‘L.A. Confidential’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Andy Greenwald

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 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 the change because I am bringing CR. I'm bringing band. 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 Vanna Mallory in the same place talking about Basic Instinct. We'll find out. We will be at the ACT's Tony Remby 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 slash events for more information. Theringer.com slash events. And you can see us Wednesday, San Francisco, April 8th. There's a Giants game that day. 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 start private by default for those under 16 direct messages are turned off. Many friends can comment on their videos. When safety comes first, discovery can follow. Learn more at TikTok.com slash Guardians Guide. The rewatchables is brought to you by theringer podcast network. We're 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 since the early 2010s. Sean Fentasy, close to 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. I really appreciate that. This is the only thing I wanted. This is the quartet. This is really meaningful to me. This is my LA quartet, actually. 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 up up and beyond. It's like a CR celebration. I want to stand on ABC. You guys were around. Yeah. There's so that, you know, Chuck Kloesterman, he loves you. This trio, we love Chris Ryan. You're like, guys, are we bringing Bernd Thallen now or after this? 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. We started my podcast and we started the watch with Chris and Andy. It got to the point where they would just kind of go through my house. My dogs wouldn't even bark anymore. With the coats. You were doing the watch. That was also where the rewatchable started because we did the anniversary heat, December 2015. Yeah. Now, we've all circled back. This is the last episode of CR month. What did you think of the choices, Andy? I thought they were amazing. That they were representing the man himself. I thought it was a little, we were just discussing it's a little chalk at the end. Yeah. You could have gotten a little more creative. 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? Rise of Skywalker. Just run it back. I'd be good. 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. No, we'll save it. There's plenty to say. I have a lot of thoughts. I have more thoughts than I've ever had. Was the live show that you did about heat considered? No. No. That wasn't it at all. That's not canon. That was just an excuse to have Christy Pacino impersonations for an hour and a half. Which was just me screaming. Like I think I have to go back in the lab with Pacino. Do you think you're going to take a step back for the next month? I asked him about this and he was like, what are you talking about? You know, I was like, am I getting put out to pasture? Money never sleeps. This isn't the gold watch. Are you going to be a Pesky? You guys are the gold watch. That's right. That's right. Well, coming up next, a request from CR LA Confinential. 1997 Sean. Titanic, Boogie Nights, Goodwill Hunting, LA Confinential and Jackie Brown. We used to make things in this country. 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. But those five specifically just feels very rooted in 97. And then this one, Greenwald, there's 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? For sure. This was definitely the, the critics pick. It was definitely the burgeoning college student who wished they were critics 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, critically well regarded modest smash, the type that they don't make anymore. It made 126, which I was surprised by. It kind of hit the people you should be satisfied with. 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, you were in the Academy at that time. I mean, I was a huge, huge Titanic supporter. I think my work speaks for itself. The way I whipped votes during that time period. Big call girl guy. This movie resonated with him immediately. Why, why this one? Well, why did this have to be in CRM up? 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. Um, 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's a five-toll movie. It's like, this is a five-toll 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. You agree with that? It's like an amazing plate of chicken parmesan. In a good way. In a good way. Yeah. It's like, it's not that complicated. Like the Dantanas chicken parmesan? I love Dantanas chicken parmesan. I've gone down to hell with it. It has that protein to sauce ratio. I'm coming in here. I'm coming in here. Wow. Jeez. Andy, no. Save that for how to say it. Dantanas chicken parmesan is wonderful. All right. It's just, it's a, it looks on the surface like it's going to be simple. But then when you cut in and you look at the layers, you look at the depth, the width, the sauce meets the cheese meets the chicken. There's a lot going on here. There's a lot. It's deeper than it seems. And it's only $29.95 on the menu. You know? Well, we also have, we have chicken parmesan prices for Crow and Pierce, which is one of the things that really helps us. Crow's not even Crow yet. He's barely Crow. Neither. Knew him from the one Denzel movie. Didn't know him from anything else at the time. I think it's Rumpersstomper, right? That was his biggest movie to that point. Yeah. Have you guys done that yet? Rumpersstomper. That would have been the final, yeah, the final edition for the show. That was good. We see our year. We see our 27. That's a fun one. And you wanted to do an entire Nazi month, as I always said. Nazi adjacent. The believer. What else could you do there? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Coming out of this movie, would you have bet on Pierce or Crow being a bigger star? Cause that would have been on Crow. But Pierce is, it's a great movie for him. I thought that they would both be big stars. And Pierce 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. Straight jaw, yeah. 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. I guess I thought Crow, the movie really loves Crow. Yeah. 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 and 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, Guy-ass, kicking ass all the time. Yeah. Like almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like the toughest cop in 1950s Hollywood. And obviously that he wasn't going to let that happen. But I mean, Crow went on to have the bigger career. I don't, I'm not sure if this is in my hot take or what, but Pierce 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. And he's in a way different place. So the legacies are kind of perfect, right? Cause 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. He's a little bit, I don't even know if he's a little bit older, how much older than DeCaprio is he? Like maybe five, six years, right? I, for him, it's not LA Convential. 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? Like, well, there is like, there are a bunch of bail movies you could have thrown them in and he probably would have been going to drive the car. He's a great comp. That's it. 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? It was kicked around. McConaughey was the one. The casting what ifs weren't what I wanted. McConaughey was the big one. It's funny. It's a perfect Damon part. He was a little young. Guy Pierce one. It's basically he plays that part in the department nine years later. Guy Pierce is like almost 10 years older than Decapria. I don't know if I would have bought McConaughey as X-Li. I think that would have been a bad move. It's coming off Time to Kill where it would be like pretty much like an extension of that character. And then they're wearing the same glasses as the Time to Kill. Pierce had a certain energy. It was 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. Listen, that's that's that's the guy Pierce energy. 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. Yeah, there is a cerebral power broker is very, very moral. There's another charming power broker who knows where all the bodies are buried in a certain role. So is he Dudley? And I'm committing crimes. And then you had to get a semi self-loathing guy who moonlights in Hollywood and kind of forgets where his bread and butter is and gets called back. So it's hard to work stuff. Yeah. OK. So Hollywood Andy. We've got a beautiful Lynn Bracken over here too. The producer's chair. Cut to look over. No, no. He's going to be like, it's all hushed. He's a Simon Baker character. He's a show. Matt Reynolds and Vistis. They're all bad. Come on, it's just acting. Yeah. I think that's how you haven't done it before. That makes gahow, Johnny Stampinato, of course. Yeah. No question. Well, my, I wrote this down. LA is a beautiful, seductive, fucked up place that's really here to break your dreams and steal your soul. Is that what we told Sean? We wanted him to move for Grant Lane. I believe it was. 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. It'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, 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. Really? Oh, go ahead. No, just worth noting because Curtis Hansen 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. 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. Right. 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. You know, yeah. In the 90s. Because you're shooting Hollywood in the 90s. I mean, it doesn't work that much different than swears, you know, it's 45 years between when the movie is set and when they filmed it and it's 30 years since they made it. So yeah. 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 she's still going it 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, that kid, the parents in schools and one guy's trying to be an actor. Another person is trying to be a director. And eventually it just doesn't work out. You, you moved here for a job and show business. Right. I moved here to write for a TV show. But this is, 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. Like, right? Like it's like, could make you, could break you, be found dead. You don't know who the good guys. Yeah. A lot of people who don't want to know how the sausage is made. So it's like, Godfather, Jack Walts. That's right. Got to. Listen to me, my crepe McFriend. Jack would have fit in great in this movie. Yeah. He could have easily thrown them in. Yeah. 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. DeVito says 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 can be a huge theme in these LA books in the 40s, 50s, 60s. Yeah. So he writes this quartet of novels, LA Quartet. Black Dahlia, Big Noir, which is my favorite LA confidential and then white jazz. And like they can't get increasingly Byzantine and hallucinatory as he goes on. And he would later take on the Kennedy assassination. One of your pet projects. You just recently talked about that on Wait a Second. Yeah. And they try. We saw the Kennedy assassination. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. Well, congrats. That's great. Are you going to visit the White House? What's going to happen next? No, it's it's done. Yeah. It's they don't even need me. Yeah, they don't need me. You know, he basically tries to write a secret history of Los Angeles of 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 in this adaptation. I think the 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 Helgeland 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. So this is eight, right? And they narrated that. That's three. It's got like a character. So many characters, so many different spinning out. It spreads over eight years. Right. Yes. It's like a much broader canvas. Three years in this movie. And it doesn't feel like that. More real people in the book than are in the movie as well. The movie is trying to balance like 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 like really readable, but also awkward style where it's like all staccato, like the writing is like five word sentences over and over and over and over again. So you almost like can feel the words coming out of the typewriter as you're reading it. It's a very unusual and it's different from his other books. So other books are not like that as much. I feel like they're a little bit. White Jazz is a little bit. It's like weird that 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 got it. I just got to keep going. But you're right. I mean, his Elroy's authorial voice is you can't replicate that on screen without extensive voice. But can you think of another example of an adaptation that is respected on both sides of the aisle, 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 is. This and Cruisin are the only two. Was Cruisin a book? I think it was a book, right? Was it a it was a novel. Yeah. I've got it in my bag. Wow. Yeah. Andy's trying to adapt it right now. You want to be on the recruising? They're going to cruise again. Andy wasn't with us on the cruise. Andy, have you ever, your guy has written subscripts from time to time for the last, I don't know, nine, eight, nine, 10 years. Yeah. Have you ever tried to adapt the book? Yes. How hard is it? What are the things we don't know? 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, it's a, I love it, but it's not a very well known books. 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 Hansen, like on Charlie Rose from promoting the movie 30 years ago, and he brings the same, like, 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 is no longer, that no longer exists. And I showed him a picture of Aldo Ray 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. Yeah, I think that if, if I were trying to adapt to James Alroy 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. It's like a metastasized tumor. Everything touches everything. No, we're fucking screenwriters. Like, and we need to like 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. 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, 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. It never happened. And that book is so cool and fascinating. It's about like a cop who is also a hit man 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. Incessual. Crazy book. They never happen. They're just, they're really hard to do. So I think Andy's right on. Like this is an amazing way of like kind of calling something that's very big, like a 500 page novel down to two hours and 10 minutes. Yeah. It's just like there is a central mystery that we are going to solve. It's ruthlessly efficient to, 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. It's a structurally almost perfect movie. I noticed I watched it two times in the last video. I was like, man, they're just, this is like a big ass bone in filet. Like no fat at all. Yep. 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 a writer. I'm going to get some movementic 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. Yeah, but there's a difference between like the guy right as would shut who's like, you know, dead and like James Elroy going around being like, this is a fucking turkey. Yeah. These guys are communists. 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 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. Um, 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 Hansen 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 then I can also make something that I think is artistically interesting. It's pretty, pretty like slick move by an old studio directing hand. His run here where it's like, Hand the Rocks of Cradle, River Wild, this, and then Wonder Boys and Eight Mile kind of like culminating after that. Just a tour de force. In her shoes, right? Oh, in her shoes, right? Not at this table. That's why. Kind of like the dark twin of Ron Howard. You know what I mean? Like that incredibly safe pair of hands. Save that for your one man show. That's a good one. Dark twin of Ron Howard. Yeah. It is our John Howard. What if the Apollo 13 crashed? 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. 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. 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. And there's no ego in like Dante Sponati. He's like, yeah, I know how to shoot this. And Jerry Goldsmith is like, I get it. Yeah, I'm already 75. A bunch of grownups. Yeah, it's just a bunch of grownups who are like, we got a really good idea for a movie. This is how we're going to do it. Let's make the picture. Yeah. Well, he did the opening credits. Wasn't that part of his pitch? Yeah. He had all the postcards. That was like literally how he made the movie. Yep. 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 doing it. 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. Like that's every lifetime movie. For some reason, that's the best one. It is. Um, I popped it in last night after watching an LA confidential just to be like what, what was Hanson's style to your point? Like trying to figure out like, what is it that he does? Like 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, if you remember the premise of the hand that rocks the cradle where it's like a woman is assaulted by her OBGYN. And she blows the whip. She goes public on him. And then he kills himself and his wife, his widow, then gets a job. And about sure as Nanny. And then seeks revenge. The Mournay's part. Yeah. So it's like, it's a, the only person who's on tour is the special needs gardener. Yes. But early on frames. That's right. I forgot about the gardener. The movie is amazing. Julianne Moore's in it. She's like, yeah, it's a bizarre movie. Julianne Moore's Hall of Fame smoking performance. CR. Just smoke burring. 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. 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. Yep. 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 should just say it in a line, you know? And he's like, so with the, he asked about hand, the, hand, the 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. Patented rose charm. What's the L.A. Confidential. Y.N. kills himself and you say what? Maybe they can make a new CR character. Charlie. Yeah. I've tried him out before. What is L.A. Confidential in a sentence? City of Angels is full of devils, right? Sounds good. There's a good, good line in it. I think it's, I think it's Jack Vinson's who says everybody wants something. Hmm. This is a real. Whatever you desire. Yeah. I wrote down some themes, including tablet culture. Still prevalent. Yeah. Police brutality. Haven't gotten rid of that yet. Racism still exists. Good, evil, sure. Seductive and beautiful L.A. That's here to steal your soul. Still exists. How about using blackmail against the rich and powerful to advance your political and financial interests? No, no, that's a bridge too far. Yeah. What else? Anything? I think it's a really good movie about the real and the fake and how they coexist in this city. Very comfortable. Yeah. That like you can see Michael Jackson having a dance off of 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, you know, there's like 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 that like they all are just kind of coexisting in a way that is very unusual even for bi-metropolis standards. 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. Yeah. John Stampinato and Lana Turner were dating. By the way, that was its own movie. Incredible. You could have just detoured into a separate Stampinato movie. I don't think they ever made it successfully. They never made it because of like of her daughter, right? Yeah. Her daughter. Murder of Johnny Stampinato. I'm pretty worried about spoiler alert there on the murder of Johnny Stampinato. Yeah, don't worry about that, Sierra. What you said, though, when I moved out here to work for Jimmy Shown, we were at in Hollywood Boulevard and would go out to get coffee and Spider-Man and Superman were doing. And it took me six months to get used to it, how weird everything was. The man theater where the premieres happen, the stars, just the weirdness. But you do get used to it. You do. And I don't know, for everybody, it's different. For me, it was like six months in. I wouldn't, I wouldn't blink. 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 six p.m. and everything turns purple and it's the perfect temperature and you're like, oh, I'm never leaving. You know, it's like it's that kind of weird, like you can exist in heaven and hell at the same time sensation that Elroy writes about incessantly. Well, Greenwald mentioned the three types of police officers in this movie, aggressive, rural baker, star fucker, personality builder and straight arrow idealist. And they do a great job within 20 minutes of like, OK, I get, I get your type. I get you, I get you. Crownwell, hmm, what's he up to? And it's just, we're all. The genius move that they pull is that they all have to go before the police commissioner and respond to a 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. One of the ingenious ideas of the book that is also really well preserved in the movie is that like those three characters are three very. Clear male archetypes post World War Two, right? There's like the GI Bill College Boy. There's the World War Two grunt, right? Who is in the trenches, who's like all muscle. And then there's like the very cynical, like 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. Any 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. 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. Yes. Like Bud's whole thing is that he's not smart enough to do it until someone tells him that he is. And then they all want to be the thing that they are not like the 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. Don't forget all the call girls who want to be various stars. Yes, they get cut. Yeah, they get cut. That word cut to look like. We're running out every time. If you could be cut to look like anyone, who would you be cut to look like? Chandler Big. That's perfect. Rolo Tomasi. Yeah. One of the great stealth plot ideas of all time, because I was thinking like they're the big ideas like where the guys, it's like ironically, Spacey Kaiser Soze. Awesome. Oh, holy shit. What's in the box? Again, Spacey. Yeah. 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 it's way up there. I don't even know what it's competing. It's a movie invention. The Rolo Tomasi ideas, the Hanson and Hellin, like coming up with them themselves. 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 saw her. Oh, yeah. To remind you, it nudges you. And then when you get to something like Rolo Tomasi, you can imagine Helglund 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 is gets us along the track fast. You could have called it John Malone. Like the Rolo Tomasi was really smart. It's a memorable thing. My son, I watched it with my son. He missed it. He didn't because well, it's the two. And then when when Cromwell says that you really have to be paying attention to Pierce's face. So I don't think he totally got it. And Pierce does such a great job in that scene, which just he does a lot of job. 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's eyes are doing. Craig, did you had you seen this movie before? No. Was it hard to follow? And did you get the Rolo Tomasi? I did get the Rolo 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 it almost like go to another tab and be like, wait, which one has this last name? That part was harder, but I did catch Rolo Tomasi. 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 the one of the main characters of the previous novel. So like his 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. 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, same thing with the freeway. Yeah, 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. Yeah. Yeah. Do you miss heroin as a big plot in a movie? Feels like we're not getting as much lately. Well, I mean, we live in a time where, you know, like a different kind of drug, I think, dominates these kinds of movies too. Like, opioids is really, yeah, it's just a different thing. But like, I remember vividly talking to my dad when he was literally on a heroin task force for years and then they like 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. You know, like this is the rise of, you know. Coming up next on First Take, heroin or fentanyl? What's a better movie drug? In that, what Sean was saying, Chris, it's like the rise of Skywalker. Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. You mentioned the screenplay and how it came from the 1990 James Elroy 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. And Mad Men, when they went to LA, which I can't remember. I even, I got to rewatch Mad Men's, my next sauna show after I'm done with Thrones. Your Instagram followers. After I get out of the 1300s and go to the 1960s. But, but Mad Men was in LA almost for the whole season, right? And didn't it tap into this? I'm remembering vaguely. He would go, he would go occasionally and then, then certain, 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, the still the boom times of being out here, that this was a place where everything worked and was golden and verdant and full of possibilities and opportunities and sunshine. Well, in pre sports, because the Dodgers come late fifties 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 Joiner. Yeah. 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. This is, I mean, Sean's beloved battle on is also about this. It is. That's probably the best representation of that period of time that this movie is kind of reacting to. It's a TV movie? Nope. It was a feature film. Directed by Damien Chazelle, starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie. Came out in the theaters? Yep. Good film. But you could also make the point, I think it's, I think this is something that Curtis Hansen did as well when he was pitching it around that most Noirs that we think of as classics are set in like the thirties and forties, which was psychologically and physically a different time in America. Fastest, different. Intentionally. And the only forties in this movie is Veronica Lake. Then 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. So Hansen 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 lineup, Private Hell 36 and Kiss Me Deadly. I don't know if Sean had any thoughts. I haven't read your substack today. Can I ask you? I don't know if you covered those. Would the most fun part about directing a film be like programming the pre-film festival? That would underline the fact that I don't know how to make films, but I do know how to program a festival. We brought in Sean Fentasy for film festival. Did you have any thoughts on those five? 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 like a director that Hansen really likes, but that's clearly a, you know, kind of a furhire 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. Yeah, because also he was Sterling Hayden was physically, didn't Elroy say this that he wanted that Sterling Hayden was his choice to play Bud White? Oh, interesting. Well, in the book, in the book, he's like the incredible Hulk. Yeah, he's the biggest guy in LA in the book. I thought Crowe looks pretty jacked in this movie. Yeah, but there's a couple of shots where you're like, he's like a little bit taller than Danny DeVito. Yeah. How tall do we think Crowe is? He's listed at six. I looked it up. This is like a Major League Baseball. I think he's like an i-Version. He's a 5'10". Got a couple inches in the. The Major League Baseball Heights thing has been my favorite subplot. It's funny. It's like he's listed. Gavin Lux plus three inches. Did he? He went from six to one to five, ten. What? Yeah, because they're measuring all these dudes for the strike zone. A lot of height lying going on. Wait, so everybody gets to know this? This is an amazing story. I got Billy Gil 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 relaxed 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. The actors Russell Crow. So I know this movie got nine nominations, but I look at it as like the starter kit for Proof of Life. This movie walked so proof of life could run. Yeah. I don't know. Was that part of CRM for you? Absolutely went into the into the math. Yeah. Stuff of legends. Yeah. Stuff of legends. 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. Taiko Russo could have done LA Confidential. So I had that in. Can I do that now? Wow. He would have been good. Can I. I had this in my recast and coach. What about him in the Davido spot? No, not Sid. Listen, no, I think Vincenzo. I think even a really good man says he. I think I mean, he's he's a little younger, a little younger. But I mean, he can do actually. But he's a lot of live right now. Because I'm trying to think of like what I could. Crusso at that time is this pre or post. And like this is post. NYPD and post J. Stensland. Post J. Pre CSI and Pre Proof of Life. This role. Yeah. Available. 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 D Mark. Yeah. But Crow. Perfect. Guy Pierce. We mentioned the bail thing. I think that's a great comparison. And they're making this movie in 07. It's clearly bail is is actually 2005 range. Because you got to admit you got to admit it to 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's not he doesn't grab Lynn Bracken lightly. He like grabs her. No, 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. Yeah. He does what did Wesley call Sakario? He does the gym flex. The gym selfie. The gym selfie of a performance in that moment. And then Spacey, who from 95 to 99 rips off usual suspect, seven outbreak, time to kill LA Confidential American beauty and wins two Oscars. Yeah. And he's really good in this movie. And now it's like Kevin Spacey problematic. You can say the least. I think even to Guy Pierce, especially. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's just a really good actor. I think this is his best performance. I'm with you. I thought that would be on an island with that. I think I think he's not nominated. 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 is doing a lot of acting with his face and not with his words. That's like some of my favorite lines and line readings in the movie. 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? Like the layers to the scene with Matt Reynolds where he's like, yeah, show business. Even like when he's talking to X-Lay, it's like, is he flirting with this guy or is just talking to him? Like there's 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. 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. Stickier. Most of the time. Yeah, I don't feel like this was sticking out. 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 guys like, what about my? You're going to come see me, right? Right. You're going to go talk about it. And Spacey just has a cigarette in his mouth and he goes, keep it up. Yeah. 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. 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 deaf. He is so controlled, is so subtle, is so good at suggesting a character's inner life with a 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. Yeah. Like I still think that we'll also come up in other parts of the pod, but like the him coming across Matt's body and like the wordless kind of like funerally has for Matt, but like kind of also himself as he like slides down is like, that's really, really good shit. You know, like that's the problem with his career, which was, I mean, that run was incredible. He could never like, remember he made that terrible movie, Paid Forward. Oh yeah. Tough one. 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. That's he always had to play these mysterious guys. And I gotta be honest, I think he's like a one on one. 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. I think that kind of character forward mainstream American drama, it just doesn't really happen that much anymore. He did actually pivot to television because he was kind of an actor who would 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. And what's so weird is I remember at the time when he was at his apex, he was always talking about how Jack Lemon was his hero. That's right. And the thing about Jack Lemon was that everyone loved Jack Lemon. He played in every man, whether it's the apartment or grumpy old man, you're like, I like that guy. So warm. He seems like a decent guy. You would have been like, is he going to kill us? Yes, absolutely. The closest he gets to like Lemon Lemon is like, in a way, like the margin call performance where he's kind of more like Shelly in Glengarry and doing that kind of hang dog, like, but. Which he can do. Is kind of an outlier. He's right. Like there's, there's a lot of Kevin Spacey performances. You'd be like, so you picked him to be the guy in seven. Interesting. Yeah. No, it's true. He's the kind of guy who cut his fingerprints off. Interesting. And it's probably worth restating for the younger audience is that he was the star. He was the top build star of this movie. And that speaking of professionalism with Curtis Hansen, 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 pre disposition 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. He said he tried to get him to make it before he won for usual suspects. And it was winning the Oscar as I think one of the big reasons why this movie got to go because it wasn't going to go just with Pierce and Crow. 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, that's 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. It's pretty, it's she's operating at a high level, but the Oscar. 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 from this movie. Maybe like the ninth pick if we did a draft from this cast, from this cast, cinematography, director, oh, yeah, adaption. You pick any category. Julianne Moore. I personally would put Bridget Fonda and Jackie Brown. Also, this was the year you were whipping votes for Gloria Stewart. That's right. I heard she was quite difficult to work. I deep dive that Oscars year before we do. Craig, did you, were you surprised when the Oscar for this? Shocked. I mean, I would have given her a razzie. I think she's probably the only character in the movie where I'm like, this takes me out of it a little bit. I think it is like among the more bizarre wins in recent Oscar history. I don't think she's bad. Yeah. I think Oscar screws up the perception of the. I think if she was, if she didn't win the Oscar, you'd be like, she looks enough like Veronica Lake that this is interesting. And Kim, they say her character is the natural and the lady that produces Redford. It's no different. But the Oscar is just like she has four scenes. They're fine in the same apartment, wearing the same gown, having the same conversation for a lovely house in Hancock Park, which we need to recognize. We have a whole place to talk about that. But I 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 whispered 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. Yeah, 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. Well, is there a precedent for that? 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's she's she was a Bond girl. She's gonna say nine and a half weeks, you know, which is like a good erotic thriller. It's a tense movie. Craig, you should watch that with Liz tonight. Nine and a half weeks. It's Ron Kump. I think you're right. It's it almost seemed to be like, OK, 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 sixties or seventies. And they can't. We gotta go through this. I deep dove this. So she beats Joan Cusack and in and out. Wild nomination. Good performance. I think she's good in that movie. She's very good. She's very she plays the wife of a man who is gay, who like isn't coming out, but is coming out. And it's like that star that Kevin Klein. Yeah, how's that movie aged? 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 Klein are making a movie next door and it seemed like a big deal. And then you don't think Tom Selleck was the big name at that moment. That was great casting. I thought we'll do the rewatchables for a G month. Mini driver and Goodwill hunting. Sure. Comments. Yeah. I don't think she should have won, but I thought she was good in that movie. Yes. I think she's excellent and I love her. Julianne Moore and Boogie Nights. I mean, this is what the fuck are we doing? So fucked up. What are we doing? So fucked up. Like, like we should just put a thousand people to movie theater show Boogie Nights and LA confidential and be like, guess who won supporting? So like, just insane. It's a good way of putting it. It's a great idea. I think that, uh, should we do like the, the Jubilee like debate style thing with Gen Z kids, but do it for Oscars history. You know, this one isn't a debate. Like Julianne Moore, her job is 30 times harder in that movie. Yes. I just think that movie had a little bit of a stigma. It's porn 90s. The, the, it was just, it was on the edge. It was, I had a lot of like a claim for how, but it was a young director. And then it was like, Lin Rackin is also a prostitute. It's not as though it's like, I know, but is there, can you look at this, Sean, and like see the gamesmanship involved? Because people, voters, like you think Gloria Stewart was, came in second. So Gloria Stewart was the fifth one from Titanic, the old lady. I was still talking about Jack, who she spent a weekend with. Meanwhile, she has this whole fucking family. She's in like 80 seconds of the movie. I'd be so mad at my wife. I've been and I talked about this on our real estate. And she remembers. I'd be so mad. That guy. So if we lived together for 60 years, you'd have this fucking Jack. 24 hours with them. I don't think that's why Gloria Stewart was punished and humiliated the Academy Awards when they gave her Kim Basinger this Oscar. But do you think that like the thinking person's voter, in this case, voted for Kim Basinger because they knew LA Confidential wasn't going to win? 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 and in every single physical media, yes, it's a Blu-ray. Every single interview when they are asked about Kim Basinger, just like, she's just like the best person. She's just really cool. And Danny DeVito is 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. Kevin, what he did after work, I can't say. Do you think Kevin got it? Hey, Kevin's Kevin. 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. There should have been Twitter back then, because I think they would have liked and like, let's really interrogate this. Are we really going to do this? I wrote that a couple more. Bridget Fonda and Jackie Brown. Heather Graham and Boogie Nights. Yeah, why not? Sure. Sigourney Weaver and Ice Storm. Yeah. Well, that's a good one. Parker Posey and Waiting for Government. Yes. Although the Oscars does do comedies. Yeah. But I think you could make a case for all of those, at least predominantly, 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? This is great. Babe Pig in the City. Eraser. Would you still have a name going? Not one? Really? Does it, does TV count? Does it do TV? No. No. It's four movies. Oh, this is four. This is it. Wow. This is my new favorite game. It's great. This is a great game. Strahm's going to steal this. I might. There's a couple of animated movies that he did voice performances. Were there any animated performances? No. LA Confidentials one. Star Trek First Contact. LA Confidential. I Robot. Oh, I Robot. The Green Mile and the Longest Yard. IMDb gave this for James Cromwell. The Warden and the rebake. That's right. Come on IMDb. You gotta give us a little. How is Babe not in there? That's not right. Babe was in Goldman. Thought that was the best movie of 1993 or whatever year. I'm shocked it's not in the top four. Do you want to talk Cromwell for a second? Incredible run by him. Did you? I thought succession was the exclamation point. It was a multiple exclamation point. I'm seeing Big Hero 6 as number two. Maybe that's a personal algorithm. That's how I. I have that. Oh, you're looking at Google. Sorry, I thought you were saying a letter box. No, I was. Oh, no, I was doing IMDb. Oh, IMDb. Okay, got it. 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 Confidential? I don't remember how I felt when I saw him at theater. Satan across these four books. That's acceptable. I did you know? No. Do you know he was the bad guy? And I kind of didn't really until they basically told me. It's the only, it was the only downside of reading the book before and I thought. Because the movie handles it so well. 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. He was like when they flipped Ronny Cox in the late 80s with Robocop. Yeah. Like, oh, Ronny Cox. From the face. It's like, nope. I like flipping them. They've done. Yeah. That's good. It's like a heel turn. I can remember seeing this in the theater at age 20 and being shocked, having not read the books. I absolutely a memorable rug out from under me most. The way that they film Jack's death is really, really good. Like it's really, really good. Yeah, addiction boil. Yeah. He's really great in this. What do you think with the new strike zone, how would Cromwell fare? I mean, he's, he's six, seven, six, eight. Is he really that tall? It was the biggest flaw of succession that him and Brian Cox were brothers. They couldn't even be in the same frame. Foot and a half tall. You wouldn't eat two Brian Cox's to reach. So nine Oscar nominations. It went for adapted and it went for a supporting actress. You know, the best actor in a supporting role that year, Rob Williams, one for Goodwill Hunting, Robert Forster for Jackie Brown. No slender, please. Fuck. Anthony Hopkins and Amistad. Great caneer and as good as it gets is the weak one. She's a disgrace. Terrible. That's like, that, that tires just wobbling in the back. And then our guy, Bert Reynolds, a boogie knight's, no John C. Riley. I think Spacey, it's kind of insane. He was the nominated. The only reason he was not was the nominated was because he won. I think so too. They were like, fuck him. Yeah. And two years later, he wins again for American Beauty. Best actor we've talked about this year before. It's a, it's a weird one where you have Peter Fonda's in there and Dustin Hoffman and Weng the dog. He's cold. And you would ever see him in the ball. He's cold. I have, yeah. Have you seen him? Yeah. Is it, is Ui's, do you prefer Ui's gold or Lorenzo's oil when it comes to like ingredients you can get at Erwan? Such a deep, from your magazine. They're very different films. Lorenzo's oil is very traumatizing film about a family, a couple trying to find a cure for their child's illness. That is not a good thing. Directed by George Miller. Not a good thing that much. Really a sad film. Ui's gold is about a beekeeper who's a kindly old man who's trying to make a connection with his family. Andy likes to get a turmeric latte at Erwan with Lorenzo's oil. I do. Just like a little bit. Some people are going to create a top latte. I think they could have named it, would be a little bit better. Lorenzo's oil. Because it makes it sound like it's like a land man. You know, like. It makes it sound like it's like a nice, it's like. In the 80s we got to start using Lorenzo's oil. They renamed it. Flirtle. Yeah. Lorenzo's oil. What you're going to know is talking about the Lorenzo's oil. So if you had say Crow for best actor, Guy Pierce for supporting or Spacey for supporting and you can only give one nom. It feels like the rare actor, actor for Pierce and Crow. Like two best actors. Interesting. And that only happened a couple of times, right? So who would you go with between Crow and Pierce? Pierce. Probably Pierce too. Yeah. Wait. You'd give Pierce the Oscar nomination over Russell Crow for this movie? Yeah. I think that's the right call. What? I also think. Russell Crow is going to. Could have done both. Could have been like when we had two guards. I think Russell Crow is really good as bud. But I think it shows a little bit more that he is. Not American. Like I think his accent and his manner sometimes comes across as a little like I'm still on the set of virtuosity. I think Pierce is incredible. 138 minutes. Craig plus 38. 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. Yeah. I did have a horrifying thought that you could have easily done this as a six episode drama. There's like specific cuts. Yeah. You would need to have. If you're going to please anybody. I was just thinking like there is like natural like cliffhangers. They've been amazing. Making this is a TV show. Nobody has to shut the fuck up about making this TV show. I'm usually never. I'm just a TV show guy. But I don't want anybody to do Elroy unless you've got this stuff or so like do Elroy. Well, we have the evidence. They try to make the TV show twice. Right. It failed both times. Perhaps what's better way to do it to express this. He's so sad. It's very confidential. Look what we used to be able to do. 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 Stompinato and Bud and Stenzlin. Johnny Stomps. So there's more of that. And you 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 Stenzlin to be a rat. But you don't need it. 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 it, the works of James Elroy. I'm vetoing it. That would be at least more open to that. But if it's just like coming to CBS Sunday nights LA confidential. I think in the movie. No, the movie's at a certain level. I don't think you can do it. I think it's off limits. Like they made a fucking Boogie Nights TV show. But obviously it is very. Very serious. You can't. People are very tempted. Like Dahlia got made. They've wanted to make white jazz. I think big nowhere would be incredible. Wouldn't the move be to just do it's a each season is a different Elroy novel. Elroy just basically do that. You Castle Rock but Elroy. 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 in 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 any good. Well, the other problem would be they'd be shooting it in Vancouver because we have a terrible mayor and a terrible, terrible governor and we can't shoot shit in here because the whole film industry has gone to shit. We're going to take a break and come back. 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. No shit. Raj. Raj has been on fire in 2026. You could have blindfolded me and I would have said pretty much that. That would be a review. Do you're dead review this? I don't know. Probably. I had too many rewatchable scenes. I'll go through. I'll go fast. Crow meets Basinger the first time, actually 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. Crow goes to Basinger's house. She came on a bus with dreams to Hollywood and this is how it turned out. Thanks to Pierce, we still get to act a little. To be fair, she took a bus from Echo Park to Hollywood. Her mother lives. I do like you're the first person in five years who didn't tell me I looked like Veronica Lake. He's like, you look better, right? Really good move by our guide, Basinger. The interrogation scene. Can we talk about this quick? Quick scene is a fucking banger. It's a masterpiece of fully. Yeah. It's probably my favorite. I think it's my favorite. And just to be clear, where are we putting the parentheticals? Interrogation into Bud going to solve the real crime? You can have that, but it's just actually moving from room to room, Bud with the chair, Dudley and Jack, the sort of deep focused shots. It's just all the reflective stuff that they're doing. It's so awesome. Just quickly, Bud kills the rapists, almost fights with Exley. Exley kills three guys, becomes Shaka and Eddie. We have a couple good action scenes. The Rolo Tomasi story. The two Johnny Stampinato scenes, which I'm just lumping together because we get, what do I get if I give you your balls back? You WAP cock sucker. Can you hear the word WAP again? I'm half Italian. I can 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 Rolo reveal all in a row. Sierra, I have a question. The shocking Kevin Spacey death scene after Cromwell goes heel. The Rolo Tomasi, the way he says it and then dies. Is that eligible for the Jesse Isenberg? 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. It's funny you said that because that was going to be my flex, but it was a different Spacey. Oh, we'll save it. Do you like that new category? 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. Yeah, no comment. I think I have a lot of choices. It's like a big diner. You want a corned beef sandwich? Cheese. Factory menu. Yeah. Yeah. But like how often when you go to a diner, are you changing up the order? Because like the thing about a diner is, you find what you like and you stick by it. Fine. I'll cut the flex categories. Yeah, every once in a while I like trying to challenge myself. So like I think the thing that's weird about- How often will you get sushi at a diner? It's like specials. What are specials today? Right? Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah, you got them. One more thing, the specials? Fine. Bill should start each pod by reading the specials, which is the new categories for the album. Oh, that's a good idea. I like that. That's good. I have a cream of broccoli. Can I just add one or two? Well, I'm not done yet. Oh, you're sure? I have Bud finds the photos. Danny DeVito's trunk. Yeah. Tough one. Convenient. He thought it was of him. No, it's not of you. It's of Exley. That's like when I see social clips of the watch. And I'm like, no, Chris. No. Cheezing me down. I'm gonna have to be in a commute. And then Bud versus 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. Yeah. Get one, but not both. Incredible risk. And then the big shootout at the end. Victoria Motel. CRO is, talks about situational awareness with action scenes, tight spaces where the camera always can follow where everybody is. That's a good one for that. It's really good. Yeah. And it's, it's, it almost feels a little bit premature. A little bit premature. Like when you're watching the movie, you're like, Oh, we're doing this now. This is the big shootout. We're done. Okay. Cause in the book, I feel like you're like, it's just like, you know, and the Victoria Motel shootout isn't quite the same in the book and stuff like that. There's like a train and shit, but yeah. Also CRO, 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. I was just having a conversation about this the other day. With Meg Ryan. 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. And it's also like, especially since John Wick. But between this and, uh, 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. I forgot to tell you, I was watching the first eight episodes of Miami Vice again, because they're on 2B. I was too. Pankow is in Glades. Yeah, I know. Couldn't, there was a Pankow, like a Pankow rejuvenation in Glades. I was going to touch you about this, but I was like, I don't, I don't want to bother about Pankow. You can never bother me with my vest. 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. Listen, two, two of these, two of these flexing for us. Yeah. Whole, whole series is there. We talking about the Panko sons? Yeah. Cause in Ira? Yeah. Panko had a tough pod run to live in Diana Lake. You gave him a tough time. I think I liked it. I was kind of with Bill. I, I, I see both sides. Fancy didn't have the balls to jump on the Pankow recasting bandwagon, but it was hinting. I, I, I was more on my side this way. Did you get a note in your mailbox from Billy Peterson about, he's like, Hey, love your work. No, he's just, all he does is just roll in piles of money. Yeah. It's great. He just had, he's a swimming pool, but just with $20 bills in it. He just dives into it. He's uncle Scrooge. Is it all day? Just swims around and watches the bills flat. So what's your, what did you, what scenes did you have that I didn't mention? Well, we mentioned it, but when, um, Xley and Bud 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, again, another amazing, uh, spacey performance when he is told that he's going to have the show taken away from him just on his face. It's 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. It's these three cops. What did you have for most of your watchable? You name them all, but I, it's the interrogation scene for me. It's the interrogation. Like 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 boys up to this? And he's like, I think you'll be surprised with the, with the boys capable of. Yeah. 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 scene? No, I, I not conducting it. He's like, dude, a melon there. He's a God. Yeah. He's like, he's making sure that the other guys can hear certain things that the other, the other and really good Foley on the snap of the switch. He's really everything. I had that at one stage. The best is when college boy was an insult. Oh yeah. In like the forties, fifties, sixties, like, Oh, look at college boy. We just don't have, we've lost college boy. I don't know what it is though. Like master's boy. Doesn't have the same ring. Pug, D boy. Pug boy. To your table. Heck guy. I don't know. Just the, the era where you would make fun of somebody for pursuing higher education, just somehow, somehow. I feel like it's like that was for a minute. People were calling guys libs. That was like sort of a, they're gonna let the lib. So that's the most lib thing I've ever heard of. Like that's over with, over lib. They're like, I was at era one today. We're fucking back. No one was calling me a libs. Libs are back, man. So we all have the, we all have the interrogation. I have the interrogation. Interesting. I have one other small one, which is bud visiting Pierce Patchett for the first time. God, that's a good scene. I love that. Oh, it's so good. We have not talked about Pierce Patchett and just like, Yeah, Strathern. Come on. Strathern is so good in this movie too. Our guy, Dion. Dion Dave. Okay. Well, I don't want to piss on it. But he's so good and he can do that in any movie. Sneakers, like whatever. Like he's just one of my favorite IMDb's, including he's in the best Miami Vice episode ever. Thier Strains Brothers and Arms. Yeah. Wow. The third episode of season two. Just to keep you in the loop. Cut the energy. Him and Bruce McCall. Yep. McGill. McGill? Bruce McGill. Yeah. Bruce McCall. Bruce McCall and Bruce McGill. Bruce McCall and his new coach at Creighton. I was watching Bruce McGill in a really terrible Bruce Willis movie that I like. Can you guess? The color of Night. The color of Night's Castle. Nope. Is it Hudson Hawk? Bruce McGill. Bruce Willis. Sarah Jessica Parker. Oh, the striking distance. Oh, yeah. This is the boat. Yeah. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh boat cops. Disgraced cop doing that like Pittsburgh Coast Guard. Pittsburgh in and out was to Long Island. People in Pittsburgh were like, Strike and distance. Willis was here. Willis was having a promissory. I kind of like that movie. Made it all the way to Philly. It's good. The third actually where it's like all in that one boat and he's going to get, move around the boat, but he's being spied. Yeah. They check some boxes. I'll tell you that much. Cops not liking each other. There's just a grease cops. Pennsylvania. Come on. It's an AP. It's right in the heart of the Barry Bons era too. Is it not? It's like early nights. It's the killer beats. It's pretty good. Yeah. Benia. Well, Benia was on the Mets at this point. I think so. What on the Mets? I still is. A.O.O.O. What I'm hosting. How a Philly guy with the most Philly joke of all time. What I'm hosting to be classics in seven years. It's the year a month. We'll allow it. Good. All right. The only other thing I would shoot out for is like a rewatchable. I have the interrogation scene. You know what's fucking great is the post-Xley shootout montage that they do to skip ahead time where it's like, Xley gets promoted, Jack returns to badge of honor, Bud goes like continues to see Lynn, and then you get like, you know, Bud keeps beating up all of the mobsters, moving in on Mickey's turf and the 10 opens. Those montages can go the wrong way. That one works. It really does. But I think it's probably the worst part of the Godfather when it, Puccino. Oh, it's just the newspapers. Michael kills McCloskey and Salazzo, and then it's like, it's like playing this carnival music and they're just showing newspapers. 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. Like the Santa Monica Freeway. On the Santa Monica Freeway to Pierce Patch, it's gender-bending champagne parties. That's right. Which really, like they had a location. You know, they brought in the cabaret dancers. They bring those back. Those parties? Gender-bending parties at your house? Just, I might be able to have a Pierce, Pierce pageant party. Yeah, you should. Just like guys, no limits tonight. Just a bunch of chicks wearing clutch sweatshirts. Some of the girls are cut like modern actresses, which we just go for it. I'm listening. I'm listening. You wanna go? You wanna go? All of them. All of them. All of them. Just a bunch of chicks wearing clutch sweatshirts. I was like, nothing. 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 gotta be young Crow, right? So would you say anything else? Kevin Spacey on the poster? Yeah, I would say like, yeah. Kevin Spacey on the poster. A list species, probably. Yeah, okay. 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. It's probably that. This is a TV show. What streamer would this be on? Exactly. I don't know, man. We're just coming off Project Hail Mary. Book adaptations are back. 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. But this was not a popcorn slam dunk beatry dress seller. True. True. Do you guys want to hear my son's review in the kitchen of Project Hail Mary? Sure. Can I tell you this? Sure, you texted it to me, yeah. He was like, how was it? And he said, it sucked. It's 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 sat in the theater. I was like, it sounds like you liked it. He's like, no, I liked it. I was like, we had to work. Do you think he was intimidated by thinking he was going against conventional wisdom? I think he was trying to zag, because I don't know what he was thinking. We're still working on him. He's got to be a good assistant. I do, 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. That's where we landed. Yeah, he thought. It's good and I appreciate it, but it's not. The next thing he said was it wasn't like 2001, which is his next quote. Yeah. That's true though. Yeah. 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. We get two in this. Home run. Every time. If someone pisses themself, it means it's good movie. I didn't think they'd go back to the well, so to speak. You know somebody's scared when they're just the peas running down their leg or there's pee under their seat. It's the last level of fear. Craig, don't put the cameras down beneath this table. Yeah, don't. That's how I felt when you guys asked me if I like proof of life. Craig, you like proof of life. You just don't know it yet. I eventually realized. My Gondoli was Cadillac El Dorado's driving around in LA in the 1950s. It's pretty cool. I just go for it. Would you have for what stage is the best, Andy? What's age the best? I was going to, I thought your Floyd Gondoli would be like a group of men being told to go out and like pursue justice without mercy. Like that is just. You do like that. Slam dunk for you. That is. I didn't like watching movies like that. 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, I feel like LA is still a rough adjustment for some outsiders. You don't usually get pulled into the victory motel. But, you know, emotionally it can be a tough adjustment. That's what working above Herbalife was, Grantland. That's right. That's right. It's kind of our victory motel. Yeah, that's what it was like. What'd you have? 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. And this movie is a great example of that. And there's a handful of actors when we get into some of the other character categories that 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. And he was really good at that. Tarantino bottom with the Watkins. Yes. But it's like the corner. The corner has a whole day before Budway walked into his office. I mean, Stenzlund is a great example of a character. When he's in the scene, he's the star of that scene. Sure. That's good. But what do you have, Sierra? For best. Yeah. Pierce Patchett is a proto-epstein, enriching himself, exerting control from the shadows, using blackmail. This is more of like a movie thing. I think for the novel readers, they're a little like, all right, but Dudley telling Xley 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 Xley kills Dudley. I had that as well. 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 from Mickey Cohen. I have corrupt LA cops, which you mentioned. I love movies where the police department hates one of their own cops. Yeah. Always works. Yeah. Shunning him. Yeah. And there's like they're in groups and he's coming around the corner and they're just kind of stink eyeing him. Serbiko. Yeah. Yeah. It's that always works. 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. Is that that fucking Xley out there? Hi guys. Just put him in every cop movie. Increase racial harmony within the LAPD. Talking about getting plastic surgery is having you cut. We just need to bring it back. That's just to come back. Yeah. You're going to have me cut to look like Nick, right? Where's Crispin? Why is Crispin so much chief's opinion? I have a QB tier. DeVito, I mean, I know it's the 50s, so you can get away with it. You could have 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 Ducey? Two phrases nobody said in 50 years. Yeah. Just, I thought it was... There's a lot of colorful Elroyisms in the book too that are, you don't hear too often. And then Russell Crowe said that Elroy told him Budwey 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. He legendarily builds his own bar at set. He has a pub set up, or he did. Who did it? So the best all-time drunk actors, Quentin Jaws is number one. He died when he was 34. Richard Harris and Oliver Reed. Oliver Reed was the number one. He died during Gladiator. Sterling Hayden. Sterling Hayden. Long Goodbye. He didn't even look at the script. Yes, famously huge drunk. Peter O'Toole and Lion and Winter. Yeah, I mean, Thorough is a great one. Robert Mitchum. Yeah, incredible Mitchum story. Mitchum wouldn't do Siren Head Live unless they gave him a case of Jose Cuervo Golds. But he wouldn't go on. That's over. That's pretty great. Nick Nolte was a famous one. That's a good one. I mean, Colin Farrell, our beloved Colin Farrell for a time. Andy, could this be a new ringer podcast for you where each episode is just a history of a drunk actor? Sure. Yeah. Do we do the full arc of the character? Remember how much time we spent talking about Robert Shaw and the Jaws? He was daring dry fists to climb up on top of the boat. Shame on him. Dry fists was going to do it. Spielberg had to step in because he was going to die. Did you ask Spielberg about that? Yeah, we talked about it at length. It was roughly 50 minutes of our conversation, which is about Robert Shaw being shit-faced during the making of Jaws. What would it be now, Craig, just somebody who took too many gummies who? Yeah, overdosing on CBD during a pod. And just soft. Again, we used to know how to make things in this country. We used to be able to really be politically drunk on movie sets. We used to know how to cut women so that they could work in brothels, modeled on movie stars. Now, to be fair, Kim Basinger has not been cut. We should be clear. No, just not. She's not just a dider hair. Dider hair a tiny bit. Bride of Bisbee, Arizona. Sierra, what do you have for Great Shack Orta? All the stuff in the interrogation scene before Exley goes in, there's a great one of Jack in the front of the frame, Dudley in the mid. Exley 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, Spanadi. It was funny. I was watching the movie thinking that was like minus 250 on Fandall, that that was going to be Sierra's Gorda. Did you have a different one? You love reflection shots. I do. You're a big reflection guy. Multiple split-die-opter shots in the movie. Molt like three, I think. Name them. Well, one in particular, when Exley 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 of the movie is Exley holding up the badge in the shadows of the cop cars arriving, which is just a beautiful image. I like the cop cars coming over the hill. I thought you were going to get those guys. There's one other one too, which is like the when Exley and Budweider about to show down, like I'm showing down in the street and it's one of the only zooms in the movie. And like zooms in on the two of them and captures them in the frame head to head with each other. This is the thing I wanted to say. Like it is such an unshoey 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 like not even that memorable of the scene, but it's when Stensland walks out of Dudley's office ever after turning in his badge and gun. And he puts at 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. 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. Chess Rockwell, Brock Landers award for best character name, Hollywood Jack, the big V. The big V. In two names. He pulled out two nicknames successfully. Pierce Morehouse Patchett, which is PIMP is pretty darn good. Yeah, pretty good. 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. I think that's because those guys in the novel lose the Chief of Police or like real cops. I feel like if you were able to like 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. Yeah, it is a bummer. The Amanda Divens 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. And this is Lin's house? This is Lin's house. So it's basically the 11th, 11th fairway. It was for sale twice in the last seven years. And the first time, it was on one of my walks, went and checked it out, went, did an open house before somebody fixed it up. And it was pretty beaten up. It was like the LA Confidential House. Everybody in the neighborhood knows the house. Oh, that Bud White sperm is that what the issue was? Yeah. Keep the black light in the house. But it was cool. But it was quiet to put his money in there. 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. Do you think they gutted it or do you think that amazing like front room is still there? I think they 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. Yeah. Because it was buried under there. But it's fucking cool. And that's a really cool street that you basically come off Rosmore, 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 Coenga. But it's a really cool distinct house. I don't know how livable it is. It's funny. This is the category I picked for my flex category, but I didn't pick that house. I picked Pierce Patchett's house. Yeah. That's the architectural marvel. So I had some thoughts on the Pierce house because that's the runner up. I wanted it to be even bigger. The inside. I wanted it to be like this, like the fucking Babylon house. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't put it in it. If he's doing eight, Sean, it's getting that H money. Yeah. Plus. Oh, maybe he's using the product. He's also got us pay for all those ladies to get cut. Getting cut was more expensive than I think. That might not be covered by insurance. So you like the house? I don't, are the interiors in the movie, the actual interior. I've never been, I thought it was too modern. It's up the street from where I live. It's in Los Filos. It's the Lovell House. It's a very famous house, very famous architectural masterpiece in LA. That was built like a hundred years ago. It's, but it feels like it was designed in the 50s and is beautiful. It's a Neutra house. It was built in 27. 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. Like Amityville Horror Style? Well, you never know. Ghosts? Yeah. Sean Fennessey word for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. What a pleasure to have Andy here for this category. 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, is like the three streets converging where the boxer is. And that's where Fast and Furious starts, right? Isn't that, that's the market in Echo Park. I didn't want to bring that up, but it did look a little familiar. I thought a month of all months you would invoke Fast and Furious versus presence. I've never seen it. I just thought you, I thought that was appealing to you, Sean. I've heard criteria orgasms. Two and they're related. As Andy mentioned, Bud and Lynn go to a showing of Roman Holiday. The Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Pack classic Oscar winning movie released September of 53. So it's right the perfect time because this movie is like 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. Frolic room, still there, still there. My only other criteria orgasm is an oral. You don't get to have criteria orgasms. Sean's solo, solo category. Because it's music based. He just joined in. It was, it's C. Armand. All right. It is C. Armand. Jerry Goldsmith based some of the score off of Leonard Bernstein's On the Water for the score. That's pretty cool. Jerry Goldsmith based. Just C. Armand. He's going to have a criteria orgasm on C. Armand. He riffed on it. Do you, have you ever orgasmed on the show? On this one? Yeah. During Sakara, you just didn't know. Just a quiet death. It's a time to meet God. Little death. Just like walked into the dark. Did you hear on the mailbag of a listener said that the Emily Blunt character should have been Tom Cruise? It was an amazing, amazing email. Like Tom Cruise, the firm early 90s. Yeah. Into deep. Young guy who's a rationing hockey. I'm not a soldier. It's pretty interesting thought. Maybe you could do that on Sora. Sure. Tom Cruise in Sakara. You have a flex category. 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. What was the best line reading was when Jack says to Xley, why in the world do you want to go digging any deeper into the night owl killings lieutenants? Because it's like, did I made you? So yeah, that was my favorite line reading. Butch's girlfriend word, weak link of the film. This will be interesting. Do we have a weak link, Sean? I don't think that it's Basinger, but I wrote down Basinger because I didn't know what to do. Okay. Andy? I, this might be sort of a niche thing, but I think DeVito is the worst onscreen Italian as Jews since De Niro and Casino. Great take. This is honestly, yeah. I'm fixated by this. Love it. Like there's a lot of, and we'll get to, I imagine, promos, 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, Boi chick. Boi chick. Like, 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- This is a real hobby horse of yours. Yeah, you like to point out a great act of it. I really appreciate it. I'm casting. I love it. Come on. Anytime because I'm on the watch. Roll of representation. Like the muck-ranking editor-in-chief of Hush Magazine. Crouches and closets to photograph the rich and powerful having sex. Ellis Logue at a B.J. This is important for the culture. Yeah. Okay. So I'm just saying that's an opportunity. For sure. That's the weak link. Uh, 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 the first time, like did you think years have gone by in this movie? It was a little unclear. Is that true? Yeah. It starts in 53 and 51. Yeah, they flip a newspaper at one point. The newspaper says 53. Oh, I would have said months. In the book, it's like a decade almost. It's eight years or something. I'm gonna turn a Dodgers game in there. But they do a good job of it. Like it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. It's not weekly. And I also think like to that same point, like the heroine, it's still kind of hard to track the heroine in the movie. My weak link was Danny DeVito. Yes. Thank you. For different reasons? For the reasons you mentioned. Thank you. I just wasn't buying it. He's just an Italian. He's just Danny DeVito. I also, he takes me out of the movie a little. A little bit. He's, 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, it's such a good Bishemi role or something. Yeah, it's just- There you go again. I know it's the R month, but excuse me. Another Italian? Is Kevin Pollock Jewish? Put him out of the pen cow. Yeah. He's right there. Pen cow. Come on. Honestly, Kevin Pollock could have done it. 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 a 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. Which maybe is why they cast a goi. Could be. Yeah. 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. Tell this guy to pull his punches. I had one for this for recasting. Is Billy Crystal too famous for that part? Yes. Well, you can certainly make the case Danny DeVito is way too famous for this part. Why is Danny DeVito even in this movie? My point is if you're going to go famous for that part, I'd rather have Billy Crystal. Yeah. And then my dream Billy Crystal. My dream choice would have been Larry David, because nobody knew who Larry David really looked like in 97. Yeah. And I think. This is the big brain thinking I want. Yes. It could that could have been where we went, but I just. So that's when Larry David walks up to Jack Vincennes and he says, this guy has a jackal in his stomach. I don't know. I mean, he took me out of the movie. Too much history. Anyway, what's age the worst? Kevin Spacey. I didn't like the Pierce house as much. I really wanted like a Babylon house for him. I wanted like just this house is obscene. We're like in Hollywood Hills. There's no house within maybe we're in Malibu. I don't know. There's I just wanted like a giant kind of like crazy. Oh my God, this guy's got to be the richest guy in LA kind of house. I got to know sell that one. Guy Pierce, Kevin Spacey stuff. Pierce that was just in the news. He got handy with him on the set. Yeah. And he was uncomfortable and the whole thing. Yeah. I don't probably should have just punched him. James, our relationship to the film is all over the map. Yeah. 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. Turkey of the highest form. And it but that Crow and Basin are impotent, right? Yeah. And then when Curtis Hansen died, he was like, it's a pretty good movie. James, I don't have any other what's age to work. Kind of a weird cat. Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah. I think what's age 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. And we're any millennials Craig, you want to weigh in on that? I don't have a home. Yeah. Can working men have a home? It's great. Greg is producing this from an Acura. There's one other quote in the film that is obviously very purposefully almost grown worthy, but from downtown to the beach in 20 minutes is a heinous note, which is just coming back. Unless you're driving a cab. You're buying in. Yeah. Interesting. So a couple of what's age the worst. The fight that button actually have in the records room when he catches actually like after Lynn, yeah, he would have killed him like the way he's like throwing him around the room. He's like slamming his head into a filing cabinet and the guy is like a shiner afterwards. That's also Russell Crowe's audition to be Wolverine. That's right. That's why he would. I think when he throws the chair out of the window now for no reason at all. Just to be like, oh, God damn it. I had something somebody had to pay. Something else you got to bring back is just being able to be ruthlessly violent in the workplace. You know, just throw furniture through windows. Yeah, that was definitely an HR violation. Yeah. That's the day you transition to talent only is the day you make that. Yeah, as soon as I get a window out. Yeah. Do you think that the LAPD had HR? No. Right. And then the only other thing that what do they have now I think is a better question. The Lynn Dudley Budd Triangle. Yeah. That whole like we're going to take pictures of Exley with Lynn to make Bud 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. So you think Elrae saw that part and said, what the fuck? Well, I think it's just almost as like why wouldn't they just have actually killed? Like they're doing that to everybody else. Like why? I think Elrae sounds insane, but if somebody did like an adaptation of the book of basketball and they had that Caramelon third, I would fucking lose my mind. But you said your adaptation would be to forget the entire text. We got to game this out. Who's making the film? Yeah, there is. Is it a scripted film? Nobody is. It's 12 part documentary. I have an easy category. I will direct the 12 part documentary book of basketball if I can reorder the! And the film festival beforehand is going to be killer. The Ruffalo Han and Rubenick Partridge overacting 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 and drag. Gwenda Deacon? Just it's just a zero the entire time. Say her name. Come on. When somebody calling sick, was there some Oscar winner that at the last second felt ill and they just had to grab someone? One scene, it's a vibe. Like, okay, that she's when she's identifying that's my girl. And you're like, well, 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 two more scenes. Really bad. You have a flex category. I already did it. It's Pierce Patchen. You just shot me down. You said, there's not a nice house and it's not architecturally significant and I should stop talking. And so I will. I thought it was a nice start. I was saying, I feel like his house would have been splashier. What's his background, Pierce? How did he make his fortune? Businessman. Oh, H. H sling an H. No, no, I think he's dabbling now. But he's like, oh, he's in his 40s or 50s at this point. I think he's like 30. Honestly, people age differently. It's a good point. I think he's emerged out of a world of blackmail and extortion. 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's part of this. I don't know how he misses it. The guy's a businessman. He got H over here. I got my call girls here. I'm having, I have like a whole underground casino in my giant palace. He's watching March Madness hit in Parley's. Every boxing thing, the guys are going down there. They're taking bets. There's no way he's not doing gambling. He's going to be playing that in LA. So there would have been this. Yeah. Big missed opportunity. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford, hottest take award, Andy. You haven't done this before. I don't know if I have a hot take for this. Okay. You don't need to struggle to find one. 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 fifties, but it feels like a nineties movie. It's cut like a modern film. Yeah. The acting style is decidedly modern. Everything about like 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 Noir movie and push it out there. It's just like the perfect balance. We should we should chat out Brian Raftree, our friend's article on theringer.com about nineties noir. It really talks about why the 50s and the 90s were decades that celebrated noir because they were decades after a big conflict where the United States had a very clear self, at least the way they thought of ourselves as boys got rolled to play and then there's kind of a moral morass afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. Take wasn't hot enough. I'm coming in way hotter. Okay. That was warm. I'm just telling you, I'm going to be squatching. Sean, you go. Okay. Set up to fail there. This is- You can come in hot. I'm just saying people are going to get burned. The second best adaptation of the Wizard of Oz of all time. That's pretty good. It's a good hot. And Wicked and Wicked Forgotter 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. And Dudley is the wizard? He is the wizard of Oz. Who are the funny monkeys? That was really good. Yeah. I didn't invent that take. That is something that has been suggested about this movie. That's really good. It is good. If you played Dark Side of the Moon starting at- Who invented that take? And can we get them here before the end of the recording? 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? It feels like getting trapped by Tarantino in a kitchen somewhere. And he's like, but you don't know, man. He's hella confidential. He's just Wizard of Oz, man. Mine is, this is almost a new category, the Pierce 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. Wow. Yeah. It's ahead of its time. Yeah. Like, I think you could do this now. You think he wins Shark Tank? I think you could. 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, I think in the room, I think Cuban Bazaar. I, I, who knows, Bill, maybe it's still happening today. Craig? I literally had this written down. I was like, this guy invented deep fakes essentially. Casting what ifs. We mentioned McConaughey, he turned it down, said in 2018, really regretted it. Russell Crowe turned it down. Then they talked him into it. Nothing else interesting. There was a Isabella Scrupco offered the lead female role, turned it down. I don't know if I believed it. That was in one of the research things. Goldeneye. Goldeneye. It was one of the things, other things I saw at Basinger was their first choice. They really wanted her, so who knows. There was a Michael Madsen as Bud, I didn't believe that one. Okay. No, I'd, I'd kick the tires on it. I just think at 97 is Madsen getting a movie like this. What about Michael Madsen? His career was kind of cut to look like Russell Crowe. Yeah, this could go both ways. We could start doing guys too. Yeah. That's very, go on. No, you could cut guys to look like other actors. And then what would happen? Look at this Glenn Powell lookalike I have. Yeah. What are you doing with him? Fucking having a catch. I don't know. No. Don't torture CR and CR, bud. A best that guy word is a smorgasbord. Oh, there's so many of that guys. This is the best category. Running some routes. You want to do the Pierce Patch it, but just to make cool friends who look like famous people. I'm gonna fucking Colin Farrell from Miami Plates and go get Mojito's. But he's just some dude from Nebraska. Got off the bus. Yeah. That's a good idea. I'm a feeling for Mojitos. I feel like he would do that. Have you seen that video of the guy who hires the Tom Cruise impersonator and just hasn't come over to his house and be like, I want to see this. I want to see this. One on one to make human desire. We're getting Pamela Anderson as Lynn Bracken. Did you kick the tires on that? I just don't believe it. Okay. I don't think they're going. She's this is the year after Baywatch. The great mysteries of this podcast to me is when you'll decide a rumor is not real. Listen, there's a sniff test 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 discussed, I think that people just start adding stuff into the history of the movie. And I want to start doing that for recreation. Just popping on the IMDB trivia page or Wikipedia. You can just basically start adding shit. That's that guy. We have a ton. We have for the, for the common man, the Craig's out there, we have Straitarn. Sure. I think people, not everybody knows his name. Rob Rifkin is definitely that guy. I have Ron Rifkin. We know him as Ron or Rob? Ron. Ron Rifkin. I'm going so much deeper. The leader of SD6. We have Matt McCoy, the dad from hand that rocks the cradle. Callback. Wait, Matt McCoy also, who I will always think of as Nick Lassard, the replacement for Steve Gutenberg in the later period police academy movies. Five and six. Great call. I was like, this guy's going to be a star as big as Steve Gutenberg. That's 10 year old. That's my first podcast tape. And then in one of the TV adaptations, he played Exley's dad. Matt McCoy is Matt McCoy, except for Craig. There's a couple other guys. There's Steltlin. Alan Graf is the wife Peter in the beginning. Yeah. I feel like he might have been in the most rewatchable. He's a legendary stuntman, stunt coordinator and second unit director. But yes, he has been killed in 74 rewatchables. But I know that we have the same winner for this. I'm excited. Do you have Thomas Arana? What part was he? He's one of Dudley's henchmen who's in, he's the fucking guy at the end of hunt for October. And he's Russell Crowe's homie and gladiator. And he's in limitless. So great choice, but that was not who I had. There's another one from the first rewatchable. John Mahoney. Yeah, that's who I have. John Mahoney is always. The chief of police. I assume you're talking about Paul Guilfoyle. 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. Oh my God. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. The guy who's like, come out of here. The guy who's driving the armored truck and he looks over and sees the truck and does this. Yeah. He's the first guy that they punch. You can't hear you slick. Yeah. Yeah. Cousin Art, you know. I can't believe you didn't notice that. I'm sorry. I mean, this is why you're you, man. I thought you would have been riding with me on this. I'm riding now. I literally don't know that guy. I found a guy who's been fucking hunt for October, gladiator, and living. What about Tom Mahoney, though? Yeah, he's great. Who only plays chiefs of police. Yeah, sure. He was the American president, Armageddon, Zodiac. In Austin Powers 2, he was NATO Colonel. He was Earth Corp. ship commander and something. And famously, he was the LMU coach in the Hank Gathers story. Oh. Oh. I just put that into appeal. Who was the LMU coach? Wasn't somebody famous? Who was their off at the guy? Paul Wester. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There you go. But again, like. 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. I mean, they're one of the chiefs of staff, or I'm chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, no matter what it is. Phillip Baker Hall is busy. That's that guy. Yeah. Who do you have for Dan Wader, CR? I think this is Trent Schuster. Adam as well, unless you wanted to throw some Dick Stenslin at me. I threw Simon Baker in here as well. Early Simon Baker, first Simon Baker actually. So that he has a different name. That's what we three Aussies did. Yes, movie. Did get my wife's attention when he came on. Because you know, big devil wears Prada. Sure. Part for him. What about the mentalist? Were you a fan of that show? Never watched it. Okay. Recast and couch director city. Did anybody have anything else for this? I do. We already talked about this. What do you got? I want to talk something out here. Yeah. For Dudley. Possibly. Oh. Oh, this point is actually Irish. It's authentically Irish. There's a hell your mother's in it. Unquestionably fucking evil the second you see him. Nobody's like, what a nice guy. Small though of stature. Not of charisma. But is closer to like what Dudley was, which was just like very sinister. You think posture weight communicates evil right away. Yeah, don't you? I mean, I know. I know. And the Jim Sheridan. No, that's not. Yeah, in the name of the father, he's so moral. But he's coming off the lawyer and usual suspects. Oh, yeah. Kobayashi. Yeah. Coming off that. Yeah. That's good. And then I had. How tall is Cromwell? He keeps growing in my estimation. He's like six steps. He's like Vixen Wembley. He's Wemby, yeah. The only ones I had was, how about Campbell Scott or Josh Charles as Exley? Oh, good choices. Is Bale too young? At this point. I'm just trying to get an American a job here. Oh, I see what you're doing. So Damon, it should just be Damon. Okay. He could have done this talent to Mr. Ripley, Goodwill Hunting and Rounders all in a row. Would have been like, oh my God, the fucking goat is here. Norton. Pretty good. Yeah. I like that. It's one year after Larry Flint. So Ed Norton is a possibility. And he, you know. Ed Norton, that's a really good one. That's a really good one. It's a green wall. That's why I'm here. 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 Exley. I think so. Ed Burns? Year before Saving Private Ryan? She's the one. Is that 96? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Ed Burns is Exley. Ed Burns was a hard boiled detective in a TV show like seven years ago. That he made. Yeah, he came on the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. What was that show called? Great question. I watched some of that show. Was he a detective? Yeah. Obviously Ed Burns. Oh, and it got stuck for life. Andy, you have a flex category. 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, Ray? I mean, generally, this maybe this also goes into the Floyd Gundaly. 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. And 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. It's also just like great to go into stores where people are just dicks to you from behind the counter. Like where it's just like, don't worry about a Yelp review, man. No, I also feel like, I feel like Nick from Nick's liquor, his 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. So they'll get a good meal there. I don't think you can like Johnny Stampinando 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's Last Meal, which is pretty iconic. It's a Frank Ferdur, French fries, alcohol, and sperm. Tough one. Tough order. It's a tough order. But maybe, you know, restaurant menus were different then. That's the secret menu, it ended out. Yeah, Dudley picked that to chat to animals. God damn. I thought he was just drooling. Yeah, nope. Can't believe Sierra month is ending. Half-assernate 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 Pearson, Russell Crowe. They were shot four months after principal photography had ended, and Pearson 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. I'm wearing one right now. The cop that congratulates Exley at the end is Daryl Gates, famously of the LAPD. It's a weird movie for him to make a cameo. Controversial to say the least. Yeah. Not ideal. Very strange choice. Not ideal. 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 Exley, and they just cut all that out. And works for his dad. Yeah, it's crazy. 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. Which the current inhabitants just had to get frugged at the entire time. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, guys. And then they can file this on their heads. And then the Victory Motel was built. Yeah. They just like the location and they built. It's like the Inglewood. Yeah. Like the oil fields by there. Apex Mountain, Crow, now. Spacey. This is, I think there's a case to be made there. It's either this or American Beauty, but I like this because it sets up American Beauty and I wrote down Spacey. The run is in. Okay. Guy Pierce, it's Memento. Although it didn't really turn into anything after Memento, like we thought. I think he's a great crew. No, but I'm saying after Memento, it's like. I think post the brutalist, it might be now. Wow. Interesting. I think he is very well regarded. As an actor. Is there a movie? It was a film. Okay. Did you see Brutalist? 2024. You start, you start Brutalist? Started Brutalist. Listen. Did you? I think you made the right call. Wow. So this is just a 10 minutes. Some shameful opinions here. It's, it's, it's. Walk out of that movie. Not, not all of us have to watch every movie. We can pick and choose a tiny bit. It was nominated for best picture. It wasn't like some obscure piece of shit. My weird one is sort of nopinated. But really, it could have been a TV show. Okay. I will assassinate both of you. He's, tell you what. I have another seeker for you. I never finished Babylon. My main concern, Sean, I'm with you in terms of Guy Pearce being an interesting actor who will age into different gravitas. He should probably stay offline. I don't know if you've seen some of his recent retweets and quotes. No. Precuring certain global actions. Let's just say that I, the tenor of his tweets suggest that he was pro Danny DeVito being cast as Sid Hutchinson. And he would not want someone else cast in that role. Oh no. I'll just throw that out there. Okay. So you want him abolished from society? What are you saying? No, I just wanted him to take his phone away. Stop tweeting. Okay. CDLA noir crime movies, Chinatown? Apex Mountain? Yeah. Got to be right. Yeah. Basinger. I don't, I really don't think this was Apex Mountain for her. I think it was in the 80s during that nine and a half weeks stretch. Did she, dude, the getaway after this big movie? She was, getaway was before this. Getaway was before this. I think it was nine and a half weeks Batman, like that era. What did she follow this up with? Some, everyone loved her. Some well-deserved vacation. She married Al Baldwin and I think she, she scaled back a tiny bit after this. But weren't they married before this movie? They were married during this film. Yeah. Yeah. I saw No Mercy in the theater with my mom. Her next movie was Eight Mile five years later. She's going to throw that out there. She took five years off. Which one did you see with your mom? No Mercy with Richard Gehr and Kim Basinger, where they're handcuffed together and trying to escape in New Orleans. And there was, I got him and I don't know this movie. 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. Yeah. I wish, kind of wish I wasn't with my mom. 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 No Mercy. You're seeing No Mercy. Gehr and Basinger, come on. Yeah. Let's turn that to be legendary. Frolick Room. Wait, hold on. I have a question. Do you think that Eight Mile is rewatchable? I don't love it. It's an interesting time capsule. I don't know if I know. I'm glad it exists, but I wouldn't like get the 4K. I wonder if my just being a few years younger makes me like that movie a little bit more. You were more of an M&M-less. I was more into M&M. That's fair. Yeah. He spoke to you. Frolick Room. That movie peaks with Bob Deep playing in the opening seconds. DeVito, no. It's a critical part of the film. Evil Cromwell. Has he been evil in anything else? He's bad in a couple of things, but not the devil. What's your favorite Cromwell? It's this. God. Well, he really is good in that Star Trek movie. I think he's very good in that, but succession was good. And yeah. I really loved him in succession. He's Uncle Yui? I think that's my favorite Cromwell. Yeah, he's really good in that. He's hilarious in that because his, him and Nicholas Broad are genius together. He plays the president in a Jack Ryan movie. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think this is like maybe his- Like Harrison Ford Jack Ryan or which one? No, it's the Ben Affleck one. I think he's excellent in this. So I probably, I might say this. Toilet face dunking, I still think it's San Elmo's Fire. 50s LA. Maybe. I'm dangling a guy out the window to get more. Dangling a guy out the window, sure. Toilet dunking Big Lebowski, pretty good one. Oh yeah. Good call. Yeah, good. I've got a special big picture episode, toilet dunks. That's a really good for a slow time. Like a June. I feel like two and a half, three hours. Two and a half, three hours. I would pay $10 to watch Amanda watch four hours of guys getting dunks in a tube. So do we have four hours of that much footage? 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 this. Who cleaned it? Like I just can't think of anything worse. The San Elmo's Fire is a good one because it's like a pretty like grungy bathroom. Yeah. Hancock Park movie houses. It's probably the, it's the Howard Hughes house and the aviator I still feel like. And that's which one's that? 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. Oh wait, can we do one Apex Mountain here? Yeah. 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 of consultants on the film. I like when they do this after the, it's like you, you don't need to, that guy's done. Do you count checking in the heart? Do you count checking in the heart? A heart shot if it's double tapped and then a guy gets a head shot after. Cause Wing grows like. That's a good one. When they get him in the hotel room, but then he gets shot. And what movie was that, Chris? Keep. Yeah. Well, fortunately we have a future serial killer here, Craig Wilbeck. Shot in the heart, you die instantly, right? No, I don't think you do. Which is why when Russell Crowe shoots him and then go 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. Yes. Cause we see Spacey die and he gets, he gets 20 seconds to deliver the line of Rolo. I don't think I would have. So they kind of fudge it a little bit. Sometimes you die instantly when you get shot in the heart. Sometimes you don't. It depends if you're an adventurer. I mean, I think your brain still works. So it's amazing to have five doctors here and not answer this question. Well, look, we're all about the answer. All of us are employed at the CDC. Sean, we are all trying to promote. How many games could Jason Tatum play after getting shot in the heart? You know, it's just like right back at it. Don't tempt OG Ananovi is all I'm saying. Cruiser, Hanks. Hanks is Hollywood Jack. Who cruises X-ley? Cruises X-ley is what I was thinking as well. I'd cruises X-ley was the other choice. So we go Cruz. I think later Hanks as Dudley. That would be a great twist. Hanks would never go heel like that. What's the closest he can road to perdition? No, he did. He did it in what's the Wachowski's movie? Cloud Atlas. Cloud Atlas, yeah. Doesn't he play like nine guys? He plays like four characters, but he does play a villain. He haven't seen it. No, this would have been good for him. I think for the catalog. He would have been playing one villain in the 90s or all the other shit he did would have been good. Do you think it would be fun if Bill watched Cloud Atlas? I do think it would be fun. Yeah, I think if we could get some more afterwards. How long will Bill last during Cloud Atlas would be a better game? I don't think it's your speed, but you're not a Hanks completist. That's something we can say about you. You haven't seen them all. 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. I wish he did some different things. He's trying a lot of new instruments. They don't all sound good. I think when you fly as close to the sun as he did in the 90s and then with Castaway, I don't... At some point, it's like I've won seven titles. What else do you want from me? He only seems happy in the Wes Anderson movies now. He enjoys them. He's good in those. He's very good. I think he's good at that. I mean, in Cranston. Yeah, they're cooking. We're two men. We've scored Seizier Spielberg, clearly scored Seizier. 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... He wouldn't cast DeVito as the hush-hush editor. I don't think that much. Thank you. 100% would have been back in the mix. Absolutely. Yeah, Trifus. Truly. That's great. Trifus. That's a great pick. Oh my God. That's great. That would have been great. Sean, for this category, I feel like you have to stand up for the working director like Curtis Hansen. Because again, if it's Scorsese or it's Spielberg, it has a very different point of view. Okay. Do you think that's stylistically... That's not the game. Yeah. I have to pick. You have to pick. One thing I will say about Hansen 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 a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films are, where you just 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. Yeah. Where the whole time you're like, where is this going? You like that movie? The River Wild? Yeah. I like the remake too. I watched on Netflix a movie called Gaslit by my husband. It's right there in the tunnel. You didn't finish Babble. 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. What do you think about Suspenseful? Or Gaslit by my husband? The title is Gaslit by my husband. Was this, was everything I wanted? Did anybody appear in it that we would ever have heard of? Didn't recognize one actor? Okay. Will the algorithm on Netflix just roll from this rewatchable right into that film? Can we arrange for that? When we do the, when the after CR month, when a Gaslight by my husband is the next episode. Gaslighting month is a good idea. You can do the film Gaslight. Craig, check it out, Liz. I think you guys would like Gaslight by your husband. Yeah, she, she's basically thinks she's going crazy, but he's doing stuff to her. And, and it's, it's actually, it actually would have been a really good movie with better actors. That's my, that's my one blurb. I'd like to encourage you to check out the 1940s classic Gaslight around which this seems to be very clear, clearly inspired by. I'm going to do that too. Best hang, worst hang. Best hang, probably Lynn Kim Basinger's character. Jack, Hollywood Jack. Best hang. Go to the frolic room with Hollywood Jack. Pierce Patchard is the best hang. Andy. Cool house, cool attitude. So how's the heroine? He's got a little golf. He's an on heroine all the time. So he's chill. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe four hours of golf with Pierce Patchard would be fun. Probably be eight hours. 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. Grease the wheels. Yeah. Dudley? No. Best or worst? No. He does like his whiskey from Ireland. I didn't drink that. I hit that good line. No is all the secrets of the world? Worst hang, Stenland. No, no, no. Missing Lefferts. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a dead body. I had to actually leave it. He's right. Yeah, you're right. Pick a knits. I mentioned the gambling really bothered me that there was no gambling in this movie. Kim Basinger was prettier than Veronica Lake. And it's a Veronica Lake research. Hold on, hold on. Hold on. No, I just think. Is that your highest take? Hold on. 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. That's a subjective opinion, right? Fair. Whoever's hotter, I don't think she looks like Veronica Lake. She doesn't. 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. I think I would have cast that differently if anyone who went to the movie in 1997 could remember where Veronica Lake was, except for like film nerds, right? Yeah. But like even just the way that Veronica Lake acts, she's a way more playful actor. She is like way funnier and is in like a lot of light comedy in the 40s. And Kim Basinger is not a funny actor at all. No. No. Do you think the lady who's they think is a Lana Turner lookalike, but is Lana Turner in fact looks like Lana Turner? I thought that was pretty good actually. Okay. Yeah. I didn't mind that one. Lana Turner and Johnny Stampinato, by the way, weren't together until a couple of years after this movie wrapped up, which was, they shut it. Anything else for Nippix? A lot of my effort in what's his worst. 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. I know. Actually, the books. The books in Pierce's bookcase. The only knit that I really bugged me on rewatch was there's the 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 this cup is fucking four eyes. So I feel like Dudley just left that party. Yeah. Come on. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast are untouchable. So in 2020, Brian Helgel and 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. Not based on an Elroy novel? It was set in 1974 and Crow and Pierce would have both been in it. What? And it just kind of fell apart. Yeah. And Helgel said, and said Warner Brothers passed and he said that Elroy was either on board or had been spoken to. Okay. Interesting. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the florist, Zane Lowe or somebody else? Can we have CR? I just wanted to just shout out the other TV pilot. Oh. Because there were two. There was one in 2003 that you can watch online with Kiefer Sutherland as Hollywood Jack. And the Trio logo during the heyday of Trio. The Trio is brilliant but canceled when they would air pilots. Really good idea, by the way. 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. And it was Walton Goggins as Vincent. It was Shay Wiggum as Stensland. Then a bunch of other like good working act like Mark Webber was Bud White. And 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. And that's like you can't find that one. 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. Just the way you could do a show like that on network television. No. It was an era when I think they were taking swings to try it like will we become cable or will we. CBS was like can you move it to Chicago and just set it in a fire department? And have them never leave the fire department? If we just called it cops colon Los Angeles. Yeah. It probably would have been on the full schedule. Sorry to interrupt. What do you got, Sierra? You have Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the floor, Sam Lowe, anybody else? We've had Zane every week this month. Dudley, man. 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. He's just explained it all to me, man. It just kills fantasy. Why is he giving cops? If Zane just just launched cop talk, to fictional and non-fictional cops. Amazing. But he talks about their like career high points. Yeah. I mean, everything is like as if they're Harry Styles. It's like, you've just, you know, all the sounds you feel you're hearing. You're seeing. You're bracing people. Harry. I thought for sure you were going to have him interview the Simon Baker character. It's been a rough road for you, mate. Matt Reynolds, last meals. Oh, a hot dog with a topper of semen. But here you are, man. So close to badge of honor. Okay. It's in the, it's in the Berndahl zone where I can't make eye contact with you when you start doing it. You transform. It's your whole body. Have you ever watched the Zane interview? Yeah, because of Chris. Oh, he encouraged it. The same. You know, I didn't incur, I didn't tell you you have to watch a Zane interview, did I? You tell me to do lots of things. It's weird. It's like, I was, when, when, when Zane like interviewing Adele or whatever was happening during Krantlin and Juliet and Chris were both so into it. They would show it to me and I'd be like, this is nothing to me. Like, I don't know what is interesting about this. Like, it's fine. It's an interview of an artist. They were just walking around the office with it. We didn't actually show it to them. Showing it to different people, hoping to connect. But what you've done with it, you've transformed. And today, the return of the artist. This is fucking playing hello. Just one Oscar. Who gets it? Dante Spinati. Nah, you fucking blacked out here. The cinematographer. I, Chris, explained it so well, I thought, which is like, how does that, 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 one. Yeah, this movie actually won two Oscars and lost seven and it lost all seven to Titanic. Oof. Tough beat. Dante has an incredible, incredible CV where he's also known as working as being the primary DP for Michael Mann and Brett Ratner. Yes. He shot parts of Melania. He did Manhunter and X-Men the Last Stand. 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. He's interviewed by The New Yorker about it. And he was just, he was, he wouldn't blink. He was like, yeah, I took the job. I'd take it again. He is, I believe, how old is he? He's currently 84, 85. It's a very well shot documentary. Probably. He has wrote questions. You see, you haven't finished Babylon, but you have completed Melania. I didn't finish Melania there. I did watch the first 20 minutes. But you haven't watched Gaslit by My Husband to completion. The first. That's also Melania. Gaslit by My Husband. When's the sequel? She's got to remarry it. Have it happen again. Probably an answerable questions. Actually, like a whiff, maybe gay. Maybe there's something going on there with him and Bud. What does Lynn say? You can't fuck Bud by fucking me? That was, I thought to tell. And also like he was really, now granted, Lynn, it looks great. 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, but I don't know. By not having him take care of Inez, it also undercuts a little bit of his white night kind of presentation in the book. I just thought that whole part was weird. And then this is the biggest one to me. Is it a better movie if Bud just dies? Do we need to see him again? It's kind of related to my unanswerable, which was what was Bud white going to do to support Lynn in Arizona? Or what was Lynn going to do to support Bud? The dress store. She's going to do the dress store. You think that that's like a- So she's going to pay for the, he's been shot multiple times. This year's the one, Neoward. What are they doing in Phoenix? He's got a hole in his face. This is what I wondered. Like, former call girl. Is the implication that he can't speak anymore? That's in the book. He can't talk anymore. Yeah. Wow. And he's really surviving the two gunshots and then the one right to the face from five feet away. That felt like a note. I mean, it wasn't a note, but it felt like what we got to have is like the three good people in this movie handshake at the end. We're surprised to see him in the car at the end. Yeah, that was my flex. The Clarence Warley should have died. I do think he should have died. It would have been better for his character. Go down a hero. Showing him in the car. I think the whole ending, I felt a little deflated at the end of the- Her line at the end is like- Some guys get the girl or whatever. Yeah, some guys get the world. Others get an X hooker and a trip to Arizona. And then you see Russell Crowe. I do feel like it kind of deflated a little bit. I think Aaron Rodgers said that to Mike Tomlin when the Steelers fell apart last year. He's coming back. So- There's a case that this movie could just end at the hotel and we don't even need the last vaccines. Yeah, totally. We definitely don't need the psycho ending with him explaining the entire plot to all the cops. That's Elroy. Every Elroy book is like, there's a five, 10-page scene of like, they find the one guy who can explain everything and he does. Is that the all time, why did you add this scene? The psycho? Yeah. Person? 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. I've gone back and forth on the psycho one. Maybe we can save it for the psycho episode, but I think- It's going to be a psycho episode. I love that movie. That would be great if you want to do psycho. I love psycho. But- I like the way you acted as if you didn't just suggest it. Oh, you guys want to do psycho? Well, I never actually thought we would make a film. He planted the suggestion and then made the other person think they thought of it. Very excellent. But it's 1960. We don't do movies that far back historically, but I would love to do that. But there's two things- Running out of movies. Now that we've done CR, mother. Vertigo. Don't you want to do Vertigo? Yeah, Vertigo. We've talked about it for a while. That's- 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. Speaking- That's not like a big pastime of mine is cutting women to make them look like- Maybe not. You found them in Copland. Oh, the psycho thing. The thing about psycho is the psychiatrist explaining Norman Bates, that part is terrible. That's what I mean. But the cutaway to Norman at the end with the fly and him like the voice in his head, that part is great. I was talking about the doctor explaining the four minutes. I had a problem with the answer. What do you got? Do you think it'd be more entertaining if Shams adopted Sid's writing style? Word around the form is that Lucas Slovenian sweetheart has taken his kids back to the motherland. But while the baby mama is away, the cat will average 34 points a game. Hashtag Shams. Hush hush. Again, Shams is now portrayed by Robert Lohsia, which is problematic. Yes, problematic. What's that problematic? Can Shams, can we add Shams to the Winged Chickens' A-Lo category? But Shams, Shams Hudgens. Yeah. This is great. This is what Shams needed. Yeah. Rebrand. Yeah, a little boost. Instead of him like going on first take in these shows, he could just, that could be his little video thing. 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. Don't match that Shams. Why is this Robert Lohsia? It's Robert Lohsia's Shams as the, as the Shams. That's my day to be a voice. Is that weird? You can do better than that. You can't get that. Worship. That's good. Secret Handshake Club member Billy Ead 1 from this movie. It's got to be the night owl coffee mug, right? I had roller to mossy. I guess is that too big? For what is it? What is it though? I don't know because I don't know. No, it's memorabilia. That's something I should show. Yeah, night owl. You got to be the night owl. That we could each share and if one of us is killed, that's pretty good. We should come up with that. There wasn't like, was there a matches from the Victory Hotel? I had Jack Vincent's Tour de Shell sunglasses, which I think are sick. But this is different than memorabilia. It's memorabilia, but it's Secret Handshake memorabilia. Gotcha. Okay, 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. So you haven't seen me leaving flirtedly business cards at your house then? Flirtedly business cards. That'd be another one. That's classy. I got a good one. 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 On Janu Dikes in Hollywood. You could, that would be mine. The hush-hush magazine. Where would you leave that? For like around your home? Just among the stack of regular magazines. So right next to my great-grandma. I'm just imagining Bill getting On Janu Dikes in Hollywood served on my Netflix. I'm searching for it tonight on eBay. And just be like, all right, I was going to watch Babylon, but fuck it. Brutalist is too long. You guys laugh, but put on Gas Life by my husband. Get Gas Lit. Gas Lit. Ten minutes and see if you're still watching. It would be a good bit for you, Sean. I'm like, what's up? You're logging it. Yeah. Is there a sequel to this? Funny if you just logged it out of nowhere. I'll watch it. Look, I'll watch anything. I don't care. 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. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Interesting. Which is similarly a movie about this period in history. Post-war detectives trying to solve a big cover-up, but also a kind of a parable about the building of the highways and who controls the ways and means of the city. What in war would you put up with this in a lonely place? That's a great one. That one's a little Hollywood inside baseball. I like Touch of Evil for that. That's good. Not an LA movie. I would also say as a kind of museum piece, more than an enjoyable movie. The Brian DePalmas Black Dahlia, which there is now, legendarily, a director's cut. I don't know if that's true or not. Are there Dahlia heads out there? I mean, Black Dahlia is an incredible novel. That I'm saying for the movie. I think there are people who are like there's a secret director's cut that would be better. Holding that hope. 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. It's about a guy who comes home from World War II and takes a trip to Los Angeles. And it's the only original screenplay that Raymond Chandler ever wrote. And he was nominated for the Academy Award for it. And it's like it's a pretty good movie. It's not considered on that like Bogart class of Noirs, but I really like it. I have a double feature guest slip by my husband. That's good. Good choice. I'd watch it first though and then go and now I can't. Because you're the one who's going to step up. In a lonely place. But you said it wasn't good enough. Who won the movie? I didn't say that. Ty remember it. No, you guys are turning at each other. I've been praying for it for two hours. Curtis Hansen. Come back to me. I actually answered Helgoland. I feel like I feel like pro has been minimized. We have not talked about Russell Crowe kind of won this movie. Crowe wins the movie because it sets up 10 years of Russell Crowe being one of the biggest stars we have. And a feeling. It has to start with this. 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. Yeah, that's true. And being like, oh, this is a new character in my life. It's a breakout. This is yeah. What are we going to do with this next? How are we going to see him next? Who's going to harness this rage and this surprisingly modest frame? That's a great call. I also think he needs it for the IMDB. Like just a collage of work. This is a good one to throw in there. And then he's got Gladiator and of course everything peaks with Good for Life. I just have beautiful mind. The writers just keeps going. It's like an unadaptable book and they made a great script out of it. That's fair. All right. Here we go. Producer Craig, what do you got? I don't want to get crushed for this. You don't like it. No, I like that I didn't love it. I like that 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, then 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 the dial. 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 fifties world they're building. And that's the way it's supposed to be. But when it wasn't Pierce Russell Crow or Spacey and it was like the DeVito or the Kim Basinger mixed in with some of the dialogue, I had trouble fully getting my hands dirty with it. That's when you're on Steelers Muck Drafts. No, I was walking the whole time. I pay attention. There are a couple lines that are a little clunkier than I remember them being. Like when Exley's trying to get Jack to go and Jack's like, are you ready to pay the consequences? Yeah. Which I don't think is something you say or do. 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 movie, preserving this film. And everyone's like greatest movie ever made. And I was like, maybe I'm missing something. I need to watch it again. I mean, I see what he's saying. You're a younger. I think it's a second watch movie. I think the second time when you don't, 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. 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. 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. 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 acting and the style of the performance. One thing that's noteworthy is a lot of people have tried and failed to make movies like this. Like gangster squad. I think this is one of the high degree of difficulty. Oh, I can 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. Or tried to be about too much. Like this is going to the TV point. Like the smartest decision they made was the one that was harshest, maybe for L. Roy Superheads, which is if it's not about these three guys and their journey with this one case, it's not in the movie. What was that one Affleck made? It wasn't LA, but it was in the mid 2010s. They lived by the land. Yeah. Hollywood. No, I'm talking about it was sent and they lived by night. Oh, live by night. Live by night. But that's an example of like when you go way back and you're really going for it. That's 30s, right? Yeah. I don't, I don't, I like Affleck. I don't know if that movie totally worked, but. But Hollywood land would actually be an interesting double feature with this because that's sort of about a similarly, a few years later in the mid late 50s. This is a movie where I fully just copped to having on my 15 year old glasses, where I, 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. With the game that year. It was the game. It was Krogerberg's crashes 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 and Out. In 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. Hey, you hit the perfect time. Where I was like, I'm going every Friday. That's like me and Anthony before. Good year. Same thing. That's why I still support Karate Kid, all those purple rain. And Spectre Todd. Yeah, 15 I think is the key movie year. I even saw it happen with my son a little bit. So your brain is just developed enough that you can start actually understanding movies and you think you're smarter than you are. And this movie is really a good, like you're a grown up now. Yes, that's exactly right. But it would be interesting to watch Ben's taste develop because we had video stories on what was in the theaters. Ben has everything that's ever been made, like his fingertips. When are we going to have, maybe Zane can interview Ben. Ben, you fell in love with Kubrick. So when you see Project Hail Mary, you're seeing a copy of a copy. That's it for CR Month. Wow. We did it. Five movies and a bail bag. Unbelievable. Thanks guys. What a month. Thanks favorite rewatchables month, I think. A lot of bangers. I'm sorry I couldn't close it out strong for you, but it's okay. Listen. Had a great time. What were the highlights? Definitely Matt Reynolds's last meal. The highlights we're getting to finally do Sicario and getting a podcast with my guys. What do you think of all this as someone who's known him longer than anybody? What does that mean? Well, no, I think it's, it's, it's You should ask that like Zane. What do you think of the oddest? 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. Did you guys know each other when this movie came out? Yes. Yeah. We, this is our 30th anniversary this year. Oh, that's sweet. Unbelievable. But we didn't see this movie together. He was probably at parties. 97? I was probably going to see. Sierra, who would you hold good son style if they're both hanging on a cliff and you had to save, you could only just drink to save one. Of Greenwald and Sean? Yeah. It's a tough question. I've lived a full life. Save it for April. I'm fine. I'm younger. Sean has more to give. My mom is furious that we didn't do anything in the cruisers. Well, we can still do it. Are we now holding a hostage for the next CR Month? No. Yeah. Will there be another CR Month? I think every March should be CR Month. I don't know why we wouldn't do that. I'll compete with March Madness. Yeah, it's kind of. It's a 15-0 in CR. I'm glad that it's a 31 day month. It's not like women's history month being like February, this is good. Right, we've crammed five books. 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 real archibals. Yeah. Can you do you have like a. I was scouting breakdown. Oh, fuck. Can we do perfect getaway from hell? No. Okay. That's noir. Wait, is breakdown the Timothy Orffin? The breakdown from hell? Trucker from hell. But isn't that dual? No, but breakdown's different. They take as a wife. I love breakdown and I love JT Walsh. Breakdown's insane. I'm a huge fan. Another similar Curtis Hansen style guy, Jonathan Mosto made that one. My favorite one that's on the from hell month schedule is domestic disturbance with John Travolta and Vince Vaughan. Evil stepfather. Who's who? Remember this at all. Who's the evil stepfather? Vince Vaughan 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. Is domestic disturbance Harold Becker? I think it is. I think that the perfect getaway is from hell. It's the people we meet on vacation from hell. Oh, you're talking about the Steve Zahn one. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like that movie. I love that movie. It's a good one. Good little familiar with that one, Andy? No, I love this is like seeing under the hood. It's a really good twist. This is how it gets made. Don't spoil it. Good Hawaii movie. It's a good Hawaii movie. Which one is this? Perfect getaway with Steve Zahn, Timothy Oliphant, and Mila Jovovich. You told me that was your film. We should go to Hawaii. Record it there. Could we do a live show in Hawaii? Get meffed out. Yeah. Sounds great. Greatest place on earth, so please. It is. That sounds awesome. All right. See you, Armand. Thanks to Craig Horvath. Thanks, guys. Thanks for letting me celebrate. Thanks to Gahau 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. It's just great. But I thought for four. I thought this was good. How did it feel? It felt great. All right. It's like riding a bike. You can listen to CR and AD on the watch. See our, Sean, our big picture. And we'll see you in April on the rewatchables.