

Speaker 3:
[11:15] There's some, it was kicked around, McConaughey was the one.

Speaker 1:
[11:20] The casting what ifs weren't what I wanted. McConaughey was the big one. It's funny, it's a perfect Damon part.

Speaker 2:
[11:26] But he was a little young, right?

Speaker 1:
[11:26] Guy Pearce, basically he plays that part in The Department nine years later, right?

Speaker 2:
[11:30] Guy Pearce is like almost ten years older than DiCaprio.

Speaker 1:
[11:33] I don't know if I would have bought McConaughey as Exley. I think that would have been a bad move.

Speaker 3:
[11:37] It's coming off Time to Kill where it would be pretty much like an extension of that character.

Speaker 4:
[11:41] And they're wearing the same glasses as Time to Kill.

Speaker 1:
[11:44] Because Pearce had a certain energy. It reminded me of when Sean got to Grantland where he's like, I'm just here to do good work, but he was secretly scheming who he could take out. That's the Guy Pearce energy.

Speaker 2:
[11:56] I don't want to bogart this, but I did come into this movie realizing why you picked this group. Because if you had to do it, there is a hothead who can hang with everyone and is strangely popular with the ladies. There is a cerebral power broker who is very, very moral. There's another charming power broker who knows where all the bodies are buried in a senior role.

Speaker 1:
[12:13] Maybe he loves where the body's there himself. And I'm committing crimes.

Speaker 2:
[12:16] And then you had to get a semi-self-loathing guy who moonlights in Hollywood and kinda forgets where his bread and butter is and gets called back. So it's hard to work that.

Speaker 6:
[12:24] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:25] It's Hollywood Andy.

Speaker 4:
[12:27] We've got beautiful Lynn Bracken over here, too, in the producer's chair.

Speaker 5:
[12:30] Cut to look at the producer.

Speaker 6:
[12:32] Chris is gonna be like, it's all hushed.

Speaker 1:
[12:33] This is the Simon Baker character.

Speaker 5:
[12:35] Who's showing Matt Reynolds in business.

Speaker 6:
[12:38] They're all bad.

Speaker 5:
[12:39] Come on, it's just acting.

Speaker 1:
[12:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:41] I think that's how you haven't done it before.

Speaker 4:
[12:42] That makes Chia Hao Johnny Stompinato, of course.

Speaker 1:
[12:45] Oh, yeah. No question. Well, I wrote this down. LA is a beautiful, seductive, fucked up place that's really here to break your dreams and steal your soul.

Speaker 2:
[12:54] Is that what we told Sean when we wanted him to move for Grantland? I believe it was.

Speaker 4:
[12:57] I'm so happy that I'm here. Honestly, I love it here so much. And this movie is a good reason why. I think most people have this weird tortured relationship with the city. And I'm like, I love it. I love that it's a shithole. I love that it's full of people who are doing terrible things to each other every day. I think that's fascinating. That's way more interesting than you would have it be understood when you're like watching movies in the 90s. And you're like, oh, well, this is the city of dreams. Like I don't dispense with all that. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in like the nastiness of the city. And this movie is all about that.

Speaker 3:
[13:23] It's really good.

Speaker 2:
[13:24] No, just worth noting, because Curtis Hanson is from here. And I feel like you could he's not as interested in the narratives or presenting it a certain way. He's just like, well, yeah, this is also a place.

Speaker 3:
[13:33] There's something kind of melancholic about watching this and watching Boogie Nights, because I think they're both, you know, obviously period pieces made in the 90s about earlier eras of Los Angeles. And one thing LA had, I think even up to maybe the point where we moved here was still those bones were still there. Like you could still probably shoot the outside of the Formosa and not have a target next to it.

Speaker 1:
[13:55] Right.

Speaker 3:
[13:56] And now that is kind of, I think, fully changed. I think you can still find it in different neighborhoods, but it's wild watching this movie and thinking about how little they must have had to do when it came to Hollywood.

Speaker 1:
[14:08] Yeah, in the 90s definitely.

Speaker 3:
[14:09] Because if you're shooting Hollywood in the 90s, it doesn't look that much different than Swayers, you know?

Speaker 2:
[14:13] It's 45 years between when the movie is set and when they filmed it, and it's 30 years.

Speaker 3:
[14:18] 30 years since they made it.

Speaker 1:
[14:19] One of the great themes that we've talked about in other Rewatchables episodes about LA, that everybody comes here wide-eyed with a dream, right? And sometimes it really works out, sometimes it kind of works out, but multiple characters say this in the movie. Like, Kim Basinger says at one point, like, basically says, I didn't obviously come here to do this, but it's kind of how I ended up, right? Some people try it, try it, try it, and they leave. And we knew, you know, I'm older than you guys, but we had a bunch of people. When my kids were younger, the parents in schools, and one guy's trying to be an actor, another person's trying to be a director, eventually it just doesn't work out.

Speaker 4:
[14:58] You moved here for a job in show business.

Speaker 1:
[15:00] Right. I moved here to write for a TV show. But this is kind of how it goes. And sometimes the city choose you. I mean, the corruption stuff, which I think we've seen in the last 30 years, has morphed into different, more public versions of this. But that underbelly of what was going on, that was always part of the romance of LA. It's like, it could make you, it could break you, you could be found dead. You don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are.

Speaker 3:
[15:25] Yeah, a lot of people who don't want to know how the sausage is made.

Speaker 1:
[15:28] Godfather, Jack Waltz.

Speaker 6:
[15:29] That's right.

Speaker 5:
[15:31] Cartoons.

Speaker 1:
[15:33] Listen to me, my crem-mit friend.

Speaker 3:
[15:36] Jack would have fit in great in this movie.

Speaker 1:
[15:38] You could have easily thrown him in. But there were two quotes in here. One was, life is good in Los Angeles. It's paradise on earth. That's what they tell you anyway. The Vito says in the beginning. And then, how can organized crime exist in a city with the best police force in the world? Which seems to be, you're big on these Elroy books, but this seems to be a huge theme in these Elroy books in the 40s, 50s, 60s.

Speaker 3:
[16:01] Yeah, so he writes this quartet of novels, the Elroy quartet, Black Dahlia, Big Noir, which is my favorite, LA. Confidential and then White Jazz. And like, they kind of get increasingly Byzantine and hallucinatory as he goes on. And he would later take on the Kennedy Assassination, one of your pet projects.

Speaker 1:
[16:18] You just recently talked about that. And wait a second.

Speaker 3:
[16:20] Yeah, and they try and-

Speaker 1:
[16:22] We saw the Kennedy Assassination.

Speaker 4:
[16:23] No kidding. Well, congrats. That's great. Are you going to visit the White House? What's going to happen next?

Speaker 1:
[16:28] No, it's done.

Speaker 3:
[16:30] Yeah, they don't even need me. Yeah, they don't need him. He basically tries to write a secret history of Los Angeles in these novels. And some of them are fictionalized versions of real characters. So in the novel of LA. Confidential, a lot of stuff is happening at what is basically Disneyland, but is not in this adaptation. I think one of the things that really, really struck me about watching this and refreshing myself with the novel is, it is an incredible adaptation. It's an incredibly brave adaptation, but it's also like two guys, Brian Helglund and Hanson, sitting down and just drilling, like, what is this movie going to be about? And every scene needs to be about one of the three cops, and hopefully more.

Speaker 1:
[17:14] So initially it was eight, right? And they narrated down to three.

Speaker 3:
[17:17] It's got like eight characters, so many characters, so many different spinning out.

Speaker 2:
[17:21] It spreads over eight years, right? It's like a much broader canvas.

Speaker 3:
[17:24] Yes, it's three years in this movie.

Speaker 4:
[17:25] And more real people in the book than are in the movie as well. You know, the movie is trying to balance the truth of Hollywood versus this created world. It's an incredible book that I voraciously read right before the movie came out, and was kind of shocked by how different it is. But it has this really readable but also awkward style where it's all staccato. The writing is like five word sentences over and over and over and over again. So you almost can feel the words coming out of the typewriter as you're reading it. It's very unusual and it's different from his other books. His other books are not like that as much. I feel like they're a little bit-

Speaker 3:
[18:03] The White Jazz is a little bit, it's weird. The movie is way closer to the way like Robert Town writes in Chinatown than it is Elroy's novel. But the scenes are short in this film for the most part. And I feel like that replicates the feeling of page turning. Like where you're like, I just got to keep going. But you're right. I mean, Elroy's authorial voice is, you can't replicate that on screen without extensive voiceover.

Speaker 2:
[18:31] But can you think of another example of an adaptation that is respected on both sides of the isle like the way this is? Because I think people who love the book understand that it's a different piece and respect how well it's made. This and Cruisin are the only two.

Speaker 4:
[18:45] Was Cruisin a book?

Speaker 1:
[18:47] I think it was a book, right?

Speaker 4:
[18:48] Was it a novel?

Speaker 2:
[18:50] Yeah, I've got it in my bag.

Speaker 4:
[18:51] Wow, yeah. You've got to remember.

Speaker 1:
[18:53] Andy's trying to adapt it right now for everything.

Speaker 4:
[18:56] You want to be on the re-Cruisin? They're going to cruise again.

Speaker 1:
[18:59] Andy was with us on the Cruisin. Andy, have you ever, your guy who's written some scripts from time to time for the last, I don't know, nine, eight, nine, 10 years, have you ever tried to adapt a book?

Speaker 2:
[19:11] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[19:12] How hard is it? What are the things we don't know?

Speaker 2:
[19:14] Well, it's very hard. I think the hardest thing is the fidelity issue. Like when I did Briar Patch, I basically just took the characters in the plot and changed everything because A, it's not a beloved, I mean, I love it, but it's not a very well-known book, so you have that liberty to do it. But I think the most important thing is when adapting anything is that you have to, as the adapter, try not to be too precious about what you know other people love and zero in on what you love. Because the enthusiasm is the one thing that you can carry from the book to the screen. And I think that that's what these guys did to a degree that is almost unprecedented. When you see, you watch Curtis Hanson on Charlie Rose from promoting the movie 30 years ago, and he brings the same pitch that he brought to Arnon Milchon and the producers to Charlie Rose where he's like, here are six images that I found about coming to Los Angeles in the 50s that remind me of a place that I grew up in that no longer exists. And I showed him a picture of Aldo Rey, and I thought about how I love these characters even though I hate them. And those were the pillars of his adaptation. And for whatever reason, maybe it's ego or whatever, he felt comfortable throwing everything else away.

Speaker 3:
[20:23] Yeah, I think that if I were trying to adapt to James Elroy's book, I would just completely lose myself being like, well, we can't have this without this. We can't have this without the Disney character. We can't have this without Inez being a bigger character.

Speaker 2:
[20:37] It's like a metastasized tumor. Everything touches everything.

Speaker 3:
[20:39] And these guys are just like, no, we're fucking screenwriters. And we need to make every single scene go into the next one, and every action has a consequence, and every single thing needs to be about the theme of these guys. And it's just a really, really impressive piece of work in that way.

Speaker 4:
[20:54] I think it's notable that of the LA quartet, only two of the books have been made into movies, and the other one is a really bad De Palma movie. And the other two, I always wanted to see white jazz, and Clooney wanted to make white jazz for the longest time. And you heard about like Smokehouse is making white jazz for like five years, and it never happened. And that book is so cool and fascinating. It's about like a cop who is also a hitman for the mob. And then he has this like kind of confrontation with himself over how the city really works. And he's also really hot for his sister.

Speaker 3:
[21:22] Incessuous.

Speaker 4:
[21:24] Crazy book. They're really hard to do. So I think Andy's right on. Like this is an amazing way of like kind of culling something that's very big, like a 500 page novel down to two hours and 10 minutes.

Speaker 2:
[21:35] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:36] It's just like there is a central mystery that we are going to solve.

Speaker 2:
[21:39] It's ruthlessly efficient too. I feel like I know you probably all noticed it when we're rewatching it. Like looking for a seam, looking for something to either make a joke about or point out. And it just rolls almost to the point of you just get lost in it. And I stopped taking notes both times watching it.

Speaker 4:
[21:53] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:53] There's some stuff that I'm like, this wasn't as electric as I remembered. But there's nothing where I'm like, you could just lose this, really.

Speaker 4:
[22:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:00] It's a structurally almost perfect movie. I noticed. I watched it two times in the last week. I was like, man, they're just, this is like a big ass bone in fillet. Like no fat at all. Just zooming through it. I think if I adapted, I would be more in the Kubrick camp, like kind of like fuck this guy with the writer. I'm going to get some moon landing stuff in here. And I almost think if the author is mad at you, when the movie comes out, maybe that's where you want to be.

Speaker 3:
[22:28] Yeah, but there's a difference between like the guy who writes Eyes of a Wood Shut, who's like, you know, dead. And like James Elroy going around being like, this is a fucking turkey. These guys are communists.

Speaker 4:
[22:39] Kubrick does the same thing that Andy is talking about though, which is like, he just picks what he likes. Like in Lolita, he's just like, this is so funny to me. And he's, I'm going to make this like a broad comedy about a 45 year old man who wants to fuck a teenager. And that's, you know, that's, there's a comic aspect of Lolita, but it's not Peter Sellers doing bits, you know? Yeah, that's true. So I think it's like, it's kind of brave, but also I think there's some like industrial design to the way that Curtis Hanson did it too, where he was just like, studios don't want to make period pieces. They don't want to make noir movies because they never make any money. I'm not going to shoot this in black and white. Like every choice I make is going to be so this movie can get made, so that it can be commercially successful. And that I can also make something that I think is artistically interesting. It's pretty slick move by an old studio directing hand.

Speaker 3:
[23:22] His run here where it's like Hand the Rocks a Cradle, River Wild, this, and then Wonder Boys in Eight Mile, kind of like culminating after that.

Speaker 1:
[23:29] Just the tour de force.

Speaker 2:
[23:30] In her shoes erasure.

Speaker 3:
[23:31] Oh, in her shoes, right?

Speaker 2:
[23:32] Not at this table.

Speaker 3:
[23:33] But it's kind of like the dark twin of Ron Howard. You know what I mean? Like that incredibly safe pair of hands.

Speaker 1:
[23:40] Save that for your one man show. That's a good one. Dark twin of Ron Howard.

Speaker 5:
[23:44] Yeah. It is I, John Howard. What if the Apollo 13 crashed?

Speaker 3:
[23:53] Anyway, he's just like this incredibly professional, like maybe there's nothing in this that's like super flashy, like holy shit Scorsese camera move or something you've never seen before, but all of the jigsaw pieces wind up coming together.

Speaker 2:
[24:10] That's the thing when I was watching it. There is no, even some of the questions that I know were categories we're going to get through about if it could be improved in certain ways. Like every single piece of this movie is in service to the movie. It is the type of like buttoned up industry forward professionalism that we do not do anymore.

Speaker 3:
[24:24] It kind of reminds me of Apollo 13 in that way, where it's just like, oh, you're watching it. And it's like, oh man, and then this, and then this, and then this.

Speaker 2:
[24:30] And there's no ego in like Dante Spanotti. He's like, yeah, I know how to shoot this. And Jerry Goldsmith is like, I get it. I'm already 75, but I've been 75 forever.

Speaker 4:
[24:37] It's just a bunch of grownups who are like, we had a really good idea for a movie. This is how we're gonna do it.

Speaker 2:
[24:40] Let's make the picture.

Speaker 1:
[24:42] Well, he did the opening credits. Wasn't that part of his pitch? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[24:45] He had all the postcards.

Speaker 1:
[24:46] That was like literally how he made the movie. Yeah, Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a great example. That movie's been made 17,000 times. It's being made now. You could go on Netflix and probably find five of them right now. They make them on Lifetime every week and for some reason, that's probably the best one of all of them, except for maybe Fatal Attraction. We're saving it for From Hell Month. It's just so well done. But what's the movie? It's like Nanny's mad at the family and she's just getting her revenge. That's every Lifetime movie. For some reason, that's the best one.

Speaker 4:
[25:18] I popped it in last night after watching LA. Confidential just to be like, what was Hanson's style to your point? Trying to figure out what is it that he does with the camera, how the movies look, the colors of the movie. And it's a totally different looking movie, totally different feeling movie. But even though it is a bonker script, do you remember the premise of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle where it's like a woman is assaulted by her OBGYN? And she goes public on him and then he kills himself and his wife, his widow, then gets a job as the nanny and then seeks revenge.

Speaker 2:
[25:51] That's de Mornay's part.

Speaker 4:
[25:52] So it's like it's a nutty Lifetime movie.

Speaker 1:
[25:53] And the only person who's on tour is the special needs gardener.

Speaker 4:
[25:56] Yes, played by Ernie Hudson.

Speaker 3:
[25:57] Oh, that's right. I forgot about the gardener.

Speaker 1:
[25:59] The movie is amazing.

Speaker 4:
[26:00] Julianne Moore's in it.

Speaker 2:
[26:01] She's murdered in it.

Speaker 4:
[26:02] Yeah, it's a bizarre movie.

Speaker 1:
[26:04] Hall of Fame smoking performance CR. Just smoke-burring from every...

Speaker 4:
[26:10] But it is like, the ideas in it are Lifetime movie level. You know, like it is really dopey in a lot of ways. But it looks so great and it feels so professional.

Speaker 2:
[26:20] And you watch these interviews with Curtis Hanson and his heroes and some people he actually interviewed because he started as a journalist visiting sets as he talks about like Howard Hawks, Sam Fuller. And it's just like the thing is the thing. And speaking of great shows where people talked around a wooden table, I did watch this Charlie Rose interview. And he's like, well, Charlie, you know, every movie has a simple concept behind it and you can just say it in a line, you know? And he's like, so he asked about hand that rocks the cradle. And he goes, every movie has a simple concept. Charlie leans in and goes, is it the hand rocking the cradle? No, it's just be careful who you trust when you turn around. But the intellectual is in my display.

Speaker 4:
[26:55] A patented rose charm.

Speaker 1:
[26:58] What's the LA. Confidential?

Speaker 3:
[26:59] Your OBGYN kills himself and you say what?

Speaker 1:
[27:03] Maybe that could be a new CR character.

Speaker 3:
[27:05] Charlie? I tried him out before.

Speaker 1:
[27:07] What is LA. Confidential in a sentence?

Speaker 2:
[27:11] City of angels is full of devils, right?

Speaker 1:
[27:15] Sounds good.

Speaker 4:
[27:16] There's a good line in it. I think it's Jack Vincenzo who says everybody wants something. This is a real everybody wants something.

Speaker 1:
[27:23] I wrote down some themes including tabloid culture, still prevalent. Police brutality, haven't gotten rid of that yet. Racism, still exists. Good and evil, sure. Seductive and beautiful LA that's here to steal your soul, still exists.

Speaker 3:
[27:38] How about using blackmail against the rich and powerful to advance your political and financial interests?

Speaker 2:
[27:44] No, no, that's a bridge too far.

Speaker 5:
[27:45] Yeah. What else?

Speaker 1:
[27:47] Anything?

Speaker 4:
[27:48] I think it's a really good movie about the real and the fake and how they coexist in the city very comfortably. That you can see Michael Jackson having a dance off with Spider-Man on the streets of Los Angeles and that feels normal. That you can step on the walks of fame and that feels normal. That you can walk past the Chinese theater, that you can go up to Beverly Hills and look at homes. You can go on tours of people's homes in the city. And also, there's a lot of crime and there's a lot of sadness and poverty and terrible things happening in the city on a daily basis. And they all are just kind of coexisting in a way that is very unusual even by metropolis standards.

Speaker 2:
[28:23] But to that point, maybe, and well I'm sure we'll talk about it later, but maybe the most important scene in the movie is the scene when Exley insults the real Lana Turner who is actually dating a real gangster. All of which was true. Jon Stompanato and Lana Turner were dating.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] By the way, that was its own movie. You could have just detoured it into a separate Stompanato movie. I don't think they ever made it successfully.

Speaker 3:
[28:43] They never made it because of her daughter, right?

Speaker 2:
[28:46] Murdered Jonny Stompanato.

Speaker 4:
[28:47] Are you worried about spoiler alert there on the murder of Jonny Stompanato?

Speaker 1:
[28:51] Yeah, don't worry about that, Sierra. What you said, though, when I moved out of here to work for Jimmy Show and we were at an Hollywood Boulevard and would go out to get coffee and Spider-Man and Superman were doing it. It took me six months to get used to it. How weird everything was. The Man Theater where the premieres happened, the stars, just the weirdness. But you do get used to it.

Speaker 3:
[29:10] You do.

Speaker 1:
[29:11] And I don't know why for everybody it's different. For me, it was like six months in, I wouldn't blink.

Speaker 3:
[29:15] I think that I start every single day here the same way, which is like, it's too bright, it's too hot. And then I get to 6 p.m. and everything turns purple and it's the perfect temperature. And you're like, oh, I'm never leaving. It's that kind of weird, like you can exist in heaven and hell at the same time sensation that Elroy Wright's about incessantly.

Speaker 1:
[29:35] Well, Greenwald mentioned the three types of police officers in this movie. Aggressive, rule-breaker, star-fucker, personality builder and straight-arrow idealist. And they do a great job within 20 minutes of like, okay, I get your type. I get you. I get you. Cromwell, hmm, what's he up to? And it's just, we're off.

Speaker 3:
[29:54] Well, the genius move that they pull is that they all have to go before the police commissioner and respond to the same question, which is, are you going to rat on your friends? And actually says yes, Jack says maybe, and Bud says, fuck no.

Speaker 4:
[30:06] One of the ingenious ideas of the book that is also really well preserved in the movie is that those three characters are three very clear male archetypes post-World War II. There's the GI Bill College Boy, there's the World War II grunt, who's in the trenches, who's all muscle, and then there's the very cynical, I just want to get what's best for me person in the 50s is trying to kind of get fat as he heads into the second half of his life. And those are like, those set up, I think, kind of an archetype of masculinity over the next 75 years in America that are really smart. And the idea of using them as like this triangle of trying to solve something together is really, really fascinating. You know, they kind of do represent like one person ultimately. They kind of feel like the totality of a guy living in a city.

Speaker 2:
[30:50] Well, so each one of them during the course of the movie tries to overcome the limitations that they realize they have placed on themselves. Bud's whole thing is that he's not smart enough to do it until someone tells them that he is.

Speaker 3:
[31:00] Yeah, they all want to be the thing that they are not. Like, actually wants to be his dad. Jack wants to be thought of as moral even though he knows he's not. And Bud wants to be smart even though he's not.

Speaker 1:
[31:11] Don't forget all the call girls who want to be various stars. They get cut.

Speaker 2:
[31:15] They get cut.

Speaker 1:
[31:16] They get cut to look like Veronica Leigh.

Speaker 4:
[31:18] If you could be cut to look like anyone, who would you be cut to look like?

Speaker 1:
[31:21] Chandler Biggs.

Speaker 2:
[31:24] That's perfect.

Speaker 1:
[31:25] Rollo Tomasi. One of the great stealth plot ideas of all time. Because I was thinking like they're the big ideas. Like ironically Spacey, Kaiser Soze. Awesome. Holy shit. What's in the box?

Speaker 3:
[31:41] Again, Spacey.

Speaker 1:
[31:42] You know, the six cents. We all know like the huge ones. The stealth, I don't know what this is. And then it reveals itself in a very small way. But you're like, oh, it's way up there. I don't even know what it's competing against.

Speaker 3:
[31:57] It's a movie invention. The Rolla Tomasi idea is Hanson and Helen like coming up with themselves.

Speaker 2:
[32:03] There's such, there's elegance and efficiency and play throughout the entire movie. Because you were thinking about these different archetypes. The movie does, I think people can watch this movie and be a little confused the first time potentially. And it doesn't really hold your hand. And yet if you watch it again, you realize that it does do the Chiron of the characters names. It does show Susan Leffert's face when we first met her. To remind you. It nudges you. And then when you get to something like Rollo Tomasi, you can imagine Helgeland and Hanson for months beating their heads against the wall. Being like, how can we combine these moments? How can we educate the characters with something that is clever, with something that gets us along the track fast?

Speaker 1:
[32:39] You couldn't have called it John Malone. Like the Rollo Tomasi was really smart. It's a memorable thing. My son, I watched it with my son. He missed it.

Speaker 3:
[32:47] He didn't?

Speaker 1:
[32:48] Well, it's the two. And then when Cromwell says it's them, you really have to be paying attention to Pearce's face. So I don't think he totally got it. And Pearce does such a great job in that scene, which is...

Speaker 2:
[33:01] He does a lot of jawbone.

Speaker 3:
[33:02] Yeah, but it's like that's the way it usually looks. So Dudley wouldn't pick up on actually looking like he has to take a shit anyway. Like it's always kind of how he looks.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] Craig, had you seen this movie before? No. Was it hard to follow and did you get the Rollo Tomasi?

Speaker 6:
[33:18] I did get the Rollo Tomasi, but to Andy's point, I had trouble sometimes. There are so many last names just being thrown around throughout the entire movie that I had to kind of stop and almost like go to another tab and be like, wait, which one has this last name? That part was harder, but I did catch Rollo Tomasi.

Speaker 3:
[33:32] It's funny. It's like there's two things that jump out at me when I watch it. One is that Buzz Meeks is one of the main characters of the previous novel. So like his life and death in this book is much more significant kind of. And then the heroine, which kind of is a runner throughout the plot of like, somebody stole the heroine from Mickey Cohen. And it's like, that is a major animating factor in the book. And it kind of gets yada yada at the end of the movie.

Speaker 4:
[34:01] I think he's never said it, but I think it's one of the reasons why Elroy is very hot and cold on the movie is because it cuts out that part of it, which he's, that's like the way the drug started running through the city is a big theme of all of his novels. And the movie is not really super interested in that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[34:16] Same thing with the freeway.

Speaker 4:
[34:17] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[34:17] It's like the sort of the actual spine of what was changing and how it was going to be changed is kind of yada yada.

Speaker 4:
[34:23] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[34:24] Do you miss heroin as a big plot in a movie? It feels like we're not getting it as much lately.

Speaker 4:
[34:29] Well, I mean, we live in a time where, like a different kind of drug, I think, dominates these kinds of movies too. Opioids is really, yeah, it's just a different thing. But I remember vividly talking to my dad when he was literally on a heroin task force for years. And then they kind of paused that and shifted their focus onto more fentanyl-related cases when he was working, because everything in this country changed. It doesn't mean heroin is gone, but it just doesn't hold the... This is the rise of heroin. This is the rise of, you know...

Speaker 1:
[34:58] Coming up next on First Take, heroin or fentanyl? What's a better movie drug?

Speaker 2:
[35:03] What Sean was saying, Chris, it's like the rise of Skywalker.

Speaker 3:
[35:05] Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[35:07] You mentioned the screenplay, and how it came from the 1990 James L. Roy novel, where basically Hanson said, he was talking about the apparently golden era of the 20s and 30s, which had been basically bulldozed. I was trying to think of other movies and TV shows that kind of hit that a little bit. I remember getting Mad Men when they went to LA., which I can't remember. I've got to rewatch. Mad Men is my next sauna show after I'm done with Thrones.

Speaker 3:
[35:37] Your Instagram followers.

Speaker 1:
[35:38] After I get out of the 1300s and go to the 1960s. But Mad Men was in LA almost for the whole season, right? And didn't it tap into this? I'm remembering vaguely.

Speaker 2:
[35:53] He would go occasionally, and then one season, Pete is living out here, and it was the only time they could ever do exteriors because they shot LA for New York the rest of the time. So everything was, which kind of helped the show because it was kind of hermetically sealed. But I think it definitely captured the sense, still the boom times of being out here, that this was a place where everything worked, and it was golden and verdant and full of possibilities and opportunities and sunshine.

Speaker 1:
[36:17] Well, and pre-sports, because the Dodgers come late 50s and so do the Lakers, right? And then the Angels come, and then all of a sudden it's like, LA, here we go, pre-Wally Joyner.

Speaker 5:
[36:28] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[36:31] But that idea that's in this movie too of like we're selling it, we've decided on the dream we're going to sell people, but we had to create this too.

Speaker 3:
[36:37] This is, I mean, Sean's beloved Babylon is also about this.

Speaker 1:
[36:40] It is.

Speaker 4:
[36:41] That's probably the best representation of that period of time that this movie is kind of reacting to.

Speaker 1:
[36:45] It's a TV movie?

Speaker 4:
[36:47] Nope. It's a feature film, directed by Damien Chazelle, starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] Came out in the theaters?

Speaker 4:
[36:53] Yep. Yep. Good film.

Speaker 2:
[36:56] But you could also make the point, I think this is something that Curtis Hanson did as well when he was pitching it around, that most noirs that we think of as classics are set in like the 30s and 40s, which was psychologically and physically a different time in America. Fashion is different. Intentionally, and the only 40s in this movie is Veronica Lake. And that's intentionally, she's, as we say, cut to look like that. Everything else is just an abundant optimistic time. This is still the underbelly of it.

Speaker 1:
[37:24] So Hanson held a mini film festival for the people in the movie and showed them The Bad and the Beautiful, In a Lonely Place, Don Siegel's The Line Up, Private Hill 36 and Kiss Me Deadly. I don't know if Sean had any thoughts. I haven't read your sub stack today. I don't know if you covered those.

Speaker 3:
[37:41] Would the most fun part about directing a film be like programming the pre-film festival?

Speaker 1:
[37:46] The film festival for the cast?

Speaker 4:
[37:48] That would underline the fact that I don't know how to make films, but I do know how to program a festival of old movies.

Speaker 1:
[37:53] We brought in Sean Fennessey for the film festival. Did you have any thoughts on those five?

Speaker 4:
[37:58] I've seen all the movies and I love all of them. I think Don Siegel is like, I don't know if you mentioned him as a director that Hanson really likes, but that's clearly a kind of a fur-higher guy who can work in a lot of different sorts of dramas, but is really good about like Guy with a Gun. Guy with a Gun, who's on a mission, who's got a problem to solve. A lot of his movies are like that. And then the Killing the Kubrick movie is really interesting because there's a lot apparently of Sterling Hayden's character in that movie in the Bud White performance that Russell Crowe looked at him.

Speaker 2:
[38:29] Yeah, because also Sterling Hayden was physically... Didn't Elroy say this, that he wanted... That Sterling Hayden was his choice to play by the way? Because he was physically a big actor.

Speaker 4:
[38:37] In the book, he's like the incredible Hulk.

Speaker 3:
[38:39] Yeah, he's the biggest guy in LA in the book.

Speaker 1:
[38:41] I thought Crowe looks pretty jacked in this movie.

Speaker 3:
[38:43] Yeah, but there's a couple of shots where you're like, he's like a little bit taller than Danny DeVito.

Speaker 1:
[38:47] How tall do we think Crowe is?

Speaker 3:
[38:48] He's listed at 6. I looked it up.

Speaker 1:
[38:51] Is this like a Major League Baseball?

Speaker 3:
[38:52] I think he's like an Iverson, got a couple inches in the...

Speaker 1:
[38:56] The Major League Baseball heights thing has been my favorite subplot.

Speaker 3:
[38:59] It's funny, it's like he's listed...

Speaker 1:
[39:00] He's been listed at 3 inches.

Speaker 4:
[39:01] Did he?

Speaker 1:
[39:01] He went from 6'1 to 5'10.

Speaker 4:
[39:03] What?

Speaker 1:
[39:04] Yeah, because they're measuring all these dudes for the strike zone.

Speaker 4:
[39:06] Oh.

Speaker 1:
[39:07] A lot of height lying going on.

Speaker 3:
[39:09] Wait, so everybody gets to go to the strike zone?

Speaker 5:
[39:11] This is an amazing story.

Speaker 1:
[39:12] I could have Billy Gill come on and do the whole breakdown of this. Yeah. There's been a lot of height lying. We're going to take a quick break and then I want to talk about the actors. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You've been there settling in for a relaxing evening of TV. You waste half the night scrolling through options. Can't really find anything to watch. Well, enter Fire TV. It's entertainment with zero effort required. Fire TV serves up personalized recommendations from across all your apps. All in one place. It's your helper. Not sure what to watch next? Just tell Alexa Plus what you're in the mood for. She'll pull up the perfect recommendation. Problem solved. Stop the scroll, start the show, find what you're looking for with Fire TV. Subscription may be required. This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like an expert coach, TaxAct offers step-by-step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way. Add Expert Assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you with Expert full service. TaxAct helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more, conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. The actors, Russel Crowe, so I know this movie got 9 nominations, but I look at it as like the starter kit for Proof of Life.

Speaker 5:
[40:36] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[40:37] This movie walked so Proof of Life could run. I don't know, was that part of Seagr Month for you?

Speaker 3:
[40:41] Absolutely went into the math, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[40:43] Stuff of Legends.

Speaker 5:
[40:44] Yeah, Stuff of Legends.

Speaker 1:
[40:45] But you can see it, you can see where the next 10 years are going. Like he's just a movie star in this movie.

Speaker 4:
[40:50] Tell you, Caruso could have done LA. Confidential.

Speaker 1:
[40:53] So I had that in, can I do that now?

Speaker 4:
[40:56] Wow, he would have been good.

Speaker 1:
[40:57] Can I, I had this in my recasting couch. What about him in the DeVito spot?

Speaker 3:
[41:04] No, not Sid. Listen.

Speaker 4:
[41:06] No, I think Vincennes. I think he would have been a really instinctive Vincennes. I think, I mean he's a little younger, a little younger. But, I mean he can do actually, but he's not.

Speaker 1:
[41:16] CR is alive right now.

Speaker 3:
[41:17] Because I'm trying to think of like what I, like Caruso at that time, is this pre or post NYPD?

Speaker 1:
[41:21] This is post NYPD, post J, pre CSI and pre-Province. Yeah, available.

Speaker 3:
[41:30] Guy Jack would have been a good one. It kind of fits the book a little bit more. I mean, Jack's a little like washed in the book. And in the movie, it's like, boy, he could, he's basically like the double for the guy. He's like Dean Martin.

Speaker 1:
[41:43] But Crowe, perfect. Guy Pearce, we mentioned the bail thing.

Speaker 4:
[41:50] I think that's a great comparison.

Speaker 1:
[41:52] They're making this movie in 07. It's clearly bail is Exley, 2005 ranch.

Speaker 4:
[41:57] Yeah, because you got to emit, you got to emit intelligence for sure. And that kind of posture, right? That stiff posture. But then there's like, he's got some stuff going on, you know? He is not, he doesn't grab Lynn Bracken lightly. You're like, he grabs her, you know?

Speaker 2:
[42:13] Also, there's the scene that I really caught on Rewatches when the camera show up outside the Night Owl and Dudley like puts his hat on and actually kind of flexes.

Speaker 4:
[42:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:21] He does, what did Wesley call Sicario? He does the Jim Flex. The Jim Selfie. The Jim Selfie of a performance in that moment.

Speaker 1:
[42:29] And then Spacey, who from 95 to 99, rips off Usual Suspect 7, Outbreak, Time to Kill, LA. Confidential, American Beauty and wins two Oscars.

Speaker 3:
[42:40] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:40] And he's really good in this movie. And now it's like Kevin Spacey, problematic, to say the least.

Speaker 3:
[42:47] I think even to Guy Pearce, especially.

Speaker 1:
[42:51] He's just a really good actor.

Speaker 4:
[42:54] I think this is his best performance.

Speaker 2:
[42:56] I'm with you. I thought that would be on an island with that.

Speaker 1:
[42:59] Not nominated.

Speaker 4:
[43:00] I think he's been more iconic, obviously, as villains in movies and more memorable in certain movies. But given that he's on screen for 25 minutes and does doing a lot of acting with his face and not with his words.

Speaker 3:
[43:14] That's like some of my favorite lines and line readings in the movie.

Speaker 1:
[43:17] Also, a classic Spacey performance where it's like, is this guy straight or gay? Is this guy a good guy or a bad guy? Is this guy funny or not funny?

Speaker 3:
[43:26] The layers to the scene with Matt Reynolds where he's like, yeah, show business.

Speaker 1:
[43:31] Even when he's talking to Exley, it's like, is he flirting with this guy or is he just talking to him? It's always he's like that last level of actor where he's playing it, where you're trying to figure out what he's up to in the scenes. And that was with House of Cards. He's basically playing this guy as an older House of Cards as a senator.

Speaker 2:
[43:49] And everything about the role is performance, which increasingly as he got more rewarded for his performances, that became what he did as he was doing shtick most of the time.

Speaker 1:
[43:58] Yeah, I don't feel like this was shtick at all.

Speaker 2:
[43:59] There's a moment that I, one of my favorite moments in the movie, this really small moment is after they've told the boxer that they're going to help his brother get freed and they go back to the car and the guy's like, you're going to come see me, right? You're going to go talk about it. And Spacey just has a cigarette in his mouth and he goes, keep it up, keep it up. And it's like, it's such a perfectly choreographed bit that fits the character because the character is always looking for the moment to camera because that's what he admires most.

Speaker 4:
[44:23] There's a really great Elroy quote about Spacey that I think kind of sums up both his performance and also kind of how we understand him as a public person and even some of the thorniness without actually coming out and saying anything specific where he says, Spacey is so deft, he is so controlled, is so subtle, is so good at suggesting a character's inner life for the minimal of outward action, he glides. There's something amorphous about the guy. I met him a couple of times. I don't have any kind of rapport with him, you know. I like him well enough, he's not a bad guy, but there's a mask that's up when you meet him personally and I imagine that this helps him when he immerses himself. It's a deep immersion performance. Some of the best self-loathing I've ever seen on screen.

Speaker 3:
[45:00] Yeah, I still think that, we'll also come up in other parts of the pod, but him coming across Matt's body and the wordless funeral he has for Matt, but also himself as he slides down is like, that's really, really good shit.

Speaker 1:
[45:20] The problem with his career, which was, I mean, that run was incredible, he could never, remember he made that terrible movie, Pay It Forward? Oh yeah.

Speaker 4:
[45:28] Tough one.

Speaker 1:
[45:29] He could never just be a normal person. He couldn't be like, Kevin Spacey is now a high school teacher with a heart of gold. He always had to play these mysterious guys. And I gotta be honest, I think he's like a 101. I don't think he exists anymore. This was like a specific type of actor who kind of, you kind of knew what the perfect Kevin Spacey role was. And I don't know who's filled that void since. I don't think we've found the person.

Speaker 4:
[45:54] I think that kind of character forward mainstream American drama just doesn't really happen that much anymore. He did actually pivot to television because he was kind of an actor who could really thrive in that space. But, you know, when you go back and look at the movies and the parts that he took on, it's not unreasonable to be like, there's kind of a red arrow pointing at the unseemliness of this person. And almost the industry telling you by how they're casting him, like what they think of him, that is really fascinating.

Speaker 2:
[46:19] And what's so weird is I remember at the time when he was at his apex, he was always talking about how Jack Lemmon was his hero.

Speaker 3:
[46:24] Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2:
[46:26] And the thing about Jack Lemmon was that everyone loved Jack Lemmon. He played in every man, whether it's the apartment or grumpy old man. You're like, I like that guy.

Speaker 3:
[46:32] So warm.

Speaker 1:
[46:34] Yeah, Kevin Spacey and the odd couple, you would have been like, is he going to kill Oscar?

Speaker 2:
[46:37] It's absolutely a horror film.

Speaker 3:
[46:38] I think the closest he gets to Lemon Lemon is in a way like the margin call performance where he's kind of more like Shelley and Glengarry and doing that kind of hang dog. But is kind of an outlier. He's right, like there's a lot of Kevin Spacey performances, you'd be like, so you picked him to be the guy in Seven. Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[46:59] Yeah, no, that's true.

Speaker 3:
[47:00] He's the kind of guy who cut his fingerprints off. Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[47:02] What's probably worth restating for the younger audience is that he was the star. He was the top billed star of this movie. And that speaking of professionalism with Curtis Hanson, what he could do and what he couldn't do, he was like, my deal breaker is I want unknowns. And we'll get to that in terms of these other cops so they don't have a predisposition about them. For Dudley, I want someone that everyone thinks is the farmer in Babe so that everyone will like him. So we'll do that misdirect. And then we'll have a movie star play Jack Vincennes. And he got Kevin Spacey.

Speaker 4:
[47:30] He said he tried to get him to make it before he won For Usual Suspect. And that it was winning the Oscars, I think one of the big reasons why this movie got to go. Because it wasn't going to go just with Pearce and Crowe.

Speaker 1:
[47:40] It was just a certain type of part and he was the best at it. But if you put him in like the ref as like the husband, it's just not going to work. Kim Basinger, there's two separate conversations here. Conversation number one, CR the Catherine Tramell, would you throw your life away for this obvious stay away award? Pretty solid, pretty solid choice.

Speaker 3:
[48:00] It's pretty, she's operating at a high level, but the Oscar?

Speaker 1:
[48:05] Well, that's the second conversation. She wins supporting actress, and if you were saying, hey, if you knew nothing, who won the Oscar, would have been like a, kind of a fourth round pick?

Speaker 2:
[48:16] From this movie?

Speaker 1:
[48:17] Maybe, like the ninth pick, if we did a draft?

Speaker 4:
[48:19] From this cast?

Speaker 1:
[48:20] From this cast, cinematography, director, adaption, you pick any category.

Speaker 3:
[48:25] If you did Julianne Moore, I personally would put Bridget Fonda and Jackie Brown.

Speaker 2:
[48:29] Also, this was the year you were whipping votes for Gloria Stewart.

Speaker 6:
[48:31] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[48:33] I heard she was quite difficult to work with.

Speaker 1:
[48:34] I deep died that Oscars year, but before we do, Craig, were you surprised to win the Oscar for this?

Speaker 6:
[48:39] Shocked. I mean, I would have given her a razzy. I think she's probably the only character in the movie where I'm like, this takes me out of it a little bit.

Speaker 4:
[48:48] I think it is like among the more bizarre wins in recent Oscar history, I don't think she's bad.

Speaker 3:
[48:56] Yeah, I think the Oscar screws up the perception of the performance.

Speaker 4:
[48:59] I think if she didn't win the Oscar, you'd be like, she looks enough like Veronica Lake that this is interesting.

Speaker 1:
[49:05] She's the same character as The Natural and the lady that seduces Redford. It's no different.

Speaker 4:
[49:10] But the Oscar is just like, she has four scenes.

Speaker 2:
[49:13] They're fine.

Speaker 3:
[49:13] In the same apartment wearing the same gown, having the same conversation four times.

Speaker 2:
[49:17] First of all, that's a lovely house in Hancock Park, which I think we need to recognize.

Speaker 1:
[49:20] We have a whole place to talk about that.

Speaker 2:
[49:21] Can't wait. I was confident that was coming up. But I think that like Hanson is really good with actors and is very fond of actors. And he gives her opportunities to show more variety than she had been given in a lot of other parts. And certainly even what this part would suggest. Like there's the moment when they're in the theater watching Roman Holiday and Bud whispers something to her. And she's a little playful and throws popcorn at him. So he's giving her a chance to succeed. But my question, Sean, as the local Oscar expert, I feel like Oscars like to do this thing where it's like, we're rooting for this person who got a chance to show us something and it's time to reward them as the next phase of their career begins. And tip, there wasn't really a next phase for her. Is there precedent for that?

Speaker 4:
[50:04] Usually it's when someone has made like 10 or 15 all time beloved classics, or they've been a part of like something really special about movie history. And Kim Basinger is a beautiful star and a good actor, but like, what are her five best performances? What are the unforgettable moments in Kim Basinger movie history? You know, she's Vicki Vale. You know, she was a Bond girl.

Speaker 1:
[50:26] I was gonna say 9 and a half weeks.

Speaker 4:
[50:27] She's in 9 and a half weeks, you know, which is like a good erotic thriller.

Speaker 1:
[50:30] It's a tense movie. Craig, you should watch out with Liz tonight. 9 and a half weeks. It's rom-com.

Speaker 4:
[50:34] Check it out. I think you're right that it almost seemed to be like, okay, well, we can't wait to see what you do next, but usually when they give someone like this an award, it's someone like Amy Madigan, right? Who's like in their 60s or 70s.

Speaker 1:
[50:46] We gotta go through this. I deep dove this. So she beats Joan Cusack in In-N-Out.

Speaker 2:
[50:50] Wild nomination. Good performance.

Speaker 4:
[50:52] I think she's good in that movie. She's very good. She plays the wife of a man who is gay, who like isn't coming out, but is coming out. And it's like-

Speaker 3:
[50:59] Who's the star of that movie?

Speaker 4:
[50:59] Is that Kevin Kline? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[51:01] How's that movie aged?

Speaker 4:
[51:02] I haven't seen it a long time. It did shoot in Northport, which is the town next to me. And when it was shooting, it was like Frank Oz and Kevin Kline are making a movie next door. And it seemed like a big deal. And then-

Speaker 2:
[51:10] You don't think Tom Selleck was the big name at that moment?

Speaker 4:
[51:12] That was great casting, I thought.

Speaker 2:
[51:13] We'll do the Rewatchables for AG Month.

Speaker 1:
[51:16] Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting.

Speaker 2:
[51:19] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[51:21] I don't think she should have won, but I thought she was good in that movie.

Speaker 4:
[51:24] I think she's excellent and I love her.

Speaker 1:
[51:27] Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights?

Speaker 3:
[51:29] I mean, this is-

Speaker 1:
[51:30] What the fuck are we doing?

Speaker 4:
[51:31] So fucked up.

Speaker 1:
[51:32] What are we doing?

Speaker 3:
[51:33] So up.

Speaker 1:
[51:34] Like, we should just put a thousand people to movie theaters, show Boogie Nights and LA. Confidential and be like, guess who won supporting actor? It's just insane.

Speaker 3:
[51:43] It's a good way of putting it.

Speaker 4:
[51:44] It's a great idea.

Speaker 1:
[51:45] I think that...

Speaker 4:
[51:46] Should we do like the Jubilee, like debate style thing with Gen Z kids, but do it for Oscars history?

Speaker 1:
[51:52] This one isn't a debate. Like, Julia Moore, her job is 30 times harder in that movie. I just think that movie had a little bit of a stigma. It's porn, 90s. It was on the edge. It had a lot of like a claim for how good it was. A young director. And they were just like, that.

Speaker 4:
[52:08] But Lynn Bracken is also a prostitute. It's not as though it's like...

Speaker 2:
[52:11] But is there, can you look at this, Sean, and like see the gamesmanship involved? Because people, the voters... Do you think Gloria Stewart came in second?

Speaker 1:
[52:19] So Gloria Stewart was the fifth one from Titanic, the old lady who's still talking about Jack, who she spent a weekend with. Meanwhile, she has this whole family.

Speaker 3:
[52:27] She's in like 80 seconds of the movie.

Speaker 1:
[52:28] I'd be so mad at my wife. Van and I talked about this on The Rewatchables.

Speaker 6:
[52:32] I'd be so mad.

Speaker 1:
[52:33] It's like, we lived together for 60 years.

Speaker 5:
[52:35] She had this Jack.

Speaker 1:
[52:37] Spent 24 hours with him.

Speaker 4:
[52:39] I don't think that's why Gloria Stewart was punished and humiliated at the Academy Awards when they gave Kim Basinger this Oscar.

Speaker 2:
[52:44] Do you think that the thinking person's voter, in this case, voted for Kim Basinger because they knew LA. Confidential wasn't going to win?

Speaker 4:
[52:50] I'll tell you what I think happened. I watched a bunch of the making of documentaries that are on the Blu-ray for this movie.

Speaker 2:
[52:56] Is it physical media?

Speaker 4:
[52:57] It's physical media, yes. It's a Blu-ray. Every single interview when they are asked about Kim Basinger, she's just like the best person. She's just really cool. And Danny DeVito was like, you know, she just really cares about the work and she's like a really nice person. And there's none of this weird like talking around Kevin Spacey being a maniac stuff going on in the interview.

Speaker 3:
[53:17] Kevin, what he did after work, I can't say.

Speaker 1:
[53:20] Do you think Kevin got it? Kevin's Kevin.

Speaker 4:
[53:25] So, but when you go back and look at the year, she won BAFTA, she won SAG, she won the Globe, she won everything. She dominated the season. So, really weird. People just like her.

Speaker 3:
[53:36] There should have been Twitter back then, because I think they would have like been like, let's really interrogate this. Are we really going to do this?

Speaker 4:
[53:41] I guess so.

Speaker 1:
[53:42] I wrote down a couple more. Bridget Fonda and Jackie Brown. Heather Graham and Boogie Nights.

Speaker 4:
[53:48] Yeah, why not?

Speaker 1:
[53:49] Sure. Sigourney Weaver and Ice Storm.

Speaker 2:
[53:51] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[53:52] Well, that's a good one.

Speaker 1:
[53:53] Parker Posey and Waiting for Guffman.

Speaker 2:
[53:54] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[53:55] Although the Oscars does do comedies. Yeah. But I think you could make a case for all of those to at least be nominated. Really strange year. This is a new game I'm playing with IMDb's. When IMDb suggests the four movies you know the person from. What do you think IMDb says known for for James Cromwell?

Speaker 3:
[54:15] Babe Pig in the City, Eraser.

Speaker 1:
[54:19] You still haven't named one.

Speaker 2:
[54:21] Not one?

Speaker 6:
[54:21] Really?

Speaker 2:
[54:23] Does TV count? Does it do TV?

Speaker 4:
[54:25] No.

Speaker 1:
[54:25] It's four movies known for.

Speaker 4:
[54:27] This is it. Wow. This is my new favorite game.

Speaker 1:
[54:29] This is a great game. Sean's going to steal this.

Speaker 4:
[54:32] I might. There's a couple of animated movies that he did voice performances. Were there any animated performances?

Speaker 1:
[54:39] No. LA. Confidential is one.

Speaker 2:
[54:41] Star Trek First Contact.

Speaker 1:
[54:43] LA. Confidential, iRobot.

Speaker 2:
[54:46] Oh, iRobot.

Speaker 1:
[54:46] The Green Mile and the Longest Yard. IMDb gave this for James Cromwell. With the end of Warden. Yeah, and the remake.

Speaker 2:
[54:53] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[54:54] Come on, IMDb. We gotta do, give us a little... How is Babe not in there?

Speaker 2:
[54:58] That's not right.

Speaker 1:
[54:58] Babe was in... Goldman thought that was the best movie of 1993 or whatever year.

Speaker 4:
[55:01] I'm shocked it's not in the top four.

Speaker 3:
[55:03] Do you want to talk Cromwell for a second?

Speaker 1:
[55:06] Incredible run by him.

Speaker 3:
[55:07] Did you?

Speaker 1:
[55:08] I thought Succession was the exclamation point, was a multiple exclamation point.

Speaker 4:
[55:13] I'm seeing Big Hero 6 as number two.

Speaker 3:
[55:14] Maybe that's personal algorithm.

Speaker 2:
[55:16] I think that's algorithm.

Speaker 1:
[55:17] I have that.

Speaker 4:
[55:18] Oh, you're looking at Google. Sorry, I thought you were saying Letterbox.

Speaker 1:
[55:21] Oh, no, I was doing IMDb.

Speaker 4:
[55:23] Oh, IMDb. Okay, got it.

Speaker 3:
[55:26] Cromwell, I assume when you watch this, you're probably like, when did you sort of feel like Dudley was not on the straight and narrow when you're watching LA Comic?

Speaker 1:
[55:35] I don't remember how I felt when I saw it in that theater.

Speaker 3:
[55:37] He's Satan across these four books.

Speaker 1:
[55:40] Did you know he's the bad guy?

Speaker 6:
[55:42] I kind of didn't really until they basically told me.

Speaker 4:
[55:46] It was the only downside of reading the book beforehand, I thought. Because the movie handles it so well.

Speaker 1:
[55:50] But the casting of him was so great, because this is like three, three and a half years after Babe. And in general, he was always like, oh, I like that guy. It was like when they flipped Ronny Cox in the late 80s with RoboCop. Like, oh, Ronny Cox, bring it face. It's like, nope.

Speaker 4:
[56:05] I like flipping them, like that's what they've done. Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1:
[56:08] It's like a heel turn.

Speaker 2:
[56:09] I can remember seeing this in the theater at age 20 and being shocked having not read the books. Absolutely a memorable rug out from Under Memos.

Speaker 4:
[56:18] The way that they film Jack's death is really, really good. Like, it's really, really good.

Speaker 3:
[56:23] Addiction boy-o.

Speaker 4:
[56:24] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[56:25] He's really great in this.

Speaker 2:
[56:26] What do you think with the new strike zone, how would Cromwell fare? I mean, he's six, seven, six, eight.

Speaker 1:
[56:31] Tall guy.

Speaker 3:
[56:31] Is he really that tall?

Speaker 1:
[56:32] It was the biggest flaw of succession that him and Brian Cox were brothers.

Speaker 2:
[56:36] They couldn't even be in the same frame.

Speaker 1:
[56:37] It was like a foot and a half taller than him.

Speaker 2:
[56:39] You would need two Brian Cox's to reach.

Speaker 1:
[56:40] So nine Oscar nominations. One for adapted and one for supporting actress. You know, the best actor in a supporting role that year, Robin Williams, one for Good Will Hunting, Robert Forster for Jackie Brown.

Speaker 4:
[56:57] No slander, please.

Speaker 1:
[56:58] Anthony Hopkins in Amistad. Greg Kinnear in As Good as It Gets is the weak one.

Speaker 4:
[57:04] Terrible.

Speaker 1:
[57:06] That tire is just wobbling in the back. And then our guy Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights. No John C. Reilly. I think Spacey, it's kind of insane he wasn't nominated. I think the only reason he wasn't nominated was because he won.

Speaker 4:
[57:19] I think so too.

Speaker 1:
[57:20] They were like, fuck him.

Speaker 4:
[57:20] And two years later he wins again for American Beauty.

Speaker 1:
[57:23] Best actor, we've talked about this year before. It's a weird one where you have Peter Fonda's in there and Dustin Hoffman in Wag the Dog.

Speaker 2:
[57:31] And you ever seen Uly's Gold?

Speaker 4:
[57:33] I have, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[57:33] Have you seen it? Yeah, it's a nice film. Do you prefer Uly's Gold or Lorenzo's Oil when it comes to ingredients you can get at Erewhon?

Speaker 3:
[57:40] Such a deep premier magazine.

Speaker 4:
[57:42] They're very different films. Lorenzo's Oil is a very traumatizing film about a family, a couple trying to find a cure for their child's illness.

Speaker 1:
[57:51] That is not a good name.

Speaker 4:
[57:52] Really a sad film. Uly's Gold is about a beekeeper who's a kindly old man who's trying to make a connection with his family.

Speaker 1:
[57:58] Andy likes to get a turmeric latte at Erewhon with Lorenzo's Oil.

Speaker 2:
[58:01] I do, just like a little bit. Some people get a cream top latte, not me.

Speaker 3:
[58:05] I think they could have named it a little bit better.

Speaker 4:
[58:07] Lorenzo's Oil.

Speaker 3:
[58:07] It makes it sound like it's a land man. It makes it sound like it would be nice.

Speaker 2:
[58:14] It's the 80s, we've got to start using Lorenzo's Oil.

Speaker 4:
[58:16] They renamed it Flerd away Lorenzo's Oil.

Speaker 1:
[58:18] Like Godot is talking about with a Lorenzo's Oil. So if you had to say Crowe for best actor, Guy Pearce for supporting or Spacey for supporting and you could only give one nom.

Speaker 4:
[58:29] It feels like the rare actor actor for Pearce and Crowe. Like two best actors. And that only happened a couple of times, right?

Speaker 1:
[58:36] So who would you go with between Crowe and Pearce?

Speaker 5:
[58:39] Pearce.

Speaker 4:
[58:41] Probably Pearce too.

Speaker 2:
[58:42] You'd give Pearce the Oscar nomination over Russell Crowe for this movie?

Speaker 6:
[58:45] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[58:46] I think that's the right call.

Speaker 6:
[58:47] What?

Speaker 3:
[58:47] I also think Russell Crowe was gonna.

Speaker 1:
[58:50] Could have done both. Could have been like when we had two guards and all in the end together.

Speaker 3:
[58:54] But I think it shows a little bit more that he is not American. I think his accent and his manner sometimes comes across as a little like, I'm still on the set of Virtuosity. I think Pearce is incredible.

Speaker 1:
[59:09] 138 minutes. Craig plus 38.

Speaker 6:
[59:12] There's just a lot of food on the plate. I don't think you could have. You couldn't make the same movie for an hour and 40 minutes. That's just like not possible. But this did feel a little long to me.

Speaker 1:
[59:21] I did have a horrifying thought that you could have easily done this as a six episode drama. There's like specific cuts.

Speaker 3:
[59:28] You would need to have... If you were going to...

Speaker 1:
[59:32] I was just thinking there's like natural clip hangers.

Speaker 3:
[59:35] They've tried making this as a TV show. Nobody has the stomach.

Speaker 4:
[59:38] Shut the up about making this a TV show.

Speaker 6:
[59:41] I'm usually never at this TV show guy. I don't want to redo it.

Speaker 1:
[59:44] This IP is off limits.

Speaker 3:
[59:45] Is there anybody to do Elroy unless you've got the stomach to like do Elroy?

Speaker 4:
[59:49] We have the evidence.

Speaker 2:
[59:50] They tried to make the TV show twice. It failed both times. Perhaps what's a better way to do it, to express this.

Speaker 1:
[59:56] He's so sex.

Speaker 5:
[59:57] LA. Confidential.

Speaker 2:
[59:59] Look what we used to be able to do. Like there are... What this movie does with like ellipses with like just assuming you're going to get there of condensing time of showing you the five most interesting moments in this character's journey is remarkable. And I went into the... I was reading the shooting script to see if there were like, you know, novelistic disquisitions about whatever. 100% no. The things that got cut were like the two things that I have in my nitpicks of what I wish were in the movie. Like it started with the more stuff about the freeway. Like it was just more context table setting stuff. Or you came into a scene a little bit before. Like I think it starts with Johnny Stompanato and Bud and Sten...

Speaker 1:
[60:38] Johnny Stomps.

Speaker 2:
[60:39] So there's more of that. And the payoff in the movie where he's like, I don't need your 20 bucks, I'm not a rat anymore. The first scene is him accepting 20 bucks from Bud and Sten to be a rat. But you don't need it.

Speaker 4:
[60:49] I think if you told me that the same way that this is a movie made by really, really gifted crafts people and like veteran filmmakers, if it was like, okay, Matthew Weiner or Vince Gilligan are taking on the works of James Elroy.

Speaker 1:
[61:02] I'm vetoing it.

Speaker 4:
[61:04] That would be, I'm at least more open to that. But if it's just like, coming to CBS Sunday nights, LA. Confidential.

Speaker 1:
[61:11] If the movie's at a certain level, I don't think you can do it. I think it's off limits. Like, if they made a fucking Boogie Nights TV show, I'd be furious. Like, you can't.

Speaker 3:
[61:20] People are very tempted. Like, Dahlia got made. They've wanted to make white jazz. I think Big Nowhere would be incredible.

Speaker 1:
[61:27] Wouldn't the move be to just do, each season is a different Elroy novel, and you just basically do that?

Speaker 2:
[61:33] You Castle Rock, but Elroy.

Speaker 4:
[61:35] It would be cool because of the way that all of the characters intersect. You know, famously or infamously, Dudley survives LA. Confidential. And like Chris said, he kind of hovers over the trilogy, the quartet of books. And so if you had like one amazing, if you had like John Malkovich as Dudley Smith across four seasons of TV, and it's 12 episodes each, and they're each an adaptation of the novels, and all the novels are long, that would be interesting. But it just has to be like the most talented adapter of that kind of work in the world. And maybe it's Andy Greenwald.

Speaker 1:
[62:03] Well, the other problem would be they'd be shooting it in Vancouver because we have a terrible mayor and a terrible governor and we can't shoot shit in here because the whole film industry has gone to shit.

Speaker 5:
[62:12] We're going to take a break and come back.

Speaker 1:
[62:15] This episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. You know that thing where you finish a movie and you immediately have to look up who directed it, what year it came out, how much money it made. Suddenly it's 1 a.m. Well, Claude is built for that kind of rabbit hole. Deep research featuring digs across dozens of sources. Pulls it all together, cast connections, box office, contacts, production history. So you're not bouncing between 10 tabs, because that stinks. It thinks with you instead of just handing you a quick summary. Try it free at claude.ai/rewatchables. This episode is brought to you by Brooks Running. Sometimes in the film world, we see performances on screen that are so mind blowing, you think someone somewhere is bending the rules. Like when one actor plays twins or nails a really difficult accent. The Glycerin Flex from Brooks is that phenomenon in shoe form. It provides a flexible cushion ride that's made to move with you. With the breathable upper, your shoe feels like a distraction-free second skin. It's the ultimate blend between human movement and tech. So if you want to experience the best parts of your performance, flex the rules. In the new Glycerin Flex, shop the Glycerin Flex at brooksrunning.com. All right, so $35 million budget made $126.2 million, LA. Confidential. Roger Ebert, four stars. LA. Confidential is seductive and beautiful, cynical and twisted in one of the best films of the year.

Speaker 3:
[63:39] No shit.

Speaker 1:
[63:40] Raj. Raj has been on fire in 2026.

Speaker 3:
[63:44] You could have blindfolded me and I would have said pretty much that. That would be a review.

Speaker 2:
[63:49] Do your dad review this?

Speaker 5:
[63:52] Probably.

Speaker 1:
[63:53] I had too many rewatchable scenes. I'll go through, I'll go fast. Crowe meets Basinger the first time. Exley shows up at the Night Owl coffee shop after all the murders. And then they take the picture after and he's like, hold on, let me take my glasses off for this great shot. Crowe goes to Basinger's house. She came on a bus with Dreams to Hollywood and this is how it turned out. Thanks to Pearce, we still get to act a little.

Speaker 2:
[64:16] To be fair, she took a bus from Echo Park to Hollywood. Her mother lives, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[64:22] I do like you're the first person in five years who didn't tell me I look like Veronica Lake.

Speaker 3:
[64:26] It's like you look better, right?

Speaker 1:
[64:27] Really good move by our guy, Basinger. The interrogation scene, can we talk about this quick?

Speaker 2:
[64:32] Why quick?

Speaker 1:
[64:33] This scene's a fucking banger.

Speaker 3:
[64:34] It's a masterpiece of fully, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[64:36] It's probably my favorite, I think it's my favorite.

Speaker 2:
[64:39] Just to be clear, where are we putting the parentheticals? Interrogation into Bud going to solve the real crime?

Speaker 3:
[64:45] You can have that, but it's just actually moving from room to room, Bud with the chair, but Dudley and Jack, the sort of deep focused shots. It's just all the reflective stuff that they're doing. It's so awesome.

Speaker 1:
[64:57] Just quickly, Bud kills the rapist, almost fights with Exley, Exley kills three guys, becomes Shotgun Eddie. We have a couple of good action scenes. The Rollo Tomasi story, the two Johnny Stompin Otto scenes, which I'm just lumping together because we get, what do I get if I give you your balls back, you WAP cocksucker. You're going to hear the word WAP again? I'm half Italian. I could joke about it. And then the she is Lana Turner and we get to see the Formosa Cafe. Then we get Lynn Bracken seduces Exley and then Smith shoots Hollywood Jack. And then the Rollo reveal all in a row. Sierra, I have a question. The shocking Kevin Spacey death scene after Cromwell goes heel. The Rollo Tommasi, the way he says it and then dies. Is that eligible for the Jesse Eisberg? That's good. You should be proud of that right there. Don't worry if you don't make it any further award for best line reading.

Speaker 3:
[65:55] Because that was going to be my flex, but it was a different Spacey line.

Speaker 1:
[65:59] We'll save it. Do you like that new category?

Speaker 2:
[66:02] I'm excited. There are a lot of... I got to say, it's been a minute. There are a lot of new categories. There's a new category for you a little bit.

Speaker 4:
[66:08] Yeah, no comment.

Speaker 1:
[66:10] I have a lot of choices. It's like a big diner. You want a corned beef sandwich?

Speaker 6:
[66:16] Cheese and factory menu.

Speaker 4:
[66:19] But how often when you go to a diner, you're changing up the order? Because the thing about a diner is you find what you like, and you stick by it, right?

Speaker 1:
[66:28] I'll cut the flex categories down.

Speaker 3:
[66:29] I like trying to challenge myself. I think the thing that's weird about...

Speaker 4:
[66:32] How often will you get sushi at a diner?

Speaker 3:
[66:34] It's like specials. You get it at a specials today, right?

Speaker 4:
[66:37] Sometimes.

Speaker 3:
[66:38] Sometimes, right?

Speaker 2:
[66:39] Yeah, you got them.

Speaker 1:
[66:40] The specials? Fine.

Speaker 6:
[66:41] Bill should start each pod by reading the specials, which is the new categories for the episode.

Speaker 4:
[66:44] That's a good idea. I like that.

Speaker 6:
[66:46] That's good.

Speaker 1:
[66:46] I have a cream of broccoli.

Speaker 4:
[66:48] Can I just add one or two?

Speaker 1:
[66:50] Well, I'm not done yet. Oh, you're sure you're done. I have Bud Finds the Photos, Danny DeVito's Trink. Yeah. Tough one.

Speaker 4:
[66:57] Convenient.

Speaker 6:
[66:58] He thought it was of him.

Speaker 1:
[66:59] No, it's not of you. It's of Exley.

Speaker 4:
[67:02] That's like when I see social clips of the watch and I'm like, no, Chris, Chris.

Speaker 1:
[67:07] No.

Speaker 2:
[67:08] Then you're chasing him down on the Pasadena commute.

Speaker 1:
[67:12] And then Bud vs Exley where it seems like Bud's gonna kill him and then they decide to work together. Bud tortures the DA for answers, which includes the combo toilet dunk, legs dangle outside the window. We don't get that often.

Speaker 3:
[67:25] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[67:25] We get one, but not both. And then the big shootout at the end.

Speaker 3:
[67:30] Victory Motel.

Speaker 1:
[67:31] CRO talks about situational awareness with action scenes, tight spaces where the camera is, can follow where everybody is. It's a good one for that.

Speaker 3:
[67:40] It's really good. Yeah, and it almost feels a little bit premature. Like when you're watching the movie, you're like, oh, this is the big shootout, we're done. Okay, because in the book, I feel like you're like, it's just like, you know, and the Victory Motel shootout isn't quite the same in the book and stuff like that. There's like a train and shit, but yeah.

Speaker 1:
[68:01] Also Crowe, some of his gun work in this movie leads to Proof of Life three years later. A lot of people don't make that point.

Speaker 3:
[68:07] I was just having a conversation about this the other day.

Speaker 2:
[68:10] With Meg Ryan?

Speaker 3:
[68:12] You know, since the emergence of wearing the tactical bulletproof vest, I think we've seen a different kind of like gun acting going on.

Speaker 1:
[68:20] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[68:20] And it's also like, especially since John Wick. But between this and To Live and Die in LA, I kind of miss guys running around with a revolver shaking everywhere, you know? Like, where it's like Pankow jumping over something and being like, hey!

Speaker 1:
[68:37] I forgot to tell you, I was watching the first eight episodes of Miami Vice again, because they're on Tubi.

Speaker 6:
[68:43] I was too.

Speaker 1:
[68:44] Pankow is in Glades.

Speaker 5:
[68:45] Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1:
[68:46] There was a Pankow, like a Pankow rejuvenation in Glades.

Speaker 3:
[68:49] I was gonna text you about this, but I was like, I don't wanna bother him about Pankow.

Speaker 1:
[68:53] You can never bother me with my advice.

Speaker 4:
[68:55] It's two guys and one girl, and then the two guys realize they love each other at the same time, and the girl's like, hey, but we're the one girl.

Speaker 1:
[69:04] Listen, Tubi's flexing it for us. Whole series is there.

Speaker 2:
[69:08] We talking about the Pankow sons?

Speaker 6:
[69:10] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[69:10] Cousin Ira?

Speaker 6:
[69:11] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[69:12] Pankow had a tough pod run to live and die in LA.

Speaker 3:
[69:14] You gave him a tough time. I think I liked him.

Speaker 4:
[69:16] I was kind of with Bill.

Speaker 1:
[69:19] Fennessey didn't have the balls to jump on the Pankow recasting bandwagon, but was hinting. You were more on my side this year.

Speaker 3:
[69:25] Did you get a note in your mailbox from Billy Peterson about, he's like, Hey, love your work.

Speaker 1:
[69:29] No, he's just, all he does is just roll in piles of money. He's a swimming pool with just $20 bills in it.

Speaker 2:
[69:37] He just dives into it.

Speaker 1:
[69:40] Just swims around and watches the bills flap. What scenes did you have that I didn't mention?

Speaker 4:
[69:45] Well, we mentioned it, but when Exley and Budd and Vincennes go into the DA's office or the captain's office and they're being kind of confronted with Will you rat, the way that those three scenes are cut, another amazing Spacey performance when he is told that he's going to have the show taken away from him just on his face is amazing. And then putting Ed behind the mirror and observing when Jack is being interrogated. I think that whole section is so smart. And kind of like that's when the movie coalesces and you're like, Oh, it's these three guys. Like this is really what this movie is about isn't it? These three cops.

Speaker 1:
[70:15] What did you have for Most Rewatchable?

Speaker 2:
[70:17] You name them all, but it's the interrogation scene for me.

Speaker 3:
[70:20] It's the interrogation.

Speaker 2:
[70:21] It jumps up such a level. And to see, it's always fun when the audience gets put in the same position as some of the characters. When Jack says, Are you sure College Boy is up to this? And he's like, I think you'll be surprised with what the boy is capable of. And we all lean in being like, Oh, I guess we're about to be surprised. And then I didn't. Has there been other precedent of the manipulation of the live mic in an interrogation? He's conducting it. He's like Dudamel in there. He's a god.

Speaker 3:
[70:46] Yeah. He's like, he's making sure that the other guys can hear certain things that the other the other.

Speaker 2:
[70:51] And really good Foley on the snap of the switch. Really.

Speaker 1:
[70:54] I had that in What's Aged the Best is when College Boy was an insult.

Speaker 3:
[70:59] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[71:00] In like the 40s, 50s, 60s. Like, Oh, look at College Boy. We just don't have we've lost College Boy. I don't know what it is now. Like Masters Boy doesn't have the same ring to it. Ph.D. Boy.

Speaker 3:
[71:11] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[71:12] Just the era where you would make fun of somebody for pursuing higher education, just somehow somehow beneath.

Speaker 3:
[71:18] It's like that was for a minute. People were calling guys libs. That was like sort of a they're going to let the libs.

Speaker 2:
[71:24] That's the most lib thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 1:
[71:26] Over lib.

Speaker 2:
[71:28] They're like, I was at Arrow on today.

Speaker 5:
[71:29] No one was calling me a lib.

Speaker 3:
[71:31] Libs are back, man.

Speaker 1:
[71:33] So we all have the interrogation.

Speaker 4:
[71:38] I have one other small one, which is Bud visiting Pearce Patchett for the first time. I love that scene. We have not talked about Pearce Patchett. Strathairn is so good in this movie, too.

Speaker 1:
[71:49] Our guy.

Speaker 3:
[71:50] Dion Dave.

Speaker 4:
[71:51] Okay. I don't want to piss on it.

Speaker 3:
[71:53] But he's so good. He can do that in any movie. Sneakers, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[71:58] One of my favorite IMDb's, including he's in the best Miami Vice episode ever. Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms.

Speaker 3:
[72:06] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[72:07] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[72:07] The third episode of season two.

Speaker 2:
[72:09] Just to keep you in the loop.

Speaker 4:
[72:10] Cut the energy.

Speaker 1:
[72:11] Him and Bruce McCall.

Speaker 3:
[72:13] Yep. McGill. McGill?

Speaker 1:
[72:16] Bruce McGill.

Speaker 3:
[72:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[72:17] Bruce McCall.

Speaker 3:
[72:18] Bruce McCall.

Speaker 1:
[72:19] Bruce McGill.

Speaker 3:
[72:20] New coach of Creighton.

Speaker 1:
[72:24] I was watching Bruce McGill in a really terrible Bruce Willis movie that I like. Can you guess?

Speaker 4:
[72:30] The Color of Night?

Speaker 3:
[72:31] The Last Castle?

Speaker 1:
[72:32] Nope.

Speaker 4:
[72:32] Is it Hudson Hawk?

Speaker 1:
[72:34] Bruce McGill. Bruce Willis. Sarah Jessica Parker.

Speaker 3:
[72:40] Oh, the Striking Distance?

Speaker 2:
[72:41] Striking Distance. Oh, yeah. This is the boat, right? Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Boat Cops.

Speaker 1:
[72:44] Disgraced cop doing that, like Pittsburgh Coast Guard.

Speaker 3:
[72:47] That was to Pittsburgh what In-N-Out was to Long Island. People in Pittsburgh were like, strike distance.

Speaker 1:
[72:52] Willis was here. Willis was having a promos.

Speaker 4:
[72:55] I kinda like that movie.

Speaker 3:
[72:56] Made it all the way to Philly.

Speaker 1:
[72:57] It's good.

Speaker 4:
[72:57] The third act right where it's like all in that one boat and he's gonna get move around the boat but he's being spied. Yeah, I saw it during COVID.

Speaker 1:
[73:03] It checks some boxes. I'll tell you that much. Cops not liking each other. There's disgraced cops.

Speaker 2:
[73:09] Pennsylvania. Come on.

Speaker 4:
[73:11] It's nice. It's right in the heart of the Barry Bonds era too. Is it not?

Speaker 1:
[73:14] It's like early 90s.

Speaker 3:
[73:15] It's the killer bees.

Speaker 4:
[73:16] Bonilla was on the Mets at this point, I think. Still on the Mets technically. AO Philly guy with the most Philly joke of all time.

Speaker 1:
[73:23] When I'm hosting 2B Classics in 7 years, a month will allow it.

Speaker 3:
[73:29] The only other thing I would shoot at at Fraud is a Rewatchable. I have the interrogation scene. You know what's fucking great is the post-Exley shootout montage that they do to skip ahead time where it's like Exley gets promoted, Jack returns to badge of honor, Bud goes like continues to see Lin, and then you get like, Bud keeps beating up all of the mobsters moving in on Mickey's turf and the tent opens.

Speaker 1:
[73:53] Those montages can go the wrong way. That one works.

Speaker 3:
[73:57] It really does.

Speaker 1:
[73:58] But I think it got, it's probably the worst part of The Godfather when it, Pacino.

Speaker 3:
[74:02] Oh, it's just the newspapers.

Speaker 1:
[74:03] Michael kills McCloskey and Salazzo and then it's like, did it? It's like playing this carnival music and they're just showing newspapers.

Speaker 2:
[74:11] The other risk you run is like driving the bus past something you actually wish you could stop and get out and spend more time in.

Speaker 3:
[74:16] Like the Santa Monica Freeway.

Speaker 2:
[74:17] Well, on the Santa Monica Freeway, two Pierce Paget's gender-bending champagne parties.

Speaker 1:
[74:21] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[74:22] Which really, like they had a location. Yeah. You know, they brought in the cabaret dancers.

Speaker 1:
[74:27] They bring those back.

Speaker 2:
[74:29] Those parties?

Speaker 3:
[74:29] Gender-bending parties at your house?

Speaker 1:
[74:30] Just, I might bring, dude, have a Pierce Paget party.

Speaker 3:
[74:33] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:33] You should.

Speaker 1:
[74:34] Just like guys, no limits tonight.

Speaker 3:
[74:36] Just a bunch of chicks wearing clutch sweatshirts.

Speaker 1:
[74:37] Some of the girls are cut like modern actresses, which is, we just go for it.

Speaker 4:
[74:41] I'm listening. I'm listening.

Speaker 5:
[74:44] I said just a bunch of chicks wearing clutch sweatshirts. I was like, nothing.

Speaker 1:
[74:52] Craig's already RSVP'd. No. What's the most 1997 thing about this movie? Tough one, because it's set in the 50s, but it's got to be young Crowe, right? So would you say anything else?

Speaker 4:
[75:02] Kevin Spacey on the poster?

Speaker 1:
[75:05] Kevin Spacey on the poster.

Speaker 2:
[75:08] I had this is to, not to piss Sean off, but I had that this is a movie in the first place, is the most deeply 1997 thing about it, because this is a TV show.

Speaker 1:
[75:16] What streamer would this be on?

Speaker 2:
[75:18] Exactly.

Speaker 4:
[75:19] I don't know, man. We're coming off Project Hail Mary. Book adaptations are back. Like this is the way with movies, is adapt these really good novels into movies. This was how it was for like 40 years in Hollywood.

Speaker 2:
[75:30] But this was not a popcorn, slam dunk, beatry, drug seller.

Speaker 1:
[75:33] True. Do you guys want to hear my son's review in the kitchen of Project Hail Mary? Did I tell you this?

Speaker 4:
[75:39] You texted it to me, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:40] He was like, how was it? And he said, it sucked. I was like, really? It sucked? People like it. He's like, no, it was good. It sucked, but it was really good. It kept my interest. And I'm glad I saw it in the theater. I was like, it sounds like you liked it. He's like, no, I liked it.

Speaker 3:
[75:57] Do you think he was intimidated by thinking he was going against conventional wisdom?

Speaker 1:
[76:01] I think he was trying to zag because I don't know what he was thinking. We're still working on it.

Speaker 4:
[76:07] To his credit, there's that thing where the expectations are really high for a movie, and you're like, this did not meet the expectations.

Speaker 1:
[76:12] That's where we landed.

Speaker 4:
[76:14] It's good, and I appreciate it, but it's not.

Speaker 1:
[76:16] The next thing he said was it wasn't like 2001, which is his next quote.

Speaker 2:
[76:21] That's true, though.

Speaker 1:
[76:23] Yeah, it wasn't going to be 2001, Ben. So we're working. He's only 18, working progress. Special category I threw in, the Floyd Gondoli Butter in My Ass and Lollipops in My Mouth Award for Something I Just Enjoy. I like scared characters with a puddle of pee underneath them.

Speaker 2:
[76:40] We get two in this.

Speaker 1:
[76:41] Home run. Every time.

Speaker 3:
[76:43] If someone pisses themselves, it means it's a good movie.

Speaker 2:
[76:45] I didn't think they'd go back to the well, so to speak.

Speaker 1:
[76:47] You know somebody's scared when they're just the pees running down their leg or there's pee under their seat? It's the last level of fear.

Speaker 2:
[76:55] Craig, don't put the cameras down beneath this table.

Speaker 6:
[76:59] That's how I felt when you guys asked me if I like Proof of Life.

Speaker 1:
[77:03] Craig, you like Proof of Life. You just don't know it yet.

Speaker 3:
[77:05] My Gondoli was Cadillac Eldorado's Driving Around LA in the 1950s. It's pretty cool. I just go for it.

Speaker 1:
[77:13] What do you have for What's Age the Best, Andy?

Speaker 2:
[77:15] What's Age the Best? I thought your Floyd Gondoli would be like a group of men being told to go out and pursue justice without mercy. That is just slam dunk for you.

Speaker 1:
[77:25] That is.

Speaker 6:
[77:25] I feel like watching movies and what not.

Speaker 2:
[77:27] What's Age the Best? Well, we already said racial profiling is an attempt to project dominance and safety in a community. Going great. I thought audience's willingness to explore twisty morality genre tales, just not in movie theaters. You had tabloid culture. I feel like LA is still a rough adjustment for some outsiders. You don't usually get pulled into the Victory Motel.

Speaker 3:
[77:51] No.

Speaker 2:
[77:51] But emotionally, it can be a tough adjustment.

Speaker 3:
[77:53] That's what working above Herbalife was, Grantland.

Speaker 2:
[77:56] That's right. That's right.

Speaker 3:
[77:57] It's kind of our Victory Motel.

Speaker 5:
[77:59] What did you have?

Speaker 4:
[78:04] Oh, well, my gondoli is when a seemingly kindly old Irishman is the most evil person in the movie, which is also we find that in the town as well, of course. There's many such examples and this one has a great one in Dudley. But what's age the best is there was a really good interview with Hanson where he said, I love characters who only have one scene, but they're the star of that scene. This movie is a great example of that. There's a handful of actors when we get into some of the other character categories we can talk about. But that's a really clever idea that I think has been dispensed with a bit over the last 25 years.

Speaker 1:
[78:39] Tarantino bought in with the Watkins.

Speaker 2:
[78:41] But it's like the coroner. The coroner, he's had a whole day before Budway walked into his office.

Speaker 4:
[78:46] Stensland is a great example of a character. When he's in the scene, he's the star of that scene.

Speaker 2:
[78:50] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[78:51] That's good. What do you have, CR?

Speaker 3:
[78:52] For best?

Speaker 5:
[78:53] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[78:54] Pierce Patchett is a proto Epstein, enriching himself, exerting control from the shadows, using blackmail. This is more of a movie thing. I think for the novel readers, they're a little like, all right. But Dudley telling Exley he'll never be a great cop unless he can shoot a criminal in the back in order to get justice. And that's exactly how Exley kills Dudley.

Speaker 1:
[79:16] I had that as well.

Speaker 3:
[79:17] And just like the balls on these guys to do the Dudley, to make Dudley like a twist rather than going into it. We all know Dudley is like the dark prince of Los Angeles. And instead it's like, holy shit, this guy is taking over for Mickey Cohen.

Speaker 1:
[79:32] I have Corrupt LA Cops, which you mentioned. I love movies where the police department hates one of their own cops. It always works.

Speaker 4:
[79:41] Shunning him.

Speaker 1:
[79:41] Yeah, and there's like, they're in groups and he's coming around the corner and they're just kind of stink eyeing them.

Speaker 4:
[79:46] Serpico, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[79:47] Yeah, that always works for me.

Speaker 3:
[79:48] I was kind of like, there's... I don't ever want to use Sora, the AI video thing, but I kind of want to put Inspector Todd in LA Confidential.

Speaker 1:
[80:04] Just put him in every cop movie.

Speaker 3:
[80:07] Increased racial harmony within the LAPD, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[80:11] Talking about getting plastic surgery is having you cut. I think we just need to bring it back.

Speaker 2:
[80:15] Got you just to come back, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[80:16] You're gonna have me cut to look like Nick Wright?

Speaker 5:
[80:21] Where's Chris been?

Speaker 4:
[80:24] Why does Chris have so many chiefs' opinions?

Speaker 5:
[80:26] Why does Chris have a QB tier? Yeah, but is Chris okay?

Speaker 1:
[80:31] DeVito, I mean, I know it's the 50s, so you can get away with it, you couldn't now, but when he rips off the back-to-back, did you know the DA is a swish? And then he does the Reynolds as an AC Doocy, two phrases nobody said in 50 years. Yeah. I thought it was...

Speaker 4:
[80:47] There's a lot of colorful Elroyisms in the book, too, that you don't hear too often.

Speaker 1:
[80:53] And then Russell Crowe said that Elroy told him that Bud Waite doesn't drink. So Crowe didn't drink during the entire shoot and described it as the most painful period of his life. And not ironically. Yeah. Probably why he looks great by the end of the movie.

Speaker 3:
[81:09] I mean, he legendarily builds his own bar at set. Like he has a pub set up. Or he did.

Speaker 1:
[81:17] Who did? So the best all-time drunk actors, Quentin Jaws is the number one. He died when he was like 34.

Speaker 4:
[81:25] Richard Harris and Oliver Reed.

Speaker 1:
[81:29] Oliver Reed was another. He died during Gladiator.

Speaker 2:
[81:32] Sterling Hayden.

Speaker 4:
[81:32] Sterling Hayden.

Speaker 2:
[81:33] A long goodbye. Didn't even look at the script.

Speaker 4:
[81:35] Yes. Famously huge drunk.

Speaker 3:
[81:37] Peter O'Toole in Lion in Winter.

Speaker 4:
[81:39] Yeah. I mean, throughout his entire life.

Speaker 1:
[81:42] Robert Mitchum.

Speaker 4:
[81:43] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[81:44] Incredible Mitchum story. Mitchum wouldn't do Saturday Night Live unless they gave him a case of Jose Cuervo Gold. But he wouldn't go on.

Speaker 1:
[81:53] That silver of that dude. Nick Nolte was a famous one.

Speaker 4:
[81:56] That's a good one. I mean, Colin Farrell. You know, our beloved Colin Farrell for a time. You know, he was.

Speaker 1:
[82:01] Andy, could this be a new Ringer Podcast for you where each episode is just the history of a drunk actor?

Speaker 2:
[82:06] Sure. Yeah. Do we do the full arc of the character?

Speaker 1:
[82:09] Remember how much time we spent talking about Robert Shaw and the Jaws? We spent like 20 minutes. He was daring Dreyfuss to climb up on top of the boat. Shame him. Dreyfuss was going to do it. Spielberg had to step in because he was going to die.

Speaker 3:
[82:22] Did you ask Spielberg about that?

Speaker 4:
[82:24] Yeah, we talked about it at length. It was roughly 50 minutes of our conversation, which is about Robert Shaw being shitfaced during the making of Jaws.

Speaker 1:
[82:30] What would it be now, Craig, just somebody who took too many gummies?

Speaker 6:
[82:35] Yeah, overdosing on CBD during a pod.

Speaker 1:
[82:39] Again, we used to know how to make things in this country. We used to be able to really be belligerently drunk on movie sets.

Speaker 4:
[82:44] We used to know how to cut women so that they could work in brothels, modeled on movie stars.

Speaker 2:
[82:49] Now, to be fair, Kim Basinger has not been cut.

Speaker 1:
[82:53] We should be clear.

Speaker 2:
[82:54] No, she's not.

Speaker 4:
[82:54] She's dyed her hair a tiny bit.

Speaker 1:
[82:56] Died her hair a tiny bit.

Speaker 2:
[82:56] Pride of Bisbee, Arizona.

Speaker 1:
[82:58] Ciara, what do you have for Great Shot Gordo?

Speaker 3:
[83:00] All the stuff in the interrogation scene, before it actually goes in, there's like a great one of Jack in the front of the frame, Dudley in the mid. X-Lee is reflected off the glass, and you can see into the interrogation booth to see the kid waiting for them, and it's just like these guys are spinaudic.

Speaker 1:
[83:16] It's funny, I was watching the movie thinking that was like minus 250 on FanDuel, that that was gonna be Ciara's Gordo.

Speaker 3:
[83:22] Did you have a different one?

Speaker 1:
[83:22] You love reflection shots.

Speaker 3:
[83:24] I do.

Speaker 1:
[83:24] You're a big reflection guy.

Speaker 4:
[83:25] Multiple split diopter shots in the movie, like three, I think.

Speaker 2:
[83:28] You can name them.

Speaker 4:
[83:30] Well, one in particular, when X-Lee and Bud burst into the DA's office, they show Rifkin in the background and Bud in the foreground. It jumps out at you. I think also just one of the very last shots in the movie is X-Lee holding up the badge in the shadows of the cop cars arriving, which is just a beautiful image.

Speaker 1:
[83:50] I like the cop cars coming over the hill. I thought you were going to say that.

Speaker 4:
[83:53] There's one other one too, which is when X-Lee and Bud White are about to have a showdown in the street, and it's one of the only zooms in the movie. It zooms in on the two of them and captures them in the frame head to head with each other.

Speaker 2:
[84:04] This is the thing I wanted to say. It is such an unshowy movie in terms of camera work and direction. It is always serving the story. And then when I went through it to consider this category, that's what jumped out. The very few times that they choose to move the camera, you pay attention. So weirdly, one of my nominations for this category is not even that memorable of the scene, but it's when Stensland walks out of Dudley's office after turning in his badge and gun, and he puts out his hand to shake Bud's hand, and we kind of move the camera around to this just wall of raw beef faces, all being like, raw deal Stens, and then we completely move the camera to see Exley coming down the hall.

Speaker 1:
[84:39] All alone.

Speaker 2:
[84:40] And similarly, you called it a minute ago, when Bud shows up at Patchett's house and he's at the top, Patchett's putting at the bottom, and they're both in frame, and you feel the divide between them.

Speaker 1:
[84:50] Yeah. Chess Rockwell brought Glanders a word for best character name. Hollywood Jack, the Big V.

Speaker 2:
[84:56] A lot of good ones in this.

Speaker 1:
[84:57] The Big V, in two names. He pulled out two nicknames successfully. A lot of good ones.

Speaker 4:
[85:04] Pearce Morehouse Patchett, which is PIMP is pretty darn good.

Speaker 6:
[85:07] Yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[85:09] What about Buzz Meeks, Dick Stensland? I would say there's like a shadow version of this category, which is missed opportunities, because there are a lot of characters in the film, some of whom have lines and have a role to play, and their names are Chief of Police or City Councilman.

Speaker 3:
[85:24] I think that's because those guys in the novel, who is the Chief of Police, are like real cops.

Speaker 2:
[85:31] I feel like if you were able to dine out in Los Angeles in 1998 and be like, guess what, I'm in the Best Picture nominated film, LA. Confidential, and I have three scenes, who do you play? Councilman. It's kind of a bummer.

Speaker 4:
[85:43] It is a bummer.

Speaker 1:
[85:44] The Amanda Dobbins Award for Best Piece of Real Estate. Shout out to Amanda. The LA. Confidential House. It's in Hancock Park. It's right next to the 10th and 11th hole of Wilshire Country Club.

Speaker 3:
[85:57] And this is Lynn's house?

Speaker 1:
[85:58] This is Lynn's house. So it's basically the 11th, 11th fairway. It was for sale twice in the last seven years. And the first time, so it was on one of my walks. Went and checked it out. Went and did an open house before somebody fixed it up. And it was pretty beaten up. But it was like the LA. Confidential house. Everybody in the neighborhood knows the house.

Speaker 4:
[86:20] All that blood white sperm. Is that what the issue was?

Speaker 1:
[86:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[86:22] Keep the black light in the house.

Speaker 3:
[86:24] But it was cool. Did William Peterson buy it to put his money in there?

Speaker 1:
[86:26] Well, there's no backyard. It was like mostly a front yard and then a side yard that's next to the golf course. And it was kind of like this is something you'd really have to spend money to fix it up. Somebody bought it, fixed it up, and then sold it during COVID for $7.5 million.

Speaker 3:
[86:41] Do you think they gutted it or do you think that amazing like front room is still there?

Speaker 1:
[86:44] It kept the bones, but I think they had to fix. It was one of those where you walked on it, you could feel the floors creaking.

Speaker 3:
[86:49] Yeah, it was old. It was buried under there.

Speaker 1:
[86:52] But it's fucking cool, and that's a really cool street that you basically come off Rossmoor, which is one of the first big Hollywood streets. You take a left and you go down and it curls around. And where it curls is where that house is, so you see it and it curls right through Cuyenga. But it's a really cool, distinct house. I don't know how livable it is.

Speaker 4:
[87:11] It's funny, this is the category I picked for my flex category, but I didn't pick that house. I picked Pearce Patchett's house.

Speaker 3:
[87:17] Yeah, that's the architectural marvel.

Speaker 1:
[87:19] So I had some thoughts on the Pearce house because that's the runner up. I wanted it to be even bigger.

Speaker 4:
[87:25] The inside.

Speaker 1:
[87:26] I wanted it to be like this, like the fucking Babylon house.

Speaker 3:
[87:29] Oh yeah.

Speaker 4:
[87:30] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[87:32] If he's dealing H, Sean, he's getting that H money.

Speaker 5:
[87:35] Yeah, but he's sniffing it too.

Speaker 1:
[87:37] Oh, maybe he's sniffing, maybe he's using the product.

Speaker 3:
[87:39] He's also got to pay for all those ladies to get cut.

Speaker 2:
[87:42] Getting cut was more expensive than I think.

Speaker 3:
[87:46] That might not be covered by insurance.

Speaker 1:
[87:47] So you like the house?

Speaker 4:
[87:48] Are the interiors in the movie, the actual interior?

Speaker 3:
[87:51] I thought it was too modern. It's up the street from where I live.

Speaker 4:
[87:54] It's in Los Felos. It's the Lovell House. It's a very famous house, very famous architectural masterpiece in LA that was built like 100 years ago. But it feels like it was designed in the 50s and is beautiful.

Speaker 2:
[88:07] It's a Neutra House. It was built in 27.

Speaker 1:
[88:08] The great thing about Hancock Park is like these houses have been around for 110 years and like some shit went down in a lot of the houses and you just can kind of feel the energy. But it's like, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4:
[88:19] Like Amityville Horror Style? What do you mean?

Speaker 1:
[88:20] Well, you never know.

Speaker 4:
[88:21] Ghosts?

Speaker 1:
[88:22] Yeah, who knows? Sean Fennessey word for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. What a pleasure to have Andy here for this category.

Speaker 2:
[88:30] I'm excited for this. But wait, what about the real estate? I thought someone was going to mention Bob's Market in Echo Park, which is that the three streets converging where the boxer is. And that's where Fast and Furious starts, right? Isn't that the market? Wow.

Speaker 1:
[88:43] I didn't want to bring that up, but it did look a little familiar.

Speaker 4:
[88:46] I thought a warm feeling. Of all months, you would invoke Fast and Furious.

Speaker 3:
[88:50] Yeah, it's fine, man.

Speaker 2:
[88:52] I've never seen it. I just thought that was appealing to you, Sean.

Speaker 1:
[88:57] What do you have for criteria, guys?

Speaker 4:
[88:58] I hate those songs. Two, and they're related. As Andy mentioned, Bud and Lynn go to a showing of Roman Holiday, the Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck classic, Oscar-winning movie. Released September of 53, so it's right at the perfect time, because this movie is December, January, January. And when Jack goes for a drink after the party at Badge of Honor, he goes to the Frolic Room, which is right next door to the Pantages Theater, which is showing on the marquee, The Bad and the Beautiful, which is, as you mentioned, is one of the key inspirations for this movie.

Speaker 1:
[89:36] Frolic Room's still there.

Speaker 4:
[89:37] Still there.

Speaker 3:
[89:38] My only other criteria orgasm is an oral AU.

Speaker 1:
[89:41] You don't get to have criteria orgasms. This is Sean's solo.

Speaker 3:
[89:44] I'm pulling one in there because it's music-based.

Speaker 1:
[89:46] He just joined in.

Speaker 4:
[89:48] It's CR month.

Speaker 1:
[89:49] Yeah, it is CR month.

Speaker 3:
[89:50] Jerry Goldsmith based some of the score off of Leonard Bernstein's On the Water for the score.

Speaker 1:
[89:56] That's a pretty good one.

Speaker 4:
[89:56] It's a fact.

Speaker 1:
[89:58] CR month does get to have a criteria orgasm on CR month.

Speaker 3:
[90:00] He riffed on it.

Speaker 4:
[90:01] Do you, have you ever orgasmed on the show?

Speaker 3:
[90:04] On this one?

Speaker 4:
[90:04] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[90:05] During Sicario, you just didn't know.

Speaker 4:
[90:07] Just a quiet death.

Speaker 5:
[90:08] They said, time to meet God.

Speaker 4:
[90:09] Little death.

Speaker 2:
[90:11] Just walked into the dark.

Speaker 1:
[90:13] Did you hear on the mailbag of a listener said that the Emily Blunt character should have been Tom Cruise? It was an amazing email. Like Tom Cruise, the firm, early 90s.

Speaker 5:
[90:28] In too deep.

Speaker 1:
[90:29] Young guy who's a rationing hockey.

Speaker 5:
[90:31] I'm not a soldier.

Speaker 1:
[90:33] It's pretty interesting thought. Maybe you could do that on Sora.

Speaker 6:
[90:36] Sure. Tom Cruise in Sicario.

Speaker 1:
[90:38] You have a flex category.

Speaker 3:
[90:40] Let's see. I had Jesse Eisenberg. That's good. You should be proud of that right there. Don't worry if you don't make it any further. The best line reading was when Jack says to Exley, why in the world do you want to go digging any deeper into the Night Owl Killings lieutenant? Cause it's like that made you, you know. So yeah, that was my favorite line reading.

Speaker 1:
[91:02] Butch's girlfriend word, weak link of the film. This will be interesting. Do we have a weak link, Sean?

Speaker 4:
[91:09] I don't think that it's Basinger, but I wrote down Basinger cause I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 1:
[91:12] Okay. Andy?

Speaker 2:
[91:14] I, this might be sort of a niche thing, but I think DeVito is the worst on-screen Italian as a Jew since De Niro and Casino.

Speaker 4:
[91:23] Great take.

Speaker 2:
[91:24] Like, I, like.

Speaker 3:
[91:25] This is honestly, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[91:28] I'm fixated by this.

Speaker 4:
[91:29] I love it.

Speaker 2:
[91:30] Like, there's a lot of, and we'll get to, I imagine, Cromwell's Irish accent, but like, there's a lot of, certain words are doing a lot of labor for DeVito's performance where he's just like, come on, boy chick. Okay. Yeah, I found that. Maybe, maybe the scales are even because Jason Alexander played a character named George Costanza. So maybe the Jewish-Italian alliance is strong, but.

Speaker 4:
[91:51] This is a real hobby horse of yours. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[91:53] You like to point out great acts of anti-Semitism in casting. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1:
[91:56] I love it.

Speaker 4:
[91:57] Come on. Anytime it goes up on the watch, I like it.

Speaker 2:
[92:00] When you have a long role of representation, like the muckraking editor-in-chief of Hush, Hush magazine, who crouches in closets to photograph the rich and powerful having sex.

Speaker 3:
[92:12] Ellis Logue at a BJ.

Speaker 2:
[92:13] This is important for the culture.

Speaker 5:
[92:15] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[92:15] Okay. So I'm just saying that's an opportunity.

Speaker 5:
[92:17] For sure.

Speaker 2:
[92:19] That's the weak link.

Speaker 3:
[92:20] The passage of time in this movie is not super well documented to me. So I think if you watch this movie like the way Craig did like first time, like did you think years have gone by in this movie?

Speaker 6:
[92:31] It was a little unclear.

Speaker 1:
[92:32] Is that true?

Speaker 3:
[92:34] Yeah. It starts in 53 and no 51.

Speaker 1:
[92:37] Yeah, they flip a newspaper at one point.

Speaker 6:
[92:39] The newspaper says 53. I would have said months.

Speaker 3:
[92:41] In the book, it's like a decade almost.

Speaker 6:
[92:44] It's eight years or something.

Speaker 1:
[92:45] I'm gonna throw in a Dodgers game in there.

Speaker 2:
[92:46] But they do a good job of it. Like it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 3:
[92:48] It doesn't really matter. It's not a weak link. And I also think like to that same point, like the heroin, it's still kind of hard to track the heroin in the movie.

Speaker 1:
[92:58] My weak link was Danny DeVito.

Speaker 2:
[93:01] Yes, thank you.

Speaker 3:
[93:02] For different reasons?

Speaker 1:
[93:03] For the reasons you mentioned.

Speaker 2:
[93:04] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[93:05] I just wasn't buying it. He's just an Italian.

Speaker 2:
[93:08] He's just Danny DeVito.

Speaker 1:
[93:09] I also, he takes me out of the movie a little. His Danny DeVito-ness is just too omnipresent and too much of a history with him. And he's in taxing his remains. I can't buy him as a character. And I almost don't know if we needed a famous actor for that part. I just, every time he's in a scene.

Speaker 3:
[93:26] It's such a good Buscemi role or something.

Speaker 1:
[93:28] Yeah, it's just.

Speaker 2:
[93:29] There you go again. I know it's CR Month, but excuse me.

Speaker 5:
[93:35] Kevin Pollack?

Speaker 3:
[93:36] Is Kevin Pollack Jewish?

Speaker 2:
[93:37] What about Pencal?

Speaker 4:
[93:38] He's right there.

Speaker 5:
[93:39] Pencal, come on.

Speaker 1:
[93:41] Honestly, Kevin Pollack could have done it.

Speaker 4:
[93:43] Yeah, he could have. I find that DeVito is a great first voice to hear when the movie opens and you're getting those postcards. And he's kind of a great narrator. But when he's in scenes, and Spacey, who is a big showy actor, but is much more subtle in this movie, and DeVito is just throwing ham sandwiches at him nonstop. I mean, it's crazy how big he is.

Speaker 2:
[94:03] Which maybe is why they cast Agoy. Could be.

Speaker 1:
[94:05] I just think he's done too much comedy over there. Like even when he was getting like beaten up, in the chair, at the end, it's like come on, this is Danny DeVito. I had one for this, for recasting. Is Billy Crystal too famous for that part?

Speaker 5:
[94:21] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[94:23] Well, you certainly made the case, Danny DeVito is way too famous for this part. Why is Danny DeVito even in this movie?

Speaker 1:
[94:27] My point is if you're gonna go famous for that part, I'd rather have Billy Crystal.

Speaker 5:
[94:31] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[94:32] And then my dream choice would have been Larry David because nobody knew who Larry David really looked like in 1997.

Speaker 2:
[94:41] Yeah, this is the big brain thinking I want.

Speaker 5:
[94:44] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[94:44] That could have been where we went, but I just...

Speaker 3:
[94:46] So that's when Larry David walks up to Jack Vincennes and he says, this guy has a jackal in his stomach.

Speaker 1:
[94:57] I don't know. He took me out of the movie. I had too much history. Anyway, what's age the worst? Kevin Spacey. I didn't like the Pearce house as much. I really wanted a Babylon house for him. I wanted just... This house is obscene. We're in Hollywood Hills. There's no house within... Maybe we're in Malibu. I don't know. I just wanted a giant kind of crazy, oh my god, this guy's gotta be the richest guy in LA kind of house.

Speaker 4:
[95:24] I gotta no sell that one.

Speaker 1:
[95:26] Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey stuff. That was just in the news.

Speaker 3:
[95:32] Specie got handsy with him on the set.

Speaker 1:
[95:34] Yeah, and he was uncomfortable on the whole thing. I don't... Probably should have just punched him. James Elroy's relationship to the film is all over the map. 97, he said it was a work of art on its own level. And in 2016, he said it was problematic. And in 2023, he said it was Turkey of the highest form.

Speaker 3:
[95:55] And that Crowe and Basinger are impotent, right? Yeah. And then when Curtis Hanson died, he was like, it's a pretty good movie.

Speaker 4:
[96:05] James Elroy...

Speaker 1:
[96:05] I didn't have any other What's Aged the Worst.

Speaker 4:
[96:06] Kind of a weird cat.

Speaker 6:
[96:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[96:08] You know. I think What's Aged the Worst is hands down the opening, and I quote, there are jobs aplenty and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house. I don't know, any millennials, Craig, you want to weigh in on that?

Speaker 6:
[96:22] Don't have a home.

Speaker 2:
[96:24] Can working men have a home for Los Angeles, Craig?

Speaker 3:
[96:26] Craig is producing this from an Acura.

Speaker 4:
[96:29] There's one other quote in the film that is obviously very purposefully, almost groan worthy, but from downtown to the beach in 20 minutes is a heinous note, which is just coming back to unless you're driving a cab, you're buying in.

Speaker 6:
[96:42] Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 3:
[96:44] A couple of what's aged the worst. The fight that Bud and Exley have in the records room when he catches Exley after Lin, he would have fucking killed him. He's throwing him around the room, he's slamming his head into a filing cabinet and the guy is like a shiner afterwards.

Speaker 2:
[97:01] That's also Russel Crowe's audition to be Wolverine.

Speaker 3:
[97:03] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[97:04] That's why he would have killed him.

Speaker 1:
[97:05] I like when he throws the chair out of the window note for no reason at all.

Speaker 6:
[97:08] Just to be like, oh, god damn it.

Speaker 1:
[97:10] Somebody had to pay.

Speaker 4:
[97:11] Something else you got to bring back is just being able to be ruthlessly violent in the workplace, just throwing furniture through windows.

Speaker 1:
[97:16] That was definitely an HR violation.

Speaker 6:
[97:18] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[97:19] That's the day you transition to talent only is the day you make that.

Speaker 4:
[97:22] Yes, as soon as I can get a window out.

Speaker 2:
[97:24] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[97:24] Do you think that the LAPD had HR?

Speaker 4:
[97:27] No.

Speaker 3:
[97:28] Right.

Speaker 6:
[97:28] I don't.

Speaker 3:
[97:29] Then the only other thing that-

Speaker 1:
[97:32] Do they have it now? I think is a better question.

Speaker 3:
[97:34] The Lin-Dudley-Budd Triangle.

Speaker 1:
[97:38] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[97:40] That whole, like, we're going to take pictures of Exley with Lin to make Budd go crazy so that he attacks Exley thing is the one film only flourish that is a little off because in the book, Inez, the rape victim, is actually the center of their love triangle.

Speaker 1:
[97:58] So you think Elroy saw that part and was like, What the fuck?

Speaker 3:
[98:01] Well, I think it's just almost as like, why wouldn't they just have Exley killed? Like they're doing that to everybody else. Like, why?

Speaker 1:
[98:06] I think Elroy sounds insane, but if somebody did like an adaptation of the Book of Basketball and they had like Karl Malone third, I would fucking lose my mind.

Speaker 2:
[98:14] But you said you said your adaptation would be to forget the entire text.

Speaker 4:
[98:18] I think we got to game this out. Who is making the film?

Speaker 2:
[98:22] Is it a scripted film?

Speaker 1:
[98:25] Nobody is.

Speaker 4:
[98:25] It's a 12-part documentary.

Speaker 1:
[98:27] I have an easy category.

Speaker 4:
[98:29] I will direct the 12-part documentary Book of Basketball if I can reorder the big pyramid in any way, yes.

Speaker 2:
[98:34] And the film festival beforehand is going to be killer.

Speaker 1:
[98:37] The Ruffalo hand of Rubenek Partridge over acting where it is an easy one. It's the old lady who IDs her call girl daughter and then has two other terrible scenes. And looks like David Letterman. Looks like David Letterman in drag.

Speaker 2:
[98:48] Gwenda Deacon.

Speaker 1:
[98:49] It's just a zero the entire time.

Speaker 5:
[98:51] Say her name. Come on.

Speaker 1:
[98:52] Did somebody call in sick? Was there some Oscar winner that at the last second like fell ill and they just had to grab someone?

Speaker 2:
[98:59] What's weird is in one scene, it's a vibe. Like, okay, when she's identifying, that's my girl. And you're like, wow, that was really memorable, you know, day player that they found to play that role of all the people who show up on set. And you're like, let's reward this person with an entire...

Speaker 5:
[99:11] Two more scenes.

Speaker 1:
[99:13] Really bad. You have a flex category.

Speaker 4:
[99:15] I already did it. It's Pierce Patchett and you just shot me down. You said, it's not a nice house and it's not architecturally significant. And I should stop talking. And so I will.

Speaker 1:
[99:24] I thought it was a nice start. I was saying, I feel like his house would have been splashier and more...

Speaker 4:
[99:31] What's his background, Pierce? How did he make his fortune?

Speaker 1:
[99:34] Business man.

Speaker 4:
[99:34] Oh, H.

Speaker 3:
[99:35] H slinging H.

Speaker 2:
[99:36] No, no, I think he's dabbling now.

Speaker 4:
[99:38] But he's like, he's in his 40s or 50s at this point. So like, how did he make his fortune?

Speaker 2:
[99:42] Honestly, people eat differently.

Speaker 4:
[99:44] That's a good point.

Speaker 3:
[99:45] I think he's emerged out of a world of blackmail and extortion.

Speaker 1:
[99:49] I had a major nitpick for this that I was going to do later, but I'll do now since Sean brought it up. I just think gambling is part of this. I don't know how he misses it. The guy's a businessman. You got H over here. I got my call girls here. I have like a whole underground casino in my giant palace.

Speaker 4:
[100:07] He's watching March Madness hitting parley.

Speaker 1:
[100:10] Every boxing thing, the guys are going down there. They're taking bets. There's no way he's not doing gambling.

Speaker 3:
[100:14] In LA., so there would have been this big missed opportunity.

Speaker 1:
[100:19] The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford's hottest take award, Andy. You haven't done this before.

Speaker 2:
[100:25] I don't know if I have a hot take award. I struggle to find one.

Speaker 3:
[100:28] I think this is like the perfect modern period film in that it feels really true to life. It has all of the sort of superficial like the cars, the production design, all of it looks like the 50s, but it feels like a 90s movie. It's cut like a modern film. The acting style is decidedly modern. Everything about the performance and the editing and the feel of the film is like 97. You could put this up against usual suspects and it feels very similar, but then they take all of the know-how of how to make a full on LA. Noire movie and push it out there. It's just like the perfect balance.

Speaker 2:
[101:09] We should check out Brian Raftery, our friend's article on theringer.com about 90s Noire. It really talks about why the 50s and the 90s were decades that celebrated Noire because they were decades after a big conflict where the United States had a very clear, at least the way they thought of ourselves as a boy scout role to play. And then there's kind of a moral morass afterwards.

Speaker 6:
[101:30] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[101:32] Take wasn't hot enough. I'm coming in way hotter.

Speaker 6:
[101:34] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[101:34] That was warm.

Speaker 1:
[101:35] I'm just telling you, I'm going to be scorching. Sean, you go.

Speaker 4:
[101:39] Okay. Set up to fail there. This is...

Speaker 1:
[101:43] You can come in hot. I'm just saying people are going to get burned.

Speaker 4:
[101:45] The second best adaptation of The Wizard of Oz of all time. That's pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[101:51] It's a good hottest take.

Speaker 4:
[101:53] And Wicked and Wicked for Good are very far near the bottom. There's Bud, the cop with no brain. There's Ed, the cop with no heart. And there's Jack, the cop with no courage. And then there's the victimized girl, Lynn, who just wants to escape Oz and go back home to Arizona, not Kansas, and they all get what they want.

Speaker 3:
[102:10] And Dudley is the wizard?

Speaker 4:
[102:11] He is the wizard of Oz. Who are the flying monkeys?

Speaker 1:
[102:13] That was really good.

Speaker 4:
[102:15] I didn't invent that take. That is something that has been suggested about this movie.

Speaker 3:
[102:18] That's really good.

Speaker 4:
[102:19] It is good.

Speaker 3:
[102:20] If you played Dark Side of the Moon starting at...

Speaker 2:
[102:24] Who invented that take and can we get them here before the end of the recording?

Speaker 4:
[102:26] It's been written about since the 90s because the archetypes of the characters are so strong and it's like, why does this movie feel so familiar even though I've never seen this movie before?

Speaker 3:
[102:34] It feels like getting trapped by Tarantino in a kitchen somewhere and he's like, what you don't know, man, is LA.

Speaker 5:
[102:39] Confidential is just Wizard of Oz, man.

Speaker 1:
[102:44] Mine is, this is almost a new category, the Pearce Patchard Award for most reprehensible movie plot idea. That was actually pretty awesome. His business of high class call girls being cut to look like movie actors, I think it's kind of a brilliant business. Great job by him.

Speaker 5:
[103:01] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[103:01] Yeah. It's ahead of its time.

Speaker 5:
[103:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[103:04] Like, I think you could do this now.

Speaker 3:
[103:06] You think he wins Shark Tank?

Speaker 1:
[103:07] I think you could do this. You got a Shark Tank right now and be like, so we got the Kardashians, we have Margot Robbie. And I don't know, I think in the room, I think Cuban buys it.

Speaker 3:
[103:19] I, who knows, Bill, maybe it's still happening today.

Speaker 1:
[103:22] Craig?

Speaker 6:
[103:23] I literally had this written down. I was like, this guy invented deep fakes, essentially.

Speaker 1:
[103:27] Yeah. Casting what ifs. We mentioned McConaughey, he turned it down, said in 2018, really regretted it. Russel Crowe turned it down, then they talked him into it. Nothing else interesting. There was Isabella Skrupko offered the lead female role, turned it down. I don't know if I believed it. That was in one of the research things.

Speaker 4:
[103:49] Goldeneye.

Speaker 1:
[103:50] It was in one of the things, other things I saw, Basinger was their first choice, they really wanted her, so who knows.

Speaker 3:
[103:57] There was a Michael Madsen as Bud thing.

Speaker 1:
[103:59] I didn't believe that one. No, I'd kick the tires on it. I just think at 97 is Madsen getting a movie like this.

Speaker 2:
[104:07] What about Michael Madsen cut to look like Russel Crowe? Could I interest you in that?

Speaker 3:
[104:12] Yeah, this could go both ways. We could start doing guys, too.

Speaker 6:
[104:14] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[104:16] Go on.

Speaker 3:
[104:17] No, you could cut guys to look like other actors.

Speaker 4:
[104:19] And then what would happen?

Speaker 3:
[104:20] Look at this Glenn Powell looking like I have.

Speaker 5:
[104:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[104:23] And what are you doing with him?

Speaker 5:
[104:24] You're having a cat. Shut up.

Speaker 1:
[104:27] Don't torture CR on CR month. I bet that guy word is a smorgasbord.

Speaker 2:
[104:33] There's so many of that guys. This is the best.

Speaker 5:
[104:34] Running some routes.

Speaker 4:
[104:35] You want to do the Pearce patch it, but just to make cool friends who look like famous people.

Speaker 5:
[104:40] I got to make Colin Farrell from Miami Vice and go get Mojitos. But he's just some dude from Nebraska.

Speaker 2:
[104:49] Got off the bus.

Speaker 4:
[104:49] Yeah. That's a good idea.

Speaker 2:
[104:51] I'm a foodie from Mojitos.

Speaker 1:
[104:52] I feel like he would do that.

Speaker 6:
[104:54] Have you seen that video of the guy who hires the Tom Cruise impersonator and just has him come over to his house and take off the world? And put them one on one.

Speaker 2:
[105:01] It's a very human desire.

Speaker 3:
[105:03] Pamela Anderson is Lynn Bracken. Did you kick the tires on that?

Speaker 1:
[105:06] I just don't believe it.

Speaker 3:
[105:07] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[105:07] I don't think they're going.

Speaker 3:
[105:09] This is one of the great mysteries of this podcast to me is when you'll decide a rumor is not real.

Speaker 1:
[105:16] Listen, there's a sniff test to all of these. And I just don't think Curtis Hanson was like, you know who should get Pamela Anderson to play? I just don't see it. And I think as the years pass, as we've discussed, I think that people just start adding stuff into the history of the movie. And I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[105:32] I want to start doing that for recreation. Just pop in on the IMDB trivia page.

Speaker 1:
[105:36] Or Wikipedia. You can just basically start adding shit. That's that guy we have a ton. We have, for the common man, the Craigs out there, we have Straythorn. I think people, not everybody knows his name. Rob Rifkin is definitely that guy. We know him as Ron or Rob?

Speaker 4:
[105:52] Ron.

Speaker 1:
[105:53] Ron Rifkin.

Speaker 3:
[105:53] I'm going so much deeper than this.

Speaker 4:
[105:55] The leader of SD6.

Speaker 1:
[105:56] We have Matt McCoy, the dad from Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Callback.

Speaker 2:
[105:59] Wait, Matt McCoy also, who I will always think of as Nick Lassard, the replacement for Steve Guttenberg in the later-period Police Academy movies.

Speaker 4:
[106:07] Thank you, Five and Six.

Speaker 2:
[106:09] I was like, this guy's gonna be a star as big as Steve Guttenberg. That's a ten-year-old from my first podcast take.

Speaker 3:
[106:15] And then in one of the TV adaptations, he played Exley's dad.

Speaker 1:
[106:19] Matt McCoy is Matt McCoy, except for Craig.

Speaker 3:
[106:23] There's a couple other guys.

Speaker 1:
[106:24] There's a stealth one. Alan Graff is the wife beater in the beginning. I feel like he might have been in the most Rewatchables.

Speaker 3:
[106:29] He's a legendary stuntman, stunt coordinator, and second unit director. But yes, he has been killed in 74 Rewatchables.

Speaker 1:
[106:36] But I know that we have the same winner for this.

Speaker 2:
[106:39] I'm excited.

Speaker 3:
[106:40] Do you have Thomas Arana?

Speaker 1:
[106:43] What part was he?

Speaker 3:
[106:44] He's one of Dudley's henchmen who's in, he's the fucking guy at the end of Hunter for October and he's Russel Crowe's homie in Gladiator, and he's in Limitless.

Speaker 1:
[106:54] So great choice, but that was not who I had. There's another one.

Speaker 3:
[106:58] John Mahon?

Speaker 2:
[106:58] John Mahon, yeah. That's who I have. John Mahon is always-

Speaker 4:
[107:02] I assume you're talking about Paul Gilfoyle.

Speaker 1:
[107:05] The guy driving the armored truck in Heat is one of the guys that get in the prison fight with- Wait, wait. Yeah. The first guy is driving the car.

Speaker 6:
[107:15] Oh my God! Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[107:19] The guy who's like got the shit coming out of his ears.

Speaker 1:
[107:20] The guy's driving the armored truck and he looks over and sees the truck and does this.

Speaker 6:
[107:24] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[107:24] He's the first guy that they punch.

Speaker 5:
[107:25] He can't hear you, slick. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[107:27] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[107:28] Cousin Art, you know.

Speaker 1:
[107:30] I can't believe you didn't notice that.

Speaker 3:
[107:31] I'm sorry. I mean, this is why you're you, man.

Speaker 1:
[107:34] I thought you would have been riding with me on this.

Speaker 3:
[107:36] I'm riding now.

Speaker 1:
[107:37] I literally don't know that guy's name, but I want to look it up.

Speaker 3:
[107:39] I found a guy who was in Hunt for October, Gladiator, and Lineages.

Speaker 2:
[107:42] What about John Mahone, though, who only plays chiefs of police?

Speaker 3:
[107:46] Yeah, true.

Speaker 2:
[107:46] He was the American president, Armageddon, Zodiac. In Austin Powers 2, he was NATO Colonel. He was Earth Corps Ship Commander in something. And famously, he was the LMU coach in the Hank Gathers story.

Speaker 3:
[107:59] Oh.

Speaker 2:
[108:00] I just put that into Appealed to Bill.

Speaker 3:
[108:01] Who was the LMU coach? Wasn't it somebody famous? Who was there often?

Speaker 1:
[108:04] Paul Weston. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[108:05] There you go. But again.

Speaker 1:
[108:07] So that guy, he's typecast, but in a good way. And he's telling his wife, yeah, there's this new Tom Quancy. There's this part for the general. I think I'm going to get it.

Speaker 2:
[108:18] I'm either one of the chiefs of staff or I'm chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, no matter what.

Speaker 3:
[108:22] Philip Baker Hall is busy. That's that guy.

Speaker 1:
[108:24] Who do you have for Dan Waiter, CR?

Speaker 3:
[108:26] I think this is just there.

Speaker 1:
[108:29] Adam as well, unless you want to throw some Dick Stensland at me.

Speaker 3:
[108:31] I throw Simon Baker in here as well. Early Simon Baker, first Simon Baker actually, so that he has a different name.

Speaker 4:
[108:39] Three Aussies in this movie.

Speaker 1:
[108:42] Did get my wife's attention when he came on. Because, you know, Big Devil Wears Prada, part for him.

Speaker 4:
[108:47] What about The Mentalist? Were you a fan of that show?

Speaker 1:
[108:49] Never watched it. Recasting couch director, Siddy, did anybody have anything else for this? We already talked about this.

Speaker 3:
[108:54] We want to talk something out here for Dudley, possibly.

Speaker 2:
[109:00] Oh, actually Irish.

Speaker 3:
[109:02] Authentically Irish.

Speaker 1:
[109:04] If there's a hell, your mother's in it.

Speaker 3:
[109:06] Unquestionably fucking evil the second you see him. Nobody's like, what a nice guy.

Speaker 2:
[109:11] Small, though, of stature, not of charisma.

Speaker 3:
[109:14] But is closer to like what Dudley was, which was just like very sinister.

Speaker 4:
[109:19] You think Postuate communicates evil right away.

Speaker 3:
[109:22] Yeah, don't you? I mean, I know in the Jim Sheridan movies.

Speaker 4:
[109:25] Yeah, in the name of the father, he's so moral.

Speaker 3:
[109:27] But he's coming off the lawyer and usual suspects.

Speaker 4:
[109:30] Oh, yeah, Kobayashi, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[109:32] Coming off that. Right.

Speaker 2:
[109:34] That's good.

Speaker 3:
[109:35] How tall is Cromwell?

Speaker 2:
[109:37] He keeps growing in my estimation. He's like six steps.

Speaker 1:
[109:39] He's like Victor Wembe.

Speaker 3:
[109:41] The only ones I had was, how about Campbell Scott or Josh Charles as Exley?

Speaker 2:
[109:47] Oh, good choices.

Speaker 1:
[109:49] Is Bale too young?

Speaker 2:
[109:51] At this point, probably.

Speaker 3:
[109:52] I'm just trying to get an American a job here.

Speaker 1:
[109:54] Oh, I see what you're doing. So Damon. It should just be Damon. He could have done this, Talented Mr. Ripley, Good Will Hunting and Rounders all in a row. Would have been like, oh my God, the fucking goat is here.

Speaker 4:
[110:04] Pretty good.

Speaker 3:
[110:06] Yeah. I like that.

Speaker 4:
[110:07] It's one year after Larry Flint. So Ed Norton is a possibility. And he, you know.

Speaker 1:
[110:12] Ed Norton. That's a really good one.

Speaker 4:
[110:15] That's Andy Greenwald.

Speaker 2:
[110:16] That's why I'm here.

Speaker 1:
[110:18] So Ed Norton was American History X and Rounders in 97. So would not have probably been available for this movie, but would have been a really good X-ley.

Speaker 2:
[110:29] I think so.

Speaker 1:
[110:30] Ed Burns?

Speaker 4:
[110:34] Year before Saving Private Ryan. She's the one. Is that 96? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[110:38] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[110:38] I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[110:39] Ed Burns is X-ley?

Speaker 4:
[110:41] Ed Burns was a hard-boiled detective in a TV show like seven years ago. What was that show called?

Speaker 1:
[110:47] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[110:47] He came on the podcast.

Speaker 4:
[110:47] Yeah. What was that show called?

Speaker 2:
[110:48] Great question.

Speaker 4:
[110:49] I watched some of that show.

Speaker 3:
[110:50] Was he a detective?

Speaker 2:
[110:51] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[110:52] Obviously Ed Burns, Long Island, got stuck for life.

Speaker 1:
[110:54] Andy, you have a flex category.

Speaker 2:
[110:55] I do. What was the show called? Was it Public Morals? Yeah. My flex category is probably, let me find it, but it was, you probably could have guessed that I would have chosen this. I chose the Big Kahuna Burger category. But I don't know if I did it right, because there are a couple opportunities to discuss food and drink in this movie. How much time do we have left, Craig? I mean, generally, this maybe also goes into the Floyd Gondoli. Like, I really like movies set in an era when there are no choices in liquor stores. You walk in and you say, give me a box. And in that box, I want gin, scotch and vodka. And the guy's like, okay. I don't know what the holdup is, too. Like, I feel like he could have been doing this more quickly since there were no other options.

Speaker 3:
[111:33] It's also just great to go into stores where people are just dicks to you from behind the counter. Like, where it's just like, yeah, don't worry about a Yelp review, man.

Speaker 2:
[111:40] I also feel like, I feel like Nick from Nick's Liquor's entire performance was 80 yard for some reason. You never see his face. It always sounds like a very strong voice. Also speaking of drinks, I really feel like Stensland probably is correctly labeled as a malcontent and maybe not a good cop. Pretty fun at parties considering his mixology abilities when which he takes dark liquor and light liquor and just pours them into the punch at the same time. Shout out to Formosa, which still exists. You can sure get a good meal there. I don't think you can like Johnny Stompanato have a daytime schlitz there and just with the company of your own thoughts, which I did enjoy. And then the only other food really mentioned in the film is Matt Reynolds' Last Meal, which is pretty iconic. It's a frankfurter, french fries, alcohol and sperm.

Speaker 4:
[112:29] Tough one.

Speaker 2:
[112:31] Tough order. It's a tough order. Maybe, you know, restaurant menus were different then.

Speaker 3:
[112:35] That's the secret menu at In-N-Out.

Speaker 4:
[112:36] Yeah, Dudley picked that to check panels.

Speaker 2:
[112:41] Goddamn.

Speaker 5:
[112:43] I thought it was just, they threw the onions in there.

Speaker 4:
[112:48] Can't believe Sierra Month is ending.

Speaker 1:
[112:50] Half-assert research. No building in LA back in the day was led to be taller than City Hall, so they had to basically cheat all the camera work, so we wouldn't see any buildings at that. So they had the fight scene with Guy Pearce and Russel Crowe. They were shot four months after principal photography had ended, and Pearce had shaved his head for another movie, so he's got a wig on. But I didn't really notice the wig when I was watching it.

Speaker 4:
[113:16] I'm wearing one right now.

Speaker 1:
[113:20] The cop that congratulates X-ley at the end is Daryl Gates, famously of the LAPD.

Speaker 3:
[113:25] It's a weird movie for him to make a cameo. Controversial to say the least.

Speaker 4:
[113:28] Not ideal.

Speaker 1:
[113:28] Very strange choice.

Speaker 4:
[113:29] Not ideal.

Speaker 1:
[113:29] And then you mentioned the rape victim, Inez, in the movie, who then disappears after one more scene. In the book, she's huge and with X-ley and they just cut all that out.

Speaker 3:
[113:40] And works for his dad. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[113:44] And then the Lovell House is here. That's Patchett's home. It's a famous house, as we mentioned. Bracken's house is at 501 Wilcox, which is, we talked about next to the Wilshire Country Club.

Speaker 3:
[113:57] Which the current inhabitants just had to get broadcasted the entire module.

Speaker 1:
[114:01] Sorry, guys. And then, the Victory Motel was built. They just like the location and they built.

Speaker 3:
[114:11] It's like the Inglewood, like the oil fields out there.

Speaker 1:
[114:14] Apex Mountain, Crowe, no. Spacey?

Speaker 2:
[114:19] I think there's a case to be made there.

Speaker 1:
[114:20] It's either this or American Beauty, but I like this. I prefer this. Because it sets up American Beauty and the run is in. I wrote down Spacey. Okay. Guy Pearce, it's Memento. Although, it didn't really turn into anything after Memento, like we thought.

Speaker 3:
[114:32] I think he's had a great career.

Speaker 1:
[114:33] No, but I'm saying after Memento, it's like...

Speaker 4:
[114:35] I think post The Brutalist, it might be now.

Speaker 2:
[114:39] Wow.

Speaker 4:
[114:39] Interesting. I think he is very well regarded as an actor. It was a film.

Speaker 6:
[114:44] Okay. Did you see Brutalist?

Speaker 4:
[114:45] It came out in 2024.

Speaker 3:
[114:48] You start Brutalist?

Speaker 1:
[114:49] I started Brutalist. Listen, did you...

Speaker 2:
[114:52] I think you made the right call.

Speaker 1:
[114:53] Wow. Ten minutes in.

Speaker 4:
[114:55] Some shameful opinions here.

Speaker 2:
[114:56] It's a walkout of that movie.

Speaker 1:
[114:58] Not all of us have to watch every movie. We can pick and choose a tiny bit.

Speaker 4:
[115:01] It was nominated for Best Picture. It wasn't like some obscure piece of shit.

Speaker 2:
[115:07] But really, it could have been a TV show. Okay.

Speaker 4:
[115:09] I will assassinate both of you.

Speaker 1:
[115:13] Tell you what, I have another secret for you. I never finished Babylon.

Speaker 2:
[115:17] My main concern, Sean, I'm with you in terms of Guy Pearce being an interesting actor who will age into a different gravitas. He should probably stay offline. I don't know if you've seen some of his recent retweets and quotes regarding global actions. Let's just say that the tenor of his tweets suggests that he was pro Danny DeVito being cast as Sid Hutchins and he would not want someone else cast in that role.

Speaker 4:
[115:40] I'll just throw that out there. So you want him to abolish from society?

Speaker 2:
[115:45] No, I just want him to take his phone away. Stop tweeting.

Speaker 1:
[115:48] CD, LA. Noir, crime movies, Chinatown, Apex Mountain. Yeah, gotta be, right? Basinger, I really don't think this was Apex Mountain for her. I think it was in the 80s during that nine and a half week stretch.

Speaker 3:
[116:02] Did she do the getaway after this?

Speaker 1:
[116:05] The getaway was before this. I think it was nine and a half weeks Batman, like that era.

Speaker 5:
[116:09] What did she follow this up with?

Speaker 2:
[116:12] Everyone loved her, some well-deserved figures.

Speaker 1:
[116:13] She married Alec Baldwin and I think she scaled back a tiny bit after this.

Speaker 4:
[116:19] But weren't they married before this movie?

Speaker 2:
[116:21] They were married during this film.

Speaker 1:
[116:23] I saw No Mercy in the theater with my mom.

Speaker 2:
[116:26] Her next movie was Eight Mile five years later.

Speaker 1:
[116:28] Just want to throw that out there.

Speaker 2:
[116:30] Which one did you see with your mom?

Speaker 1:
[116:31] No Mercy with Richard Gere and Kim Basinger with their handcuff together and trying to escape in New Orleans. And there was...

Speaker 3:
[116:38] I got to admit, I don't know this movie.

Speaker 1:
[116:39] It's bad. My mom really wanted to see it. I hadn't been hanging out with her and we went. And there was a point I'm like, wow, this is a weird one to be with my mom. I kind of wish I wasn't with my mom.

Speaker 4:
[116:52] It's amazing that just 90 seconds ago, you were like, I don't have to see every movie. But you're telling us about you seeing No Mercy.

Speaker 1:
[116:59] Garen Basinger, come on.

Speaker 4:
[117:01] Turned out to be legendary.

Speaker 1:
[117:03] Frolic Room.

Speaker 4:
[117:04] Wait, hold on. I have a question. Do you think that 8 Mile is rewatchable?

Speaker 1:
[117:08] I don't love it.

Speaker 3:
[117:09] It's an interesting time capsule. I don't know if I...

Speaker 4:
[117:11] No.

Speaker 1:
[117:11] I'm glad it exists, but I wouldn't get the 4K.

Speaker 4:
[117:16] I wonder if my just of being a few years younger makes me like that movie a little bit more.

Speaker 3:
[117:19] You were more of an M&M guy than I was.

Speaker 4:
[117:20] I was more into M&M.

Speaker 2:
[117:21] That's right. He spoke to you.

Speaker 1:
[117:23] Frolic Room.

Speaker 3:
[117:24] That movie peaks with Bob Deepling in the opening seconds.

Speaker 1:
[117:27] DeVito No.

Speaker 4:
[117:27] It's a critical part of the film.

Speaker 1:
[117:29] Evil Cromwell. Is he Ben Evil in anything else?

Speaker 3:
[117:35] He's bad in a couple of things, but not the devil.

Speaker 1:
[117:38] What's your favorite Cromwell?

Speaker 6:
[117:41] It's this.

Speaker 2:
[117:44] God, well, he really is good in that Star Trek movie. I think he's very good in that. But Succession was good.

Speaker 1:
[117:51] I really loved him in Succession. I think that's my favorite Cromwell of all the Cromwells.

Speaker 4:
[117:55] He's hilarious in that, because he and Nicholas Brawn are genius together. He plays the president in a Jack Ryan movie. Yeah. But I think this is like maybe his...

Speaker 3:
[118:07] Blake Harrison for Jack Ryan or which one?

Speaker 4:
[118:08] No, it's the Ben Affleck one.

Speaker 1:
[118:10] I think he's excellent in this. I might say this. Toilet face dunking, I still think it's St. Elmo's Fire. 50s LA. Maybe.

Speaker 3:
[118:23] Danging a guy out the window to get to one.

Speaker 6:
[118:25] Toilet dunking, Big Lebowski, pretty good one.

Speaker 4:
[118:27] Oh, yeah. Good call.

Speaker 1:
[118:30] I've got a special big-picture episode, toilet dunks.

Speaker 4:
[118:33] That's a really good... For a slow time.

Speaker 1:
[118:35] Like a June.

Speaker 4:
[118:36] Be like two and a half, three hours.

Speaker 3:
[118:38] I would pay $10 to watch Amanda watch four hours of guys getting dumped in a toilet.

Speaker 4:
[118:44] Do we have four hours of that much footage?

Speaker 1:
[118:46] I gotta say, whenever there's a toilet dunk, I always think about the actor. And if I had been the actor, like how many times I would have asked the crew, are we sure it's clean? Nobody's going to the bathroom in this. Who cleaned it? I just can't think of anything worse. The Santa Monica Fire is a good one because it's like a pretty grungy bathroom. Hancock Park movie houses. It's probably the, it's the Howard Hughes House and the Aviator, I still feel like.

Speaker 5:
[119:15] Which one's that?

Speaker 1:
[119:16] It's on the Eighth Hole in Wilshire. It's when they land the plane. But he's in that, I feel like that's the best movie location of all of them. Cruiser Hanks.

Speaker 2:
[119:26] Oh wait, can we do one Apex Mountain here?

Speaker 1:
[119:27] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[119:29] For me, this is the Apex Mountain of guys getting shot in the heart. Like the dude watching the cartoons will live rent free in my head forever because of the noises he makes after being shot. And the attention paid to Kevin Spacey's post-heart shot. It's very good. I feel like they had a shot in the heart consultant on this film.

Speaker 1:
[119:46] I like when they do this after the, it's like you don't need to, that guy's done. You shot him in the heart.

Speaker 4:
[119:51] Checking the pulse rate.

Speaker 3:
[119:52] A heart shot if it's double tapped and then a guy gets a headshot after. Because Wayne Gross is like, that's a good one.

Speaker 1:
[119:58] When they get him in the hotel room but then he gets shot in the head.

Speaker 2:
[120:00] And what movie was that Chris?

Speaker 3:
[120:02] Well fortunately we have a future serial killer here, Craig Horlbeck. Shot in the heart, you die instantly, right?

Speaker 4:
[120:09] No, I don't think you do. Which is why when Russel Crowe shoots him and then immediately checks his pulse, I guess he wouldn't have a pulse if he was just shot in the heart. But it has been literally like two seconds.

Speaker 2:
[120:18] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[120:19] Because we see Spacey die and he gets 20 seconds to deliver the line of Rolo Tomasi.

Speaker 2:
[120:26] I don't think I would have had that front of mind.

Speaker 4:
[120:27] They kind of fudged it a little bit. Sometimes you die instantly when you get shot in the heart, sometimes you don't.

Speaker 1:
[120:31] It depends if you're in the ventricle or.

Speaker 4:
[120:33] I mean, I think your brain still works.

Speaker 5:
[120:35] It's amazing to have five doctors here and not know the answer to this question.

Speaker 3:
[120:38] Well, look, we're all about doing our own research.

Speaker 2:
[120:41] All of us are employed at the CDC, Sean, and we are all trying to do great work.

Speaker 1:
[120:44] How many games could Jason Tatum play after getting shot in the heart? Just like right back at it.

Speaker 5:
[120:50] Don't tempt OG Ananova is all I'm saying.

Speaker 3:
[120:52] Cruz or Hanks? Hanks as Hollywood Jack?

Speaker 5:
[120:58] Cruz is actually is what I was thinking as well.

Speaker 3:
[121:00] Yeah, Cruz is actually was the other choice. So we go Cruz?

Speaker 2:
[121:05] I think later Hanks as Dudley.

Speaker 1:
[121:08] That would be a great twist casting.

Speaker 3:
[121:10] Hanks would never go heel like that. What's the closest he came? Road to Perdition?

Speaker 5:
[121:15] No, he did it in... What's the Wachowskis movie? Cloud Atlas? Cloud Atlas, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[121:21] Doesn't he play like nine guys in a row?

Speaker 5:
[121:22] He plays like four characters, but he does play a villain. You haven't seen it?

Speaker 3:
[121:27] No, this would have been good for him. I think for the catalog, him playing one villain in the 90s and all the other shit he did would have been good.

Speaker 1:
[121:33] Do you think it would be fun if Bill watched Cloud Atlas?

Speaker 5:
[121:36] I do think it would be fun. Yeah, I think if we could get some...

Speaker 3:
[121:40] How long will Bill last during Cloud Atlas would be a better game?

Speaker 5:
[121:43] I don't think it's your speed, but you're not a Hanks completist. That's the only thing we can say about you. You haven't seen them all.

Speaker 3:
[121:48] I haven't been happy with the 21st century in Hanks. I've been on the record for a while. I know you have as well.

Speaker 5:
[121:54] I wish he did some different things. He's trying a lot of new instruments. They don't all sound good.

Speaker 3:
[122:00] I think when you fly as close to the sun as he did in the 90s and then with Cast Away, at some point, it's like I've won seven titles. What else do you want from me?

Speaker 2:
[122:09] He only seems happy in the Wes Anderson movies now.

Speaker 5:
[122:12] He's good in those.

Speaker 2:
[122:12] He's very good.

Speaker 5:
[122:13] I think he's good at that.

Speaker 2:
[122:14] Even Cranston.

Speaker 5:
[122:15] They're cooking.

Speaker 3:
[122:16] Scorsese or Spielberg? Clearly Scorsese.

Speaker 1:
[122:19] Yeah, but I do think it would be interesting to see Spielberg have... The way that this movie excises some of the gross stuff from LA. Confidential and also makes the characters a little less... I mean, actually lies about his war record in the novel. There's a lot of stuff about these characters that are even worse. But if you gave Spielberg this script, I do think it would be good. That being said...

Speaker 3:
[122:41] He would have cast DeVito as the hush-hush editor.

Speaker 2:
[122:44] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[122:45] 100%. Dreyfus would have been back in the mix.

Speaker 5:
[122:48] That's great.

Speaker 3:
[122:49] Dreyfus.

Speaker 5:
[122:50] That's a great pick.

Speaker 3:
[122:51] Oh my God. That would have been great.

Speaker 2:
[122:53] Sean, for this category, I feel like you have to stand up for the working director like Curtis Hanson. Because again, if it's Scorsese or it's Spielberg, it has a very different point of view.

Speaker 5:
[123:01] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[123:02] That's not the game, though. You have to pick.

Speaker 5:
[123:06] One thing I will say about Hanson that he said that I thought was really interesting is he was like, I like suspense films. And that's not really a word you hear. Like we talk about thrillers all the time on the show. This is often called a crime movie. This is a suspense movie the way that like a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films are, where you just like really want to know where it's going and what's going to happen. And you're kind of like you're locked in. Like we were saying, there's just not a lot of fat on the movie. And because of that, if you look at almost all of it, The River Wild is the same thing. Where the whole time you're like, where is this going?

Speaker 3:
[123:35] You like that movie?

Speaker 1:
[123:36] The River Wild? Yeah. I like the remake too.

Speaker 3:
[123:41] I watched on Netflix a movie called Gas Lit by My Husband. It's right there in the tunnel.

Speaker 1:
[123:47] We didn't finish battle.

Speaker 3:
[123:49] First of all, it was amazing. It was a lifetime movie. It was number one on Netflix. Had to check it out. And I was just riveted the entire time.

Speaker 1:
[123:55] What do you think about?

Speaker 3:
[123:56] Suspenseful?

Speaker 5:
[123:58] Or Gas Lit by My Husband?

Speaker 3:
[124:00] The title is Gas Lit by My Husband. Was this everything I wanted?

Speaker 1:
[124:06] Did anybody appear in it that we would ever have heard of?

Speaker 3:
[124:08] Didn't recognize one actor?

Speaker 2:
[124:10] Will the algorithm on Netflix just roll from this Rewatchables right into that film? Can we arrange for that?

Speaker 3:
[124:14] When we do the after CR month, when Gas Light by My Husband is the next episode.

Speaker 5:
[124:19] Gas lighting month is a good idea. You could do the film Gas Light.

Speaker 3:
[124:23] Craig, check it out, Liz. I think you guys would like Gas Light by My Husband. Yeah, she basically thinks she's going crazy, but he's doing stuff to her. And it actually would have been a really good movie with better actors. That's my one blurb.

Speaker 5:
[124:38] I'd like to encourage you to check out the 1940s classic Gas Light, around which this seems to be very clearly inspired by.

Speaker 3:
[124:44] Best Hang, Worst Hang. Best Hang, probably Lin, Kim Basinger's character.

Speaker 1:
[124:50] Jack.

Speaker 3:
[124:52] Hollywood Jack.

Speaker 2:
[124:52] Best Hang.

Speaker 3:
[124:53] Go to the Frolic Room with Hollywood Jack.

Speaker 2:
[124:55] Pierce Patchett is the best hang. Cool house, cool attitude.

Speaker 3:
[124:58] It's a house of heroin.

Speaker 5:
[125:00] He's on heroin all the time.

Speaker 2:
[125:02] So he's chill.

Speaker 5:
[125:03] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[125:04] Maybe four hours of golf with Pierce Patchett would be fun.

Speaker 2:
[125:06] It'd probably be eight hours.

Speaker 1:
[125:07] I think Jack would be like, I know how to get into all the clubs. I know like we go get a nice meal or something like.

Speaker 2:
[125:13] Grease the wheels.

Speaker 1:
[125:14] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[125:15] Dudley? No.

Speaker 2:
[125:16] Best or worst?

Speaker 3:
[125:17] No. He does like his whiskey from Ireland. He had that good line.

Speaker 5:
[125:21] Knows all the secrets of the world.

Speaker 3:
[125:22] Where's Tang? Stenlin?

Speaker 2:
[125:24] No, no, no. Mrs. Lefferts.

Speaker 3:
[125:27] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[125:28] There's also a dead body over there.

Speaker 4:
[125:29] I had actually, but he's right.

Speaker 3:
[125:31] Yeah, you're right. Pickin Nits. I mentioned the gambling really bothered me and that there was no gambling in this movie. Kim Basinger was prettier than Veronica Lake. I did some Veronica Lake research.

Speaker 2:
[125:44] Whoa.

Speaker 1:
[125:45] No, I just think.

Speaker 5:
[125:46] Hold on.

Speaker 3:
[125:47] I just think like she's right. I just needed to dye my hair and I'm good. Because I'm hotter than Veronica Lake.

Speaker 5:
[125:54] That's a subjective opinion, right? Like whoever's hotter. I don't think she looks like Veronica Lake.

Speaker 3:
[125:59] She doesn't.

Speaker 5:
[126:00] Nor do I think she acts like Veronica Lake. And so she might be the actress who most looks like Veronica Lake at that time, who would make sense for the movie. But Veronica Lake.

Speaker 3:
[126:08] I think they would have cast that differently if anyone who went to the movie in 1997 could remember who Veronica Lake was, except for the film nerds.

Speaker 5:
[126:15] Yeah, but even just the way that Veronica Lake acts, she's a way more playful actor. She is way funnier and is in a lot of light comedy in the 40s. And Kim Basinger is not a funny actor at all.

Speaker 3:
[126:27] No.

Speaker 1:
[126:27] Do you think the lady who they think is Lana Turner lookalike, but is Lana Turner in fact looks like Lana Turner?

Speaker 3:
[126:35] I thought that was pretty good, actually. Yeah, I didn't mind that one. Lana Turner and Johnny Stappanato, by the way, weren't together until a couple years after this movie wrapped up, which was, they kind of shaved it. Anything else for nitpicks?

Speaker 2:
[126:49] We talked about everything.

Speaker 1:
[126:50] We put in what's usually the worst.

Speaker 2:
[126:51] There's a lot of, it's actually not that fun to go searching for nits for this movie because there's like a thousand people being like, actually, plastic ketchup bottles weren't invented until the 70s. And actually, glasses were...

Speaker 3:
[127:01] The books, the books in Pearce's bookcase.

Speaker 2:
[127:03] The only nit that really bugged me on Rewatch was there's this scene where Dudley's like, Edmund, lose the glasses. I've never seen a police officer wearing glasses. And then it cuts to Stensland pouring liquor. And the first guy with his cup is fucking Four Eyes. So I feel like Dudley just left that party.

Speaker 3:
[127:18] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[127:19] Come on.

Speaker 3:
[127:20] Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. So in 2020, Brian Helgeland, the writer, said there was a sequel that was in development with Chadwick Boseman, who then got sick and they decided not to do it.

Speaker 1:
[127:34] Not based on an Elroy novel?

Speaker 3:
[127:35] It was set in 1974 and Crowe and Pearce would have both been in it. And it just kind of fell apart.

Speaker 2:
[127:41] Yeah, and Helgeland said Warner Bros. passed and he said that Elroy was either on board or had been spoken to.

Speaker 4:
[127:47] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[127:49] Interesting. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Zane Lowe or somebody else? What do you have, CR?

Speaker 2:
[128:00] I just wanted to just shout out the other TV pilot. Because there were two. There was one in 2003 that you can watch online with Keifer Sutherland as Hollywood Jack.

Speaker 3:
[128:08] The Trio logo during the heyday of Trio.

Speaker 2:
[128:11] The Trio is brilliant but canceled when they would air pilots.

Speaker 3:
[128:14] Really good idea, by the way.

Speaker 2:
[128:15] I wish we could bring that back. But the one that was for CBS 2019 is pretty compelling because it was created by a writer named Jordan Harper who wrote a book we love called Everybody Knows. It was Walton Goggins as Vincennes. It was Shea Whigham as Stensland. Then a bunch of other good working act like Mark Webber was Bud White. Harper's whole pitch was that he was going to spread out time. And so The Night Owl wasn't even going to happen until the second season.

Speaker 1:
[128:41] And that's like, you can't even find that one.

Speaker 2:
[128:43] You can't find it. I've heard that it was very good and that also CBS never ever would have made it because it was a very strange choice for CBS in 2019.

Speaker 5:
[128:51] I just thought about how you could do a show like that on network television.

Speaker 2:
[128:54] No, it was an era when I think they were taking swings to try it like, will we become cable or will we?

Speaker 3:
[128:59] CBS was like, can you move it to Chicago and just set it in a fire department?

Speaker 1:
[129:04] And have them never leave the fire department?

Speaker 2:
[129:05] Or just call it cops colon Los Angeles.

Speaker 3:
[129:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[129:07] It probably would have been on the fall schedule. Sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 3:
[129:11] What do you got, CR.? You have Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Floor, Zane Lowe, anybody else? We've had Zane every week this month.

Speaker 1:
[129:18] Dudley, man.

Speaker 2:
[129:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[129:20] Here we are from the streets of Dublin to the boulevards of sunset, the city of angels and you, you've always held that badge high. That's your journey, but now you're on the other side of the law. So tell me, tell me how you got there. Tell me what you plan to do with all that H, the rackets, the sin, the vice. Just explain it all to me, man.

Speaker 3:
[129:42] It just kills me to see.

Speaker 5:
[129:46] Why does Zane keep interviewing cops?

Speaker 1:
[129:49] Yo, if Zane just launched Cop Talk, and Zane talking to fictional and non-fictional cops, amazing.

Speaker 2:
[129:59] But he talks about their career high points.

Speaker 5:
[130:01] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[130:02] I mean, everything is like as if they're Harry Styles.

Speaker 4:
[130:04] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[130:04] It's like, you just, you know, all the sounds you feel, you're hearing, you're seeing.

Speaker 2:
[130:09] You're bracing people.

Speaker 4:
[130:10] Harry.

Speaker 3:
[130:11] I thought for sure you were going to have him interview the Simon Baker character. It's been a rough road for you, mate.

Speaker 1:
[130:16] Matt Reynolds' last meals. A hot dog with a top of semen. But here you are, man.

Speaker 4:
[130:26] So close to badge of honor.

Speaker 5:
[130:32] I can't. It's in the, it's in the Bernthal zone where I can't make eye contact with you when you start doing stuff.

Speaker 4:
[130:40] You transform.

Speaker 5:
[130:42] Have you ever watched the Zane interview?

Speaker 2:
[130:44] Yeah, because of Chris.

Speaker 5:
[130:45] Oh, he encouraged it.

Speaker 1:
[130:47] I didn't tell you you have to watch a Zane interview, did I?

Speaker 2:
[130:50] You tell me to do lots of things.

Speaker 5:
[130:51] It's weird because when Zane interviewing Adele or whatever was happening during Cranlan and Juliette and Chris were both so into it, they would show it to me and I'd be like, this is nothing to me. I don't know what is interesting about this. It's fine. It's an interview of an artist. They were just walking around the office with the computer showing it to different people hoping to connect. But what you've done with it, you've transformed.

Speaker 1:
[131:14] Today, the return of that. This is fucking playing alone.

Speaker 3:
[131:23] Just one Oscar. Who gets it?

Speaker 5:
[131:26] Dante Spinaugty.

Speaker 1:
[131:27] He fucking blacked out here.

Speaker 5:
[131:28] The cinematographer. Chris explained it so well, I thought, which is like, this movie doesn't look like it's trying to be a 50s movie. It looks like it's trying to be a 90s movie. Titanic 1.

Speaker 2:
[131:38] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[131:39] This movie actually won two Oscars and lost seven and it lost all seven to Titanic.

Speaker 2:
[131:43] Oof.

Speaker 3:
[131:45] Tough beat.

Speaker 2:
[131:46] Dante has an incredible, incredible CV where he's also known as working as being the primary DP for Michael Mann and Brett Ratner.

Speaker 5:
[131:53] Yes. He shot parts of Melania.

Speaker 2:
[131:55] He did Manhunter and X-Men The Last Stand.

Speaker 1:
[131:58] I think I read a Q&A with him about Melania where they were like, what are you doing? And he was like, I'm a working journalist.

Speaker 5:
[132:04] He did read by The New Yorker about it. And he was just, he wouldn't blink. He was like, yeah, I took the job. I'd take it again.

Speaker 2:
[132:09] He is, I believe, how old is he? He's currently 84, 85.

Speaker 3:
[132:16] It's a very well shot documentary. Probably an answerable question.

Speaker 5:
[132:20] You say you haven't finished Babylon, but you have completed Melania.

Speaker 3:
[132:25] I didn't finish Melania either. I did watch the first 20 minutes.

Speaker 1:
[132:28] But you haven't watched Gaslip by My Husband to completion.

Speaker 3:
[132:31] The first, Gaslip by My Husband, when's the sequel? Yeah. She's got to remarry and have it happen again. Probably an answerable question. Actually, like a whiff, maybe gay. Maybe there's something going on there with him and Bud.

Speaker 2:
[132:45] What does Lin say? You can't fuck Bud by fucking me.

Speaker 3:
[132:48] That was, I thought the tell and also like he was really, now granted, Lin, it looks great. Yeah. But it's the only time he's interested in that, the entire movie, and it seems directly because of some sort of weird Bud thing.

Speaker 2:
[133:00] But I think that's true.

Speaker 3:
[133:01] I don't know.

Speaker 5:
[133:02] It kind of, by not having him take care of Inez, like it also undercuts a little bit of his White Night kind of like presentation in the book.

Speaker 3:
[133:10] I just thought that whole part was weird. Then this is the biggest one to me. Is it a better movie if Bud just dies? Do we need to see him again?

Speaker 5:
[133:19] It's kind of related to my unanswerable, which was what was Bud White going to do to support Lin in Arizona?

Speaker 1:
[133:24] What was Lin going to do to support Bud?

Speaker 2:
[133:25] The dress store. She's going to do the dress store.

Speaker 5:
[133:28] She's going to pay for the, he's been shot multiple times.

Speaker 3:
[133:31] This year's the Wataneo Award. What are they doing in Phoenix? He's got a hole in his face. This is what I wondered, former call girl.

Speaker 2:
[133:36] Is the implication that he can't speak anymore? That's in the book.

Speaker 1:
[133:39] He can't talk anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[133:41] Wow. And he's really surviving the two gunshots and then the one right to the face from five feet away?

Speaker 1:
[133:47] That felt like a note. It wasn't a note, but it felt like what we got to have is the three good people in this movie handshake at the end.

Speaker 3:
[133:54] Were you surprised to see him in the car at the end?

Speaker 4:
[133:56] Yeah, that was my flex. The Clarence Worley should have died. I do think he should have died. It would have been better for his character. Go down to Hero, showing him in the car. I think the whole ending, I felt a little deflated at the end. Her line at the end is like, Some guys get the girl or whatever. Some guys get the world, others get an ex hooker and a trip to Arizona. And then you see Russel Crowe, I do feel like it kind of deflated a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[134:18] I think Aaron Rodgers said that to Mike Tomlin when the Steelers fell apart last year.

Speaker 4:
[134:23] He's coming back.

Speaker 3:
[134:24] There's a case that this movie could just end at the hotel and we don't even need the last two scenes. We definitely don't need the psycho ending with him explaining the entire plot to all the cops.

Speaker 4:
[134:38] That's Elroy.

Speaker 1:
[134:40] Every Elroy book is like there's a five, ten page scene of like they find the one guy who can explain everything and he does.

Speaker 3:
[134:47] Is that the all time? Why did you add this scene?

Speaker 5:
[134:49] The psycho person.

Speaker 3:
[134:52] Like just get that scene out of there. Turn the movie off as soon as people listening who haven't seen Psycho during the big attempted murder scene at the end, just end the movie.

Speaker 5:
[135:03] I've gone back and forth on the psycho one. Maybe we can save it for the psycho episode.

Speaker 3:
[135:08] Psycho episode? I love that movie.

Speaker 5:
[135:09] That would be great if you want to do Psycho. I love Psycho.

Speaker 2:
[135:12] I like the way you acted as if you didn't just suggest it. Oh, you guys want to do Psycho.

Speaker 5:
[135:15] Well, I never actually thought we would make a film.

Speaker 3:
[135:17] He planted the suggestion and then made the other person think they thought of it.

Speaker 5:
[135:22] But it's 1960. We don't do movies that far back historically, but I would love to do that.

Speaker 3:
[135:27] Running out of movies now that we've done CR.

Speaker 4:
[135:29] Vertigo. Don't you want to do Vertigo?

Speaker 3:
[135:30] Yeah, Vertigo. We talked about it for a while.

Speaker 5:
[135:32] But that's like the horny CR, horny Bill Hall face too. Speaking of cutting women to look like other women, that's a part of Vertigo as well.

Speaker 1:
[135:40] That's not like a big pastime of mine is cutting women to make them look like he found them in Copland.

Speaker 5:
[135:47] The thing about Psycho is the psychiatrist explaining Norman Bates, that part is terrible. But the cutaway to Norman at the end with the fly and him like the voice in his head, that part is great.

Speaker 3:
[135:57] I was talking about the doctor explaining for four minutes.

Speaker 4:
[136:01] I had a problem with Hanson.

Speaker 3:
[136:02] What do you got?

Speaker 1:
[136:04] Do you think it would be more entertaining if Shams adopted Sid's writing style? Word around the form is that Lucas Slovenian sweetheart is taking his kids back to the motherland. But while the baby mama is away, the cat will average 34 points a game.

Speaker 4:
[136:20] Hashtag, Shams. Hush, hush.

Speaker 5:
[136:24] Again, Shams is now portrayed by Robert Lohsia, which is problematic. Problematic.

Speaker 1:
[136:29] Why is that problematic?

Speaker 3:
[136:31] Can Shams, can we add Shams to the Wayne Jake and St. Lo category?

Speaker 1:
[136:34] But Shams, Shams Hudgens?

Speaker 3:
[136:36] Yeah. This is great. This is what Shams needed.

Speaker 4:
[136:39] Yeah. Rebrand.

Speaker 5:
[136:41] A little boost.

Speaker 3:
[136:42] Instead of him going on first take in these shows, he could just, that could be his little video thing.

Speaker 1:
[136:46] Everybody in Boston is talking about whether the two J's will be able to share the ball and what it means for the two P's, Peyton Pritchard.

Speaker 4:
[136:58] Of the Dome. Hashtag Shams.

Speaker 5:
[137:00] Why is this Robert Lojja?

Speaker 3:
[137:02] It's Robert Lojja as Shams as the, as the Shams guy.

Speaker 1:
[137:07] That's my David DeVito voice.

Speaker 5:
[137:09] Is that weird? You can do better than that.

Speaker 3:
[137:15] Secret Handshake Club member Billy in one of this movie. It's got to be the Night Owl coffee mug, right?

Speaker 1:
[137:20] I had Roller Tomasi. I guess is that too big?

Speaker 3:
[137:24] What is it though?

Speaker 1:
[137:25] I don't know because that's what I know.

Speaker 4:
[137:27] Secret Handshake Club.

Speaker 3:
[137:29] No, it's memorabilia. It has to be something I can show.

Speaker 1:
[137:31] Specifically night owl.

Speaker 3:
[137:32] You've got to be the Night Owl.

Speaker 2:
[137:32] It's a thing that we could each share. And if one of us is killed. That's pretty good. We should come up with that.

Speaker 3:
[137:37] There wasn't like, was there a matches from the Victory Hotel?

Speaker 5:
[137:41] I had Jack Vincennes tortoiseshell sunglasses. Which I think are sick.

Speaker 1:
[137:46] But this is different than memorabilia.

Speaker 3:
[137:49] It's memorabilia, but it's secret handshake memorabilia.

Speaker 1:
[137:52] Gotcha. Okay, so my-

Speaker 3:
[137:53] So if I just had a night owl coffee mug and you were like, is that LA. Confidential? It's like one of those. Like you almost have to like get it.

Speaker 1:
[138:00] So you haven't seen me leaving flirtily business cards at your house then.

Speaker 3:
[138:04] Flirtily business cards. That would be another one.

Speaker 4:
[138:07] I got to go on. The opening scene of the movie, the opening montage, they show you a Hush Hush magazine cover that says the line that DeVito says in the beginning of the movie of, Anjanu Dykes in Hollywood, you could- that would be mine. The Hush Hush magazine.

Speaker 5:
[138:20] Where would you leave that?

Speaker 4:
[138:22] Around your home? We could put it right there. Just among the stack of regular magazines.

Speaker 1:
[138:26] Just imagining Bill getting Anjanu Dykes in Hollywood served him on Netflix.

Speaker 3:
[138:30] I'm searching for it tonight on eBay.

Speaker 1:
[138:32] And just be like, all right, I was going to watch Babylon, but fuck it.

Speaker 4:
[138:37] Brutalist is too long.

Speaker 3:
[138:38] You guys laugh, but put on Gaslight by My Husband, get Gaslight, give it 10 minutes, and see if you're still watching.

Speaker 4:
[138:45] It would be a good bit for you, Sean.

Speaker 5:
[138:48] Start logging it. Is there a sequel to this?

Speaker 3:
[138:51] It would be funny if you just logged it out of nowhere.

Speaker 5:
[138:53] I'll watch it. Look, I'll watch anything. I don't care.

Speaker 3:
[138:55] It was number one on Netflix that had my attention. Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi were a best-worst life lesson. Some men get the world, others get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. It's a pretty good life lesson. Best double feature choice. We all have Chinatown.

Speaker 5:
[139:09] Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Which is similarly a movie about this period in history. Post-war detectives trying to solve a big cover-up, but also kind of a parable about the building of the highways and who controls the ways and means of the city.

Speaker 2:
[139:26] What in war would you put up with this? In a lonely place?

Speaker 5:
[139:28] That's a great one. That one's a little Hollywood inside baseball.

Speaker 1:
[139:31] I like Touch of Evil for that.

Speaker 5:
[139:33] That's good. Mexico.

Speaker 1:
[139:34] Not an LA movie. I would also say as a kind of museum piece more than an enjoyable movie, the Brian De Palma's Black Dahlia, which there is now legendarily a director's cut. I don't know if that's true or not.

Speaker 3:
[139:47] Are there dahlia heads out there?

Speaker 1:
[139:49] I mean, Black Dahlia is an incredible novel.

Speaker 3:
[139:51] I'm saying for the movie.

Speaker 1:
[139:53] I think there are people who are like, there's a secret director's cut that would be better.

Speaker 5:
[139:59] So, I think a really good semi-classic noir, not as seen as some of the best-known ones that would be good for this is The Blue Dahlia, which features Veronica Lake. Alan Ladd is the star. He's about a guy who comes home from World War II and takes a trip to Los Angeles. It's the only original screenplay that Raymond Chandler ever wrote. He was nominated for Academy Award for it. It's a pretty good movie. It's not considered on that Bogart class of noirs, but I really like it.

Speaker 3:
[140:27] I have a double feature guest slip by my husband. I watch it first though and then go to LA. Confidential and step up.

Speaker 2:
[140:34] In Lonely Place. But you said it wasn't good enough.

Speaker 3:
[140:37] Who won the movie?

Speaker 2:
[140:39] I remember it.

Speaker 4:
[140:39] No, you guys are turning at each other.

Speaker 3:
[140:42] I've been praying for it for two hours.

Speaker 5:
[140:45] Who won the movie? Curtis Hanson.

Speaker 2:
[140:50] Come back to me.

Speaker 1:
[140:53] I actually think it's Helga Lund.

Speaker 2:
[140:56] I feel like Crowe has been minimized. We have not talked about Russel Crowe. He kind of won this movie.

Speaker 3:
[141:02] Crowe wins the movie because it sets up 10 years of Russel Crowe being one of the biggest stars we have. It has to start with this.

Speaker 2:
[141:10] It still matters, as little as it happens, where it's like you go to a movie and you don't really know this person, you leave the movie only talking about this person. And being like, oh, this is a new character in my life.

Speaker 3:
[141:20] It's a breakout.

Speaker 2:
[141:22] What are we going to do with this next? How are we going to see him next? Who's going to harness this rage in this surprisingly modest frame?

Speaker 3:
[141:29] I also think he needs it for the IMDb, like just the collage of work. This is a good one to throw in there. And then he's got Gladiator and of course everything peaks with a beautiful life. But then Beautiful Mind.

Speaker 1:
[141:41] The writers just keep going. It's like an unadaptable book.

Speaker 2:
[141:44] Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 4:
[141:45] A great script out of it.

Speaker 3:
[141:46] That's fair. All right, here we go. Producer Craig, what do you got?

Speaker 4:
[141:51] I don't want to get crushed for this. You don't like it. I liked it. I didn't love it. And I do. It's always tough. Every time I listen to you guys, by the end of it, I'm like, wow, maybe that was way better than I thought. But in the moment, I thought the lead three actors were great. I thought the story was really interesting. I don't know. It felt just like a little cheesy to me. And I had trouble with a lot of the dialogue. And I don't know if it's just great actors, tough dialogue, or if that is kind of the style of the noir 50s world they're building and that's the way it's supposed to be. But when it wasn't Pearce, Russel Crowe, or Spacey and it was like the DeVito or the Kim Basinger mixed in with some of the dialogue, I had trouble kind of like fully get my hands dirty with it.

Speaker 3:
[142:33] That's when you're on Stewart's mock drafts?

Speaker 4:
[142:35] No, I was locked in the whole time.

Speaker 2:
[142:36] I paid attention. There are a couple lines that are a little clunkier than I remember them being. Like when X Lee's trying to get Jack to go and Jack's like, are you ready to pay the consequences? Which I don't think is something you say or do.

Speaker 4:
[142:50] And then I started, after I watched the movie, I was reading some stuff and then I was like, oh wow, this is Library of Congress is saving this, preserving this film and everyone's like greatest movie ever made. And I was like, maybe I'm missing something and need to watch it again.

Speaker 3:
[143:01] I mean, I see what he's saying. I think it's a second watch movie. I think the second time when you're not so worried about following every single thing that's happening and you're just watching it for the actors and the choices. It's a different movie.

Speaker 1:
[143:15] But not only is it a 30 year old movie, but the lexicon of the film is 75 years ago. So it's like basically a western to you.

Speaker 2:
[143:25] My thing when I saw the movie, I was relatively film illiterate of old movies and I hadn't seen the noirs that it was influenced by. And so my relationship with this movie has deepened because of what it sent me back.

Speaker 1:
[143:35] That was probably how I felt about Chinatown when I saw it where I was like, this is so incredible. And then you go back and watch 40s and 50s movies and you're like, well, it's style of the acting and the style of the performance.

Speaker 3:
[143:44] One thing that's noteworthy is a lot of people have tried and failed to make movies like this.

Speaker 1:
[143:48] Oh, like Dancer Squad?

Speaker 3:
[143:50] I think this is one of the high degree of difficulty. Oh, I could see what they're going for, but that just didn't work or they cast the wrong person or they didn't have the feel for it. It's only a couple that have actually made it.

Speaker 2:
[144:02] Or tried to be about too much. Like this is going to the TV point, the smartest decision they made was the one that was harshest maybe for Elroy Superheads, which is if it's not about these three guys and their journey with this one case, it's not in the movie.

Speaker 3:
[144:14] What was that one Affleck made? It was in LA, but it was in the mid 2010s.

Speaker 1:
[144:18] They Live by Night?

Speaker 3:
[144:19] The gangster movie. Oh no, no, I'm talking about, it was set in They Live by Night.

Speaker 5:
[144:24] Oh, Live by Night.

Speaker 1:
[144:25] Live by Night.

Speaker 3:
[144:27] But that's an example of like when you go way back and you're really going for it.

Speaker 1:
[144:30] That's 30s, right?

Speaker 5:
[144:32] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[144:32] Good book.

Speaker 3:
[144:33] I like Afriq. I don't know if that movie totally worked, but.

Speaker 5:
[144:36] But Hollywoodland would actually be an interesting double feature with this, because that's sort of about a similar late. Same kind of double wave. A few years later in the mid late 50s. This is a movie where I fully just cop to having on my 15 year old glasses, where in 97, you went through some of the movies, like I made a much longer list of movies, all of which I tried to see or saw in movie theaters that like totally switched me on. I was voraciously consuming movie magazines at this time. It was The Game, it was Cronenberg's Crash is that year, Contact is that year, Private Parts, the Howard Stern movie, Night Falls on Manhattan, the Lumet movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Wag the Dog, we mentioned In-N-Out and The Company of Men was a huge movie that year. Event Horizon, Liar Liar, like all of those movies. I was really just starting to go crazy.

Speaker 3:
[145:24] Hit you at the perfect time.

Speaker 5:
[145:25] Where I was like, I'm going every Friday.

Speaker 3:
[145:29] Same thing. It's why I still support Karate Kid, all those Purple Rain.

Speaker 1:
[145:35] Inspector Todd.

Speaker 3:
[145:36] Yeah, 15 I think is the key movie year. I even saw it happen with my son a little bit. Your brain is just developed enough that you can start actually understanding movies and you think you're smarter than you are.

Speaker 5:
[145:47] This movie is really a good like You're a Grown Up Now movie.

Speaker 2:
[145:49] Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 1:
[145:50] But it would be interesting to watch Ben's taste develop because we had video stories and what was in the theaters. Ben has everything that's ever been made like at his fingertips.

Speaker 3:
[146:00] When are we gonna have, maybe Zayn can interview Ben. Ben, you fell in love with Kubrick.

Speaker 1:
[146:07] So when you see Project Hail Mary, you're seeing a copy of a copy.

Speaker 3:
[146:12] That's it for CR Month.

Speaker 2:
[146:14] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[146:14] We did it. Five movies in a mail bag. Unbelievable.

Speaker 4:
[146:17] Thanks guys.

Speaker 3:
[146:18] Craig's favorite Rewatchables month I think.

Speaker 4:
[146:21] A lot of bangers. I'm sorry I couldn't close it out strong for you but it's okay man. I had a great time.

Speaker 3:
[146:26] What were the highlights?

Speaker 1:
[146:27] Definitely Matt Reynolds' last meal. The highlights were getting to finally do Sicario and getting to podcast with my guys.

Speaker 5:
[146:38] What do you think of all this? As someone who's known him longer than anybody.

Speaker 1:
[146:41] What does that mean?

Speaker 2:
[146:42] Well, no, I think it's...

Speaker 3:
[146:43] You should ask that like Zayn.

Speaker 5:
[146:45] What do you think of The Oddest?

Speaker 2:
[146:47] Every month of my life for the last 30 years has been CR Month. So it's just nice to see everyone else catch up.

Speaker 3:
[146:52] Did you guys know each other when this movie came out?

Speaker 2:
[146:54] Yes. Yeah. This is our 30th anniversary this year.

Speaker 5:
[146:56] Oh, that's sweet.

Speaker 3:
[146:58] Unbelievable.

Speaker 2:
[146:59] But we didn't see this movie together. He was probably at parties.

Speaker 1:
[147:03] 97? I was probably going to see...

Speaker 3:
[147:05] CR, who would you hold Good Son's style if they're both hanging on a cliff and you had to save, you could only have the strength to save one?

Speaker 1:
[147:12] Of Greenwald and Sean?

Speaker 3:
[147:13] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[147:14] It's a tough question. I've lived a full life. Maybe save it for April.

Speaker 2:
[147:18] I'm younger. Sean has more to give.

Speaker 3:
[147:22] My mom is furious that we didn't do any in the cruisers.

Speaker 1:
[147:25] Well, we could still do it. Are you now holding it hostage for the next CR month?

Speaker 5:
[147:29] Will there be another CR month?

Speaker 3:
[147:31] I think every March should be CR month. I don't know why we wouldn't do that.

Speaker 1:
[147:34] I'll compete with March Madness.

Speaker 3:
[147:36] Yeah, it's kind of...

Speaker 1:
[147:38] It's a patino in CR.

Speaker 2:
[147:39] I'm glad that it's a 31-day month. It's not like Women's History Month being like February. This is good.

Speaker 3:
[147:44] Grand Five Boob is one of the reasons we did... I mean, the next... When we do From Hell Month, I think that's going to be the peak of the Rewatchables.

Speaker 2:
[147:51] You do?

Speaker 3:
[147:51] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[147:52] Can you...

Speaker 5:
[147:52] Do you have like a...

Speaker 3:
[147:53] I was scouting Breakdown.

Speaker 6:
[147:56] Oh, fuck.

Speaker 1:
[147:58] Can we do Perfect Getaway from From Hell?

Speaker 3:
[148:00] No.

Speaker 5:
[148:01] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[148:02] That's noir.

Speaker 5:
[148:03] Wait, is Breakdown...

Speaker 1:
[148:04] The Timothy Olds band?

Speaker 5:
[148:05] The Breakdown from Hell?

Speaker 3:
[148:06] Trucker from Hell.

Speaker 5:
[148:07] But isn't that Duel?

Speaker 3:
[148:09] No, the Breakdown's different.

Speaker 5:
[148:11] They take his wife. I mean, I love Breakdown, and I love JT.

Speaker 3:
[148:14] Breakdown's insane.

Speaker 5:
[148:15] I'm a huge fan. Another similar Curtis Hanson style guy, Jonathan Mostow, made that one.

Speaker 3:
[148:22] My favorite one that's on the From Hell month schedule is Domestic Disturbance with John Travolta and Vince Vaughn. Evil stepfather.

Speaker 5:
[148:30] Who's who?

Speaker 2:
[148:31] I don't remember this at all.

Speaker 5:
[148:32] Who's the evil stepfather?

Speaker 3:
[148:33] Vince Vaughn is the evil second husband to Terry Polo. And John Travolta is the first husband and he thinks something's up with this guy. You guys didn't notice that? There's something up with this guy.

Speaker 5:
[148:46] Is Domestic Disturbance Harold Becker?

Speaker 3:
[148:48] I think it is.

Speaker 1:
[148:49] I think that the perfect getaway is From Hell. It's the people we meet on vacation from Hell.

Speaker 3:
[148:54] Oh, you're talking about the Steve Zahn one. Oh, yeah. I like that movie.

Speaker 1:
[148:58] I love that movie.

Speaker 3:
[149:00] It's a good one. Good little. You familiar with that one, Andy?

Speaker 2:
[149:02] No, I love this. It's like seen under the hood.

Speaker 1:
[149:04] It's a really good twist.

Speaker 2:
[149:05] This is how it gets made.

Speaker 5:
[149:06] Don't spoil it.

Speaker 3:
[149:07] Good Hawaii movie.

Speaker 4:
[149:08] It's a good Hawaii movie.

Speaker 3:
[149:09] Get to go on location.

Speaker 1:
[149:10] Which one is this? Perfect Getaway with Steve Zahn, Timothy Oliphant and Mila Jovovich.

Speaker 3:
[149:14] Get to go to Hawaii.

Speaker 4:
[149:17] We should go to Hawaii. Record it there.

Speaker 3:
[149:19] Could we do a live show in Hawaii?

Speaker 1:
[149:20] Get meffed out.

Speaker 3:
[149:22] Sounds great.

Speaker 5:
[149:22] It's the greatest place on earth. It really is.

Speaker 3:
[149:24] It sounds awesome. All right. See you, Armand. Thanks to Craig Horlbeck. Thanks to Chia Hao and Eduardo as well and everybody else at The Ringer. Great to be in here in the studio. We'll do, anytime we have three or less, we're doing My Studio. Yeah. But I thought for four, I thought this was good.

Speaker 5:
[149:41] How did it feel?

Speaker 2:
[149:42] It felt great. It's like riding a bike.

Speaker 3:
[149:44] You can listen to the CR and the watch, Sean on Big Picture. And we'll see you in April in The Rewatchables.

Speaker 6:
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