Latest / The Kulturecast / Required Viewing 01: Sideways

Transcript

Required Viewing 01: Sideways · The Kulturecast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: We're in Wayne Media. We're in Wayne Media. You are
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a bad girl.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Now I need to be spanked.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Sideways is the best comedy of the year. Oops. This
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is our week to get crazy. An Academy Award winning movie.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: These girls want to party with us. They want to
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: drink Merlot.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: We're drinking Merlot.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I am not drinking Merlot. Wow. And winner of two
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: You're getting married on Saturday.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: It was a nice way to respond to that. Sideway
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: on the DVD today.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Hello everyone and welcome to the CultureCast. I am your
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: host Chris Dashew and I, or wait, no, this is
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Required Viewing, right? This is Required Viewing.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Hello everyone and welcome back to Required Viewing, a sub-show
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: within the CultureCast. I am your host Chris Dashew and
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: I'm joined by the other host of this show, all
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: the way from somewhere in the lovely Napa, Santa Barbara
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: wine community out there in California to your friend and mine,
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: the professor of media and communications at Texas Tech, Dr.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: David D. Perlmutter.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Chris, and welcome to our second
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: required viewing. I hope everybody has their Blue Book's out.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: This is what we have to resort to now in
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: the age of AI.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: That's right. Everybody, you can't have AI writing things in person.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: If you have clicked on this episode within the CultureCast feed,
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: I wanted to let you know what this show is.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: We talk about movies, maybe not that you need to watch,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: but that have something worth talking about within them. And
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: we tend to talk about a movie from all angles,
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: not just one movie. specialized direction which is the other
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: important thing we kind of advocate for a 360 approach
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: or a holistic approach to looking at and talking about
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: film better film to do that with than a film
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: about two men going to the california wine country and
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: getting drunk and getting into all kind of troubles is
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: a midlife crisis in film form talking about the 2004
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: alexander payne directed and Alexander Payne written with Jim Taylor
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: based on the book of the same name by Rex Pickett, Sideways.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: So like I mentioned, the film is directed and written
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: by Alexander Payne and Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor on
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: the screenplay based on a book by Rex Pickett and
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: it stars Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church as Miles
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: and Jack, two friends who go to the Wine country
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: for the weekend only to have, you know, a series
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: of misadventures or adventures or, you know, anything on the
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: sliding scale. In a lot of ways, I would compare
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: it to The Hangover, but for adults as opposed to,
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: you know, for the for the 20 year old crowd.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: This is definitely for a certain group of people. of
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: a certain age. And I think we'll talk about the
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: intended audience, especially in 2004, because this also feels like
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: a much a pastoral time compared to 2026. But to Dr. Perlmutter,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: this was on your list of movies to talk about.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: So I am so curious because we have not really
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: talked about this film. We just decided to do this film.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Why are we talking about Sideways? Why is it required viewing?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Well, let me start out by pointing out something about
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: this film that I rarely do and I rarely refer to.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I leave that to you. Let's talk box office, okay?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: This film in 2004 cost $ 16 million to make. I
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: was looking up some of the history and the The
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: deal with the director was that you've got to keep
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: it under $ 10 million. We know that that's the one
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: promise in Hollywood about you've got to keep the budget
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: under something. Among the many broken dreams and broken promises
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: on the streets of Hollywood, that's one of them. It
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: did balloon, I put that in air quotes, to $ 16 million.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And $ 16 million is, I looked this up, is $ 28
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: million today.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So the film made in worldwide gross $ 110 million, from
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: $ 16 million to $ 110 million. And one of the reasons
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: this is in required viewing is because we sometimes need
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: to remind ourselves that the term blockbuster or hit has
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: been changed to only mean something that costs a huge
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: amount that eventually brings in a huge amount. Right. So
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: like we'll talk about a film that costs two hundred
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: million dollars and it makes a billion dollars. And you figure,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: you know, twice the budget of the movie is the
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: publicity and the costs of distribution and things like that.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: But like once upon a time, Hollywood said, oh. You know,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: we can spend only $ 16 million and we can bring
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: in a hundred and set nine. And that's really a
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: point about films is that we don't have to live
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: in a world where there's only giganto brontosaurus sized movies
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: that fail because they only make a hundred million. This
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: film made a huge profit for the studio. And so
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: it's worth pointing out in the sort of history of
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: filmmaking that once upon a time, And of course it
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: does still exist. There's still $ 20 million films that are made,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: $ 10 million films that are made. But it's something to
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: keep in mind. And I usually don't talk about box
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: office that much. Then also you use the word adult.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: And as we like to talk about, Chris, since I'm
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: a journalism professor, I'm fascinated by words and what they mean,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: what they meant, what the meaning is changing to as
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I meet a new generation of students and they can
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: tell me that a word means something that I didn't
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: know it meant in today's world. This was an adult
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: movie during a time where adults, people, it could be 20s,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: could be 60s, say, let's go watch a movie. And
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: it would be a serious movie with humor, but about
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: pretty much serious adult situations. There was no compromise of like, oh,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: we got to have something for the kids. We got
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: to have something for the action characters. And we just
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: serious adults doing serious adult things very entertainingly in the
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: sense of like, wow, this is so fascinating what's going on.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: And it's a very screenplay driven film, which is another
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: comment about today, because as we've both said, and many
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: of the other guests on your show have pointed out,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: is that we live in this world where you can
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: throw a lot of money at a film and the
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: carpentry is going to be great if you throw it.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: hire the right people and the costumes are going to
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: be great. But like no amount of money will buy
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: you a very good screenplay. And this film from day one,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: from people going into the movie theater and remember our
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: other key term, word of mouth, telling other people, hey,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: this is a beautiful film. You should watch this film.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: This film has an excellent screenplay. It's extremely well written
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: and it should be held up as a case study
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: of a movie that good acting, wonderful scenery and backgrounds,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: love the soundtrack. But at the core of this, the
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: flagship of watching this is damn good screenplay that I bet.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And there's a story that the original story, uh, pain,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: the director was on a plane and said, okay, I'm
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: going to do this. The form when he read an
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: original version of, of the story. And you can see
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: why people might have right away kind of like, what
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: a great story. What an interesting story. Let's get some
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: great actors, which they did. Every role is, I think,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: played very well. But man, screenplay, screenplay, screenplay.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: I am right there with you in terms of approaching this.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: Because look, just to get this out of the way
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: ahead of time, I love this movie. I've loved this
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: movie since the first time I saw it when I
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: was in my early 20s. I am in my mid-30s now.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: And it is a film that I understand now more
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: as an adult ever... Way less than I ever did
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: as someone in their 20s. And I don't think that
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: the characters in this film are in their 30s. They
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: seem like they're probably in, you tell me, they seem
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: like they're in their mid 40s, like early to mid 40s.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: You know, just past their prime by the way that
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: they're describing it or in that kind of decline the
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: way people describe it. kind of look at it. And
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: I think that that's the interesting juxtaposition here because you've
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: mentioned like, what does success look like? And I think
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: that that is what this movie is about in a
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: lot of ways is what does success look like and
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: what does sustained success look like and how do people
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: hang on to that or grasp at that or continue
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: to hold on to that long after that time is gone.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: That's pretty much the Thomas Hayden Church character. But I
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: think it's interesting to juxtapose the film's message against the
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: film's own, like you said, success and existence within the
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: industry because this is a you know the term indie
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: darling gets used a lot in the mid 2000s and
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: like you alluded to we do still still see things
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: that blow up like this did we are living in
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: a time where back rooms and obsession both came out
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: this year within weeks of one another and they made
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: similarly to this movie Millions of dollars on a very
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: small budget. And like you've alluded to, it still exists.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: It's as rare. It's rarer now than it was.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Then.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: It felt like back in the mid 2000s. I mean,
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: you know, I think of the other films that this
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: film exists within the same scheme of, which is a,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: you know, Little Miss Sunshine or Lars and the Real
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Girl or those kinds of films.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: When I looked this up, it opened in four theaters.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I'm not knocking Supergirl. I haven't seen Supergirl. It opened
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: in 3,700 or something like that theaters.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: It opened nationwide.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it opened nationwide. And I'm not saying that the
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: films are comparable in any way, but like, isn't it
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: fascinating that the word of mouth by adult was so
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: strong that something that opened... art house, you know, in
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the open. in a tiny amount of theaters. I mean,
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: I think Obsession and Backrooms probably opened in more than
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: four theaters.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I assume that they opened nationwide as well, or
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: at least, similarly to Sideways, opened closer to nationwide and
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: became more available as, like you've said, the word of
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: mouth still exists. It's just, it's now social media-driven more
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: so than just like... I guess the way I look
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: at it is, and again, as a journalism professor and
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: as someone who went to school for journalism... The undercurrent
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: of how you measure those things at one point was
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: a lot harder to measure exteriorly. And now with social media,
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: you can see those markers clearly with the word of mouth.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: You can see word of mouth now in a social
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: media age more so than you used to, because back
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: in the day, word of mouth was nebulous. It was
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: like literally people telling each other about movies. Now you
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: can see that dialogue happening with social media. And I mean,
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: forums and other things were kind of the early days
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: of that, like, full forums and blogs and stuff like that.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: But as time has gone on, word of mouth has
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: become social media. And that's how you can measure it,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: is it's easier to measure now because there's a verifiable
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: way to see, well, look at all this social media
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: traction our thing has been getting. And then there's an
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: increase in the people watching the movie. Causation and correlation, sure,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: not always in the same camp with one another, but
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: Something like this probably is the best way of measuring
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: what was the untangible quality of word of mouth. Because
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: like you've told your story about Star Wars plenty of times,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: going and seeing... My mom tells a similar story. Her
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: dad went and saw Star Wars seven times in theaters.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: It's one of those... And I know that he was
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: telling people that he knew about Star Wars as well.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: It's a thing where it's not that it doesn't happen anymore...
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: It's just I think it's so much more muted now
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: because of the options everyone has. And 2004 doesn't seem
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: like that long ago, but it is in terms of
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: where we are now in 2026. It's only 22 years ago.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: But in terms of the technology and the access we
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: have to information about people's tastes and how they interact
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: with movies, we have never had more information than we
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: do now. And every day that we continue further is
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: more information that we're getting, especially with A.I. and people
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: able to interact with A.I. and give A.I. things that
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: they're not even willing to give to other things like
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: we're getting so much more information now. that word of
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: mouth is almost a, and I'm sure it has been
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: now for a while, maybe decades, even a measurable amount
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: versus just like, well, there's an organic groundswell. Like what
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: does that mean? We don't know.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: I guess I 70%, 75% agree with you. We do
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: have a situation where the publicity space around the film
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: can be bigger than the film. So like, A film
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: can be talked about, but people may not necessarily always
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: go see a movie because obviously a lot of the
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: talking can be, it sucks, don't go, right?
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: To use academic terms there. So here, and again, this
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: is our entry point to require viewing, is that organically,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, they did have an advertising campaign. You can
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: go online and see the trailer for this. And by
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: the way, the trailer is sort of interesting in that
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think it completely sells the movie that well.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, anybody who's watching this should go look at
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the trailer as well. If they haven't already seen the movie,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: but word of mouth existed and was my, our point
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: is that it was incredibly powerful and it still is.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: It still is. And I can see it in the classroom, right?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Like when I can see it on my online classes, like,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: because I'll ask students, what are you, what are you watching?
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: And, They will, they will say things like, and I,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I actually saw this happen with backrooms where a substantial
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: number of students had watched the backrooms YouTube videos and
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: were eagerly awaiting the movie. And then a substantial number
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: of students who hadn't watched the movie in the first
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: week and were evangelizing the movie to, to others. So like, and, and.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Most of that was no Hollywood marketing department needed to
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: be part of that exchange.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: It was done before and was done at the word
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: of mouth level. Now, the word of mouth may be
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: partly on social media, but it was also kids in
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the dorms talking to each other.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Which is a thing that again it's just you know
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: you look at a movie like this and it wasn't
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: kids in dorms it was adults at coffee shops i
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: assume like what's funny about this movie at work right
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: like i mean again like to talk about more social
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: spaces less business ones but yeah like work or water
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: cooler it's funny like i don't know And again, we
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: haven't really talked about personal perception of the movie so much,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: but I love the world that this movie came out
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: in in the mid-2000s, where this is the kind of
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: movie that, like you said, people would go to the
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: theater and watch. Be like, we're going to go as
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: adults to see an adult dramedy. Like, how heady, right? Like,
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: what purpose and reason to go see a movie? And
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: I think what's funny is these Alexander Payne movies... Omaha,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Nebraska's own Alexander Payne, I should point out, his movies
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: all have a certain kind of feel to them tonally.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: And they are all, I think, of a piece. And
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: I think that that is an obviously when we talk
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: about auteurs and auteur theory, I think Alexander Payne has
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: a very specific way of making films and a very
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: specific kind of film that he tends to make. You know,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: if you look at his oeuvre, as it were, up
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: until this point, there were Citizen Ruth, Election, and About Schmidt.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Election and About Schmidt, they feel very much like Sideways
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: in terms of their tone. And then if you look
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: at the films after Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska, downsizing and
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: then the holdovers where he works with Paul Giamatti again
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: I think he as a director Alexander Payne this is
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: a kind of movie that he can make successful and
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: a kind of movie that he can make only he
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: can make which is in a serious but fun adult
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: dramedy that goes out of its way to respect the
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: audience in a way that yes it's the early 2000s
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: and we're in this kind of second phase of indie
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: filmmaking and these kinds of films are becoming more prevalent
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: and As Judd Apatow films are becoming prevalent on one
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: side where we have the fun adult comedy, we also
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: have this kind of more serious, I would say, maybe
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: black or dark adult comedy that has a little bit
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: more of an emotional depth to it. I'm not saying
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Judd Apatow films don't. It's just the emotional expectations of
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: the audience with this film. I think, is what brings
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: me as a viewer back, which is it does not
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: expect the audience to not engage with the characters emotionally.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: That's the expectation that it wants from you is to
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: be engaged with these characters. And any good adult dramedy
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: or comedy in this era is expecting that of the audience.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: And I think that this movie, yes, it's Oscar nominated
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: and we'll talk about what does the success mean in
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: terms of those kinds of qualifiers. But this is a
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: movie that for me, I think still exists within a
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: very weird space, which is it is successful 22 years
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: later for the same reason it was successful 22 years ago,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: which is The characters feel like real people because they're
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: being written by a director who has spent his entire
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: career working on projects or working with people who are
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: doing character pieces. And that's the focus.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: That's so important that, again, the Hollywood term that I
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: don't know whether people in Hollywood use the term anymore,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: but they used to say, we're making a prestige picture, right? Like,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: we hope we'll win the Academy Award. Like, we hope
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: we'll be a great vehicle for our star to really
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: get her acting chops out, you know, and show what
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: she can do and type of thing. And it can
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: be a more intimate movie. This movie, let's talk about
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: the characters for just a minute now and the situation.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: I like the way that Alexander Payne, and he did
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: this in About Schmidt, I felt, and I think he
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: did this in Election, which the two I could, you know,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I could add to our list if we have ever
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: want to.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: We probably should. I would love to cover all of
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: his films because he is a he's a very specific
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: kind of director who does a very specific kind of
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: thing really well. He is like we are not in
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: a lot of ways specialized in one specific thing, which
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: is adult character dramedy. And they work like gangbusters.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: And he in this film, we have these two main
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: characters and he's taken the form of a very familiar
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: story and Actually, we just had a gigantic film that
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: come out with the form of that story of the
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: hero's quest. And he's reduced it to a modern day
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: sort of semi-absurdist and a little bit sad about these
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: two men. One of them is getting married and they
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: decide to go have a last, you know, boys out
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: weekend together to Napa Valley. They're both one much more
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: than the other, but they're both wine people. One of them,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: one of us is what we used to call wine snob,
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: you know, and can talk about every kind of label.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: and they go on this drive right up there. And
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: we can use some terms like they discover themselves and
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: they learn things about themselves, but these are very flawed people.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Like a lot of his characters are deeply flawed. I
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: don't think he's, unless I've missed it, There's never been
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: a truly pure heroic character in any of his movies.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: They're always people who have... They're broken in some way.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: They're not successful. Or their success turned out to be
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: not what they thought it was. I feel like I
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: need to mention about Schmidt here where you.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Have a guy who.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: who was so, this is so 1990s and 2000s. He
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: was a company man, 50 years of whatever with the
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: same insurance company. And he got the dinner and the speech.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: And then he realizes it's over and everybody's moving on.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And his legacy is a bunch of boxes being thrown out.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: That's a literal scene in this. And likewise here, we
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: have Paul Giamatti's character, He's a would-be novelist who nobody
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: really thinks much of his novel, including his best friend, right?
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Right there.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: And he's teaching high school, middle school, I forgot exactly, English.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: And he's correcting student papers. And he's not where he
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: wants to be in life. He has this one thing, wine,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: that he's an expert in and he can show off
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: his skill sets in. He's blown his best relationships. with,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: with a woman who's getting married to somebody else. And
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: then you have the other, the other, uh, really what
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: a great, you know, we, we talked about how in movies,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: old Hollywood, they always used to P P pick people
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: who are physically different to be partners. You know, it's
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Abbott and Costello, right?
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: We're not going to moral and hard and Costello, right?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: So I, I was just so impressed by the, the
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: delineation of how these people are people we can know. We,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: we do know sometimes they're us. I have no problem
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: saying in some of his films, I go like, yeah,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: there's a little bit of me there. There's a wistfulness
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: or something that happened and I'm familiar with. And very
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: few directors are able to draw those sketches as well
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: as him. And that's why we go on this journey
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: with these two people who are, again, deeply flawed. They
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: do things I highly disapprove of.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: But they're not 14-year-olds. They're adults doing adult stupid things.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: I think you put it really aptly as well, which
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: is every character in an Alexander Payne film, at least
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: the ones that I've seen, they are so realistically drawn
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: and realistically created. And the screenplay allows them such free reign,
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: both the actors and the director, to... really play around
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: with expectations. And like you said, these two characters in
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: this film are deeply flawed. Neither one of them are, again,
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: like good people of what does that mean? Like, you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: everyone I think is various shades of gray. I think
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: some people are just darker gray than others in terms
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: of the things that they're allowed to do and willing
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: to do and, you know, allowing themselves to do. Obviously,
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: with Thomas Hayden Church's character, there's a a wider spectrum
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: in terms of his behavior than Paul Giamatti. But like
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: you've already alluded to, not only is it their physical
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: representation that is a hard juxtaposition line, but also just
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: the way that they act, the way that they act
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: towards other people, the way that they treat other people,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: the honesty with which they interact with each other and themselves.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: I think is another line of hard delineation. And I
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: think what's funny is, and you've already alluded to it,
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Alexander Payne really gets a lot of mileage in this
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: movie out of just the two of them being so different.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Because a lot of the scenes in this movie are
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: just the two of them sitting and talking.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: This is.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: again, an adult movie in the sense that, you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: we talked about this with Miranda on the Keddie episode
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: where it's like, is this a deep movie? And sometimes
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: deep can also mean boring because it's sitting there and
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: just asking you of the audience to engage with the
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: film intellectually and emotionally, less in a like, oh, look,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: there's a, there's a woman and she's jumping off of
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: a building and she's shooting at the Hulk and she's
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: falling through the air. Like that's engaging for some people
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: and exciting for some people. And I'm not diminishing that
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: at all. I'm more alluding to the fact that there
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: are also people who will find this kind of movie
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: engaging and stimulating where it's a conversation with two people
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: and you see the two of them kind of working
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: in and around each other. And it feels like one
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: friend is constantly trying to thwart the best intentions of
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: the other friend. It is the way I put it
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: yesterday when I was watching it to a friend of
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: mine who I have gone on me and, you know,
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: a bro's road trip before. Not as like a last hurrah,
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: but in a lot of ways.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: There is no designated driver in this relationship.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: No.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: They keep, certainly Thomas Hayden Church, he is so good
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: because he's playing again, a word that is not used
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: that much anymore. He's playing a cad.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: A total cad.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like he's in his 40s, he hasn't achieved anything
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: except maybe he's going to get he's an actor who's
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: appeared on a couple of infomercials, a couple of commercials,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: a couple of soap operas. He's not achieved success by
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: the standards of being a Hollywood actor and he's aging out.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: And so he's thinking about, you know, I guess I'd
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: get a job with my soon to be father-in-law's business, right?
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: But what is his quest? Okay, this is not the
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: quest for the Holy Grail. This is a quest, like,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: he wants to get some action before he's married, and
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: you're going like, what? What, buddy? That is the dumbest, wild,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: most self-destructive quest imaginable for an adult, you know, in
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: their 40s to do. And Paul Giamatti plays somebody who, again,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: he's sort of lost and listless, and he's trying to
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: do this, and it everything he's flailing around and they're
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: sort of bringing out the worst each other. On the
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: other hand, there's a, there's something beautiful there that they
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: actually do no matter how much they bicker and fight.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: You can tell that they're actually friends and they, they
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: sort of care about each other beyond.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: As much as they can. I think it's one of
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: these things where I think you've alluded to it so well. It's,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: They care about each other as much as they can,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: which is to say they care about each other as
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: much as they care about themselves, which is, you know,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: it vacillates on a spectrum because we see Paul Giamatti
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: caring about himself in some scenes and in other scenes,
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: just completely rejecting it. And again, like I alluded to before,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: the first time I saw this movie, I was married.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: And now the most recent time I've seen this film,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: I am divorced. I haven't spoken about it a lot
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: because it's my personal life. I don't speak about my
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: personal life very often. But I would not have had
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: any kind of angle to come at this film at
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: other than the one I came at it from before,
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: because that was just the life I had lived. And
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: now that I am in a completely different era of
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: my life, I see so much different things that I can,
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: you know, be empathetic towards the Paul Giamatti character about.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: Because again, like the self-destructiveness after big emotional events, especially
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: when you're not well adjusted the way Paul Giamatti is
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: written to not be, I think feels so, it feels realistic.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: It feels understandable. We don't need to see him talking
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: about his ex-wife over and over again. It kind of
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: just peeks through enough. And it's so smart and well
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: done that they just, they elicit empathy and sympathy at
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: times for both characters, but disgust at other times for
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: these exact same characters because they feel like real people
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: and that is not an easy thing to do by
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: any stretch of the imagination frankly it's one of the
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: harder things to do to create convincing characters especially in
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: this narrative this is it look this is the adaptation
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: of a book the book I'm sure does so much
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: more heavy lifting than this movie does because it's you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: it's three, four times as long. It takes twice as
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: long to read, three times as long to enjoy than
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: the movie does. The movie's two hours. The book is
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: not a two-hour read unless you read really fast. And
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: that's the thing that I appreciate about this movie is
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: it takes something that is so much deeper in a
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: narrative perspective literary fashion and is able to I also
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: think translate that into a film sense as well like
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: this is a really good adaptation of a book too
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: that is a success that is that exists outside of
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: all these other things that is a success that exists
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: outside of how much money it made and who directed
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: it and who was in it like it's a successful
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: adaptation of a book. And that in and of itself
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: is not a given, especially in this day and age when.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It was unpublished to when it was read. So it
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: was it was there was more of a creation there.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to add it's a big deal to spend.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I was reminding myself the running time of 127 minutes. OK,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: so spending two hours and seven minutes with people who
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: make you uncomfortable a lot, who are so awkward, who
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: say the wrong thing. I mean, There's misogyny here. There's self-destructiveness.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: There's stupidity. There's a long list of human foibles. But
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: yet we keep watching because part of it for me
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: is that there are consequences. This is not one of
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: those movies where people do stupid things. mean things, destructive things,
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: and just get away with it, laughing, running to Mexico
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: with a billion dollars or something like that. Thomas Hayden Church,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: it's not too much of a spoiler to say, he
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: has numerous painful consequences. for his idiotic, childish behavior. And
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: you sort of hope for both of them that at
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: the end of the film, they've grown a little bit. Like,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: they've made their transition from their teenage years into their
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: actual 40s. I hope that's the case there for them.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: I was actually saying, gosh, I wouldn't want to... I
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: don't think there should be a sideways two, but, like,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: I hope there wouldn't be... I hope there wouldn't be
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: much to talk about because, like, they've realized... That the
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: paths that they were on were not giving them anything
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: back like what they wanted. So maybe they've lucked out
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: that they made all these dumb decisions and come away chasing.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: That's what you sort of hope for any character, right?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: That there's an arc and that they've learned something. And
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: then when the credits roll, if they're still alive, they're
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: going to do better than what they did before.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Well, I can tell you that Sideways 2 and Sideways
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: 3 exist because they are books that were optioned to
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: be created after the success of this movie, because that's
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: the other thing that's crazy. We never got another one
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: of these movies, even though this movie made 10x its return,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: which it's because of Alexander Payne's un- uninterest in being
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: involved in a further kind of exploration of these characters
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: and i think that what you just alluded to is
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: why because by the end of this movie the hope
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: is that those characters have made that decision and learned
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: that lesson and i don't know if i need to
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: see any more because my hope is that they.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Have done franchise we don't yet know But.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Rex Pickett turned it into a franchise because there's like
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: three or four books now. And in the second book,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Jack's getting divorced and Miles is now successful. And it's
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: the inverse of what we had at the beginning of
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: this movie and what the vestiges of they're holding onto
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: in this movie, because that's the other thing. And I
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: think that that's the interesting thing about this movie for
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: me is the conversation that the movie has about what
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: does success look like? What does it mean to be successful?
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Because like we've already alluded to, Miles seemingly not successful.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Jack was successful, is successful, getting recognized in public for
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: having been a doctor on a soap opera. By his approximation,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: that's success. By yours and my approximation, that's success in
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: the rear view, not in front of me. And again,
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: I think that's what's interesting about this movie is It
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: has a conversation about what does that mean to be
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: successful or have that like midlife crisis for two people who,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: by the end of the movie, are no better off
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: in a lot of ways than they were at the beginning.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: In a lot of ways, one of them is worse off.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: And the other one, I think, again, could be trending upwards.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: We're not sure. Who knows where the last frame of
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: the movie leaves us. But that conversation about success, I think,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: is so interesting because you have two people who... do
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: and don't consider themselves successful grappling with what those things
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: mean in their lives in this midlife crisis that they're having.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Because I perceive this as like a midlife crisis movie
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: as well. Like a total midlife crisis movie. Yes, this
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: is their last hurrah. It would seem that Jack has
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: taken longer than others to get married because, you know,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Paul Giamatti's been married and divorced and Jack has never
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: even gotten married. So that's that interesting, again, like one
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: more wrinkle that they add to the character interactions is
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: this juxtaposition of the two and how they treat that
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: aspect of their own lives. The movie has a lot
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: of angles that it comes at things from, but I
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: think for me, the one that's very interesting is just
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: these two characters and what they define success as, both
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: internally and externally.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take another character, and Virginia Madsen plays Maya, who,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: like a lot of these characters, what I appreciate is
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: that a lot is implied but not filled in. And
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: we have to have everybody's backstory. We live in a
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: world now where everybody has to have an origin story
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: in which every single moment, toilet training and third grade bullying, whatever,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: is delineated explicitly, right? Nothing is implicit. But in adult movies,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: which they're still, as we've said, still exist, you can
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: have a lot filled in on the edges of the painting.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: They're outside the actual painting of what's going on. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: so Maya comes along and she's working as a waitress
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: at a restaurant, a server at a restaurant. And Paul
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Giamatti's character, Miles, knows her slightly. And of course, Thomas
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Hayden Church is immediately thinking about sex and say, hey,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: you know, you should you should try to. And We
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: get these implications, just this implicit knowledge of like, oh,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: she's divorced too. And she's looking for something. We don't
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: know exactly what she's looking for. Maybe working as a
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: server wasn't what she set out to do when she
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: went to college. But it's not fully defined. We're just
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: getting a portrait of a human. And we're immediately sympathetic,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: both Sandra Oh character and and the Maya character are
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: much more sympathetic than, of course, our two male characters.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: They really don't do anything terrible in this movie. On
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the other hand, I think in terms of women on screen,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: they are not just ciphers. They're not just reflections of
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: the male gaze or something. They're not just extras for
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the men to do something and react to them. they're
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: active agents with power. And in fact, Thomas Hayden Church's
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: accountability and some of the disasters that he encounters are
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: with the agency of Sandra Oh. And Miles realizes, oh
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: my gosh, this Maya is like the perfect person. I
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: need to live up to her expectations, not be a
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: little snitty 14-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. Again, they play
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: this important role in the lives and talking about required viewing.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: This is again, something that I think is so important
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: is that are your characters flesh fleshed out for us
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: on the screen, but that there is this subtext and
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: implicit text that you don't need to explain, but with
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: good acting and good writing enriches the experience.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: And, you know, I, I think for me and you,
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: you already alluded to this with, uh, with Thomas Hayden
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Church playing this like cad or this complete, just like,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: and you know, I love Thomas Hayden Church genuinely as
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: an actor. He was someone who I, at a very
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: early age, interacted with as an actor in Georgia the Jungle,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: where he played the villain in that film. But it was, again,
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: like he steals the show in that movie because he's
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: so funny. And in a movie full of people that
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: are really funny, Brendan Fraser, Leslie Mann, like you have
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: all these great actors in that movie, but Thomas Hayden
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Church sticks out because he is just, leaning into the
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: villainous kind of you know over the top nature of
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: the character and in this movie he's doing that same
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: thing he is able to lean into this role in
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: a way that just it doesn't feel like a role
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: It just feels like a fully embodied, real character. I'd
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: like to point out Thomas Aiden Church went to the
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: University of North Texas, which is very funny. That's where
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: I went to school. I don't think that he's on
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: the wall of the school like so many other people are.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: I know that they like to tout that dr phil
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: mcgraw went to the university of north texas as well
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: but i would uh gladly claim uh sideways own thomas
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: hayden church because he is for as good as paul
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: giamatti is in this movie we just need to take
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: a step back paul giamatti is great in everything like
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: literally when he played rhino in the amazing spider-man he
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: was great when he plays miles in sideways he's great
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: when he's in any number of things that he's been
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: in and again he's a i mean american splendor.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Is This guy played John Adam.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: He has a wide range as an actor. It's Thomas
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Hayden Church.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: He missed a range today.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Thomas Hayden Church is the surprising one in this movie
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: because he's the one who, it's not that he's not
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: a serious actor, but the expectation is that the depth
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: that he brings to the character will not be able
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: to match that of an actor of Paul Giamatti's caliber.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: And I think what's funny is every time I watch
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: this movie, I walk away with something else. Every time
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: I watch this movie, I focus on a different performance
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: and scenes because you can only often focus on one
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: performance in a scene and like focus on it and
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: focus on what the actor is like reacting to someone else. Like, Because,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: you know, if they're not talking, sometimes you're looking at
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: what the other person's saying as opposed to the way
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: someone is reacting to the way that the other actor
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: is talking. And I walk away the most recent watches
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: from this movie with just how terrible of a person
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: Thomas Hayden Church is in this movie. To the point
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: where at the end he's like, I'm nothing without my...
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: My fiance, like he's just acting. He's just acting. But
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: the thing is, Paul Giamatti knows that. And as his friend,
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: it's not that it's okay, but I love that the
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: movie essentially doesn't have him confronting him and going, stop acting,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: you're acting. It's that unwritten moment between the two characters.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: And it's earned because Thomas Aiden Church up until this
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: point has been so engaging that you feel like he
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: can get away with this one moment with Paul Giamatti,
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: where it's a complete, again, lie. He's lying there in
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: that moment, and Paul Giamatti knows it, but we as
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: the audience are at the point with the characters now
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: where it's like, you know what? Paul Giamatti's character, this
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: is the put-up-or-shut-up moment as his friend, and he does
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: what he needs to as his friend in that moment, which,
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: as a viewer... I get to that point with the
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: characters and it doesn't feel fake. It feels earned. But
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: I appreciate that the movie doesn't have Giamatti confront Hayden
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: Church in that moment because there's something so just slightly
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: lovable about Thomas Hayden Church. That's the bailout moment of
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: this movie is he's not completely beyond reproach. He's just
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: 99% beyond reproach.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: And I found myself rooting for that 1%. This is
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: something that we will discuss in many of the films
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: that that we see in one of the theories of
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: human psychology goes back thousands of years is that you're
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: born with a certain character and your life simply allows
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: you to express it at a greater or lesser level.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: And then there's others who will argue that like people
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: can change.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: And of course, many, many horrible things have been caused
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: in the world by people who didn't change and people
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: who did change. But I do think, These performances are
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: so good that despite the fact that if you listed
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: what these people did and just said, yeah, I know
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: this guy and he did this, this and this. Objectively,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: you'd say, like, why would you spend any time with that?
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: But let's go back to Miles, Paul Giannetti's character. OK,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: he steals money. He forgets. He basically forgets his mother's birthday,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: shows up with some half, you know, a card he
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: scribbled on in the doorway. And then he steals money
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: from her. His mother, obviously on some sort of fixed
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: income assisted living. Now, again, we don't know. We don't know.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Was she a terrible mother? And he always resented her
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: and the mother didn't protect her, him from abusive. I mean,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: we could fill in some things there. It's not relevant.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: The point is that on the screen, and this is
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: sort of an ethic that we'll talk about. I like
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: to only interpret what, it's my preference. It's not like
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: a rule for me or my students to always follow.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: But like, I like to only interpret what's on the screen.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I don't like those internet discussions where somebody says, oh,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: you know, the director explained this later. Or in comic
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: book number 37, that's it. And I know that's not
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: what you were doing with.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: No, but it is. Yeah, but that's, you know, off-screen
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: stuff is not really pertinent, I think. It's been made
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: pertinent now, but it's not.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: This is a complete movie to me and a complete
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: arc of a character. And It actually is interesting. There
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: have been movies where I've gone, hey, gosh, I'd like
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: to hear more about that. I mean, I did see
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I remember
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: as a young person going, boy, I'd like to see
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: another movie. Little did I know where it would eventually lead.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: But the idea of beating a franchise to death was
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: not there. in the zeitgeist of the culture at that
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: time anyway. But in this one, you list what they've done.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: It's awful, but you know, you, You come away, and again,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: this is a tribute to the director's storytelling and to
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: the whole, everybody in the cinematography, the music. Let's talk
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: about Napa Valley. Actually, I was reading, it was filmed
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: in a couple of, they did construct a soundstage. It
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: wasn't like all in the thing, but the California set,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: it was actually filmed in the San Ynez Valley, but
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: it's adjacent to the idea of this beautiful backcountry California
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: city rolling hills, a little bit dry, the perfect wine country, right?
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: And you're okay with that. Like, I'm okay spending two
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: hours with these cads, flawed, sometimes jerks who say things
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: I would never approve of. I think it's something, and
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: that's a great testament to a movie that we're willing
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: to do that.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Well, and I think, you know, you've alluded to that
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: because there are plenty of films that the characters are
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: written a certain way, the way that they're written is
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: intentionally off-putting, and me as the audience receives them as such,
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: and I am off-put by them, and I do not
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: want to see them on screen. But that's the intention
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: of the screenwriter and the director. And that's a success,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: and I can't really fault them for doing that. A
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: film that always comes to mind is Casino. because Sharon
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: stone in that movie is just the worst, but that's
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: the point. And I think here we have that kind
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: of dial turning left and right, kind of with, with
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: some level of not interchangeability, but I think some ease
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: or kind of looseness, because like you said, there, these
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: characters exist on a, on a range because we have
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: to like them by the end of the movie. We
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: have to like them in some capacity, at least Paul
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: Giamatti's character. I, And I am curious kind of your thoughts, because, again,
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: this is just going off of what we see on
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: screen and how Alexander Payne presents everything. To me, it
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: seems like by the end of the film, we're not
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: meant to like Thomas Hayden Church's character. There's that redemptive
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: moment and he kind of passes by it, flies over it,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: chooses not to take advantage of it. And that juxtaposition
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: at the end is why we continue on with Paul
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: Giamatti's character kind of into the coda of the film.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: But Thomas Hayden Church's character, I think, is meant to
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: be that kind of shepherd, the Virgil to Giamatti's Dante,
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: as it were. But then by the end of it,
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Giamatti has to continue on on his own because he
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: realizes he is going to hold himself accountable as opposed
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: to Thomas Aiden Church, who there's no accountability with his
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: character whatsoever in any capacity.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, I guess being a teacher, it's part of my
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: paycheck to always have hope that the student who struggled
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of class and maybe didn't turn in
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: the best paper and seems to not be getting the material,
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: no matter what you do and say in office hours
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: or during your teaching time, we'll pull it out, right?
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think if you become, and this is actually,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: this is one of the reasons I sort of semi-identified
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: with Miles was that, of course, he's a teacher, right?
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't seem to be a ridiculously cynical teacher either,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: which I sort of admired. The whole film, among the
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: The negative things he doesn't do is bad mouth his
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: students and say, yeah, I got to read all these
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: stupid essays from these students, which is a teacher stereotype
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: in movies and television about the teacher who's given up teaching.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: So he's not Robin Williams with the students jump. I
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: bet he's not the kind of teacher where the students
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: jump up on their desk and burst into spontaneous applause.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: But but like you could see, like, he's actually probably
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: a pretty good teacher and has good discussions in class.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: So.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: I felt that there's more hope for Miles than for Jack.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: But as I said, I use the term 1%. I
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: have 1% hope that Jack might go, wow, this marriage
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: with this beautiful woman that I have made still possible
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: through the intercession of my one last burst of stupidity
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: on my part. But then also my friend covering for
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: me is my last chance at real adulthood and something
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: close to happy, real happiness and real success. So 1%
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: is maybe 30% for Miles and maybe 1% for Jack.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: And what's interesting is like we've kind of already talked
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: about with these characters and them being so complex in
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: that moment at the end where we see Thomas Hayden
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Church and he's You know, I'm nothing without my fiance. And,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: you know, I need you to get my wallet for me. And,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: you know, if you don't get my wallet for me,
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: they're going to find out I did all this. It's
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: like I wager that your wife's going to find out
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: eventually one way or another. It has nothing to do
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: with this wallet. And that's the funny thing. I think
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: that's why Giamatti ends up doing what he does, because
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: he's doing his friend a solid. in spite of the
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: fact that he knows that his friend is the way
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: that he is, because even in spite of having his
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: face bashed in by a motorcycle, by Sandra Oh, in
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: a scene that is, like, a shocking amount of violence
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: in a film that has no violence up to that point, like,
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: she really goes off on him. He still continues to,
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of revel in his bad ways. I mean,
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: to the point where he's literally hitting on another waitress
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: the same... With the... The nose tape a la Jack
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: Nicholson in Chinatown. sitting there with Paul Giamatti trying to
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: hit on this waitress who just happens to be married
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: to MC Ganey, which is very funny. And all of
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: that kind of absurdity surrounding, you know, Paul Giamatti sneaking
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: into someone's house and seeing these two people having sex
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: and like stealing the wallet back and all this kind
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: of wild Coen Brothers-esque kind of adventure. I think it's
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: a very interesting kind of moment in this movie where,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: like you said, there should have been a off-the-gas moment
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: for Jack long before... Sandra Oh is beating him over
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: the head with a motorcycle helmet or MC Ganey is
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: chasing after him naked in the street. neither of those
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: things were enough. And they should have been, but they're not.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: And they should have been, but they're not. And like
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: you said, it's that 1% versus the 30% of kind
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: of redeemability or understanding with these characters. And the fact
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: that there's any of that in this movie is such
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: a success to the screenwriter that they're able to get
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: us to understand or sympathize and empathize with these characters
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: that are doing these really, I wouldn't say deplorable, but
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: kind of detestable things. I mean, again, Thomas Aiden Church's
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: character would not be the first, last, or only man
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: to do what he did. But the unrepentant nature with
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: which he does things is kind of the juxtaposition. Because
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: Paul Giamatti almost overcorrects for how bad he feels constantly.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: You see that in that scene where he calls his
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: ex-wife and he's kind of talking to her. like she's
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: still his significant other two years later. That, I think,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: is a stereotype that does work for this movie because
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Paul Giamatti is able to play that sad sack so well.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: But like you said, he is a complicated sad sack,
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: which I think is... such a successful turn of character
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: in this movie i will point out paul giamatti the
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: only one of the of other than sandra oh i
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: would say of the three main characters virginia madsen thomas
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: hayden church paul giamatti Is Giamatti the only one who
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: wasn't nominated for an Oscar? Which is weird. Is this
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: just like what they expected of Paul Giamatti in the
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: early 2000s? This is just the kind of characters that
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: he plays, so he's doing it really well. He wasn't
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: nominated for Best Actor, which is surprising. Because he's, again,
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: unsurprisingly really good in this movie. But this character has
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: some nuance to it that the sad sack divorced guy
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: sometimes doesn't have.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was reading... A little bit of the
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: background in the film, and I honestly had never studied
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Alexander Payne as a director. I mean, I've watched Election
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: and About Schmidt, and I'm happy to talk about them,
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: but I hadn't thought of him that much as sort
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: of a director of, I won't say the little people,
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: of stories of people who wouldn't normally be featured in
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: movies as the protagonists. But I was reading that what
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: he wanted to do here was reminiscent, and this was
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: a film, and again, I'm not that old, but I
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: remember in the 70s and 80s, there was still a
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: reference to a movie, 1961, divorce Italian style. And it
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: actually sort of embodied a type of film that apparently
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Paine wanted to hit, and you've described it, is this
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: mixture of physical comedy and drama, And verbal sparring, often
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: with a character who you don't sympathize with because of
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: their actions, but because there's a certain sadness. And they're
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: not successful as a cat. Let's put it this way.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: They keep trying to be a debonair, fooling around and divorce,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: adultery person. type of situation, but they're not very good
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: at it. And so you have these mixed feelings about them.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: And boy, he was able to pull that off in
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: an American context very well. And I think that that's, again,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: there's some films which are harder to make than others.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: And I don't mean like you have to shoot in
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: Antarctica versus shooting in a stage in Hollywood, just to
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: pull off those layers and complexities. And I think that's
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: partly why we're saying this is required viewing is that
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: A character study can be officious and boring and pretentious
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: and just have people talking for two hours about, I
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: don't know, politics or art, and we cannot be interested
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: in this. But I am deeply interested in these people talking.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not cheering for them all the time, but I
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: care about them, which was a very, very difficult thing
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: to achieve.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: Being able to be directly emotionally engaged with a character
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: in a movie, I think, especially in this day and age,
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: in the 2026 lens to take, again, to do our
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: 360 holistic view of things, to look at this movie
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: in 2026 and realize that these kinds of movies do
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: still come out in theaters and they do still have
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: big name actors in them. And they do still get nominated.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: But it just doesn't feel like they're making the splash
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: that this movie did anymore. And that's I mean, there's
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: a whole host of reasons. 2004 is such a different
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: time in terms of the. level of access to things
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: I mean we're just in the like right before if
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: not like pre Netflix if not early Netflix days we're
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: not in the streaming world by another like you know
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: four to five years so this was a again like
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: there were only a certain amount of things that you
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: could go watch at any one time and this was
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: a movie that was in theaters that you could go
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: watch there were other things in theaters you could go watch.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: And people went and saw this movie in droves. And
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: it's not because, like we said, it's a big, explosive,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: action-packed movie. It's a big, explosive character movie where these
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: characters are making big choices and doing, again, comedic, sad,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: darkly humorous things. And... we are wanting to see how
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: the other characters react to those things. And that is
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: the big, climactic, bombastic explosions in this movie's kind of
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: area of things. And that, for me, is a success
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: in more ways than... a Marvel movie making double its budget. Like,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: this movie is able to get me, like you've already said,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: to engage with and empathize with people that I see
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: some of myself in, but in a lot of ways,
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: like you've already alluded to, if I knew someone like
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: Thomas Aiden Church's character, I probably would not be friends
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: with them. I would keep them... You know, I might
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: be friends with them, but I would keep them at
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: an arm's length, is what I would say. Like, you know,
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: you wouldn't be someone... Go ahead.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Again, as you pointed out, we're not seeing the lion
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: in winter. We're seeing the people in midlife, right?
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: And so you can imagine... In fact, they allude to
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: this a little bit. Like, you can imagine their roommates
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: in college. I mean, there are friendships which are... You're
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: thrown together friendships and your friendship... Like, hey, I'm in
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: college and this is my roommate. And like, all right,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: we'll hang out together. And this sort of inertia there.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: And you can imagine... that maybe in the younger versions
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: of themselves, they had more fun, and it turned out better,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: you know, in terms of what they were trying to do.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: These are the kind of friendships which, like, serious people
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: should drop at some point in their life.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Well, and that, I think, for me, is kind of
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: the thing as, and, you know, I think it's also important,
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: you know, as a, I think that this film is
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: multifaceted in its success because I think, for me, also,
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: we can talk about the re-watching of a film and
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: we've talked about this a little bit I saw this
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: film when I was in my mid-20s either right before
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: I got married or right after I got married I
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: am now divorced and my ability to comprehend the Miles
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: character I think has changed so much in that time
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: because there are things that just that character embodies that
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: you can only understand if something like this has happened
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: to you or you've been engaged in something like this
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: and it would seem that Paul Giamatti character is still
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: opining his wife who is no longer with him his
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: ex-wife and again like that is a very specific kind
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: of divorced person on top of everything else not every
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: person who's divorced is opining their partner plenty of people
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: 50 percent of the people even are the ones who left.
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: So Paul Giamatti is the one who got left clearly or,
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: you know, something to that effect.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Well, he drove her away. I mean, he was pretty clear.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: But she left him is my point. Like she left him.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: Him driving her away is something that he has to realize,
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: which I think, again, like that's the growth of the character.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: We don't know if he's ever said that before. but
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: we see him say it in the film, in the
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: week of the road trip, this kind of last hurrah,
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: this dark midnight of the soul spread out over a week.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is one of those, we're not coming
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: back from this trip the same people we left as,
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: is kind of what they don't realize. The transformative nature
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: of a road trip, I think for me, is still
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: a very romantic notion and one that And I don't
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: believe in a lot of like romantic things anymore as
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: an adult, because like you said, as an adult, we
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: have to have hard conversations with ourselves about do we
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: want to have these people in our lives anymore? Do
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: we want to be friends with someone like this? Do
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: I want to be friends with someone who gets me
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: into these wacky and wild situations where I have to
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: go and do this stuff? I'm I have a tolerance
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: maybe that's higher than others. But I also if I
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: was being asked to break into someone's house to steal
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: someone's wallet back, I'd probably say this is my line,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: my friend. This is on you. Your bed, you made it,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: you lay in it. To be an adult versus to
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: be a young adult or an old teenager or whatever
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: you want to call your mid-20s or early 20s, this
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: film just doesn't have the same impact then that it
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: does now when you become an adult and you start
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: to have regrets. And you start to look back on
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: the things that you maybe didn't do or missed out on.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And in your 20s, there's no room for that because
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: you're kind of you're facing forward, not looking back. And
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: the longer life goes on, the harder it is to
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: stop yourself from looking back, because at some point and
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: you may not know when this is, you're going to
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: crest over the top of the halfway point of your life.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: And all you have is looking back because there's very
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: little left in terms of looking forward. It just time anyways,
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: not in terms of quality or anything else. And that's
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: kind of the conversation that Thomas Hayden Church has with
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: Paul Giamatti is, you know, do you want to keep
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: looking back or do you want to even for a
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: second look forward? And we see that reinforced to Giamatti
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: over and over again. Sandra Oh's character is like, hey,
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: Maya really likes you. You should call her back. And,
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: you know, his mom is like, you should really find
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: someone to like, you know, be be there for you
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: and be in love with. And it's like you can't
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: have that without the divorce. You can't have those moments
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: without the yearning or wanting or lacking or, like you said,
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: pushing away of someone else the thing that you want
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: and you pushed it away unknowingly or knowingly. Paul Giamatti
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: would never cop to knowing about it ahead of time.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: But after the fact, he might. And we see that
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: in the movie. And I think that that's... Another success
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: of this movie is seeing characters have growth and knowing that, yes,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: they might just be fictional characters. And I've thought about
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: this as myself, as someone who's gone through kind of
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: my own growth in the last couple of years. People
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: sometimes ask, like, was there a catalyzing moment? Was there
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: a catalyst? And like, yeah, the catalyst was I just
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: didn't want to be like this anymore. And sometimes it
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: is just that. They don't necessarily have to go to
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: Napa Valley for that to be the case. Sometimes there
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: is kind of an exterior catalyzing thing. Like watching your
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: friend implode even further his life when he's on the
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: precipice of what so many people would consider to be security,
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: financial security. It's clear that Thomas Hayden Church's fiance has money,
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: her family. has money. He does not have money. There's
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: a job for him after the marriage. All these things
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: that most of us would be looking forward to as
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: things that are benefits, he is rankling at. And Paul
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Giamatti looks at that and goes, well, I wouldn't be
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: rankling at that if I had that. Thomas Aiden Church
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: can't take his own advice that he's giving to Paul Giamatti,
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: which is look forward, not backwards, because the reason Thomas
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: Aiden Church's character is doing what he's doing in the
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: film is because he's trying to hold on to that
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: fame and notoriety that he had. He can't take his
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: own advice. Thomas Aiden Church can. And what's funny is
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: by the end of the movie, we see Paul Giamatti
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: has seemingly taken the advice of someone who could not
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: take their own advice. And change can happen. Again, Napa Valley, sure,
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: maybe it was that transformative moment for this character, but
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: you can change and you don't have to have a
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: reason why. Wanting to change is reason enough.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes it's not the advice necessarily that somebody's
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: giving the words. It's that you see by their example.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: And it could be a good example, like somebody you
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: modeled and we use the word role model and mentor,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: or it could be a bad example. And I think
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Paul Miles is... looking at his friend's behavior that he
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: probably was okay with when they were 20.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: It was fun then. It was a lark then.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: And there were fewer consequences, and there was less of
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: an end point there. And he's saying, now that he's
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: in his mid-40s, like, yeah, this doesn't work anymore. And
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: your broken nose and the fact that you had to
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: run naked through a field to get away from an angry...
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: husband and that I have to go steal a wallet.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: You have to crash a car. It just didn't make
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: a list of the absurdist, you know, pratfall sitcom, again,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Italian comedy, crazy things that happen here, but they're each
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: sort of hammering home this life lesson is like, okay,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: it's time to be an adult. Accept who you are,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: what you are. It's okay to have ambitions, but don't
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: be delusional. Don't lie. Don't heard other people to try
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: to achieve your dreams. I mean, part of the word arc, again,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: I always just love to look at words and, Okay,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: when we say a character has an arc, there's a
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: slight problem with the word arc because if you actually
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: draw an arc, it's heading down.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: Right, it comes back the other way.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: Right, because most arcs you start. So arc is a
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: good word, but what you want is you're hoping that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: there's a trend line at the end of the movie
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: where the character has learned and is on their way up.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, and it's okay if there were bumps along
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: the way.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: Growth is not linear. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: So I, I think that this is one of those
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: movies where I, I think part of the huge box
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: office was a lot of adults identified with this moment
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: of like, what do I let go of my, from
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: my youth? And that's a principle of a lot of religions,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: by the way, as well as the, the idea of like,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: there's things that make sense when you're a child and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: there's things that make sense when you have the responsibilities
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: of an of an adult. And so I think people
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: identified with that. They're not just the beautiful, the scenery
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: and the situation and the humor that just many funny
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: scenes where you're laughing. I laughed out loud in many
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: times in this movie, usually, I mean, it's a very
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: old fashioned laughing out loud. Some, I read somewhere recently
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: on the, on Reddit, somebody asked like, how old is humor?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: And of course we can go back thousands of years
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: and see plays by the Greeks and the Romans that
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: were meant to be comedies. And then you go back further,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: and I am absolutely sure that when some Cro-Magnon tripped
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: over a leaf, the other guy standing around laughed at him. Hey, Gorky,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: you really looked funny there. So I'm pretty sure physical
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: humor is as old as consciousness. Right. Maybe dolphins and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: elephants are laughing at each other and us sometimes. But
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: the point is that through great storytelling, laughter can be self-instructive.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: And so we're left hopeful, remonstrated ourselves, like, you know,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be these guys. And what else
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: can you ask for our film?
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: What's funny, I think, about our entire discussion of this
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: movie is we have not mentioned the whine of it
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: all at all. The fact that Pinot Noir ended up
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: becoming such a popular wine for years after this film.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, the wine, look, you can look
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: at the wine as a number of things in this movie.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: I think, and this is just me, that one of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: the greatest successes of this movie is the fact that
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: there are scenes that allude to the fact that Paul
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: Giamatti is a Pinot Noir grape and that he needs
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: all this kind of specialized, it's okay to need special
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: attention and care and need, and sometimes certain kinds of
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: things need more special care and attention than others and
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: i think that it's very interesting that chiamati really understands
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: and kind of empathizes with the plight of the pinot
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: noir grape and we kind of hear this kind of
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: like him waxing kind of melodically about it over and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: over again throughout the film and that's because i think
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: he like him like the grapes and wine that he
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: loves so much that the grapes make i think he
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: feels like a pinot noir grape or wine which is
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: you know The kind of care and attention that goes
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: into 90% of people is not something that's going to
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: be super effective for him. He needs something a little
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: bit more, a little bit different. And I think it's
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: just brilliant that the movie is able to weave that
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: in through the film. Because like you said, to go
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: back to your initial point about the advertising for the movie,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: the advertising of the movie makes this look like a
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: wine movie. And I'm not saying it's not a wine movie,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: but the wine is really kind of incidental. The wine
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: is a thing that is used to, like, make the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: scenery more interesting, make where they are more engaging, but
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: the wine of it all is just a thing that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: one of the characters happens to be kind of really
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: passionate about. But this is not a winemaking movie, but boy,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: the trailer for the movie would make you think it is.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I always think about that famous Latin phrase, in
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: vino veritas, in wine, there's truth and, uh... as in
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: like when people are under diminished capacity, they say things
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: that they normally wouldn't say. I think the research on
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: this is that sometimes you say things which you're not thinking,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: you're just in diminished capacity. And sometimes, yeah, you do
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: say things which you've kept inside you. But the wine,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: to me, is a great tool because it's obviously one
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: of the bonds of their friendship, right?
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: Differently. Like, Miles is a true cognoscento. He's like, he
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: takes such pride that he has this bottle and that bottle.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: And of course, his interest in Maya is not just physical,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: is that apparently she knows wine. And so he's talking
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: about wine. So he's in love with her wine intellect.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there certainly were, again, I'm sure for thousands,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: somebody in ancient Babylonia was a Mede snob or something
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: like that. But like, it is itself a fascinating example
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: of conversations which don't have intrinsic interest to the audience.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: If you think of maybe people in their 30s and 40s,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: 50s who watched the film back then, as opposed to today,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: wine was much more popular than it is today. There's
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: a sort of challenge for the wine industry and Generation
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: Z who are drinking more mixed drinks and other things.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: But wine was like the middle-aged person's drink.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Right. Wine with dinner. In fact, it's always interesting. And
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: we're going to we've talked about this in some other
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: films about like the amount of consumption. I think if
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: you go to restaurants today, you don't see people ordering
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: four bottles of wine.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: With dinner anymore, as much as you don't see people
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: smoking as much anymore. But the wine brings out character,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: sort of teases out in the same way that Miles
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: gives all these wonderful little speeches about like, can you
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: smell the. faintest little soupçon of asparagus, and he's talking
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: about how to swirl it in the glass, and will
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: it sniff, and just his physical description. This great actor,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: we've talked about this before, how I think some actors
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: are full-body actors, and like, boy, Paul Giamatta, you feel
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: his his shins acting when he's describing his love affair
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: with mine.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: Is there any better actor who does the hang dog
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: then Paul Giamatti he does the hang dog face so
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: well just like the Charlie Brown like lowering of the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: head in the walking forward and just. the pooching out
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: of the gut, just looking sad and pathetic in a
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: way that Paul Giamatti is able to do. And I
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: don't know if it's his eyes or what it is
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: about his facial expression. It's his eyes, right? It's totally
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: his eyes. He has some of the most expressive eyes
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: of any male actor in Hollywood. And I think that
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: he's just, you can see in his eyes, because a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: lot of the film is shots of him looking at
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: something else and you don't see what he's looking at
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: because what he's looking at is unimportant. you're seeing him
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: and how he's processing the world because you understand his
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: character so kind of inherently, especially if you're watching this
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: movie from where I was watching it from. And that's
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: what I love, like you said, about Paul Giamatti as
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: an actor. He is just able to elicit the exact
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: reaction he wants with every part of his body. And
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: I think Thomas Hayden Church the same way. Like, it's
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: just what the expectation is is completely different. You know,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: Thomas Hayden Church in those moments where he's with Sandra
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: Oh and her mom and her daughter, it's like, this
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: guy is so... full of it entirely full of it
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: but they don't realize that and even if they do
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: realize it it's they don't care because if if you
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: want to be fooled and someone fools you can you
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: really be upset and i'm not saying that they wanted
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: to be fooled but They gave themselves over emotionally to
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: Thomas Hayden Church, and he was not playing fair, which
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: you have if your expectation is everybody's going to play fair.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Some people aren't. And that's, you know, Thomas Hayden Church's
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: character is just not playing fair. And I think that's
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: Paul Giamatti's character. You know, if I were him, I'd
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: be done with it. But again, that's the point that
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: he has to get to as the character. And I
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: like that there is this back and forth with him.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: in Thomas Hayden Church and they feel like real people
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: which is just in filmmaking it's so much harder than
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: it sounds because people are complex and difficult and easy
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: at times and you want people to be successful and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: redeemable but there are some people that just aren't and
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: it just is some people don't have arcs as he
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: says in The Sopranos where's my arc and it's like
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: well maybe you don't get.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: One into a ditch is your arc yeah.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah that's your arc I guess this is sort.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: Of my wrap up comment that this playing off of
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: what you just said there is that you're sitting down
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: to write a book novel narrative or screenplay and one
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: challenge is how do I have the audience care about
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: what happens to a character and I guess this is
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: the suggestion that I make to my students is that
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: if the answer is a simple one then it's probably
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: not the right answer so for example it is so
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: easy to say okay Well, their parents were killed by
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: a criminal, and so the character dedicates himself to fighting crime. Okay, well,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: you know, that worked once.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: But if you're doing it today, you got to come
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: up with something else. And the more seriously you want
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: to be taken as... a creator and we've agreed that
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: there is no auteur for a film, like every aspect
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: of a film, but like more seriously, you want to
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: be taken as a writer or cinematographer or anything is
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: you have to think are, even if it's a superhero,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: this is sort of what gets me is that somehow
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: the creation of superhero or some home, sometimes this is
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: true in horror and science fiction as well. There seems
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: to be this theory that we can throw away the
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: normal rules of characterization that I've just said, where you
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: have to find complexity and depth and think about the
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: grays and not make them so underlined and underscored and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: headlined and just so simplistic. And this is a great
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: teaching tool. I think that's what I'd like to end
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: on is that I I have mentioned this film. I've
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: talked about this film. At least once in one class,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: in a graduate class, I've assigned this film as an
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: exemplar of character building and storytelling. And nothing we've done here,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: if you haven't watched this movie, really spoils the movie
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: because you're not getting plot points as the most important thing.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: you're getting impressions of getting to know people over two
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: hours and seven minutes.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: And I agree. If you go into this movie with
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: the expectations set in the right direction, which is a
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: adult character drama, comedy, dramedy, as they would have called it,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: or do call them, I don't know. It's a comedic drama.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it was portmanteaus or unnecessary. I
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: find this to be, like you said, a really good
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: example of a maximalist approach to character building with a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: minimalist budget. and a minimalist approach in a lot of
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: the other ways, they get a lot of mileage out
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: of a little, because this is effectively a stage play.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: It is. You don't have to set it in all
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: these stunning vistas of Napa to get the point across.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: Like you said, this is a character drama about characters
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: interacting with each other in a believable, engaging way. And
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: for that, it is a success. All the other things
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: are secondary successes, but The main success, like you said,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: is creating two characters that feel lived in and real
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: and we can empathize with and detest all in the
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: same breath because they feel real, like real people. Because
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: people are complex. And I think the best movies give
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: us a window into our own complexity and allow people
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: to say, yeah, it's okay to be complex and it's
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: okay to have multitudes and be multifaceted. You don't have
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: to just be one thing. And no one person is
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: one thing to everyone. But I would say if you
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: are worried about growth in life or changing, a film
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: like this can make you realize that sometimes change is hard,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: but change is worth doing. Because on the other side
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: of it, like we've already alluded to, Paul Giamatti has
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: found someone in this film that... is perfect for him
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: in every way. All of those ways more or less
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: have nothing to do with physicality. It's all about engagement
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: mentally and emotionally, and that's what the film is preaching,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: is mental and emotional engagement with the audience, which is
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: an impressive thing to pull off in two hours and
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: seven minutes with a $ 10 million budget. We may not
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: be talking about a film that is as economical with
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: its budget on the next episode, but this was one
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: good one to go out with because on the next episode,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: we're gonna be talking about a film that's more or
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: less known for having a huge budget and being more
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: or less excommunicated by the studio Before it even came out,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about Waterworld, which is a
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: film of another stripe entirely, Dr. Perlmutter. It has nothing
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: to do with wine drinking. Shocking, I know. Or drinking water, even. Well,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: sort of drinking water, I guess. What do you do
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: with a world full of water that you can't drink?
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd think there'd be more wine bottles stored and
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: at least low enough in the ocean. Yeah, Waterworld is
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: not a small, intimate character study.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: Is it? No, it's not. It is 180 from where
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: we are now. But, uh, I'm super excited to talk
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: about it with you on the next episode of Required Viewing,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: which is on the CultureCast subfeed. So that's where you
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: can find it if you want to listen to more
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: episodes of this show. This show comes out every Thursday.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: The CultureCast comes out every Wednesday. And other shows on
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: the Weirding Way Media Network come out all the days
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: of the week. So if you want to hear them,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: head on over to WeirdingWayMedia.com, where they're at the projection booth.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: Be it.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: The Feminine Critique, be it Fomentories, be it Midnight Viewing,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: those podcasts, or even 80s TV Ladies. Those can all
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: be found over at weirdingwaymedia.com. Like, rate, and review the
• 1:15:28
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• 1:15:31
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• 1:15:36
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• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: to help the show out. Yeah, come on back for
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: the next episode when we talk about Waterworld, a complete
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: 180 pivot from Sideway.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: So so