What It’s Really Like at an Awards Show. Plus: Cliff Booth Returns and the Best Super Bowl Trailers!

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about our trip to the Directors Guild of America Awards Dinner, and what it's really like in an awards show. We'll have an interesting conversation digging into that experience. Later in the show, I have a conversation with Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans, the co-directors of K-pop Demon Hunters. Perhaps you've heard of it. The talk happened after a midday screening of the movie at our local nonprofit theater, Vidiots. You were there, Amanda. It was a fun time. Pandemonium for our kids. Yes. Maggie and Chris, they made a really fun movie that has obviously completely changed the lives of many people around the world. So we had a good chat. I hope you will stick around for that conversation. When we come back from our break, we will talk about the Super Bowl trailers right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by State Farm. You know those friends who show up for whatever you're into? The ones who'll debate which superhero universe is better or binge true crime documentaries with you at 3 in the morning? Those friends are gold. State Farm is like that. Helping you figure out the coverage that actually fits. Car, home, life, whatever you need, they've got your back. And if you want a hand, a local agent is just a tap away on their award-winning app. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Okay. We're a little late this week because you and I have both been felled by illness. But we're back. We're back. We're on our feet. We're building back better, sort of. Something like that. One piece at a time. Hopefully not Joe Biden-esque in terms of building. The other dominoes in my family have fallen but are working their way back up. Yes. We're all trying to get better every day. I did watch the Super Bowl in its entirety, even though I said I would not. And let me tell you, I'm so glad that I did. It was a magnificent evisceration of the New England Patriots. I was vomiting and or asleep for the first half. I did make it awake in time for Bad Bunny, which I really enjoyed. I did, too. And then kind of watched the second half, but it was pretty boring and sort of tuned into the commercials, found they were mostly about AI, turned them off and then watched the trailers the next day in the comfort of my own laptop. Well, okay, one quick thing about Bad Bunny that I appreciate that other people have noted that I thought was very smart on his part because there obviously was going to be somewhat of a lack of familiarity among some people in the audience with his music. And there's been all kinds of like bizarre controversy conversation around it. Yeah, but I don't want to talk about that. But I love the sort of like production style presentation of that show. And it's very rare that at a halftime show you get basically a mini movie. And that was what Bad Bunny attempted to create. So I really love that. And that was really in keeping with, I think, a lot of what was going on. Most of the commercials I thought were borderline evil during the telecast. The trailers I thought were pretty interesting and pretty fun. And I felt like last year we didn't have such a good batch. The year before that we didn't have such a good batch. This year there was one big surprise, which I had gotten tipped off to. I don't know if you had gotten tipped off to. The big news, which was that there was a trailer for, or sort of a teaser for The Adventures of Cliff Booth. Or so we think that's the name of the movie. But there was a one minute spot for the new movie written by Quentin Tarantino, directed by David Fincher, that did not feature the title of the movie. It felt like it was essentially a fake 1970s exploitation style reel for the film. What did you think of it? And also a little bit of a gag reel. So it was a trailer for a Netflix film shown during the Super Bowl, directed by David Fincher and written by Quentin Tarantino. So there are a lot of things like not suitable for general audiences, quote unquote. So they use bleeps in a very funny way. Yes, like a visual bleep, a scratched out image. And use them like at scale. So purposefully to kind of tease you with like, oh, there's a lot of naughty stuff in this. And that was a major bit and part of the trailer, which I thought was funny. I thought was effective in terms of communicating a vibe of the movie and maybe piquing some interest without really telling us anything about what's going on in it. Other than that, people are cursing and it does look somewhat 70s-esque. Yeah, it looks like a dingy, beautiful 70s exploitation movie, which is kind of what I hope it turns out to be. You know, obviously Fincher's visual style is different from Tarantino's and it looked extremely Fincher to me. Yeah. And obviously he's shooting on digital, but he's like the only director alive who makes digital look like that. And I'd love to see a more high def version. It's interesting. It hasn't been officially released. Like it just aired. People ripped it off the off their TVs. But if you go to Netflix's YouTube channel, for example, it's not available there. Yeah, I think we know why, because Netflix does not want to give one single minute of content to YouTube that it does. Well, yeah, but they do promote their movies with trailers like there's something else going on here that. It's a serpentine secret campaign that they're trying to do, which I think is smart. I think withholding the title of the movie is interesting. The use of the Peter Gunn theme. The other thing that it reminded me of a little bit is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo teaser, which was set to Karen O's version of Immigrant Song. which was like basically the Fincher style, which is just like flashes of images and no story. Like you could not really ascertain what this movie is going to be. You can just get the vibe. Like you said, you can just kind of feel that it's going to be kind of a rollicking, fun movie. Like basically it looks like a buddy comedy where I don't know who the other buddy is, but it's going to be Brad Pitt. And maybe it's Elizabeth Debicki. Maybe it's Yaya Abdul-Mateen. You know, maybe it's... All people I like. Yeah. I mean, the cast looks like maybe it's Carla Gugino. god bless her walking out onto the veranda wearing a bikini we'd love to see it that's one of the best things i've seen all year um holt mccallany apparently is in this movie i didn't know long time fincher collaborator karen karagoulian from anora and the sean baker films is in the film scott khan who i'm sure will say fuck you roughly 40 times in the movie yeah uh i don't know i haven't read the script i don't want to read the script i kind of want this to be the last thing i see of this movie but i don't know if i'll be able to control myself i mean this is the issue with all of the rest of the trailers that we're going to talk about, which is we're watching them because the marketing and the trailer is such an important part of getting people into the theater. But also, we're going to go anyway. So I really don't want stuff to be spoiled. I know. I know. I definitely put on my analysis cap, like just seeing there's a moment where a car comes around the corner of the Paramount lot and up in the lot are three posters, which is still how the Paramount lot looks these days. and the three posters for the three films from 1977 are looking for Mr. Goodbar, Black Sunday, and what looks like First Love, a movie I have not seen, but some ex.com sleuths discovered that. It's sort of like out of view. And so I do hope that the essence of Hollywood is very much a part of this movie, too. At that time, we see a movie theater at a certain point that looked like the Vista to me. It looked like the Vista was dressed in some way. It's the Vista and not the Highland Park Theater? Because they were filming there. I think the Highland Park Theater is the exteriors. And I think the interior was... Because the Vista has the three separate sections where it has that primary middle section and two aisles down the end. And it has like, I don't know, 400 seats. And it looked like a really big room, but I don't know. Okay. I'm pretty excited about this. Big Kahuna Burger slathered on that wall. Yeah. You know, like this isn't a Tarantino-verse, clearly. I'm looking forward to this and I am I'm not participating in the take cycles you know like when this was announced there was a lot of hand-wringing of like what are we going to do and like you know why are greatest minds you know committing to sequels on streaming services and blah blah I don't care it's a movie written by Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher I accept and then you know then there's a lot of hand-wringing of like is this going to be good enough is it looks great I'm going to have a great time yeah neither you nor I have had as hard of a time with this era of David Fincher. I think there are some people who can't get away from being 13 and how they feel about Seven and Fight Club anymore. Honestly, the movie that this looks most like to me is Fight Club. In terms of the tone, the energy, the kind of visual dynamism, that puckish, punkish kind of rude quality, which I really enjoy. So hopefully, I don't know if it's going to be Fight Club, but I hope it lives up in some way. Okay, Disclosure Day. Yeah. This one was very brief and is essentially also a one minute teaser trailer. What is the rate for commercials on the Super Bowl in 2026? Do we know? I don't know. There was some discussion about this on the town last week on an episode about around ad buys. And they were in the five to 10 million discussion range. According to USA Today, because I don't trust the AI results, even though they paid for all of the commercials. we're at about $8 million for a 30-second spot. Yeah, that was essentially the discussion. I think it depends on how early you make the buy. Okay. So, okay, maybe this was an $11 million commercial. So you think you're getting a discount for the 60-second buy? Well, I think that the movie studios know that they need to buy early. Okay. And so the earlier you get in, the cheaper it is. Right. Well, this was also, the Super Bowl was on NBC this year, which was confusing to me. Why? Well, it's just not what I associate with the Super Bowl. It was awesome, though. It was Tariko and Collinsworth. I love Tariko and Collinsworth. They're the best. It's great. And then it segued right into the Olympics, so I did not have to get up in my disease state to change the channel. We just segued right into the Olympics. I did get up. I didn't want to watch the Lindsey Vonn crash. Thank you. No, thank you. I didn't watch that either. You know what I loved is when Drake May threw that interception into God knows where. And Chris Collinsworth's take on that was, yeah, I don't really, I don't have any thoughts on that. It was just like it was so bad that he was completely stumped for commentary. That was a wonderful moment. But so MEC, which is Comcast owned and also Universal is Comcast owned. Are they getting a discount? Oh, good point. I mean, I don't know. Well, this isn't the last of the Universal releases that was promoting their movie. Disclosure Day, they're hiding the ball. This was a very short trailer. It was somewhat similar to what we saw previously. There's one incredible set piece, clearly, where a car gets trapped underneath the train. It's like an old school Spielberg style action set piece that got me excited. But everything else is basically like, we're not really going to tell you the premise. And you will see something moving through a cloud that appears to be a UFO at the conclusion of the trailer. another thing where I'm like I really want to know everything about this movie immediately but I'd like to know nothing as well and that's like I guess that's an effective trailer right like that's a really what you're trying to accomplish there's a moment in the trailer where you see one side of a woman's face and forgive me I don't know the actress's face and then the camera moves and then the other side is Emily Blunt yeah and but I again was not at like peak physical power so I didn't know why. Where are you at on shape-shifting? Is that a power you would want to have if you were a mutant? No. I mean, I think invisibility, flying, getting somewhere instantly, Oh yeah, teleportation. Mind reading, mind control. Yeah, look at you. These are all also famously very feminine powers. The invisible woman, every day i'm here every day i'm here having it all and reimagining what is possible for superheroes okay and and women you know mystique is also a shapeshifter she's all you know the she's a blue one yes jennifer but i'm not really interested in that why not i just like i don't know it seems like a lot of hassle like for what do you feel you're not really that's actually not one of your skills we were talking about this on saturday night but you're not you can't really fake it. You know, you are yourself. Part of being a shapeshifter is about performance. This is an underrated aspect of shapeshifting. It's not just how you look. You can change your voice, of course, but what is the sort of tonality and experience, the personality change once you've shifted shape? And you can't do that. No. But my superpower lies in the opposite. You know, I'm on the other end of the where i am just myself being a demagogue yes it is what it is and i will try to you know so then i need to be able to like teleport or be invisible so i can take that power wherever it needs to go as myself your flavor of alien you like like a little green man do you like a like a tall kind of robotic invader do you like someone that comes as a humanoid style no that's that's creepy and then it brings up too much like robot AI, like whatever stuff, which I'm not interested in. Much like Jacob Elordi, I'd rather just be on the beach reading a novel sunburned. One of the great quotes of our time. Let's see. This is really Jacob Elordi week for you. Oh yeah, it's true. No, I mean, I like the arrival aliens, you know, something like a big octopi sculpt sculptural and beautiful. Let's, you know, bring some artistry to our, to our mind. I'm not looking for gross out. I guess it, As long as you're going for some sort of like something spiritual, some sort of like, let's open our consciousness to the world outside this world. Okay. If you're trying to scare me, then whatever. Gross. Gross aliens. I like an alien that can kind of alter the shape of reality. You know, like in Contact, when Jodie Foster gets to wherever she goes to, and she's sort of like, she's experiencing an alien exploration of spirituality, but like, it's not represented in some corporeal form. It's like the great mysticism. I like when they're like this, this alien race has advanced 10 million years beyond human form. Their understanding of science and technology and power has far eclipsed. And that doesn't just impact weapons. It impacts philosophy. That's still like a pretty Earth-centric understanding of aliens, you know? How so? Well, that it's like they've out, you know, they've outstripped humans. But like, who says they're competing with humans? They're living in their own world by their own science, by their own spirituality, by their own laws of physicality, of evolution. You're right about that. However, these stories are often about these races coming to Earth. Right. Either to annihilate humans or to take a resource from them or to learn something else from them. usually in our sort of solipsistic society it's stories about how we still contain as humans a kind of emotional power that an alien race couldn't possibly understand. That's why I like Arrival because the aliens just they understand something that we don't and they come to teach us about it. Okay. I'm glad you like Arrival. That's nice for you. It's really good. Didn't make 25 for 25 but I think it's the best Villeneuve. We disagree. Speaking of aliens. Yeah. Project Hail Mary. Didn't watch it. Will not watch any more about this. Show me the movie. There we go. Show me the movie. Thank you. Oh, that was your Regina King slash Rod Tidwell moment there. Yeah, I started to watch it and I turned it off. Because I was like, I'm already sold. I'm at like a year into the hype machine for this. I'm ready. I'm excited. I will be there. Yeah. I don't want to drive across town to sit in the Amazon theater personally. But like, I will. I think that's what you'll have to do. I know. and that's really tough for me. I just hope that they don't like put, you know, the watermark on it after I drive all the way. I don't think that'll be the case. That happened to someone in my family. Yeah. I don't think that will happen. I, uh, I was there recently. I saw a film there. I saw Crime 101 there. Yeah. It's a nice screen. Nice theater. But it is very far from my house. Uh, Project Hail Mary sounds great. Yeah. It's coming out in six weeks and I, Is it really six weeks? I think it's March 20th. Yeah. Okay. So it's the week after the Oscars. So it's five weeks to the Oscars and six weeks to, you got this mama hang in there mama time was so fast and so slowly all at once yes what are we gonna okay yeah i look at my child and i'm like this is now starting to go way too fast yeah and i look at the oscar race and i'm like please can we please get on with this uh minions and monsters many people have been wondering how you're feeling about this electric okay as you wrote as you wrote in this, I love monsters. And as I wrote in my head, I love a movie about making a movie. With your powers combined, I look so funny. Knox is going to lose his mind. I can't wait to show him this. It looks pretty fun. Also, I know many people have been waiting for me to speak on the Minions figure skater. Not familiar with this. So there's a Spanish figure skater who had a Minions themed routine. And he dresses a Minion and I believe he danced to like music adapted from the score of now that sounds like nbc payola well so here's the thing is that the controversy was that none of it was cleared and so like a week before the olympics there was like legal issues and apparently like the world of figure skating is like the wild world of fair use all sorts of there are often a lot of problems sure so but there was concerned that he was not going to be able to skate his minions routine but of course this was like two days before the olympics so how is he going to come up with a whole new routine let alone a new costume um and then i he i do believe it was clear so my theory is that this actually was you know like a deep nbc promotion uh because obviously this universe which honestly well done how was the routine good job i have not yet seen it okay i fell asleep if it aired Sunday night. I didn't get to see it. Are we at peak Minion, though? Like, are we good on this? Even if the movie's good, is there going to be a downturn? Why? I feel this is great. Everything dies. They're freed from the shackle of Gru. They've got a new little guy. He's not an alien, but I thought he was funny. The little green, kind of gelatinous tree there. And then the other movie would be like, he's a baby, he's so small. You got to do the Minions episode in Minion's voice for two hours. But I'm in a really good... I mean, I'll have to learn more languages because they're multilingual. But they are also at the same time kind of at size level of language right now, which is just baby, baby. How old are the Minions? I think they live forever. Eternal. Yeah, they are eternal. The Mandalorian and Grogu. Now, I listened with interest as our dear friend Chris Ryan crashed out about this, which was very funny on the watch, in which he proclaimed that he was not happy about this commercial and he is out on this movie and will not be seeing it well unfortunately he has to take my son did you hear how nox greeted chris at his birthday party no so another friend of ours gave nox a lego uh oh nox showed me yes he called he tracked me down and said i need to show you something can i can we just so it was a do you remember what it was it was like a mandalorian ship yes yeah yeah that's what it was he asked me if the helmet comes off. So here's like a Star Wars mommy report for everyone at home. These kits are satanic. Do you know how small the pieces are? Do you know how quickly we lost one of these pieces? Why is the Mandalorian's tiny sword in five pieces? How am I supposed to put that together with a four-year-old? And there's a one-year-old coming off. Help us out. Help us out. Let's walk this back. First of all, I asked you specifically if I could get Nox a Mandalorian and Grogu Lego set. And you said no. You were like, I have a small child who's going to eat all the Legos. So I didn't get him a Lego set. And then as soon as he showed me the Lego set, I was infuriated. I was like, why was this message not broadcast more widely? Because I wanted to be the person who could give this to your son. But, of course, I agree. This is a good learning time. This is a good learning time. The problem is that the pieces are so small that they disappear even before they came out. You need to get little bins that they'll go in. I can show you what we use because we have a lot of Legos. Listen, I'm happy for you that you have a single, like, calm, respectful, organized child. I have two Sonic the Hedgehogs. There is no way that I can get these tiny pieces from the little packages to the bin. Anyway, he loved it. He was proud to show you. He was proud to show Chris. He ran up to Chris and he just said, does this guy, meaning the Mandalorian, have a face? Which I thought was a great question. He was very interested in the helmet technology. We did not see the Mandalorian's face in this commercial, which was a 30-second spoof of the Clydesdale Budweiser commercials where Sam Elliott was narrating about the essential nature of being in the snow or whatever. And what we saw was Hoth, I think. I think they were on Hoth because they were being dragged by Tauntauns. You may recall Tauntauns from The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke is riding one. and then the snow monster gets him. Do you remember this at all? They have to hide inside the Tauntaun to stay warm. Bigly, but I'm... This was then remade in The Revenant. I'm more up to date on Star Wars and New Hope and also Grogu content. Okay. Well, you got to get up on Empire Strikes Back. And Grogu kicking up over the table in the other trailer because that, it just is hugely popular in our house. We talk about it a lot. The, this beat... We're three months away from the first new Star Wars movie in seven months, in seven years. and we're just doing beer commercials. It's kind of weird. Like it does feel like there's a kind of flat anticipation for this. And this used to be the most anticipated popular culture thing. I mean, when the prequels were coming around, that obviously was absolute pandemonium. Even the reissue of the original films before the prequels. Yeah. I was just talking to Mallory Rubin about this yesterday, about how exciting that was to go back to see the reissued versions of those films. obviously The Force Awakens remains one of the biggest movies of the last 50 years and the anticipation for that movie was huge. Even The Rise of Skywalker which was such a dud, people were still like I really want to see how they wrap this up. It doesn't really even feel like this movie is happening and there's something so strange about that. Do you think they've given up on adults? I don't know and I'll be honest, I don't have a problem with that. I think one of the reasons why Star Wars lost its way a little bit is it got a little too adult and I think that revisiting these movies as I have been. I mean, Counterpoint, Andor, which I haven't seen yet. I'm going to watch it. I've got to watch some other things. Right, but Andor is for us, right? Andor is for adults. Andor is not for kids. Maybe some kids are watching it and enjoying it and learning about how resistance is crushed in fascist societies, but for the most part... I can also learn that from Wicked. You could learn it in the original Star Wars movies too, honestly. It's in the text of it, but not as overtly. This is a movie purely for kids And I think that's a good thing. I just think like what it is, which is an extension of a TV show, just feels small. And Star Wars should be big. And I've been watching these movies. We watched Revenge of the Sith on Saturday. Great experience with Alice. These movies are big, man. And even if you think that they're lacking in story or performance style or you don't like the Lucas movies because he doesn't know how to direct actors or whatever, they're fucking events. They are cultural events. And this is not an event. I mean, Star Wars, the new Star Wars movie, having a Budweiser commercial 30 second spoof in the Super Bowl is not a metaphor, but like a tidy summary in the ways of which not just Star Wars, but Disney as a whole have, you know, gone from one of the great imagineering creative fonts of the world to, you know, just another place to take your kids to spend $300, which is what I will do when this movie comes out. So, I mean, obviously, creatively, artistically, cinematically, it's a disgrace. I watched it and I was like, well, Knox will probably like that. So that's kind of where I am with it. I feel the exact same way. My kid is going to love this movie and that's probably enough. But it just it dawns on me as being the most significant pop culture thing in my life as a person at 43 years old. Two things can be true. Yes, you're right. Supergirl. I forgot to Google this one. A little worried about this one. This kind of looks like an old version of what superhero movies used to be. Where it's like a lot of kind of jokey winky conversations in rooms. Followed by a lot of big set pieces with like explosions. And like you know one person with powers blowing everything up around them. I thought we were done with that era of superhero movies. It could be more than that. I think Millie Alcock's very very charming and could be great as Supergirl. but uh i don't know it did dawn on me while watching this that when this movie comes out which is on june 26th it will have been 11 months since the last superhero movie was even released the fantastic four and that's got to be the longest stretch of time we've had since since 2008 since iron man or even gosh i mean even did that machine move is i don't know I'm sure someone, and I think even during COVID, right, we had in 2020, did we have Black Widow in 2020 or was it in 2021? 2021. 2021? Are you sure? I just Googled it. Okay, so maybe that's what it was. Maybe it was, was it Spider-Man after Endgame and then a long period of time? I mean, but was there a DC movie that came out in 2020? There was Birds of Prey. So what was the distance between Birds of Prey and Black Widow? Let's see. Birds of Prey. I remember seeing this movie. She roller skates. So that was February 7th, 2020. And when was Black Widow? July 2021. Okay. So that probably was the longest stretch. You know, I'm quibbling at this point. But when did they release the Snyder Cut? Aha. Let's see. March 18th, 2021. So that's 13 months. Were there any other superhero movies in 2020? That's a really good question. Probably not anything from Marvel or DC. Anyway. I just remember this Nader cut because I remember being in lockdown in my home watching four hours of that. When was The New Mutants released? That's the one. What is The New Mutants? Yeah, exactly. The New Mutants. This is fun. The New Mutants was released August 28th, 2020. Wow. So the New Mutants is the spinoff of the X-Men about young mutants. This is a really massively failed movie that apparently was reshot and recut several times. It does start Annie Taylor-Joy as Ileana Rasputin. Sure. The mutant-nosed magic. Any relation to the other Rasputin? To Rasputin of Russian history? Yes. You know, I don't know. okay well i don't think i think there's an insinuation there you know that she she conjures a similar power now so apparently her name is magic with a k yes that i know yes so i'm i'm just i'm on wikipedia here okay and she's the younger sister of russian x-men member colossus yes that i knew an x-men enemy mikhail rasputin who is i i i'm clicking through him he was a cosmonaut My son would be so excited, but it doesn't seem like he is related to the Rasputin of Russian history. I'm scrolling, but I'm not seeing anything. Okay. Well, it seems like a missed opportunity or perhaps a sequel. So 11 months is the longest period of time, probably since 2008 and maybe even before that. Okay. And that's just interesting. that's just in in 2019 and 2020 we did a lot of episodes about comic book movies and some of it was in the lead-up to infinity war and endgame and kind of looking at this accomplishment that the mcu made and some of it was just about what i find to be most interesting about it which is like trends and storytelling what big groups of people are really interested in over a period of time taking this long a period of time between movies some of it is circumstantial new leadership at dc for example, resetting the table for the Marvel movies. And some of it is just about what people want. And they don't want these movies as much. And so we're getting fewer of them. And they're going to try to reset the table big time. You know, there's going to be a second Superman movie. There's going to be the Batman 2. There going to be another Spider movie this summer I sorry I briefly stopped listening Avengers So they making yeah they going to keep going but it different It just interesting that they stopped I haven lost any sleep at night I mean, I have, but for different reasons. No, no, it's, it's, it's a good point. It's factual. Um, I feel a little bit freer. Sure. I didn't watch the trailer for Supergirl because I didn't like the first one. And then I forgot. So that is maybe an indication of where it is in my consciousness. Yeah. I just think something else is filling its spot and I'm not sure how much you care about that either. You know? You mean video games? Yeah. That's true. But listen, you know, men and people who like screens, that's true. Women play video games. Need to have their pursuits as well. You don't know any women who play video games? I mean, I do. I know Mallory. She plays them, right? Sure. Does Joanna? I don't know. I don't think I know anybody else in my civilian life who plays video games. You might want to expand your pool a little bit. Did you watch the Goodwill Duncan commercial? I did, yeah. That was really tough. And listen, you know that everywhere I go, I ride for my guy, Ben Affleck, including getting his finances topped up by Dunkin' Donuts every year. It's an annual tradition. This was tough. It was really tough when Jennifer Aniston and Tom Brady showed up in the window. and I know that Ben Affleck is from Boston and that Tom Brady is still welcome there, even though apparently he would not support the Patriots. Yes. Well, there's a lot going on there. Would you like me to explain this to you? I mean, or we could just say it's none of our business and move on. I don't think it's so private. Okay, go ahead. I mean, he was discarded by the team and moved on to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, went on to win the Super Bowl with them, needed to show the world that it was not the Patriot way that led him to great success. It was individual success. That was compounded by the fact that he is a part owner of the Raiders, the Las Vegas Raiders, and that the Raiders had just hired Clint Kubiak, who was the offensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks. And so I think in a way he was rooting for Clint Kubiak in the Super Bowl. So he didn't want to have any allegiances in any direction. And none of that is in conflict with his role as a commentator. Well, it's not something I would do. But, you know, that's how Tom Brady chooses to live his life. Yeah. In conflict. Why did everyone have to wear such ugly wigs? In the commercial? Yeah. I would have preferred less AI de-aging. Sure. You know, for Ted Danson in particular, I found that to be a bit chilling. I, you know, I'm not opposed to people getting money. I think that's actually smart. Yeah. To just, like, siphon that money out of that company. I do think that Ben Affleck has done the work for Dunkin Donuts over the years. I agree. And he has done the work for us as a target of the paparazzi, as like the king of memes. Yes. This wasn't a ring camera commercial. It was for something that he actually consumes every day. Yeah. Which I respect. You know, between the like nostalgia baiting and the AI and the general like grotesquerie of the imagery in the commercial, could have done without it. Yeah. Could have done without it. Um, it's also, I, Goodwill Hunting is a Matt and Ben thing. So I was a little bit like, this makes me a little sad that just, you know, only one of you is here making the money off of this. Alfonso Rivero and Jaleel White could make it. Jennifer Aniston could make it. And yet Matt Damon could not. Right. Well, it's just also like maybe Matt Damon didn't need the check, you know? So it's, it's, it's Ben. Spending those Odyssey dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Must be nice. I didn't, it didn't feel good, but that's okay. Yeah. You're being so rude about Marvel and superhero. And then your beloved boy, Ben Affleck, just degrades himself. I didn't say that it was good. No, it wasn't good. I love Ben too. Okay. Shall we pivot to our Saturday evening? Okay. Shout out to the Directors Guild. They've been inviting us to the show for a few years now. And I appreciate the invite. And we've never gone because I'm not that fun and I don't want to do stuff. And I don't remember if we had really seriously talked about going in the past. But I had always wanted to go, despite my unfunness, because this is an un-televised award show that is always a little bit more interesting because you get a little bit of a looser crowd, a little bit of a looser energy at the show. And obviously, we love filmmakers. Right. And filmmakers are a bedrock of this show and kind of the lens through which we see a lot of the movies that we talk about. Yes. And this is a great year. I was going to say. For our filmmakers. It was many of our people. Yes. And something I did not know about the DGA award ceremony until we arrived, but that really played to our interest is that all of the nominees for best feature film. So in this case, that was Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, Chloe Zhao, Josh Safdie and Ryan Coogler give speeches before the winner is announced. Instead of doing the like, you know, weird person associated with the movie coming out to present like a clip package of. Which they did have. They did. But, you know, normally it's like a searing work on the power of connection. This is him, you know, and then you just like watch whatever. They have the actual filmmakers speak and they also have someone from the film come and present a medallion to them and do it like an extended introduction. And there's no time limit because it's not televised. so it is it's it's our guys and our gal and and and very focused on them and they actually get a lot of like stage time if not screen time so that was very very cool um it was really interesting and made sense for us to be there the other thing was that it's held at the beverly hilton which is also where the golden globes are held every year so that was just some good uh location scouting for yours truly yeah it gives a little bit of insight into what that show might be like too and the ways in which it is similar and different. And what you just described, I think that's the centerpiece of the show. You know, the best theatrical feature film is the primary award and the show is sort of oriented around that order. But there are a lot of other awards that are given out. There are limited series TV, series TV, comedy, variety and talk show. There are commercial awards that are given out. There's a first time feature filmmaker award that is given out. So it is a proper award show where going through the night you have someone coming out and presenting the nominees and then giving out an award and people go up and they give acceptance speeches. You've also got a host. We had a host. Kumail Nanjiani was the host. And I thought it was really, really funny. I laughed a lot. So Judd Apatow has been hosting this show for the last few years and we had been warned ahead of time by a few people that this is a really long award show. That it could run three and a half, four, four and a half, maybe even five hours. It was a real roller coaster because at first... We learned, oh, the awards, you know, drinks start at five. The awards kick off at 630. I was like, oh, great. Like, we'll be we'll be done early. And then everyone was like, no, no, no, no. It might go till 11. And then I was like, oh, have I signed my whole life away to the DJs? Do I live at the Beverly Hilton now? But in this particular case, the show ran on time. It was really crisp. Yeah. Kumail did a really nice job in the monologue. He was legitimately very funny. And all the jokes were written to a director's audience. And that's the thing. The crowd at the show is there's some press. We sat with some press, you know, our friends, Josh Rothkoff and from the L.A. Times and Kyle Buchanan from the New York Times were seated at our table, but also seated at our table were Jason Chalemi and Mike Sweeney, who were from the Conan O'Brien Travel Show, which is on HBO Max, and they were nominated that night. And that's kind of the composition of most of the tables is folks who work on shows like that who are nominees or who are guests of the nominees. and lo and behold, Mike won in his category. It was so exciting. So we watched, and if you are a longtime Conan O'Brien fan and have been watching since he was doing Late Night in the 90s, Mike is kind of an icon. He's been on the show a long time. Both of those guys have been with Conan for decades, and so as he has moved on to become a podcast host and to be making these streaming shows in the aftermath of his talk show, that same crew of people are all still together. so just to watch michael on stage just a very funny guy and you can tell he gave probably the funniest speech of the night i would say absolutely because the comedy the the category was like variety reality and quiz show all at once and so he gave a very like self-deprecating speech about this being the most important category of the night you know but like don't be nervous but it was it's very charming like off the cuff um they were lovely table mates super nice yeah and it was very exciting they won and then we were like tasked with keeping the applause going you know but but it is also like it is a bit of a lock which you under you know would you see at home but then yeah we didn't have the best seats in the house so mike had to try a good view we did but we were not up in front that's true yes um so yeah delightful very exciting part of it was really cool and i think that speaks to really the composition of the guild and there was a lot of conversation throughout the night about what the guild is and the guild is not just Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson. It's a lot of people who work as assistant directors or second assistant directors that comprise this kind of organism of movie making that doesn't get as much attention or clarity. I don't have first ADs on the show, because there's this primacy of authorship around the lead filmmaker. But these directors depend on these people so much to make the movies happen. I just remembered the Kumail joke that he was explaining the difference between Michael B. Jordan and Michael Jordan and then Scotty Pippen and Scotty B Pippen B Pippen and then he explained Scotty Pippen as the as the AD of any uh yeah and it's it was it it was gentle poking the joke was essentially that he does more or less the same amount of work for significantly less credit yeah and money um and that was kind of a theme of the night was sort of like a lot of these big-time filmmakers honoring the groups of people who work on their directing teams yes and that the award is not just for the filmmaker, but for the entire team who worked on the film. And that's, I think, really useful to understand. And most of the big noisy award shows, the Oscars is different in this respect, but most of the big noisy award shows are only spotlighting above the line talent. That's really all they're thinking about. Forget about. And then there's like below the line talent, like superstar below the line talent. Like there's like the Ludwig Garansons where you're like, this guy's going to win like six Academy Awards. And he's like one of the most acclaimed composers in the world. And he's like in his 40s. but then there's like the person below the person and the person below that person. And so I appreciated that the show took some time to talk about those people and talk about the work that they do. Um, when you were walking in the room, I'm curious, like, what were you looking for? How would you describe the vibe of the show and party itself? I felt like we were the plus ones at a large wedding, um, like in a good way. And I enjoy being a non-essential guest at a wedding. It's kind of an ideal assignment. Yes. So as you noted, we weren't in the front row. We weren't next to Leonardo DiCaprio, who was there. He was there. But we had a great view. We could see everyone coming and going. And it was, you know, it's seated tables. The DJs served Josh wine, in case anyone's wondering. Chardonnay. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, I think. Yeah, sure. California all the way. Yeah. And there's, you know, a served meal that you're trying to get through before the speeches start, just like a wedding. And then for the most part, you're watching people, some of whom you recognize, some of whom you don't talk about very meaningful moments in their lives while you do or don't drink the wine. So it did feel it was like watching an award show at a wedding instead of watching an award show at your home. Yeah, that's a funny way of putting it because it is it's a seated dinner from 530 to 630. And then the show starts and the food comes off the table. If you want to keep drinking, you can. You don't have to. I would not describe this as like a very boozy affair. No, didn't feel like the old globes, you know, where it was just like everyone's kind of they've had their third martini for some reason. This was like it wasn't stayed and it wasn't boring. You know, like I obviously this is I'm in the bag for a show like this. But I think just any common person could have sat down and been kind of relatively entertained by what they saw. Well, it was very produced and very professionally done. And so, you know, Kumail hosted and had like a very, I think that monologue would have played well on TV. I mean, he's obviously like a professional comedian and very good at what he does. But the show ran as if it were being staged for television. It was just being staged for us in the room. so you could just you you were entertained for the most part and there were moments when we were looking at our phones or post-in or trying to take pictures of our like place cards yeah they were very kind to provide us with a little tiny golden director's chair which we then both gave to our children um yeah how closely were you paying attention to the way in which the nominees and various people were being received the applause the love for movies in the room because this is something you hear about a lot at a lot of these events. It's like this can dictate what's going to happen at the events that are to come at the Academy Awards, for example. Well, I wrote down who got a standing ovation until I realized that every single theatrical feature film director was getting a standing ovation and they all deserve it. So it was one where you would note the enthusiasm and applause for one person and be like, oh, look, got a lot of people in the room. And then that seemed pretty equally dispersed. so um and in the end it just seemed like a real it does seem like this is a group of nominees that everyone likes and i think they like each other as well yeah there does not seem to be much animosity amongst this group this doesn't seem to be like a very sharp elbowed fight there's this curiosity of both sinners and one battle after another which are of course the two front runners right now being from the same studio too and so i wonder if there's like a slightly more of a plain nice circumstance going on, not between the filmmakers, obviously, but just like the awards machine that is operating around those movies. I did think there was a little bit more energy for both Sinners and Hamnet than there was for the other films. And that might just be because there was a more vocal contingent of people in the room, but it did seem a little bit louder for both of those movies. Well, there is also the fact that Hamnet was introduced instead of by one of its stars by Steven Spielberg, and that Steven Spielberg was at the Hamnet table. He was. And he kind of loomed over his aura kind of loomed over the event. Steven Spielberg was the star of the night. He was. And almost everyone, including Kumail and what I thought was like a wonderful anecdote about seeing Jurassic Park for the first time in Pakistan where he grew up. Everyone referenced Spielberg and almost talked to him like at some point during their speech. They looked right at him and addressed him or basically like, thank you. Yeah, it was sort of like the one Meryl Streep used to sit front row at the Oscars. And everyone was like, oh, there's Meryl Streep. Great call. oh it's steven spielberg and and then that became a self-fulfilling prophecy also of like now it came one of the bits of the night in a good way these are these are people who pick up on cues i know how to tell a story throughout the night so spielberg came so central to the the night that hamnet by association just kind of gets lifted up in it but yeah i think that there was a sinners definitely i noted that as well yeah um that that people were very excited um anytime any like it was mentioned. Kugler gave a wonderful speech. Yeah, let's go through those one by one. I think that's kind of interesting for folks listening at home. I think I have the order. Do I have the order right here the way I've written it down? I think that maybe Chalamet and Josh Safdie went before Chloe Zhao, but I could be wrong. You took the program home. I forgot mine. And I left it at home. Leonardo DiCaprio came out. Pretty early on in the show. He did. And introduced one battle after another and Paul Thomas Anderson. And, you know, all of these presenters who were presenting the nominee who would then give that speech that you were describing, you know, they all had prepared remarks. Some were reading off of a prompt or some were reading off of a card that they had in their hand. I would say, you know, perhaps unsurprisingly, Leo very crisply and cleanly gave his speech. He knows how to read lines. And his was really good. But it was really interesting. I did tweet about him talking about Paul coming to his mom's house in Los Feliz in the 90s before Boogie Nights, I think when he was discussing possibly taking on the role of Dirk Diggler. And under one arm, he said he had a laser disc of Raging Bull. And under the other arm, he had a VHS cassette of a John Holmes movie. Yeah. They were going to watch that at Leo's house. Leo's mom's house. Yes. Leo's mom's house, which, you know, Leo eventually didn't do that movie. I wonder if that was a factor. But then I thought he spoke warmly and smartly about what makes PTA's movie so effective and the experience of working on one battle um and then pta also gave a very good speech did he quote the john steinbeck quote in that speech or was it in the speech later in the evening about sort of the like john steinbeck once said that no one has a soul we all have a piece of a soul and that all people together kind of share a soul and he was like i see my filmmaking team that way yeah and he got that goes to the point i was making about how they see their crews i think that that was in the prepared that was in in the first in the first speech that he gave because spoiler alert if you don't read any headlines paul thomas anderson did eventually win this award and he did give a second speech he did it was also quite lovely yeah so i think he did a steinbeck quote and then um and then he thanked my rudolph who was there with him and was just talking about um how everyone in the room knows that directors can be impossible to live with yes so he wasn't the only director who made that joke yeah almost all of them made the joke of just what an absolute nightmare it is to live and deal with. Also, several filmmakers had sick children at home. Well, yeah, let's talk about Coogler. Let's talk about Coogler. So Michael B. Jordan also introduced Ryan Coogler and similarly gave a really great speech and obviously there's something really nice there. They're sort of like the funhouse mirror of each other, Leo and PTA, who had been rumored to work together forever and ever and ever and never did and then they finally did and they've made this movie. Whereas MBJ and Coogler are kind of intertwined. Like he really is. He's not just his De Niro. He's going into like another phase where like they are inextricable from each other creatively and you can kind of see ryan writing through michael b jordan's skills and i liked how mbj talked about how he sees something in him that he doesn't see in himself and then coogler came on stage and like once again cooler is the coolest guy in the world so the first thing he said was that he was extra nervous because his wife zinzi um couldn't be there with him because she was at home with their son i believe um who is ill and he's gonna be okay but then kugler held up his dga card and his insurance card and he says he said something to the effect of i've always been grateful for these but i'm really grateful tonight and um which was like you know meaningful and i also had a sick child at home so i was like i you know i see you ryan it was echoing in you yeah and i think many people could relate to that but then he pivoted to talking about being in a union and talking about his uncle who was a black panther and then became joined a part of the union i believe that teamsters but i um and the revolutionary power of unions and it was awesome and and right on and and like and pitch to the room and and also and and pitch to our moment but not in a like overly didactic way and also in keeping with the themes of sinners i mean he's just he's the best he's so smart he's so cool um and and so in tune with you know our world and what is going on it yeah i think he's just an amazing this is true of actually i think all five of these nominees in a way where they they not all filmmakers are like this and i've talked to so many but they're all really great advocates for how they see and understand movies in the way in which their worldview is imprinted onto the movies that they make and a lot of the way that kugler has kind of gone through the last year and it's been about a year since that first video of him kind of talking through the kodak film and the film stock and the style that they shot sinners on came around which was this kind of flashpoint i think for 2025 at the movies and he's just done this pretty consistently over the last year where every time there's a moment where he's on stage and he has to make a point he's one of the only people um i think he was might have been the only person on stage that night who mentioned the federal government's overreach and the way that they're invading um people's lives and privacy and inflicting violence upon them yeah and he didn't say fuck ice but he came pretty darn close to yes and it was it was like the most specific reference yes so that was really interesting um and you know there's just a lot of energy and and and passion for that movie for obvious reasons and i did turn to you at a certain point during the show and i was like i wouldn't be shocked if you won i wouldn't be shocked you know there there there are reasons why i think pta won and we can talk about them when we get into that but um i really liked what he said after him was jacob alordi who uh came out wearing a brown suit and a foulard tie yeah and he's like seven feet nine yeah like one of the tallest people that's ever lived right and you were you were just a flutter well you know i was in the same room with him and his tallness could be communicated across that that face yes and i He was too tall for the microphone. Exactly. So he had to lean over. But even like the kind of loose way he was like leaning over to talk into the microphone. I was just like, you can't you can't recreate this. It's powerful stuff. Almost anyone could use it, you know, for good. We'll talk more about those who can't later this week. But anyway, he was very charming and pitched the speech in like in a like very in the emotional way that fits for Del Toro. And I think at the end he said, like, I love you, Guillermo. I'm so happy to be in this movie, which I think it is in keeping with the performance and also set up the tone of del Toro's speech very nicely. Yeah, I think as a as a famous person, he's done a really good job in the last couple of years, Elordi, of clarifying that he's a serious actor and a cinephile and an artist and wants to be a part of good projects. Yeah, that's what he's most interested in. You know, some of them are hit or miss. He's I think he's the best thing in Frankenstein. and he it was almost like paying tribute to like your beloved uncle or your father you know like there was some real warmth for like i feel lucky to have gotten to be a part of a movie made by somebody who i really venerate and so it was a nice speech and it was a different character i think because they don't have like a long-standing partnership they haven't probably even known each other for more than a couple of years in fact it was supposed to be andrew garfield as the monster in that movie you may recall he came in last minute and did that part and did it so well um and then i guess we can talk about chalamet i can't remember who came first we should say you know gave like a lovely speech he started the the president nolan of it all or maybe he didn't start it but he was the one he said he acknowledged president nolan because christopher nolan is the president of the dgas and opened the ceremony with the speech and then he said i really like how that sounds it's so nice to say it you know uh say president and then have something nice come after it which again started another bit throughout the night yes uh but he the last time president nolan was right but he also like he chuckled and was he's he is such a warm and charming presence and then at the end he uh invited everyone over um to make uh models models and and he said i'll make quesadillas and you can do a model kit and would you like to explain that well it's a real thing yeah there there's a there's a group of friends i know among them are jj abrams and james cameron who will go to guillermo del toro's home on sunday afternoon And he was saying some people watch football. Yeah. We make models. Yeah. And, you know, that at heart, these guys are just kids playing with their toys, you know, building things together and trying to make something that looks the way that they imagine it might look. That's the whole job. Right. Yeah. And so there's something sweet about that. You know, Del Toro, I don't think he's the villain of this season for us. I just think that's a movie we don't have a lot of enthusiasm for. But it was incredible. I like his movies. And he's obviously a really nice guy. Chalamet. Yeah. I was a little surprised to see him here. Not because he's bigger than this moment or anything, but... He's in town. You know, they planned it out. So he was doing his American Cinematheque retrospective. That's right. That's right. He's on the trail. And I don't know whether he made it up to Santa Barbara or not, but the Santa Barbara Film Festival was also this weekend. Did you notice the Lordy was wearing the exact same outfit there that he wore to the DGAs? I did. I wondered if he went from one to the other. Was it the same day? I mean, it was Saturday night. I don't know. I thought that was on Sunday. Anyway, no shots. I re-wear outfits all the time. These things are expensive. I mean, he does have several contracts, but still. I think he's going to be okay. Chalamet gave a great speech. Very funny. And really captured, I think, the energy of the Safdie movie and the New Yorkness of those movies. And he, maybe two minutes into it, was getting a lot of laughs. And he was like, wow, I'm killing it. He really was pleased with himself. But he was really funny. And I can't remember any specific... What were some moments from him? At one point he said, just the other day, out of the blue, Josh said to me, if you ever need an Elias, go by the name Mike Dipey. And then he just... He emphasized, out of the blue. Which is, you know, in my mind, when I imagined those two chuckleheads together making this movie. and then promoting it that's like you know that's the real like jfk rewatchables energy you know you can't recapture it it's just like in the room yeah uh people i think are idiots but i also love doing things so that's great yeah um he his his speech was very good and he was very loose i think in the presentation it didn't feel as formal as some of the other he's really in a damien chazelle phase of life physically it's the hair length and the mustache almost like the yeah i mean he looked great great suit but i was like this man looks a lot like damien chazelle right he does and may they make many films together that's what i wish for um and then josh came up and gave his speech which i thought was really actually quite beautiful and very very personal about his relationship to movies and the movies that his father gave him yes and he spent a lot of time talking about kramer versus kramer right and so the two children of divorce sat up a little straighter Yeah. So a very relatable story about how the movies were weaponized against his mother. And he was living with his father at the time. He talked about his father as an immigrant and that his father, who showed him and his brother Benny a lot of movies, showed him Kramer versus Kramer and literally said, that's your mom and pointed to the Meryl Streep character. And then they went on a trip with their mother to spend some time with her and were awful to her and literally explained to her what their father had done and said, you're like the Meryl Streep character in Kramer versus Kramer. and then he said that that went right into the file during the divorce proceedings but then that helped him explain how in you know essential movies and life are and how intertwined they are for him and the way that he takes how he's feeling and puts them into his movies and there would be no other way for him to do what he does and um I thought it was very affecting and people in the room seem to really dig it too yeah I mean we were both it's very close to the heart for both of us it's like wincing you know as soon as Kramer versus Kramer, but in the intended way, in the way that Marty Supreme and Anka Jams want to make you feel like you're hanging on to the table for dear life, which they achieved. He got us close to that psychology. And then you mentioned Spielberg spoke on behalf of Chloe Zhao and told what I thought was a hilarious story, which is that he showed up on the set of the movie and really agilatory towards Chloe Zhao and what he does and what she does. And I think the story illuminated the differences between them as filmmakers, which is that he arrived on the set and he said, this is too dark. This is not lit correctly. No, that's not what he said. He said he tripped over something and he said, let me know when it's lit. And he's like, and then I'll be able to find my way. And Chloe said, it is lit. That's right. And he used that as a way to illuminate the naturalism that Chloe Zhao's films are seeking. That she is really interested in our intersection and union with the natural world And the way that Jesse Buckley character of is connected to nature and then by extension her family and her offspring and you know he was saying it in a way it was meant to compliment her and i think in fact he kind of like located something about the movie that i was like that i don't really connect with that i don't really jibe with but it's notable to me that i think someone like him who most people think of as a filmmaker is like someone who can really do anything you know like he's really especially in these later years where he's making movies like the fablemans where you're like wow this is even like emotionally confrontational in a way that his movies didn't always seem to be but there's still things that he looks at he's like i don't know how to do that and i do think that that was right i think he advocated for that film very well and then chloe zhao came up and she brought up um her first ad and i thought she also gave a really nice speech about um you know kind of like the unknowability of process and going forward and being like really interested in that material in a way but like the that movie is very different from everything else that she's done and kind of locating the ways in which she was able to kind of like try something new while also staying true to what she does so i don't know if you had any thoughts on chloe's speech i mean she she hit she said the name william shakespeare more than once and also i think located what is the the best part of that film which is its its conclusion and that there can be if you know life or at least some sort of connection after grief um and what art can do and what they do as directors so you know and that part of the film does speak to me even if the the naturalism in the tree there was a lot of forest talk you know there was there was you know i'm you know me and forests i like the forest yeah where so mountains forest the lake i like a lake lake and then down down down beach i like a high desert I like the frozen tundra and then beaches below all of that beaches dead last dead last the ocean I enjoy could we get the ocean without the sand that's something I've been looking for it's called the Mediterranean haven't been coming soon any other awards that night you know the pit one the SNL music concert one what other shows one the studio one. Yeah, that was the notable one. Thank you. And they gave a tribute to Catherine O'Hara. Yes, Seth and Evan. Yeah, which was very nice. And then the documentary win. They had to go after the documentary win, which went to... Yeah, Matoslav Chernov won for... 2000 Miles. 2000 Miles to Andrivka, yes. Which is just, he gave a very serious and somber speech about obviously the absolute terror that he witnessed while making the film and what is transpiring in Ukraine right now. And we talked about his Mariupol film a few years ago, which came out. I'm still shocked this movie was not nominated for Best Documentary, but it was a different energy when he spoke. Which I think was the only way to play it. Agreed. Like what he does in terms of filmmaking is absolutely incredible and essential and harrowing. And he even talked, the anecdote that he gave was about while filming for this film. And he was with a friend, a colleague, someone else, who turned to him and said, why do you have a camera in your hand instead of a gun? And he talked about the sadness of the world that we live in, and where he's from in Ukraine, you need a gun instead of a camera right now, but also that the filmmaking world allows him to use the camera in a different way. I mean, I thought it was illuminating. It was not uplifting because the situation there is not uplifting right now. It's not. But I just respect his work so much. Yeah, and I think it gives a show like that a lot of shape. It can be a lot of fun and it can be Timothee Chalamet busting his friend's balls and it can also be honoring really good work like that. And then Paul Thomas Anderson won. Yeah. And we can talk a little bit about the speech and the acceptance and then maybe just like what this is, if anything, what it means, if anything. So he spoke, I thought, quite movingly again about Adam Sumner, who was his first AD on the film, the first AD who has worked with a lot of great filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg. The one battle after another is already a tribute to him. And at the end of the film, if you stay through the credits, you can hear Sumner's voice kind of moving a crowd during a during a sequence as a tribute to him. And it was it had been communicated to us by a couple of people like he's probably going to win in part because the movie is kind of oriented around the directing crews and speaking to the work that they do. And like it honors, you know, someone who's passed and also PTA who's not won this award, who's been making movies for the last 30 years. But I think, you know, as you said, Sumner has worked with or did work with so many great filmmakers and was so beloved in that community. and it was not just on Saturday night that PTA was talking about Sumner and the very first one battle after another screening that you and I went to um at the Directors Guild um in his Q&A with Steven Spielberg he talked a lot about Adam Sumner he's thanked him you know at every awards show this has been a central the you know the film is dedicated to him so um so that I'm sure that that knowledge and affected the voting process but I think that's kind of also what the dgas are for totally um and that was what was cool about being there so i thought yeah he spoke you know very very lovingly i he he started again with sort of a spielberg tribute and um just in that he he uh compared the experience to like being in close encounters that everyone in the room has like a call to the mountain um but then the the adam sumner tribute was was very emotional yes and not like really i wish for you to have the love that i had with this man who we worked with yes and if you have it hold it close yeah um and yeah like very emotional and like not overly you know prepared there was even a moment where he was kind of got a little caught up yeah and and ultimately ended by saying like he would have just loved this like thank you so much because he would have loved it was really um it was meaningful so it was it was special to be there for that yeah it was a really really good speech and um and a good win and an interesting win and i'm kind of turning it over in my mind um in terms of the shape of the race like to me that this award show was it was a valuable experience for us because we talk about this stuff like they're action figures you know and it's just like or it's like you know the dvoa in terms of performance like a football team when we talk about the award season but like when you're talking about a colleague who you made a movie with who passed after you made the movie and then you're being honor for the movie. That's a human relationship. That's a real person who died and is a big part of this person's long professional career. We all have experiences like that. But it is still a race, you know, and this is still kind of like a stop on the trolley tour of leading up to the Academy Awards. In the 80-year history of the DGA's, the DGA winner has only lost the Oscar eight times. It is like one of the most rubber-stamped awards that we have in the world. And so you can safely bet now that Paul Thomas Anderson is going to win best director at the Academy Awards. And I think it's a collision of a lot of things. Obviously, admiration for the film, admiration for his body of work. I think the way that he has kind of like walked through this last six months has been pretty, pretty smooth. It's kind of hard to go through this considering like what this movie is about and what how what people are asking about it. And it is divisive. Like there's clearly people who do not like the movie, too. Um, beyond that, do you think this does anything else for the race? Listen, we were talking about it at the ceremony of like, how do we feel about sinners? And, you know, where is it? And is it surging? And I had a few conversations on Friday. I said to you, we're like, all of the questions were about sinners. And, you know, I and so it certainly seems like there is some movement. I and as you pointed out, there has been a split between Best Picture and Best Director several times in the past more frequently since they went to 10 nominees. Yeah. And we can we can explore like why that is. But I do think that that's interesting. Yes. Though even there, the most recent split is in 2021. And I do feel that because of how quickly the Academy votership is changing and even how some of the voting rules are changing, precedent really only applies a few years back at this point. And I think 2021 also being one of the pandemic years, really 2018 is your last real split moment. So that's almost 10 years now. Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit. So just there's been six examples in the last 20 years. Those six examples just for everybody at home are Argo winning best picture and Ang Lee winning for Life of Pi. In 2013, 12 Years a Slave won best picture and Alfonso Cuarón won for Gravity. In 2015, Spotlight won best picture. Alejandro Gonzalez-Ineritu won for The Revenant. In 2016, of course, Moonlight and Damien Chazelle, the famous mix up at the best picture final award. In 2018, Green Book won Best Picture and Alfonso Cuaron won again for Roma. And in 2021, Coda won Best Picture and Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog. In 2021, Coda had this incredible late surge, you know, where it was a movie that premiered at Sundance one year earlier. But very few people got around to seeing it. It was an Apple film. Apple, you know, not that didn't have like much primacy as a streaming service or as a movie studio. but they did have a lot of money to spend and they spent a ton of money very smartly on their campaign, basically from November, end of November through February. And they managed to race ahead of the power of the dog, which is a movie that I think people admired and didn't love. And so there was a vulnerability there. And that's really the only case where I think this can happen. I think if you look at the other examples, if you look at spotlight over the revenant, I think people just liked spotlight more. They admired the craft in The Revenant, but The Revenant is a tough movie. If you look at Moonlight Over La La Land, that's an interesting one because that marked a real shift in the Academy. But there was, I think, maybe just something about the sincerity of Moonlight that overwhelmed it in that particular case. And Green Book and Roma is the ultimate example of this, where it's like, I think people looked at Roma and they were like, there's a master filmmaker telling a truly personal story. Right. But Green Book, I had a good time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not all of these examples, but some of them are crowd pleasing versus or not even crowd pleasing, but like wider reach versus technical achievement, which which I don't really think is a split that applies here. I mean, it is box office wise, obviously Sinners. Sinners is the bigger movie. Yeah. Irrefutably the bigger movie. It's also the most commercial movie. Right. But I don't think one battle is closed off. It's not small in the right. And and also is not it's not inaccessible, even if it's provocative. It's very timely. Truthfully, you know, a lot of what transpires in the movie, obviously, is reflected in what's been happening in America, especially in the last two months. And I think that kind of benefits it in a, you know, hopefully that doesn't sound gross when I say that. But I do think it is meaningful that there's this reflection of the times. Sinners, I think it's I think it's better to just talk about this plainly. I'm really curious to see what an international academy thinks of that. That story, because American black stories were consistently told don't travel. Sinners didn't do as well internationally relative to its domestic performance. And it's very much an American story and a black American story about the very nature of creativity in the black community over, you know, 300 years. And I don't know if that's going to resonate. I really don't. It obviously resonated with the body enough to give it that many nominations. A split would be interesting. I don't think it would be bad. I think it would be. Yeah, I think it would be an interesting outcome. I don't know. The fact that they're competing in original screenplay and adapted screenplay really opens up the lane. I feel really confident that Kugler will and should win original screenplay. I think PTA will as well. I think he'll win an adapted for sure. And we've talked about it over and over, but original screenplay is always our favorite award and is where the real ones get awarded every year and all our heroes are awarded. And then the Academy often skips those, you know, Jordan Peele won for Get Out in original screenplay. Tarantino won for Pulp Piction in original screenplay. Sofia Coppola won for Lost in Translation in original screenplay. Those movies did not win Best Picture. um you know what's weird about it is that normally in a quote-unquote less deserving in our minds movie triumphs over films like that and in this case we both really love one battle after another that's it is strange to be talking about this race while rooting for both films um we don't typically yeah i know it's wonderful yeah but and change and i do wonder how it affects like our handicapping where I think that's it. I'm like, I kind of don't know. I feel a little lost in the sauce on this one because it's very clear that there's an overwhelming admiration for sinners. It's also clear that there's an overwhelming admiration for Paul Thomas Anderson. And so that's why the split seems plausible to me. We've obviously got a month before this all wraps up, but this was more or less confirmation that he's really, really strong and director. I asked you in the room when they're going to re-release Sinners before the Oscars, which just seems like an absolute no-brainer to me. They did do it in kind of fits and starts. They did it in IMAX. It was an IMAX re-release, but it was not a wide re-release. I just don't understand why not. It's a good question. I'm not sure. Did you see the news that the Academy... I did. The Academy is no longer screening films for Academy members after the nominations. Because they're getting very low attendance. Right. An average of five people showing up to screenings that the Academy is paying for and putting on in various theaters around the city and probably around the world around the world so that people can come and watch the films and then vote on them after that in a theater. And that's because the Academy portal exists, which is an app that the Academy has created very wisely to make everything accessible to all their members so that they can vote on it. You know, I find this incredibly troubling and sad, but it's also obviously not unreasonable that this happened. But also you and I also use the portals for the practical. I try to not do first watches that way. I genuinely try not to do first watches that way. As do I, as much as I can. But this is also, they're canceling them after the nominations. Yeah. And people already have access through the portal. I don't know. This just seems like reality. It is reality. This seems like budget. it but it's a slow step though in the march to everything kind of ending it's not cataclysmic it's just like the Academy Awards isn't going to do screenings like the Academy Awards that is premised upon theatrical movies well that's because people aren't going I know which is not I don't I don't blame that it's no one's fault it's just like it's just what happened it's just what happened yeah we failed to mention Charlie Pollinger won for the plague for the first time future award which is a bit of an upset I think relative to the nominees but I like the plague and i thought it was pretty promising and i i like what he's flashing and i mentioned to you that he's making the mask of the red death for a24 now and i'm looking forward to that movie he seemed to be god smacked gobsmacked up there sure he was also who who did he address what was it was it steven spielberg who was he addressing maybe no it was president nolan that he said president nolan but not in a funny way okay he said president nolan like you know he he like uh lives in a communist nation, you know, and was sort of like, I bow down to thee. I think he said it feels incredibly strange to be in the same room, you know, as you, President Nolan. Yes, yes. Which was kind of funny. And we, just to put a button on the Nolan thing. Yeah. So Nolan spoke before Kumail's monologue. He walked out to Kashmir by Led Zeppelin and gave the first speech of the night. Yes. Fascinating musical choices throughout the evening. He did, he did acknowledge it. He was like, that's quite dramatic. He's like, I throw every room to that, which I enjoy. He gave a thoughtful speech about the loss of work for the many members of the DGA and just kind of how Hollywood in general is in this conflagration of a moment. Things are really fucked up in the world of movie making right now. I do think we've turned a corner a little bit and I think if you look at screenplay sales and spec scripts are kind of ticking upwards recently and that is a good sign that maybe we're just kind of getting to the next phase of all this to my point about the superhero movie thing. I do think that we're in a big transition, but you know, as the president of the guild he needs to be thinking about the members and how they're working and if they're working. And then through the rest of the night it was almost like Spielberg was passing the baton to Nolan or something. The signature directorial voice in the world. And that is really interesting that he's taken that space. Or like the institutional guy in Hollywood in that room. But not just, but to me, it was almost like when you say the word director to the public at large, who is the first name that comes to your mind? And Steven Spielberg has been that person for more than 30 years. I mean, he might be the example, like maybe going back to like John Ford, you know, like it was like, what is director? Maybe Alfred Hitchcock is probably the best or Stanley Kubrick. But even still, because with Jaws, he invented the summer blackbuster. And then Indiana Jones, then Jurassic Park. Everyone has a Spielberg moment. So he kind of took it to the level. And I do feel like in movies in the last 10 or 15 years, a lot of the norms have been eroded around movie going, the way the franchises have incurred, the way the theatrical exhibition is down, the primacy of movies as a central art form in our country. but this was something that I was like this is an old school like baton pass that we're witnessing yeah like we're watching one master very gently like let this guy take center stage and it's so interesting that he is the president of the guild at that time and then during Paul Thomas Anderson's final speech he was acknowledging his fellow nominees yeah and he started insinuating the possibility of President del Toro yeah another beloved author he said President Nolan has a does have a nice ring to it and so does President del Toro yes come to think of it so I wonder if the next administration, the bull, as PTA described it, could be coming. Good show. It was fun. Good night. Fun night. Yeah. How did you feel getting gussied up? Listen, I like an occasion. It was great. I borrowed a dress from my friend Lauren. Thank you. You looked great. Thanks. It was Loewe by Jonathan Anderson. No one asked or cared. I didn't walk a carpet. No. But I liked wearing it. I forgot to mention Emily Bader. Oh, yeah. I went to the bathroom and Emily Bader was there and I was this close to being like, you're great. But I didn't. She was talking with some other people. She would have loved that. So even though Timothy Chalamet and Jacob Elordi and Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael B. Jordan were all there and spoke, you get the impression they weren't really sitting through the ceremony. No, I think they jumped right on a PJ and then went to wherever they went in Leonardo DiCaprio's case. I think he went right to a Super Bowl party. God bless. He was photographed later that night in San Francisco. I mean, that's just king shit. It's a quick fight. It is. He loves an event. Yeah, for sure. But they weren't sitting through. But Emily Bader sat through. And she also presented an award. And she was stunning. Yeah, very beautiful. I don't know what to say. She looked really good. And I hope that everything works out for her. I hope she becomes a big star. I do as well. She was there with Lucas Gage, who I did not remember from the film People We Meet on Vacation. Yes, he was the guy who drove the boat. But he was there as well. Yeah, he was there. He's in Smile 2. Okay. Did you see Smile 2? No. That wasn't my favorite. All right. So I see Smile? well you know i've been thinking about what you were saying about your reaction to horror movies and actually my primary criticism of smile and smile too is your general criticism of horror movies which is i found it scares to be annoying rather than effective all right and so i'm not sure if it would be the movie for you a lot of people love those movies though they've been big hits i'm happy for people that they enjoy things uh closing notes on the dgs it was fun invite me to your party. What other award show would you like to go to? Do we want to go to the Oscars? I really don't. It's because we've got to work. And I've been in that room. It seems like a real hassle. Yeah. Yeah. Respectfully, I'm not doing a press room. You know, the Academy has always been very generous and has invited us many years in a row. And we don't go because we have a professional obligation. I have two virtual tickets in my email right now for both of us. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. I told you in the past that we get that. But it just doesn't make sense for our job to go to the show. I guess out of curiosity I'd like to go once. The thing is, I'd love to go to all the parties afterwards. Another thing I don't care about. Well, I mean, it just, Matt Bellady just talks about the hors d'oeuvres spread. What? I love a past app. Once again, I'm a great wedding guest. So if we could work and then head out. That's just like a pathway to getting an RSV or something. I don't need that. It's done. I'm free again. I'm ready to hit the party. You're clear now. No, I don't want to go to the parties. I don't care about that. I want private conversation with people I think are cool. That's different from going to a party. I don't want that at all. That's the best part. I don't want to meet people. Jacob Elordi was at the perfect distance. Why would I want to meet them? What am I supposed to say? Hey, I think you're cool. What are you saying to them? What are you talking about? You immediately start talking about their work and their life and who they are as people. That's so weird. Why would you want to do that? I know, but that's because everyone, there's a contract here at this table, you know, where we talk about our work. Just like, hey, man, I really admire. You know what it immediately becomes? It's just like any other conversation with any other adult in my life right now. It's kids. It's kids. How old are your kids? Or it's the Knicks. But like, I don't have the Knicks and the Mets to fall back on. What I'm going to talk about. While we were recording this episode, I got news that Francisco Lindor broke a toe bone. Is that what it is? Is it a toe bone, Jack? Not sure about the specifics other than the surgery requires a six-week recovery, and we are six and a half weeks away from opening day. I will kill myself. That's fine, though. Like, for a toe bone, my son called me to his room last night because he banged his, he, like, stubbed his toe. Yeah. And I told him, I was like, the thing about hurting your toe, you just got to let it rest. That's all you can do. So he's going to be fine. He has six weeks. It'll rest, and then it'll be fine. He's getting surgery, though. Well. You know what you need when you play baseball is your toes. You need to be able to move around out there. You need everything. When you play shortstop, range is very important. It's fine. He's young. He'll have surgery. Surgery's not... When you're young, it's fine. It's not a toe. It is the hamate bone, which I believe is in the wrist. Oh, no. Oh, that's bad. Pinky side of the palm. Well, now I take it back. Oh, no. That's what Francisco Alvarez had. Wrist is bad. Oh, no. And you need that. Oh, no. This season's fucked. No, okay. Let's pull back for a second. Okay. Stern's masterclass. This is why we signed four shortstops. We're rich with shortstops. We've got four shortstops playing the four infield positions. Maybe one of them can slide into the shortstop. Only one of them is name-checked by Tracy Letts in the Catherine Bigelow film House of Dynamite. God, that was just so special. I bet that that character in that film also has admiration for Beau Bichette. That's all I'm going to say. Oh, Beau Bichette is also a shortstop? He was. We're moving him to third base, but now maybe we're not. But he could dip in? Yeah. I think it's probably more likely... Is shortstop and third base like an interchangeable thing, or is it like teaching Chris Pratt to play first base? I think it's more interchangeable. Are we moving Marcus Simeon to shortstop? No, Bo would play short. Simeon's at second. But I mean, Bo is a net negative defensively. I disagree. Okay. All right. Also, you guys have to go to the Oscars one year. One year you have to do it. It's literally the biggest episode of the year. But we'll still make it happen. We'll make it work. Oh, you think we can go and do an episode right afterwards? I will be... Have you... But what do you know about press rooms, Jack Sanders? Literally nothing. Yeah. So, why don't you go this year and scope it out? No, we need him. That would be very funny if you guys sent me to the Academy Awards. By the way, at the iHeart Awards, we're sending you. Absolutely. Is that over? You're staying in Austin. Is that done? Did we win? I don't think so. Okay. All right. I did tell Amanda that if the Rewatchables wins, I will immediately retweet with, I demand to recount just putting that out there um anything else k-pop demon hunters you saw it in theaters i did i was at this greeting it was wonderful it was so exciting uh knox was there also and it really it had its intended effect in my household which is like we drove home listening to the soundtrack soda pop came on and my four-year-old son was like no no this is the boys song we don't listen to that which was in i like incredible i didn't know properly i didn't know that he was capable of that level of plot also no Saja Boyz songs not allowed in our house whatsoever I'm going to tell you something Soda Pop is a jam he's asked to rewatch it several times very into the tiger so and then even my side my younger son he feels the rhythm of the K-pop you know a lot of bangers in there it's it's been fun to watch it happen in my house now that they're slightly older we've been circling having Maggie Kang and Chris Applehunt on the show for a long time so I'm glad we got to do it in this environment. I hope people enjoy it. Let's go now to my conversation with Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans. Hello. I'm Sean. How are you? What'd you think of that movie? Pretty amazing, right? This is Maggie Kang. This is Chris Applehans. They're the directors of this film, co-screenwriters. guys wow what is it like to see so many young people having an emotional experience with something that you've created pretty cool pretty amazing oh so cute my favorite part my son alexander is here hi alexander he's five and he was in the bathtub and he was singing about seeing the beauty in the broken glass. And I was like, okay, there's a lot of feelings going on. A tough life for a five-year-old. I do think it makes young children reflect on their deepest feelings, one of the magic tricks of this movie. Is that something you thought about when you were writing it, about trying to give kids access to a feeling they don't know how to put words to? Not intentionally. Not intentionally, yeah. I mean, to be honest, we wanted to just make a movie for ourselves. I mean, I think as a filmmaker, that's the first person that you make the movie for. Because, you know, I don't know, you're going to be on this journey for it. I mean, I was on this journey for seven years. So I'm not going to invest seven years of my life in someone else's life again. So, yeah, like we made the film for ourselves. And for me, it was just all ages of myself. I wanted to see characters like this in a movie like this growing up. And so it was for my young self, like seven, eight-year-old self, the 12-year-old self that loved K-pop and had to kind of hide it. And this was like, yes, now we can celebrate this. I was right all along. And then for my something-something version of myself, age as a filmmaker and a mom and grown women wanting to explore a deeper theme in movies like this having worked in the animation industry for a long time And you know we tend to kind of cater those films a little younger to children And we are firm believers as well as like Sony Pictures Animation and trying to push the boundaries of what the animation medium can do and what kind of stories we tell. So, yeah, I think we just wanted to like make a movie we wanted to see. I wanted to ask you both if you can remember the first animated film that you saw and maybe what impact it had on you. Oh, first ever. Now we have to unredact our ages. The original Snow White. Unless you say like Gertie the dinosaur. I think the first memory of a feature I have was Beauty and the Beast. And I remember thinking as Belle was singing, there must be more than this provincial life. I was like, yes, there must for me, too. And I grew up in a small town in Idaho, so maybe it kind of makes sense. But yeah, but I don't know. I didn't have an experience of like, I must make animated films. It was more I love to tell stories. And this is a great medium to do it in. Yeah, me too. Same. Like, I grew up with a cinephile dad. So I think I was like eight years old when I watched like Hidden Fortress, you know. Wow. Yeah, like very – and I grew up on Curacao films. Did you see it before Star Wars? Yes. So you knew that it was ripping off Hidden Fortress. I believe – and I think that's why my dad showed it to me because he's like, you must watch this before you watch this. That's a great education. Yeah, so – because he was very much like a film snob but then also loved Hollywood films and loved like just everything. He was just kind of like a full-spectrum kind of guy. and still is. He watches for the last 35 years he's watched anywhere from two to four films a week and still does. Wow. Those are low numbers for me. Oh, really? Yeah, but for normal people that's very impressive. Oh, wow, okay. Okay then, I will tell him that. Didn't he organize them by director and region? You do that? Region, director. I do it by director, yeah. And he has a whole catalog where he tracks, and he circles stuff. He's like, I need this one. I can't find it. Can you give him my phone number when this is on? Yeah. I feel like you have a lot to talk about. I was actually wondering, this is going to seem a little weird to say in front of a room full of little kids, but watching the movie this time around, I was like, oh, I think that's a Train to Busan reference. I feel like there are a lot of Korean film references in this movie, and a lot of film references in general. And I'm wondering how intentional a lot of that was and how much you thought about inspirations and actually putting them into the screenplay. Wait, I want to know what this Train to Busan reference is. You've got a big train with demons and an empty train car. It popped into my mind. I don't think anything is intentional, right? Is there something? No, I felt like one of our big bonds as filmmaking partners was we're both huge fans of Bong Joon-ho. And we both had like a formative experience watching The Host where we're like, wait, you can be so dramatic and scary and funny right next to each other. And the tone of this movie is full. We're jumping all over the place. But I think we also bonded on all the K-dramas that we've watched. and then like director park it's like so many i think we're in this cool era like for me as a kid from idaho i for starting at 23 when i saw a movie called my sassy girlfriend which is a great korean rom-com if you've never seen it um and it's like this lovely funny relationship uh that's very korean but very accessible so starting at 23 to now many decades later like so many of my formative filmmaking experiences were Korean films, which I think happens a lot more now because young people can watch movies from all over the world. All of our crew on this film had an amazing library of anime that they'd watched. So we could just refer to Cowboy Bebop or Sailor Moon or whatever, Fooly Cooly, and they were on it. So I think we're living in a new time where that education can come from outside the U.S., which is pretty cool. But then it's all of that coupled with all the comedy that we love. Like, I love The Simpsons. And like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Pen-13, which is like something that, Pen-15. 15? 13. Oh, 13? Because it looks like a... Oh, that's right, okay. Yeah. And so, yeah, this movie is like everything that we like, you know, all across the board, like film, music, fashion, design, color. And so it's just a celebration of like, and oddly, like we slowly, I don't know, slowly, probably slowly. We realize we just have the same taste. And that's what made it so easy for us to work together. because we kind of envisioned the same movie, like just even from the beginning. And then we slowly like realized that as we were making the film. And then going on this award circuit, we traveled together and we realized like, oh my gosh, we actually really have the same taste where we're like ordering the same food on the plane or like at a restaurant. And then realizing like our spouses are almost the same. And then Maggie forced me to buy these shoes and we're in Europe and I got home and Maureen was, my wife, Maureen, who's here, was like, finally you have a proper pair of shoes. I was like, oh no, there's no escape. You mentioned that the movie is a lot of different kinds of movies all in one, right? It's a musical and it's an action movie and it's a buddy comedy and it's a lot of different kinds of things. And it's really hard, I assume, to balance all those styles. Like, how do you know that it's working? How do you know that there's balance in that tone that you're going for? I think we just, you have to kind of try it. And that's the beauty about the animation process is you can rework something so many times versus in a live action film. You only get like one or two tries to shoot it and then that's your movie. With animation, we can iterate until basically we run out of time or money or a producer says, okay, that's enough. Like this is the movie. And so we just tried a lot of stuff and we spent most of the production, like in the story process, just tweaking everything. Like our movie, the plot and the emotional story never changed that much from the first draft. And we had that concert scene at the end in the first draft, too. And we felt like that was such an emotionally satisfying moment for a film like this. And so we were like, how do we earn that moment? And that was what we were working towards in all the kind of versions of the movie that led us to the final. Yeah, I think also what we tried to do is even if a sequence was maybe primarily comedic, it wasn't ever just doing that. So like there might, if you guys remember the scene where they're signing for the fans and it becomes this funny sign off and battle. within that is a conversation between Rumi and Gino about her anger about how she feels about herself and he's prodding her and she blurt something out and you learn a little bit about how he feels about Kima so superficially that's a really wacky moment but it's actually advancing character and then other times like in the final scene you're singing this beautiful anthem that's so vulnerable and soulful. And then 10 seconds later, popcorn is coming out of Mira's eyes. So you're never just doing one of the things. You're always trying to mix the ingredients, and then it feels coherent and not scattershot, I guess. Whenever I'm talking to animation filmmakers, I'm curious to demystify the process. You say you would tweak it and see it over again. What is it specifically that you're seeing again? Are you entirely reanimating a sequence? Is it just like an animatic? Like, what do you see, and then how do you know if it plays or it doesn't play? It's always an animatic with storyboards that are drawn in black and white, and they're just very loose sketches that convey emotion of the character, so it's a lot of faces and eyebrows and acting. And, you know, we just had a talk with Phil Lord and Chris Miller the other day, and Chris mentioned something really great. With an animated film, you should be able to turn off all sound and still know what's going on with the story. Because the acting of the face, of the body, and just all the kind of interesting, I guess, visual cues and visual moments should tell you what the story is. Like the ultimate show, don't tell. Yeah. It's funny you bring up Lord and Miller, too. I read that you said that Spider-Verse was a bit of an inspiration for the film. And I wanted to hear you both talk about the animation style that you landed on for this movie. It feels like it's kind of between your classic 2D and 3D and how you guys thought about it and why it looks the way that it does. Yeah, I think it was all a product of wanting a certain set of characters and their story and a tone. So the tone and the characters drove everything. So we wanted them to be incredibly glamorous and powerful and awesome and pop stars and also goofy and weird and have no none of their makeup on and wear their pajama pants and also pour out their soul sometimes. And so the character designs were influenced by things like Hellboy Bebop, which, if you guys haven't seen it, it's a great animated series that's kind of got its own, it's got a relationship to K-dramas in terms of these sort of larger-than-life characters that they're so cool, but also they're very funny and flawed. So those influences of the story we wanted to tell, really, we reverse engineered the designs, their expressiveness, to be able to accomplish that whole tonal range. And that led, because the ingredients at the start were unique, it led to a unique look, I think, for the animation. And then we animated mostly on twos, which Spider-Verse does as well. and we made that decision because there's a lot of dancing and choreography and fight choreography in this film and when you animate on twos, it allows you to be more snappy and high contrast and that's something that we really like and there's a lot of high contrast moments in the comedy tone of it so that's why we went with the two animating on twos But there are times when we animate on threes, on ones. I don't really remember what those moments were, but I think they're all choices made because the moment asks for it. And I think the biggest, when we saw Spider-Verse, we were watching the premiere, and we were like two, three years into the movie. And we were like on one, opposite sides of the theater. And like five minutes in, Maggie texts me and she's like, oh my God, it's so good. But I think what it, we felt like this movie was very ambitious. And there were times when we're like, is it too ambitious? Are we trying to do too many things? And you watch Spider-Verse and you're like, nah. And do anything. And we just, we were like pedal to the metal. We're going to do all of it and make it as, and just execute until we had nothing left to give. I'm glad you mentioned choreography. so there's an amazing amount of dance choreography and fight choreography in the movie an unusual amount for a movie like this are you writing that into the screenplay do you know what the movements of the characters are meant to be do you have choreographers that you work with to execute how does that explain how that works for us um no in the writing phrase you just write now they dance and it's really cool we're like song starts um uh yeah we had a lot of We had a few teams of choreographers that we worked with from Korea, really famous K-pop choreographer, dance choreographers. And then we worked with a team called the K-tigers, who are Taekwondo specialists. But then they're also integrating pop dance moves into their choreography. So the first time we went to Korea as a group on a research trip, we met with them and we were like, yeah, you know, we were thinking like, you know, Taekwondo mixed with modern K-pop. And they're like, OK. And so they start doing it and we're like, oh, we didn't think this was possible, but they were already doing it. And I don't know, we just had this kind of like moment where we're all just like crying and thinking like, oh, my gosh, it's actually possible. like we could actually pull this off so um you know and and that's kind of what happened throughout this entire process when we were like how do we pull this off and we go to the pros for some advice they're like oh this is you know and and it's because they were so inspired by the concept they were excited um to be challenged and at every stage of this production every team was like yes we are down to be challenged. Let's figure this out. And I think that's, that's how we got this done. I have a similar question about the songs. What are you writing when you're saying like, and now one of the greatest K-pop songs you've ever heard that you will live, it will live in your mind forever. It's one of the hardest and funnest parts of the film. And it was a, really was there was no roadmap because people have written musicals before but they aren't those aren't pop songs and people have written pop songs but never that we're trying to live in a story so the part that we spent months on we would write essentially a called them like a song document and it's like a five-page thing and it's it's a scene but in song structure so if you're thinking like golden it's like we're talking about what each of the girls almost a monologue about where they came from and how they felt before they found each other and then the pre-chorus is about what it meant to find my place in a group and the chorus and and so we're writing the scene that should feel interesting to read as a scene and then we're talking about the metaphor because one of the lessons we learned is like you can't sing and now the Han Moon will be golden like it's no longer a pop song it's something else right so we had to have a metaphor whether it's your idol or take down like we talk about the songs on a whole different level of like take down is about having like some boyfriend you broke up with who you know is a jerk and you just can't wait for everyone else to find out what a jerky is or golden is about feeling like there's you have so much to offer and you haven't found the place to do it yet and i'm so close now to really showing the world who i am so we were always juggling this very particular story things and then this more pop metaphor and then we would give that to the song team and then just say no for the first 12 versions until it was great until it gave us butterflies in our stomach we'd like to say that we tricked um all the songwriters into working on an animated movie because they're like wait what how many versions of this are you doing and we're like oh many they were very surprised because um usually in pop pop writing you do maybe like i don't know i think like two three max versions you know iterations a round of notes and then and then you're kind of done but you know our story process is that it's constantly evolving and changing and you know if we if we tweak a story moment here to kind of affect a character's arc then we have to like do these little nips and tucks everywhere and that's what needs to happen with the music as well so um it was a real challenge it was kind of like two two stories or like two writing things challenges that you were facing like just with the screenplay but then the music is so interwoven into that story so we were working we were basically writing two two screenplays yeah i i couldn't think of very many comparisons like bye bye birdie popped in my head it's like what's a what's a musical that is reflecting a current moment in popular music that features songs that are sort of in the spirit of that music but it kind of hasn't been done before so did people say this is not going to work no no um which is wonderful we had a great um executive music producer whose name is ian eisendrath he comes from a broadway background and then we had uh many partners but foremost was black label which is one of the best labels in k-pop um and so i think it was more like the onus was on us to be able to give them the direction on the pop level and the story level so they had a shot at creating this synthesis but there was part of it was like we were like we we won't be able to point you to anything because it hasn't been done so we're gonna have to do a new thing that you don't know how to do we don't know how to do and we're gonna have to find it together and everybody was just to maggie's point they were just down for that and down for doing version 13 which is amazing. My daughter's here. She's four and a half. This is one of her favorite movies of all time. I think one of the reasons why, even if this is subconscious, is that this is a movie, as a friend said to me before this screening started, about women just saying, yeah, we'll do it ourselves. There's not a lot of movies about that either. I know there are a lot of themes that you guys were thinking about as you were writing through, but that's one that seems to be really resonating. I was hoping you could maybe talk about writing that into the characters yeah i mean one of the main parts of the initial pitch was just seeing female characters in a in a movie like this that i feel like we haven't seen um i've been in many story rooms where it's it's an entourage and there's one or two female characters out of six or seven and we we spend hours talking about how do we make our female characters pop and i'm like oh i just hate that and i've been in many rooms where i i would suggest like well why don't we take the most interesting male character and make that one of the female characters and then it's just silence and so when it came time to make a movie of my own that's You know, I wanted to just kind of like, you know, relieve that frustration. And and this is the version of female female characters that I want to see. You know, I feel like I am this kind of like I'm very silly and this and I like to make dumb faces, but I'm also serious and emotional. And and I just wanted to explore, like, what is the type of woman that I wanted to see? and so the task was how do we make three distinct female characters that are that and so that was part of the initial pitch and and also it's a story about sisterhood it's about found family and a friendship between these three girls and and but it all and and I truly believe true intimacy only comes when you are the most silly version of yourself with somebody else. And so the kind of zaniness of the girls and being stupid, we like to use that word a lot in this movie. We want it to feel stupid. And I think there's power and confidence to be stupid. It takes a lot of courage. And to be that version of yourself in front of somebody else takes a lot of courage, too. And so it wasn't just like for fun. It really, you know, brings the girls together. And we get to see that intimacy in a different, you know, in a different way. So that was what was so important about the comedy of it. Maggie mentioned you've been working on this for seven years. Chris, I know you also came off a long run on your previous film, Wish Dragon. it's a little different from other kinds of films where you have to spend a really long time making these movies how do you maintain the focus stay interested like follow through when it takes you know huge stretches of life just to complete something yeah um i don't know i i think we actually another thing that we bond around is neither of us got into directing movies because we wanted to be called a director, we were generally a little frustrated with the type of movies that we're working on. And some of them were great, but some of them were not. And feeling like, man, we could do more than this with this medium and with the stories we want to tell. So when I joined the film, which was six years ago, we very quickly bonded around this representation. that felt really overdue, this love of music and what it means for people, and the sort of seams of the movie about, like, how are we going to treat other people's vulnerabilities on our own? Because it can be weaponized against people, and you can control people, and that's kind of what chemo represents, you know, is a toxic version of that. Or you can offer grace and connect to people through this shared vulnerability, and that makes a really strong bond and you lift each other up. Those are pretty important things and we really cared about them. And I think you need to find at least an inkling of what that is early on because then that is the reason. That's like your North Pole. That's the mountaintop. And it's so hard to keep going some weekends and some nights when you're just exhausted or you feel like you can't crack it. But when you believe that this thing needs to exist, then it's like raising a child. You just care so much about it that you will suffer constantly because you believe in the thing that's taking shape in front of you. It's like you start to build this love-hate relationship with your movie. Like your child. Yes, that's true. I didn't say that. But you believe in it so much. So you kind of have to fight for that love, I guess. I probably don't have enough critical distance at this point, but with the distance that you guys have now, really, what do you what do you attribute to this becoming? Just it's genuinely a phenomenon that is very, very rare, like not just in animation, but in any movie for a movie to hit this many people, to hit them so deeply. What do you what do you think it is that is is resonating with people at this point? I mean, I think it's the theme of the movie, you know, embracing parts of yourself that you don't think are acceptable or very pretty. one of the most amazing things that I've seen just on social media and stuff is people coming to this movie and relating to the scars that Rumi has or the patterns and they connect us through their surgery scars and the pain that they had to go through I never even thought of that and I thought that was so beautiful and I think there's so many ways that people are interpreting Rumi's journey and what the scars represent. And so I think there's just so many different ways that you could take that story and people are kind of relating to it. So I think that's a big thing. And of course the music, but we truly believe that the music, all of the music is having its moment because people love the movie so much and the characters and it kind of returns back to the story. Yeah, and it's really pretty, you know. I like to just turn it on and it's just kind of a background like prettiness. We joke about what we call sneaky deep. It's like how we like to tell the story. And it's very related to like the true foe quote about a great movie is truth and spectacle. So we really wanted to entertain and be funny and be relatable and be spectacular and then plant these little seeds, sneak up on you. because ultimately this movie succeeded on word of mouth. People got to the end and they said, oh, I really, that was worth my time. I felt something special. And they just tell somebody else. And it's such a cool era we live in where that's so powerful. We end every episode of The Big Picture by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? Have you guys seen any good movies lately? I just watched on the plane I was going to say the same thing, I think Is it the Skarsgård film? Yeah, Sentimental Value Sentimental Value It's so good, right? Oh my gosh What did you like about it? I loved I was like, man, this is a real slow European film But I didn't Again, he tricked me He was sneaky There's like a shot progression And a silent storytelling To so many parts of the film and the house and the subtext. And I was like, well, that was really cool. And then it kind of gets through, and then you come to the end and all of that comes full circle structurally. It's genius. So intentional, so efficient. And I was like, I'm crying on this plane. And then the acting is so subtle. There's no real, you don't see anybody cry or just the relationship with the daughter and the dad at the end. they don't even physically close the gap but you know that everything's going to be okay. I just love films like that. It was beautiful. Great recommendations. Congratulations to you both. Thank you to Netflix. Thank you to Sony Pictures Animation. Thank you to Vidiotz. If you're not a member of Vidiotz, you should join. Thanks to Maggie. Thanks to Chris. Thank you guys. thanks to Maggie and Chris thanks to my friends at Vidius for the fun event that was awesome thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode later this week yeah it's a very horny Valentine's Day double feature yeah or is it? that might be part of the problem well sure one of them I'm very so our friend Sam Sanders is coming on this episode which will be fun and we've been doing his show the last couple years for KCRW and we asked him to do this I think with the hope that the horniness would deliver. And we don't totally know where he stands on Weathering Heights or Pillian. The two movies that we'll be discussing in the next episode. Have some suspicions. But it'd be nice to disagree, honestly. It'd be useful for the show to disagree. Because I think we're in pretty lockstep on these two future films. Excited to discuss them? Yeah. Absolutely. I am too. Emerald Fennell. You know, she gives a lot. She does. She gives a lot. I appreciate it. There is much to discuss. I agree. We'll discuss it later this week. We'll see you then.