Latest / Off The Shelf With Phil and Dave- A Movie Review Podcast / 1999's The Insider

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1999's The Insider · Off The Shelf With Phil and Dave- A Movie Review Podcast

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to Off the Shelf with Phil and Dave, Movie
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  talk show where each week one of us takes a movie off the shelf,
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  presents it to the other end, discusses it at length.
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  This week we've got coming off of my Shelf, 1999's The Insider
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  starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer,
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  directed by Michael Mann, written by Michael Mann and Eric
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  Roth. David, here we are once again.
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  Yes. How are you doing?
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  What's? New what's happening and do.
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  You care this week how I'm doing.
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  This, just this once, Yeah, yeah.
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  First of all, I actually watched The Outsider by mistake.
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  Oh, Jason Bateman. You know what, I meant to look
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  up who was in it, so this would be funnier, but I totally we.
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  Could watch The Outsiders and that's an old Francis Ford
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  Coppola movie with Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe and see Thomas
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  Howell. Wow.
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  On Broadway, currently OK. Also, The Outsider is a Ben
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  Mendelssohn and Jason Bateman TV series based on a Stephen King
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  novel. Well, there you go.
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  You didn't watch any of it? No.
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  No, I did not. I did actually watch the Insider
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  wonderful like you requested. Yep, 99 like you said.
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  What a strong year, movies, great year.
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  How many times we've talked about 99?
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  We will continue to because it just doesn't.
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  It never fails to deliver. Well, eventually we'll run out.
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  There's a podcast I listened to called Podcast Like It's 99.
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  It's still going. I ran for about 5 years, so if
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  we really wanted to stop talking about 1999, we got a long way to
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  go. OK, well, thank you for bringing
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  it off the show, Phil. I had not seen the movie before.
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  I really hadn't heard about it. Wow.
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  Yeah, I don't know what I was doing in 99.
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  I was up to no good. I was up to no good.
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  I was just out of high school driving around in a car.
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  That's what you do and it's aimlessly.
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  Not me, but. Not you, Yeah.
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  Yes. Was cheap back then.
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  You know, you could drive around and just fill it up at 46.9, you
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  know, not anymore. No.
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  We're cruising. No, the cruising days are
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  stopped. Well, I mean, why cruise?
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  I'm not going for babes, you know.
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  Yeah, not that I was back then. So now, knowing that I really
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  have no history with this movie, I want to throw it back to you,
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  of course like I normally do, and tell me why this particular
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  film, why now and how are you? Doing very well, thank you for
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  asking. Good.
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  This movie in 1999 was Revelation.
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  I was familiar enough as a Michael Mann movie.
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  I had seen The Last of the Mohicans thanks to the Black Box
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  in the early 90s and really liked that.
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  Prior to this, I had seen Heat in the theater, which I really
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  enjoyed. I haven't seen it, but I might
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  be on my shelf. Actually, that's very good.
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  I have it there in 4K. Of course, it was lovely.
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  I really liked it. Heat was lovely.
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  It was a lovely movie. OK.
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  And this was a follow up and one of my best friends at the time,
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  Lawrence, whom I've mentioned a couple of.
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  Larry. Absolutely.
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  He was a huge Michael Mann fan and he and I both went to it and
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  other than a couple of issues with the camera work back then,
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  I remember. Vividly you've grown since.
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  I thought it was brilliant and I really thought performances were
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  astounding and. Then or now?
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  Then and now. But I remember being
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  disappointed because as great a year, movie year as 1999 was,
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  the 1999 Oscars, or the 2000 Oscars technically were really
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  not all that good. That's ironic, isn't it, to have
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  such a strong movie year. Bizarre choices, too.
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  So as an example, we'll talk about Christopher Plummer
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  throughout the rest of this conversation.
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  Forward to it. Not nominated for an Oscar?
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  That irks me. Philip because he's Canadian,
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  probably. Michael Caine wins.
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  What was he doing in 90? 9 cider house rules a most the
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  very like an incredibly bland lots of Holstrom movie he be
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  bland. He was perfectly fine.
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  But a movie that has no impact whatsoever is not good
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  necessarily. Beats Tom Cruise for Magnolia
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  beats Hailey Joel Osmond we talked about in 6th sense.
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  Oh yeah yeah, I think Michael Clarke dunked it Duncan in the
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  green mile. Yeah, yeah.
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  Like, just like, pretty great performances generally, but not
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  the best ones as far as I'm concerned.
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  Who hosted the Oscars that year, Phil.
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  I have no idea. OK, I thought you were, you
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  know, I thought you knew every year.
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  No idea. OK, no, probably Ricky Gervais.
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  Let's go with that. Golden Globes.
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  He's never host the oh, OK, get your shit together amateur hour
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  here. That's right.
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  But this movie for him particularly, I thought
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  everybody else was really good, but plumber to me stole the
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  movie and I thought deserved nomination and and when he
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  didn't get it, it was just another frustration I had with
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  the Oscars overall. Did you have a sour taste?
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  Yeah, the Oscars are sort of a weird thing with me.
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  I love them and I watch them every year.
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  But there are moments often where I'm like, bad call, you
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  know, I just don't understand it.
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  And I get really emotionally involved.
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  So I. Know you do.
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  You know the you're passionate, Phil In 2006, during it for the
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  2005 Oscars, I basically left the room of my own house.
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  I was hosting a little Oscar party and I just you're all mad.
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  Where'd you go? I just walked out.
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  I went, I went to the street, just walked out because Crash
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  had won the best picture against Kodi.
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  Great night. Good luck.
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  Brokeback Mountain, like just some great, great titles.
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  I was like, I can't take this. I have to go.
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  So I just walked out. So where I brought it up, I
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  don't know if I did bring it up the Oscars, but obviously it's.
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  All that is to say, I love the movie 99 and I really loved it.
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  Now. You loved it more.
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  More now. OK, Yeah.
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  Wonderful. Good to know.
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  Well, I'm excited to to dive into it.
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  And I will say the intro did not quite match the energy of last
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  week's Robin Hood with the Morgan Creek.
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  That's true. Yeah, that's true.
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  The score not not the real stand out for this particular film.
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  No. Tapestry said it right that
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  time. Finally got it.
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  Got it right. But I did see Bruce Mcgill's
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  name come up in the credits. I'm like OK.
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  I'm in, locked in. So I was excited I.
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  Got a long way to go to see. Him.
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  Yeah, that was true. Kind of forgot.
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  I thought you'd appreciate the opening of this movie because it
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  it's got music kind of from your preferred part of the world.
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  There was this. I don't really like the music
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  from there. Though there was a real stretch
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  of time where this sort of Middle Eastern flavor of music.
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  Body of lies. Was pretty comes to mind
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  ubiquitous. Yeah, it just an odd choice, but
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  like Sting was doing. Was Sting up to?
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  Field of Gold, I believe had some sort of Middle Eastern kind
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  of tonalities and singers and so forth.
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  It was just a thing happening in the air, and it opens with that
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  kind of vibe. Not a fan.
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  Yeah. OK.
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  Love the geography. It's lovely place.
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  That was a topography. You like the topography, too?
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  Topography. Yeah.
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  Yeah. A lot of hills and mountains.
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  Love hills. Love the mountains.
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  Now, Phil, have you ever been blindfolded?
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  Yes, but only when I was naked. That's my fault, folks.
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  That's on me. That is on me.
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  I meant to finish that with in a car that maybe it wasn't a car
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  and you were naked, but who the hell knows and we don't want to
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  know. You're not going to investigate
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  that any deeper, no. We're going to leave it at that,
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  but I feel like what the first few minutes is doing is really
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  kind of setting the tone for the movie.
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  And you know how I feel about tone setters.
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  Absolutely. It's a super important and in
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  this movie I think it's incredibly well done.
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  Really. I disagree.
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  Tell me more. You know what's funny, Phil?
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  Sometimes these movies, maybe it's my settings.
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  They don't. I find Phil, when you take these
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  movies from the mid 90s, late 90s, early 2000s and put them on
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  the big screen TV and don't change your settings to kind of
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  allow the fact that it's standard def or what have you.
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  It's on your default upscale HDR.
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  It doesn't really look that great.
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  I watch it on a smaller screen. My second watch, everything
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  looked a little more crisper because it's not trying to, you
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  know, spread it out sort of thing.
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  So I it's, it's, it's a small thing, but I find it is actually
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  kind of important when trying to get into the movie.
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  Like really sinking your butt into that couch, the popcorn
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  ready and like, oh, this doesn't look that great.
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  You're kind of like set off a little bit and then all of a
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  sudden you're like 2 seconds behind.
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  On the movie, interesting you mentioned that, because as as I
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  mentioned, I saw this movie in the theater which was on a 30 by
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  30 kind of screen. So I wonder.
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  They got it tweaked though. Yeah, I guess.
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  They have the right settings designed for that.
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  Yeah. I watch this on a DVD, So it's
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  it's definitely, I think you, I think you go in.
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  That's why there's multiple settings, right?
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  You just have to go proactively go in And being a tweaker, you
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  think I would. But, you know, maybe, maybe I
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  will now. Yeah.
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  So that's interesting. I'm sorry it kind of didn't
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  translate the movie well enough for you To me, less about the
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  visuals and more about the level of commitment that Lowell
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  Bergman is showing you. Respect that though backseat of
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  a car. Blindfolded into a foreign
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  country, doesn't know the land. So forth delivers basically an
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  entire pre interview. Blindfolded tells you that this
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  guy is willing to go into dark places, let's say stand up to
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  dictators and so forth. The leader, in this case, of
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  Hezbollah. Absolutely a Die Hard 4.
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  Now, I will say, when you don't know what the movies about, I
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  find when you go into this, you're like, I don't know what I
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  don't, I don't know what's really happening here.
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  I had no idea 60 Minutes was involved in this.
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  Wallace, who's Bergman? Who are these people?
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  I'd like to go in blind, but sometimes it kind of hinders
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  that. If I had known that, maybe I
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  would have been more prepared for sort of the tone of what
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  it's trying to do and I would have been more In Sync.
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  Or if I'm watching it a second time, I'm like, OK, I understand
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  a lot more now that I've seen it and I'm clicking more with more
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  of the scenes, especially early on.
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  It's interesting. I wonder why that is ultimately
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  because if this movie wasn't quote UN quote based on a true
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  story. That's how I got my wife to
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  watch it, by the way. Yeah, goes with that saying.
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  Respect. But if it not for that then you
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  wouldn't have the Bergman. The you know who is and who is
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  and who is. So the movie is and all movies
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  are sort of the stand alone thing.
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  So you're saying you might have been more inclined to watch a
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  trailer or because it was based on a true story you were looking
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  for more of where that real was or or what?
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  Because ultimately, going in blind is what, in theory, we all
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  do to every movies. I don't think I was expecting
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  that type of intro. Gotcha.
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  I think I'm, I think I'm more of a journalistic, but I just it
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  just caught me by surprise. Like what?
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  Am I in Beirut or wherever this sort of is?
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  Exactly. Yeah, it all kind of makes sense
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  now because it wants to, it wants to set that tone and and
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  it does. Let me tell you.
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  Please, and I get it here for I get to tell me what I think is
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  really well done. As I said, is it sort of sets up
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  Lowell as this guy that's willing to go into the dark
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  places, as it were. And the next sort of section is
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  we we get to meet Jeffrey Wigand, who's clearly at a low
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  point. He's quietly packing up his
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  office while there's some sort of party happening on the other
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  side of this. And to your point, we don't yet
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  know what he is or who he is. Yeah, but rather that he's
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  clearly dejected and has been probably laid off.
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  Maybe. You know, maybe he's not having
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  the best. Day that's right and so it's a
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  good way to introduce now sort of the two sides, the two main
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  characters. Of course, this of course is
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  Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe spoken about in
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  last week confidential watch Robin Hood and the other Robin
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  Hood That's right. So what are your thoughts on the
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  setup for this guy? And let me preface this by
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  saying that this was the first time when I first saw it very
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  vividly. Remember in 99 the Jowl Cam.
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  Is that what that was? I don't understand some of the
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  camera movements. I had issues in 99 issues.
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  Now the choice to have the camera basically like under his
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  ear. Like it's his goiter.
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  Yeah, the camera has at times, remembering Goodfellas we talked
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  about, there's a sequence where they're talking at the diner and
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  slowly, very, very slowly, you can watch it push in on them and
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  feel as though the world in the FBI and all these things are
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  coming in on them. That subtle use of camera work
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  to tell a story. I don't understand the story
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  it's telling by putting the camera so close.
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  And they do it a little bit with Lowell with the blindfold.
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  The camera is so close to the blindfold.
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  It's sort of that part of it, I will grant, is a little jarring
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  and I don't love it. Now, the rest of it, you know,
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  we'll get into. But those couple of moments, I'm
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  just like the camera work is taking me out of this scene.
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  Thank you Phillip, you have figured it out.
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  I I was Jarred. I was Jarred because things are
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  jarring. That would make me Jarred,
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  correct? Yes, that is exactly what it
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  was. I did not understand the camera
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  shots. I didn't like it.
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  So I found it really hard to get into the movie based on
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  something so simple. It's just a choice of of those
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  shots. Yeah.
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  So I think that's probably the main thing that kind of threw me
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  off, along with not really knowing what's happening, of
• 13:00
  course. But what I did find a little bit
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  comical is when he got home, I'm not realizing that he got fired.
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  I'm not quite clued in okay yet. Takes you some time.
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  He does. It does.
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  It does. But his kids watching cartoons
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  and he says it's a little early to watch cartoons and he's
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  pouring a drink. And again, not understanding
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  exactly what happened is like, well, that's dumb.
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  But then I realized, well, you got fired.
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  Maybe you want to have? A drink.
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  You want to take a drink? Yeah, not I find it struggling
• 13:31
  with with movies don't paint the picture for me.
• 13:34
  Exactly. And I have to guess what's going
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  on. I feel like I'm 2 seconds
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  behind. So why is he acting this way?
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  And then I watch it a second time and I'm looking at Russell
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  Crowe's performance. I'm like, yeah, he's dejected.
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  He's like he's off. And because he got fired, I get
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  it. Now my memory is that he's sort
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  of packing up a box. He's putting in the like, you
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  know? I was distracted by the noise,
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  the no noise. So I was yeah, settings on the
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  TV maybe, I don't know. He did a tweak it.
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  Happens now as a person that watched a lot of cartoons at all
• 14:05
  hours of the day, I can kind of respect him.
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  But we kind of have this moment where the kid runs off and
• 14:11
  pretty soon after we get a basically an asthma attack.
• 14:15
  Yeah, those are serious. They can be, can be.
• 14:17
  Absolutely. And I lived it.
• 14:19
  Buddy had asthma issues. Oh, really?
• 14:20
  Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, we can get into it.
• 14:22
  But I've never fortunately had any good for you asthma issues.
• 14:25
  But I I watched this scene and I I realize it's setting Wigand up
• 14:29
  as scientific medical minded. The only problem I have with
• 14:34
  this scene, really. And there's very few of these
• 14:37
  nitpicks that I'll have. This is one of them where I'll
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  say he is speaking to his daughter who lives with this
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  illness every day of. Her life that's going to go
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  with. Affliction.
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  There you go. Every day of her life,
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  basically. Arguably.
• 14:51
  And he's describing it. For the first time.
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  As though it's the first time. And this is very expositional.
• 14:56
  This is how movies work. So again, it doesn't bother me.
• 15:00
  I think it does, but there is a little like sounds like it
• 15:02
  bothers you. You're saying this like it's for
• 15:04
  the audience. It's not for the kid question.
• 15:06
  Is are you out? No, no, because it's not enough
• 15:10
  and not long enough and like it's not.
• 15:11
  I didn't pick up. Integrity, yes, the the good
• 15:14
  thing about being you know having an IQ of below 70, you
• 15:21
  don't pick up on these things sure.
• 15:22
  So that works to my benefits. That's right.
• 15:24
  You work out OK. I'm all over the place, all over
• 15:28
  but. Yeah.
• 15:29
  So that that was something that I, I didn't love, but it does
• 15:31
  sort of set up his character and I thought really importantly
• 15:34
  sets up medical coverage, which is obviously one of the big
• 15:38
  things that runs throughout this whole story, in particular these
• 15:41
  early scenes. The medical coverage is the
• 15:43
  biggest thing. So I thought this seemed very
• 15:46
  effective, fairly short to deliver that information, but I
• 15:50
  thought it really, really delivers well.
• 15:52
  I was a little annoyed with his wife though, for a couple of
• 15:54
  reasons. Tell me I.
• 15:55
  Will I didn't like her accent. OK, for one.
• 15:58
  You're an accent guy, you have you got issues?
• 16:00
  Yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't know.
• 16:02
  I didn't. I didn't like it.
• 16:03
  It's too Southern. It just annoyed me.
• 16:06
  Sorry for any Southern listeners out there, but wasn't her real
• 16:10
  accent so? Well, maybe it was.
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  And and when she finally finds out they're both outside that he
• 16:17
  got fired. Like he's kind of beating around
• 16:19
  the proverbial Bush is she's not very supportive.
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  No, it's all about what about the medical care.
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  And these are valid points, don't get me wrong Car.
• 16:27
  Payments but. This guy just lost his job.
• 16:30
  That marriage is over right then and there.
• 16:32
  Yeah, no, eventually it is. But I can tell you I knew way
• 16:36
  ahead of time that this is not going to last because if you
• 16:38
  don't have that support, it's over.
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  So you know you're going to have your spats absolutely in the
• 16:43
  kitchen, that's going to happen, especially in the kitchen.
• 16:46
  But but you got to be supportive and let's work it through
• 16:49
  together, right? And from there, we kind of meet
• 16:53
  the third of the triumvirate that that the the movie is
• 16:57
  really hinged upon. What about Trio?
• 17:00
  We have Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace.
• 17:03
  And I just saw him in Star Trek 6.
• 17:05
  Yes. We we have spoken of of
• 17:07
  Christopher Plummer. Before.
• 17:09
  Just a phenomenal actor. He's a powerhouse.
• 17:11
  He's a phenomenal. Actor.
• 17:13
  He's a Canadian. Alan Rickman.
• 17:14
  You know, he's theatre. Doesn't he do theatre?
• 17:16
  Yeah. He does a lot of well, did a lot
• 17:17
  of theatre, did a lot of theatre.
• 17:18
  Yeah, yeah. Just a brilliant, brilliant
• 17:20
  actor. He's great in so many movies and
• 17:23
  The Silent Partner being a Canadian movie that I love, I.
• 17:26
  Was going to ask you name one because he's in struggle.
• 17:29
  It's great. In later years he was in the
• 17:31
  beginning, you know, or the the beginner story.
• 17:34
  He was. He was in the New World with
• 17:37
  Terrence Malick, the his follow up to Thin Red Line.
• 17:40
  OK, let me ask you this. Do you remember the TV show that
• 17:45
  he was in? No, it's not coming to me right
• 17:47
  now, but I'll get back to you on that.
• 17:50
  It wasn't very good though. It was a Canadian show.
• 17:52
  It was like Skyhawk or something.
• 17:54
  I think there's like a lot of helicopters involved and he was
• 17:56
  like the the boss that sort of and all these guys worked for
• 18:00
  him and they were all doing this helicopter stuff.
• 18:03
  And yeah, I'll get back to you, buddy.
• 18:07
  I bet you if you watch it now, it's like even like 10 times
• 18:10
  worse than MacGyver. Like you watch MacGyver now
• 18:12
  like. Yeah, but you throw a Canadian
• 18:14
  budget on there exactly questionable danger.
• 18:17
  Bay, am I right? So we have plumber just walking
• 18:21
  in and just destroying scene. He's so great.
• 18:25
  He kicks, you know, kicks off. He's he's playing basically, as
• 18:30
  Loca says, fucking around with the head of Hezbollah.
• 18:34
  He's trying to, are you a terrorist?
• 18:36
  He's getting all this kind of amped up.
• 18:39
  Arabic your second. Language.
• 18:40
  Yeah, he's coming in real high, Absolutely high.
• 18:42
  I. Love it.
• 18:43
  And he's getting everybody all riled up and sitting too close
• 18:46
  and yadda yadda and. He's a 78 year old.
• 18:49
  Assassin. Absolutely.
• 18:50
  And then Lowell sends him over and like, you ready to do this?
• 18:53
  Or you? You done fucking?
• 18:54
  Around, yeah. And he's like, my heart started.
• 18:57
  It's just such a great introduction of this character.
• 18:59
  Yeah. He's he's fantastic.
• 19:00
  Did you recognize the leader though?
• 19:02
  No. Yeah, he was the FBI guy in Die
• 19:05
  Hard Four. OK, if you recall, no trying to
• 19:08
  to use the hacking. No, he wasn't.
• 19:10
  He wasn't the hacker. He was the hacky.
• 19:11
  He was the victim of the hacking.
• 19:13
  He was the head officer that was running the show there, if you
• 19:16
  recall. There we go.
• 19:17
  I've forgotten much of that movie.
• 19:19
  The jet, the jet. The jet.
• 19:21
  The jet. Speaking of jets, there's none
• 19:30
  under. There's not a jet.
• 19:32
  Is there a jet? There might be.
• 19:34
  There is. So people are flying around.
• 19:35
  They got to go places, right? He says.
• 19:37
  Do you want Wallace on a plane? Shitty.
• 19:40
  Yes. Yay or nay?
• 19:41
  And that's what led us to the scene.
• 19:42
  Really. That's true.
• 19:43
  There you go. And the way that these three now
• 19:46
  kind of begin to intersect is we have Lowell at home.
• 19:51
  We won't spend too much time. There's not really much there.
• 19:53
  Lindsey Kraus, however, the wife of David Mamet, who we spoke of
• 19:57
  a couple weeks ago. OK, that's her.
• 20:00
  That's. Wife, yes, he played she played
• 20:02
  his his wife and that's wonderful great role she brought
• 20:05
  it that's right. She's very good actor, but she
• 20:08
  gets stuck with these kind of roles.
• 20:10
  But we have Bergman getting a bunch of stuff around,
• 20:14
  cigarettes, smoking, sleep, falling asleep, this and that.
• 20:18
  And he calls one of his contacts to see if he can get somebody to
• 20:22
  explain basically what what's this means.
• 20:24
  Yeah, exactly. And the name that basically
• 20:26
  comes up is Jeffrey Wigan. Jeffrey.
• 20:29
  Wigan, Why not? Why not?
• 20:31
  Exactly? And what I love about this
• 20:33
  scene, and I think it's just great for stories in general,
• 20:35
  documentaries in particular, is the thing that you go looking
• 20:39
  for one thing and you unravel something else.
• 20:41
  So in this instance, he's just looking for a little clarity.
• 20:43
  That's it. But because of the
• 20:45
  circumstances, Wigan's got his back up.
• 20:47
  He's confused, he's sort of hesitant.
• 20:49
  He's, you know, not so sure. Standoffish one little.
• 20:52
  Standoffish, and it reminds me of this documentary I saw called
• 20:58
  Capturing the Friedmans. OK.
• 21:00
  Where the documentary began as a documentary on New York clowns.
• 21:06
  Interesting. Just interviewing clowns around
• 21:09
  New York City. And he interviewed 1.
• 21:10
  And there was like this sadness behind him.
• 21:12
  And it turns out that this guy's family, his dad had been accused
• 21:16
  of molesting children. And like, it was like this huge
• 21:20
  long back story. And they're like, we were just
• 21:22
  interviewed. We only wanted to make this
• 21:24
  story about clowns. And then because this guy wanted
• 21:26
  to talk more about his life, Sure.
• 21:28
  Yeah. Of course, they end up making
• 21:30
  this movie that is a an incredible documentary,
• 21:32
  interesting, but unravels this whole other story that they
• 21:35
  didn't anticipate. And I think it's just a
• 21:37
  brilliant reality. It's a great way to set up
• 21:39
  movie, like even a fiction. But in this instance and in the
• 21:43
  documentary, you have the ability of like, if you're a
• 21:45
  good journalist, a good documentary, marrying a good
• 21:47
  film maker, you find those things, the producer and a good
• 21:51
  producer, and you ride it out. And so the fact that Pacino kind
• 21:55
  of notices there's this something.
• 21:57
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:57
  Off nature to it. Yeah.
• 21:59
  He's got a dig. He's got a dig.
• 22:01
  And I love that from a character perspective, I think it does a
• 22:04
  lot, again, to set up the character, the story.
• 22:07
  And now we're basically in the crux of the movie at this point.
• 22:09
  Are you caught up? You were saying that you were a
• 22:11
  little 2 seconds behind. Are you now kind of getting the
• 22:13
  pieces of what this story is going to be?
• 22:15
  No, I was 2 seconds behind. Now I'm about one second behind.
• 22:19
  OK, yeah, we're getting there. But Speaking of time, do you
• 22:21
  remember the time where we had fax machines?
• 22:26
  I had one. OK.
• 22:28
  Yeah, my dad, he loves having these things and when they 1st
• 22:31
  come out. He's a guy, early adopter.
• 22:32
  Yeah, early adopter and he sticks with that old technology.
• 22:36
  I guess computers are still, you know, 20 years old.
• 22:39
  OK, I think he still has the fax machine.
• 22:41
  I don't think he uses it, but it did remind me of of Clear and
• 22:45
  Present Danger and that scene sort of triggered that moment.
• 22:49
  If you recall them towards the end of that movie, The faxing
• 22:54
  and exposing the political guy at the end it played by the
• 22:58
  great Henry Cerny. Yeah, OK.
• 23:00
  Do you? Recall him certainly for the war
• 23:03
  they were having that they weren't supposed to be having
• 23:05
  and they're faxing and, you know, and he's just a great
• 23:08
  faxing for all. Like I haven't seen a lot of
• 23:10
  scenes that's, you know, facts related.
• 23:12
  And this was a nice little treat, and I was surprised that
• 23:16
  it was able to be that interesting when it's just a fax
• 23:19
  machine. Yeah, I think that goes down to
• 23:21
  film making. I think Michael Mann in
• 23:22
  particular, and he doesn't a number of times in this in in
• 23:24
  this movie and in these early scenes really building up
• 23:28
  tension and drama in a way that is unexpected.
• 23:32
  So in this instance, like you're saying, he's making a fax
• 23:35
  machine conversation to me, be riveting, like edge of your seat
• 23:40
  kind of stuff. It's a brilliant way to get to
• 23:42
  people that can't or won't communicate, to communicate,
• 23:46
  asking things like I can't talk to you can't, won't or don't
• 23:50
  want to, all three and then wait.
• 23:53
  Yeah, wait, and. Pace and right, and that energy,
• 23:56
  I think, is incredibly well done.
• 23:58
  Yeah, it's sort of indicative of this filmmaker because he does
• 24:02
  the same sort of type of thing when they meet in the hotel.
• 24:06
  Yeah. And the paranoia setting in.
• 24:09
  Great performance by Russell Crowe, and he's stepping into
• 24:12
  the shadows. He's looking over his way like
• 24:14
  this kind of energy is. Good lighting in this movie
• 24:17
  generally. Absolutely.
• 24:18
  Thanks in the darks. Very tense, very off putting and
• 24:22
  scenes that don't intrinsically have any drama built into them.
• 24:26
  But through performance in particular and through through
• 24:28
  the visual style creates an atmosphere of dread and terror
• 24:32
  not unlike and more specifically perhaps in the golf sequence.
• 24:36
  Now, I don't know what your thoughts on that scene in
• 24:38
  particular. I I have a comment on it,
• 24:41
  Phillip, other than golfing in a suit, I've never done that.
• 24:45
  He had a good swing though. Both of them.
• 24:46
  Both of them. Good to know, yeah.
• 24:48
  Straight and narrow. But only thing I would say
• 24:50
  negatively about it is I felt the music was trying too hard to
• 24:55
  to to force that tension and then instead of letting it
• 24:58
  happen sort of naturally, OK, like it was almost too strong.
• 25:01
  I have no memory of the music whatsoever.
• 25:04
  That's how strong I thought the scenes were that I have no
• 25:07
  record of. Even there being music, there's
• 25:09
  music. So that's interesting.
• 25:10
  Or maybe there's not now. I mean it could be this movie
• 25:14
  doesn't have a lot of music in. It doesn't, But when it does
• 25:16
  come up, it's very like it's, I don't know, jarring.
• 25:21
  Yes, I did find a little Jerry guy actually in a couple of
• 25:24
  places, but I didn't realize driving ranges were open that
• 25:27
  late. Well, I mean, it might not have
• 25:28
  been that late. It was dark.
• 25:31
  That late? I mean if it's the fall, could
• 25:34
  be 630. That is true.
• 25:35
  Clearly Russell's character, Jeffrey sees the guy right,
• 25:40
  Obviously, like he's being followed.
• 25:42
  He's. Supposed to see him.
• 25:43
  Yeah, like there is this, the level paranoia that's played
• 25:45
  really well. This guy in the suit, you know,
• 25:48
  he confronts them, Yeah. Doesn't tell him that off,
• 25:51
  though. He doesn't swear because he's
• 25:52
  already sworn twice. We're at PG14 now, not 13
• 25:59
  because the scene just before he's like, he says, well you.
• 26:02
  This is your role. You, you bring it up, you got to
• 26:04
  do it. They want to change the NDA
• 26:09
  basically, basically. Non disclosure exactly.
• 26:12
  On disclosure agreement is exactly what those letters stand
• 26:15
  for. And he honors them.
• 26:16
  Yeah, and he he does. And that's why he's a little bit
• 26:18
  annoyed here and he gets to the point where he says you're
• 26:20
  you're, you're effing me F you, right?
• 26:23
  And he just kind of storms out, not too impressed because.
• 26:27
  I think it really conveyed well the power of that my.
• 26:30
  Wife might listen to this and she's really against.
• 26:33
  No, I respect it. I respect it.
• 26:34
  Yeah, thank you. This is all the outlet.
• 26:36
  I don't really swear throughout my rest of my day, but when I do
• 26:39
  this once a week I get it all out of my system.
• 26:42
  You know what? I've signed a few NDNAS over the
• 26:44
  years. NDAS.
• 26:45
  NDAS, what did I say? NDNA.
• 26:48
  Dan ka that's. Right.
• 26:51
  Jackal Jackal DNA. Mr. DNA.
• 26:58
  Actually I have not that's. I did.
• 27:00
  I have. Did you?
• 27:00
  I was going to ask you. I figured that you would have
• 27:02
  nothing. Yeah, no, I got something you
• 27:04
  don't work in for a couple of organizations I can't really
• 27:07
  discuss at this point, obviously, but you know, I've
• 27:10
  had to sign a few of them over the years.
• 27:11
  Oh interesting, I was a few drinks in the.
• 27:14
  An employee association representative and so there's a
• 27:17
  confidentiality in all of that. So I had to sign a number of
• 27:20
  those that the things said to me in confidence stayed that way.
• 27:22
  Not unlike Lowell Bergman who says that a number of times.
• 27:25
  You know, when he says, you know, I don't burn people, he
• 27:28
  does not, right? Because Y again calls them and
• 27:31
  thinks you fucked me. He says you effed me.
• 27:34
  If you will PG15 now. And he's basically saying, like,
• 27:38
  you screwed me. You threw me under the bus, You
• 27:40
  ratted me out. And Pacino's like, how do I get
• 27:42
  to be me? I don't do that by burning
• 27:45
  people. Yeah.
• 27:46
  Before I get the information. Yeah.
• 27:48
  And Lowell speaking to him kind of logically, if you will,
• 27:50
  saying, like, think about it, why would I?
• 27:52
  What do I have to gain? Nothing before the information
• 27:56
  to create you out like, you know, use your head.
• 27:58
  So I like that the dynamic that these two have starts to build
• 28:01
  on things like this straight talking and kind of obfuscating
• 28:06
  the information and the truth. And that dynamic plays out, I
• 28:11
  thought, really interestingly, over the next rest of the movie.
• 28:13
  Absolutely. And this is where I, I sort of
• 28:14
  begin to really latch on to Pacino.
• 28:18
  I think he's really strong in this.
• 28:21
  This. This might be the first time
• 28:22
  you've gone back-to-back with the same actor.
• 28:24
  Yeah. It's not often I applaud.
• 28:25
  Well, I mean, other than like the sequences.
• 28:27
  Come on, the Rockies. Those go without saying.
• 28:29
  Of course. Why even bother mentioning?
• 28:31
  I don't know, But we did. Yes.
• 28:33
  And if you recall, if not, listen to the episode.
• 28:36
  I wasn't a big fan of Roma. You had mentioned that you you
• 28:40
  liked the performance but didn't trust the guy at all.
• 28:42
  Yeah. And weren't really that
• 28:43
  interested. And Todd Lemon was more of the.
• 28:45
  Yeah, and I thought the workhorse and I and I like
• 28:48
  Pacino more in the recruit. That's right, you did and this.
• 28:51
  This is now we're in a like a recruit sandwich because we have
• 28:56
  Roma recruit and then we have this like, yeah.
• 28:59
  So this is this is I love Rod Pacino.
• 29:02
  This is good stuff. Yeah, this is good stuff.
• 29:04
  I have it here. Like he's so good.
• 29:05
  Yeah, and it it just gets better.
• 29:07
  Like I'm not, I'm not in this movie yet.
• 29:09
  Still, still I'm, I'm OK. I like I'm, you know, the
• 29:13
  because fax machines are slow. I'm more or less caught up.
• 29:16
  You're the fax. Machine of this operation
• 29:19
  exactly. But I'm, I'm warming up to it.
• 29:22
  I I would say especially to his character when.
• 29:25
  Pacino raises his voice. Yeah.
• 29:27
  Almost nobody better. You got to listen.
• 29:28
  Yeah. You got to listen.
• 29:29
  Yeah. Like Williamson.
• 29:30
  Yeah. Like I had to listen.
• 29:32
  Yeah. When you started smoking, did
• 29:41
  you know those were good years? Nicotine was addictive?
• 29:44
  Like, how much effort did you think?
• 29:46
  Because I grew up in a world where it's like everybody in my
• 29:49
  adult life, right? Like, all my adult people.
• 29:51
  Sure. Yeah.
• 29:52
  Right. They all smoked and there was
• 29:53
  like always this joke of like it's bad for you.
• 29:55
  Cancer sticks like the joke, joke, joke about how bad they
• 29:59
  are. But I wondered how much of that
• 30:02
  was, it's like, we know it's bad for you, but we don't know why.
• 30:06
  Or we know it's bad for you and we know why it's bad for you,
• 30:10
  but we don't know why we keep doing it.
• 30:12
  But I wonder the nicotine piece and the addictive properties
• 30:15
  because I watch this and one of the things that sticks out with
• 30:17
  me is like, when was this known? Like actually like the news that
• 30:22
  this movie is telling. Yes, yes, the nicotine boost
• 30:25
  maybe is maybe different than whatever, but I'm curious about
• 30:28
  all of that. Do you have any record of that
• 30:30
  when you were younger? That's a really good question.
• 30:31
  I think the problem is when you're young, you're not
• 30:33
  thinking about that stuff. Sure.
• 30:35
  Even if you hear it and you're told, hey, cigarettes are
• 30:39
  addictive, don't do it. Sure.
• 30:41
  You're like, OK, I'm going to do it.
• 30:43
  Yeah. So I think I knew but didn't
• 30:46
  listen. Sure, because my family, my
• 30:48
  parents didn't smoke, but every like their parents smoked all
• 30:52
  the my aunts and uncles smoked. So I'm sure I was made well
• 30:56
  aware that it was an Dick like me.
• 30:59
  Yeah, well, not necessarily nicotine used as the word, but
• 31:02
  the addictive nature of cigarettes, like it's hard to
• 31:05
  quit. So I think I had that knowledge,
• 31:07
  just chose to ignore it and well, that it, it is hard to to
• 31:12
  beat. It's a it's a hell of a thing
• 31:14
  now. I didn't know about this extra
• 31:16
  stuff. Yeah, that's that would have
• 31:18
  been nice to know. Yeah.
• 31:20
  But again, would I have listened?
• 31:22
  So seemingly not like I'm 99. I mean, I don't Now I look back
• 31:26
  and like, wow, it's amazing how dumb you can be in your early
• 31:30
  20s. Yeah, But I mean, there are
• 31:32
  people that have started smoking now, right?
• 31:34
  Like, like with all this time, right?
• 31:36
  So like vaping. They're vaping, sure, But it's
• 31:38
  all like this part of the same cabal almost, right?
• 31:40
  So it's fascinating to me, the choices.
• 31:42
  And this is the kind of stuff that they talk about at that 60
• 31:45
  Minutes meeting, if you recall, like kind of bouncing around
• 31:47
  saying that no one's ever won a lawsuit basically against them
• 31:50
  because they all just dump a bunch of money on it.
• 31:53
  And they say, look, hey, it's a product.
• 31:55
  We just roll it up. You buy it, you smoke it, you
• 31:57
  take the consequence, right? Like we're not pretending
• 32:00
  anything. We don't know anything about
• 32:01
  nicotines, addictive product pretties and blah, blah blah.
• 32:04
  The. Problem is, they do know.
• 32:05
  I think that's that's the. Cover, right.
• 32:07
  And then ultimately what we find out is that they also boost the
• 32:11
  the effect and shorten that gap, right?
• 32:14
  Like I remember vividly, you know, oh, it's 40 minutes.
• 32:18
  You hear the back door open and closing.
• 32:20
  You can just like time it. Absolutely.
• 32:21
  I had a guy because I worked at a gas station.
• 32:23
  That's where I started smoking. I was surrounded by cigarettes.
• 32:25
  That's in that world, sure. And so I'd sold them all to the
• 32:29
  same regular people. I remember one guy in particular
• 32:31
  said to me, I've smoked for years.
• 32:33
  And let me tell you, my cigarette burns a lot quicker
• 32:35
  than it used to. I used to be able to sit there
• 32:37
  and have a cigarette for a good, you know, 10 minutes and just
• 32:40
  sit, sit it down, let it burn a bit, pick it up, smoke it, and
• 32:43
  now it's boom, wow. Like that.
• 32:46
  I'm like, oh, that's probably conscious.
• 32:48
  That's probably a decision. So you smoke more.
• 32:50
  And I still started. So like, there's this knowledge
• 32:53
  coming to me and it's just the decisions we make are bad.
• 32:58
  That's fast. We just, we just make, you know,
• 33:01
  bad decisions. It's.
• 33:02
  Really fascinating to me. I mean, I, you know, again, I
• 33:05
  still do. It's never smoked but but
• 33:07
  questionable decisions that I know are bad are happening all
• 33:09
  the time. But tell you what, a good
• 33:11
  decision is lunch. Yes, I find in the movies like
• 33:15
  this, when they're at the newsrooms, yes, that's teachers
• 33:20
  lounges. The most important meal is
• 33:22
  lunch. Sure, that's everything is
• 33:24
  revolves around lunch. Someone's taking the lunch
• 33:27
  order. They're eating lunch.
• 33:29
  It's, it's not just a sandwich. It's like a lunch.
• 33:31
  Lunch can be. Yeah.
• 33:32
  And I like lunch. It also makes a great visual for
• 33:35
  the movies. That's probably why they do it.
• 33:36
  But I think it's real. I mean, I think.
• 33:38
  Oh yeah, you gotta have lunch. Exactly.
• 33:40
  And if you're, you know, 10 people circling around a table,
• 33:43
  someone get my order. You know it's a cheeseburger and
• 33:48
  one slice of lettuce or no, none of that lettuce shit like
• 33:50
  alfalfa spread Hollywood homicide nonsense.
• 33:56
  Speaking of teaching, you mentioned Teachers Lounge now
• 33:59
  that the Russell Crowe's character is seemingly
• 34:03
  unemployed. Yeah, he's a job because he's
• 34:05
  got to pay for the Medicare. Yep.
• 34:07
  It's USA, you know that's. Right.
• 34:09
  It's such a factor though. I mean, as Canadians, it's, it's
• 34:11
  take it the big deal, take it for granted and they'll take
• 34:14
  care of us even after smoking for 40 years, you know what I
• 34:17
  mean? My grandmother had a heart
• 34:19
  flutter when she was in Florida one year.
• 34:21
  OK, She was in the hospital for 9 days in Florida.
• 34:25
  In Florida. And her bill, my God.
• 34:28
  Pre insurance, you know, she was insured.
• 34:29
  Yeah, of course, but it was almost $90,000.
• 34:32
  Geez. Wow.
• 34:34
  Luckily was insured enough of course, but had she not, those
• 34:37
  nine days of hospital for a heart flutter was gonna cost her
• 34:41
  $90,000. What a fucked up world.
• 34:46
  That's why they keep letting us. Smoke.
• 34:48
  Yeah, I guess just keep churning it out.
• 34:50
  Making the money, yeah. But it's a really kind of good
• 34:53
  scene, hat in hand, you know, kind of situation.
• 34:55
  I'd like a lot of the stuff around The Newsroom.
• 34:57
  That's where I'm really kind of into.
• 34:58
  That's my jam. You know, Speaking of jam, we
• 35:01
  have what we watch is basically him go from like a nice big
• 35:05
  mansion type of house wouldn't go that far and he's nice
• 35:08
  jamming in. Nice.
• 35:11
  All of his Yeah, yeah, all of these.
• 35:14
  Things into this sort of now he's he's had to move smaller
• 35:17
  house, modest home and his wife apparently not too thrilled.
• 35:22
  She's not supportive. She's not at this point she's
• 35:25
  actually not too too bad. She's kind of smiling.
• 35:27
  She looks out the kids are playing.
• 35:29
  It's all downhill, buddy. It is definitely downhill
• 35:31
  because soon after we kind of have basically the the first
• 35:34
  night, somebody is his little kid is sort of discovered
• 35:38
  something in the backyard. Pretty sure it was a raccoon.
• 35:40
  Yeah, not quite, Not quite. They don't have a size 12 shoe.
• 35:45
  You don't know that, but that's another great scene of sort of
• 35:48
  nothing happening. They they cut back to the kid in
• 35:51
  the basement too, making you think that someone's in the
• 35:53
  basement, maybe closer to closer to the.
• 35:56
  Yeah, exactly. And this movie does this a fair
• 35:59
  amount. And it really tried to put me on
• 36:01
  edge. And I'll tell you, I never
• 36:03
  really fell for it. For all I know, Jeffrey could
• 36:06
  have been killed. Sure.
• 36:07
  Like I don't know the true story.
• 36:09
  Of course I don't want to know the true story cuz.
• 36:11
  Watch the movie. But I didn't really buy any of
• 36:13
  it really. I never really felt I felt it,
• 36:16
  what it's trying to do. And I'm like, I wasn't really.
• 36:18
  Was it the music? But.
• 36:20
  It might have been the music. I found it jarring.
• 36:22
  I found it jarring. I love it.
• 36:25
  I think it's really tense and intense and I thought it was
• 36:27
  really great and it ramps up Wigan to the point with calls
• 36:31
  Lowell again. This.
• 36:32
  Is heated. Their fall back and he's talking
• 36:34
  about setting up dinner or whatever else this Japanese
• 36:36
  restaurant. And Lowell just has this great
• 36:39
  line where he's like, are you talking to me?
• 36:40
  Or did someone else just walk in here like, what are we doing
• 36:43
  here? And there's this push pull
• 36:45
  between the two that I find very effective throughout.
• 36:48
  And I find that dynamic never gets tired, despite the fact
• 36:52
  this is the second time where we've seen a little bit of you
• 36:54
  fucked me. You're not, you know, this kind
• 36:56
  of stuff. Did you find that stuff to be
• 36:57
  repetitious or to find it a little grating?
• 37:00
  Or were you engaged in not the tension perhaps of the will he
• 37:04
  die or not, but rather the dynamics between these two?
• 37:06
  I would have to say I enjoyed most of their scenes together
• 37:09
  because Pacino's really good, especially when he starts to
• 37:12
  raise his voice. Now, it's not always Russell
• 37:15
  Crowe's character that he's talking to.
• 37:17
  I think I definitely prefer the scenes with Pacino and the 60
• 37:21
  minutes people. There's not too many of these
• 37:24
  particular scenes. There's just a lot of scenes
• 37:27
  generally, of course. Yeah.
• 37:28
  But I can never have enough scenes.
• 37:31
  With Com Fior. Yeah.
• 37:33
  Did I say that right? You did.
• 37:34
  He doesn't get a lot of scenes in this, but he does.
• 37:36
  He's a great breath of fresh air.
• 37:37
  Good cop, bone cop, buddy. That's right.
• 37:39
  Another Canadian. Brilliant Canadian actor.
• 37:41
  Absolutely. We saw him in some of all fears.
• 37:43
  Yeah, there you go. Episode of The West Wing as
• 37:45
  well. Yeah, this is great.
• 37:47
  It's the one TV show I watch. I know it's a lot of guest
• 37:50
  stars. Does Bruce McGill ever on that
• 37:52
  show? No, he was in missed operation.
• 37:55
  Runaway Jury he was, Yeah. And he was in My Cousin Vinny
• 37:59
  and Some of All Fears. Some of All Fears, yeah.
• 38:02
  But Phillip, if you want to kind of fill in the audience for
• 38:04
  those who haven't seen the movie, but I'm sure they have,
• 38:06
  what's his role in this movie, Mr. Fior?
• 38:10
  Seems like ADA in Kentucky. Also known as a DAW.
• 38:13
  Wants to get why again on the record.
• 38:16
  The idea is that if he can skirt the NDA by having it in court
• 38:21
  records, then it's all in open court and therefore is is able
• 38:26
  to bypass the NDAI thought it's a great little power play
• 38:28
  between the two that comes up a little later in the movie, but
• 38:33
  starts dropping the seeds early on here.
• 38:36
  What I find most interesting is the escalation of Jeffrey's
• 38:42
  situation. There's a bullet in his mailbox.
• 38:45
  There's a computer threat. You will die.
• 38:47
  My favorite parts of this are where the FBI is kind of taking
• 38:52
  his computers and, and just like RAM hard drive ramshackling his
• 38:56
  house. And he's looks so sort of
• 38:59
  crestfallen by the fact he's sitting on that computer is all
• 39:02
  the he can't even finish it. And he's chasing after them in
• 39:05
  this sort of frumpy way, and he stumbles.
• 39:07
  That was hard to watch. There's a, There's a.
• 39:10
  Beauty in that and a sadness in that and a patheticness of that.
• 39:15
  And we've watched this guy and he's, he's seemingly just
• 39:19
  wanting to do good. Yeah, he's kind of didactic and
• 39:23
  he's kind of monotonal with this kid, uses his words.
• 39:26
  Precisely interesting accent himself.
• 39:28
  Exactly. And so when he's in this point,
• 39:31
  it's the most vulnerable. I've really kind of seen him so
• 39:33
  far and watching his neighbors watch him.
• 39:36
  Watch him fall. There's just a humanity that I
• 39:39
  thought Russell Crowe just delivers incredibly well, and
• 39:42
  the way that that scene plays out, I found it's the first time
• 39:46
  where I am fully kind of with him.
• 39:49
  It reminded me of the movie called the.
• 39:51
  Fall. Interesting, but a guy who falls
• 39:53
  yes yes, trips on a lawn if I recall.
• 39:56
  Yes, yes. But you have that third party
• 39:59
  sympathy or empathy where you look at it like how you really
• 40:02
  feel bad for them. Totally.
• 40:04
  And with Pacino, which I love, is him calling the FBI.
• 40:06
  He's got, yeah, he has connections.
• 40:08
  And he's frustrated and he says, come on, these are.
• 40:11
  I'm getting 2 things pissed off and curious.
• 40:15
  Yeah. And watching Pacino deliver that
• 40:17
  line at this moment in the movie, there's nobody better.
• 40:20
  He's had other good movies since and good performances since.
• 40:25
  This might be the last like brilliant Al Pacino performance.
• 40:29
  Well, you get to the point in the career where you that's when
• 40:31
  the phoning in sort of begins because you you can and you've
• 40:35
  been around, you can totally sold on your name.
• 40:37
  Kind of like we, I think may have mentioned Harrison Ford and
• 40:39
  Hollywood homicide. I think your points was Harrison
• 40:42
  Ford in particular is well, I mean, I'd argued against it.
• 40:44
  I did. I question your the validity of
• 40:46
  your statement in that movie. But you're absolutely correct.
• 40:50
  This is Pacino giving it, and he's a great character.
• 40:54
  A lot to work with, yeah. It's peak.
• 40:56
  Yeah. He's a great producer, too.
• 40:58
  That's just Lowell. Yeah, I was like, yeah, well,
• 41:01
  maybe he's in real life. Maybe.
• 41:04
  Also, but yeah, the character, obviously this is the job.
• 41:06
  This is the job. Yeah, it's really great.
• 41:08
  And one of the things he does to produce the show brings Jeffrey
• 41:13
  and his wife to New York for the to meet Mike Wallace and hang
• 41:16
  out for a bit. What are your thoughts on this
• 41:18
  scene? And I know you'll love his wife.
• 41:20
  How do you think she reacts to? This.
• 41:22
  Sequence of events. You want to kind of give her the
• 41:25
  heads up. We're doing a taping.
• 41:26
  We're doing. We're doing exposing myself to
• 41:29
  the public. I'm drinking the NDA, basically,
• 41:31
  Yeah. I mean, she might wonder why
• 41:32
  she's having dinner with Mike Wallace.
• 41:34
  He's got a new friend, Lil Bergman.
• 41:37
  I doubt that a good scene, though.
• 41:39
  I mean, I like the exchange between Wallace and Bergman.
• 41:43
  He's like, who are these people? Like what?
• 41:44
  You know, just his demeanor about it is like his attitude
• 41:47
  towards it. It's above it all.
• 41:48
  I want to like Mike Wallace because I think in real life
• 41:51
  he's a likable person. But there's points in this movie
• 41:53
  where you're not really supposed to like him.
• 41:55
  No, I don't think that he is a likable guy in this movie.
• 41:58
  I don't think he needs to be. The power, the gravity of that
• 42:02
  character, and the performance. Does the heavy lifting.
• 42:06
  You don't have to like him if he's that good.
• 42:07
  Even Pacino is kind of casual delivery of ordinary people.
• 42:11
  What do you expect? They going through some tough
• 42:13
  stuff. Consistency.
• 42:14
  Like what are we talking about? But I want to get to the
• 42:16
  interview itself because the movie really sort of hinges on
• 42:19
  it. Like, this is, you know, really
• 42:21
  important to the film and how it's delivered to us and the
• 42:25
  intensity of it. I want to hear your thoughts
• 42:27
  about it because I found it interesting the way it was shot.
• 42:30
  The camera really holds on a couple spots.
• 42:33
  We're really seeing Pacino's sort of reaction to what Crow's
• 42:37
  character is saying. We're listening to Crow speak.
• 42:40
  Would he do it again? Does he regret value?
• 42:43
  Does think it's worth it? How did you feel the impact of
• 42:45
  the actual interview was? I thought it was fantastic and
• 42:48
  as a person that's never smoked, I thought it was noteworthy.
• 42:52
  How particular. And again, I actually, you
• 42:55
  mentioned earlier his accent. This is my favorite accent work
• 42:58
  of his in the movie. The way in which he delivers,
• 43:00
  again, that the specificity of his language and the way in
• 43:03
  which he enunciates and articulates himself, I found
• 43:07
  very, very compelling. So when he's talking about a
• 43:10
  delivery device for nicotine, yes.
• 43:12
  The boosting, the feeling, you know, the central nervous system
• 43:15
  in the brain, like all of that stuff.
• 43:17
  So the technicality of it, Yeah. Very clear, very concise.
• 43:20
  Yeah, these words I, I really was captivated and and connected
• 43:24
  to this very much. And it elicits the feelings of
• 43:27
  just like, how does anybody do this?
• 43:28
  This is a thing that's been ongoing and they found ways like
• 43:32
  vaping and this and that to kind of keep it fresh.
• 43:34
  And Young. Right with flavor that anybody
• 43:37
  is either that starts to smoke and it only just exemplifies the
• 43:43
  difficulty to quit because it's designed to not have you quit.
• 43:48
  And I thought the way that he explains that in a 3 minute sort
• 43:51
  of scene is really great. And watching Pacino as Lowell,
• 43:56
  he did that scene and kind of watching it play out, I just
• 44:00
  thought it's brilliant and I found a really engaging moment
• 44:03
  that propels the rest of the story.
• 44:05
  I will tell you one thing. I'm going to tell you how I
• 44:06
  felt. I loved what he said, Crow's
• 44:09
  character, but it left me wanting more like a cigarette,
• 44:14
  like a cigarette. And the camera would would go on
• 44:16
  to Pacino. And just his reaction also made
• 44:21
  me want more. So I didn't, it didn't give me
• 44:23
  enough interesting. Like, I like the articulation, I
• 44:26
  like the word spoken, but I would have, I would have liked a
• 44:29
  few more lines, maybe a couple other questions that just didn't
• 44:32
  really quite fulfill me for what I want.
• 44:34
  I didn't get that satisfaction that.
• 44:36
  Exhale consequence of this interview is not just for him
• 44:47
  and his NDA and it's not just the size and scope of CBS or
• 44:51
  whatever else, which is obviously stuff that the movie
• 44:53
  delves in a little later. What it really the first
• 44:56
  consequence of this interview ends up being is their
• 45:00
  relationship. Yes, with his unsupportive.
• 45:02
  Wife with his unsupportive wife because not only did he lose the
• 45:04
  job, there's obviously frayed relations there.
• 45:07
  But post interview they come back, he's in his house and he's
• 45:10
  washing his hands in the sink. And she says don't do this, go
• 45:13
  to the bathroom. And he's like, what's the
• 45:15
  difference? It's water.
• 45:16
  It's a sink. Me and my wife, right?
• 45:17
  Here and she's like this is for food and as you know because my
• 45:20
  old apartment the bathroom faucet so I brushing my teeth in
• 45:24
  this in the front sink never said a word you wouldn't.
• 45:27
  Why would I? But I just, I, I was thinking
• 45:30
  that it's the little things and the bickering or the fighting.
• 45:35
  It's obviously all these deep rooted things and the
• 45:39
  standoffishness and the bullheadedness as he's a
• 45:41
  displaying at this point, which is I'm just going to do it.
• 45:44
  I don't care what you're saying, because that's my character.
• 45:47
  And he's established that already, right?
• 45:49
  Bullheaded. So it's just a really great
• 45:51
  dynamic between the two. And, and she kind of blows up at
• 45:55
  him, storms out of the of the kitchen and we cut to a really a
• 45:59
  wide shot outside. Yeah, through the window.
• 46:02
  She walks out. You love those.
• 46:04
  He's in the mid ground, washing his hands, looking out the
• 46:07
  window. And underneath the window in the
• 46:09
  foreground is the FBI agent. The idea that this is his new
• 46:14
  world, it's a powerful shot. It's an evocative image.
• 46:17
  We can literally see the wedge, yes, an actual wedge, correct
• 46:22
  between them. Yep, like on the screen.
• 46:23
  That's right. There's a wedge.
• 46:25
  Powerful stuff. Powerful stuff.
• 46:27
  Speaking of powerful stuff, we have a nice powerful scene here
• 46:31
  by my boy Bruce McGill. Yep, who's well known in the
• 46:34
  MacGyver series. The original this point we well
• 46:38
  for those late coming to the show, MacGyver.
• 46:41
  We haven't talked about MacGyver since last season.
• 46:44
  It's been a while. I've been pretty tame.
• 46:45
  You've referenced MacGyver 3 times already in this episode.
• 46:48
  It's been a while. I'm catch up.
• 46:49
  I'm playing catch up here. From minute 40.
• 46:52
  Listen, I've really held back for a couple seasons now
• 46:56
  actually with my MacGyver talk. So you're getting it all out of
• 46:58
  this episode? It's I have to because Bruce
• 47:00
  McGill, who was a great character in MacGyver, he's a
• 47:03
  reoccurring character, is for those who don't know, haven't
• 47:06
  seen the show. And like you said earlier, we
• 47:09
  seen him a couple small roles, but man, he really impressed me.
• 47:12
  Like he's great. He had a moment here.
• 47:14
  It's a great scene in this little courtroom, not a
• 47:18
  courtroom, but this little basically where they're taking
• 47:21
  the deposition, the deposition that you knew.
• 47:23
  I didn't know that word. And he keeps getting interrupted
• 47:27
  by this guy. He's like, you can't talk.
• 47:28
  You can't talk and think, well, Mcgill's like he can and he will
• 47:32
  and shut the F up and he just loses it on.
• 47:35
  I'm like Oscar, like, I don't like.
• 47:37
  He's really good. He is really good.
• 47:39
  So he's really good. And he's like, you know, we have
• 47:41
  rights. Yeah, you got rights left,
• 47:43
  right, ups and downs. You got it all, Bruce.
• 47:46
  Jack Dalton. What a guy.
• 47:49
  And then, yeah, when the other guy is kind of smirking at him
• 47:51
  and he just snaps at him, it's a beautiful, powerful, powerful.
• 47:55
  Scene. That was the best snap of 99 if
• 47:57
  you ask me. What I like most about that is
• 48:00
  it's really there's a brief moment and perhaps you missed
• 48:04
  it. What's that supposed to mean?
• 48:07
  After that scene in the courthouse where you get the
• 48:10
  impression for the first time that things are going to be OK,
• 48:13
  you've got Lowell and Wygand on the sort of courthouse lawn
• 48:18
  having a drink. Yeah, they're kind of laughing
• 48:21
  and smiling at one another. There's this feeling of I said
• 48:24
  the thing I need to say, Yep, in the forum that I was allowed to
• 48:27
  perhaps to say it. That's America.
• 48:30
  And, and it's the last little bit of happiness because right
• 48:36
  after that empty house divorced, like things start to start to
• 48:41
  kind of fall apart around him. Maybe that's what the burning
• 48:43
  car is supposed to symbolize. He's driving home, they're going
• 48:47
  by a burning car. Could be.
• 48:49
  My wife is like, I think they're just trying to send him a
• 48:51
  message. I don't know.
• 48:52
  I wasn't sure what that burning car meant, but maybe it was just
• 48:55
  showing that things aren't going to be going well.
• 48:58
  Perhaps that's it, going to show it all right here.
• 49:01
  At the same time, what also isn't going well or is about not
• 49:05
  to go well, is the things happening at CBS 60 Minutes.
• 49:09
  The corporate arm of the of the company.
• 49:13
  Absolutely. We have Pacino sort of all
• 49:15
  excited. We have a nice little scene,
• 49:17
  which I love as a producer. I've produced a couple things in
• 49:21
  my time at school, but he's kind of piercing together the the
• 49:25
  interview. Like that angle cut this thing?
• 49:27
  Can I tell you it makes a, a world of difference.
• 49:29
  Like you really can create that story and really manipulate it.
• 49:33
  Not a bad way necessarily, but really make it like, you know,
• 49:36
  powerful. And what have you packed the
• 49:38
  loudest punch? Yeah, but then we sort of get
• 49:40
  the impression, and we'll get it later, that we're not sure about
• 49:45
  this story yet. It might not even make it to
• 49:47
  air. I think we may have Baker Hall
• 49:49
  at this point, sort of like we have a meeting.
• 49:52
  We have a meeting with corporate with corporate.
• 49:55
  Those don't go well. Tobolowski and Gina Gershon and
• 49:57
  they're talking about how tortious interference is a new
• 50:01
  phrase going around and. All the kids are saying it.
• 50:03
  Exactly, If you pulled the interview or you pulled the
• 50:06
  information out of somebody, then that itself means that you
• 50:09
  might be liable for, and they basically allude to Big Tobacco
• 50:14
  could own CBS, like the numbers. And the severity is such that if
• 50:19
  they are found guilty of this tortious interference, they will
• 50:22
  own us. They could own the entire
• 50:23
  company, which is enough to cause some alarm, obviously, to
• 50:27
  the corporate overlords. It does.
• 50:29
  And as a result, they want to cut an alternate.
• 50:34
  Phil Baker Hall wants to, you know, of course he does have an
• 50:36
  alt, if you will. I will and I wouldn't, but yeah.
• 50:41
  And the question is, you know, is CBS corporate now, you know,
• 50:45
  butting in on on the news division.
• 50:47
  What Lowell does is fantastic. Is he's talking about he's like,
• 50:51
  I just happened to find these court filings or whatever else
• 50:54
  about a merger on the horizon. And the idea is that because of
• 51:00
  corporate interference, that news division has to bow down.
• 51:03
  Yes. And that is so prescient,
• 51:07
  disgustingly so, yes, that it's now 25 years later and
• 51:12
  coincidentally, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, Bill
• 51:16
  Owens. Bill Owens quit, OK, recently,
• 51:20
  OK, I did not know this amid pressure because corporate was
• 51:25
  sticking their nose in, in the nose division because there's a
• 51:29
  merger coming up with CBS and Sky Dance Corporation on the
• 51:35
  books, OK? And so the president sues the
• 51:39
  network. The network is given the option
• 51:41
  of fighting that or paying and settling out of.
• 51:44
  Court, of course, yeah. And by settling out of court,
• 51:47
  you admit a certain amount of liability and therefore you and
• 51:54
  you want to do that because you don't want to jeopardize this
• 51:57
  merger that's coming up because you need the federal approval
• 51:59
  for the merger. Yeah.
• 52:00
  So the same thing is happening in the present day.
• 52:03
  Wow. And it's fucking disgusting that
• 52:06
  it's almost like identical. It's almost identical.
• 52:08
  Well, for the corporate benefit, the news suffers.
• 52:12
  You don't report the thing, you soften the news.
• 52:13
  You hide it, You audit it. You are, you know, the truth
• 52:16
  isn't told. No, you hide the information or
• 52:20
  it gets buried under 10 other things and it has no ability to
• 52:24
  reach. And 60 minutes in 1999 and in
• 52:28
  the years since for almost 60 years, is the, as they say in
• 52:32
  this movie, well respected? It's as well respected.
• 52:35
  The the standard, they say, Right.
• 52:36
  Our standards have to be higher because ours is the standard.
• 52:39
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 52:40
  And it still is. Yeah.
• 52:41
  And yet this shit is still happening 25 years later.
• 52:44
  It's, it's so sad. Good for Billy Owens though.
• 52:47
  Maybe. Yeah, I mean, you watch Lowell
• 52:48
  in this movie, right? He says you wanna quit protest,
• 52:50
  I'm gonna do my job, right? Like that's that's what it is.
• 52:53
  And at some point you have to realize that if you cannot trust
• 52:57
  the people you're working for with and around, then something
• 53:01
  is lost. And and this movie obviously
• 53:03
  elusive that a little bit cuz ultimately they want this cut.
• 53:06
  And he talks about Pacino in in one of his great scenes in the
• 53:09
  movie. Are we going to air it?
• 53:11
  Of course not Why? Because he's not telling the
• 53:14
  truth? No, because he is telling the
• 53:16
  truth. Just a powerful summation of the
• 53:19
  BS that he has to fight against. Absolutely.
• 53:22
  Just when you think he's done his speech, he takes it up
• 53:25
  another level. Did you find it?
• 53:26
  Surprising Wallace didn't have his back.
• 53:29
  It's the greatest scene in the it's so good.
• 53:31
  I was very surprised. I was disappointed and
• 53:35
  disappointed watching Bergman at this peak moment where he's so,
• 53:39
  like, righteous. Yeah, Right.
• 53:41
  Mike. Yeah.
• 53:42
  And does the like you're with me and what?
• 53:45
  And Mike, I'm with corporate on this.
• 53:47
  Yeah, I'm with Baker Hall. I mean, I'm normally with Baker
• 53:49
  Hall, too. I love him.
• 53:50
  I would. Argue this is probably the best
• 53:53
  scene. I don't really bring this up.
• 53:55
  It's. Very, very, very, very.
• 53:57
  You come in with your, it's true, your favorite lines, your
• 54:00
  favorite scenes, least favorite. But I would say the scenes
• 54:03
  between Baker Hall specifically and Pacino are the best.
• 54:09
  Yeah, yeah. And Wallace, the boot, it's just
• 54:12
  so great. And then we have a little kind
• 54:15
  of not really a montage, but the sort of sequence of all the bad
• 54:18
  stuff coming out. Hey, they go visit Wygand's
• 54:20
  ex-wife. They're talking about his
• 54:22
  arrest. They're talking about the
• 54:24
  citations. Did you did you roll with the
• 54:26
  the wrestling team? Right, like all the little.
• 54:28
  Bullshit. He's barred with them, Phillip.
• 54:30
  But all of that, it's all coming and then Pacino just screaming
• 54:34
  at him. It doesn't fucking matter if
• 54:35
  you're telling the truth. Like that argument again, that
• 54:38
  is like, it just doesn't. Like you're not understanding.
• 54:41
  Wygand is thinking again, didactically, ABCD and this
• 54:46
  world that he's entering is not ABCD.
• 54:49
  It is all over. You have to be, it is helped.
• 54:53
  You have to be on your feet. You have to be able to come
• 54:55
  clean. I don't care how small you think
• 54:57
  it is. They're going to go and they're
• 54:59
  going to find it. But you know, just just killing
• 55:02
  it. And the dynamic between the two
• 55:04
  I thought just perfectly pitched.
• 55:05
  Perfectly pitched. I found their phone scenes more
• 55:09
  impactful than their in person scenes at the restaurant.
• 55:12
  Totally. Did you notice when he's on the
• 55:13
  phone one of the guys is getting dirt on him?
• 55:15
  Walks by? No.
• 55:17
  Wow good catch, thank you. I thought it would play more
• 55:21
  into it but it didn't really play into anything I was
• 55:24
  thinking of. If you ran for politics or
• 55:27
  became famous or something, you know?
• 55:29
  Would there be a front page article?
• 55:32
  About the bubble gum. I was thinking more about the
• 55:34
  kilt and the junkyard dog chain. Would that make front page news?
• 55:40
  I don't know. I don't.
• 55:41
  Know I have to ask Matt Damon. There you go away.
• 55:45
  Available in the Archives. That's right, the Adjustment
• 55:47
  Bureau. Well, now we have our good
• 55:55
  friend Mr. Bergman, because he's a good guy.
• 55:57
  Much like Robin Hood, he's a man of honor and he's not going to
• 56:01
  leave him out in the lurch, so he really tries to start working
• 56:04
  on damage control. Yes, which is very important, as
• 56:08
  well as creating his own damage, which is what I think is really
• 56:11
  good. What's your damage?
• 56:13
  Where he is, where he's out there and he's trying to protect
• 56:17
  Wyand obviously, but he's also trying to secure the story.
• 56:20
  That's true. So now Lowell is doing a
• 56:23
  producer thing, which I love, and we talked about this in.
• 56:26
  Hell of a producer. In all the president's men a few
• 56:29
  others, but this one sticks out where the it's the shoe leather
• 56:32
  of the reporting of the journalistic of the interviews
• 56:35
  of the research all that work. Frost Nixon These are things
• 56:39
  right where you have people looking into the thing and
• 56:42
  trying to expose it and dig deeper continent New York Times.
• 56:44
  He wants to expose what's happening without jeopardizing
• 56:48
  his integrity. The the news divisions and tag
• 56:51
  like he is working all the angles.
• 56:53
  He's like, I'm fighting for you. I still fight like I'm still
• 56:56
  working on this. You have to open up.
• 56:58
  That is, again, Pacino just killing it.
• 57:00
  The back half of this movie is really fantastic.
• 57:03
  To me, I would 100% agree with you.
• 57:05
  I, I tell you, I'm, I was not really into it until we really
• 57:09
  get into that powerful scene with Pacino at, at CBS.
• 57:13
  This is where I'm, I'm locked in.
• 57:15
  I am, I am locked in and I continue to be locked in as we
• 57:18
  kind of get through all this. He's got a strategy to kind of.
• 57:21
  Flip the tables on CBS without though he's trying to, you know,
• 57:26
  do it without doing it. That's right.
• 57:27
  That's fantastic. And we have smart stuff.
• 57:29
  We have Wallace kind of piping in again because he thinks he's
• 57:32
  doing the damage control. If you remember that scene where
• 57:34
  he's he's like, Lord, you're going to like this.
• 57:37
  I went on and I told them this, this and this and they show the
• 57:41
  interview and he goes, yes. And that's it.
• 57:44
  You get one word and he's like, you cut and then you then you
• 57:47
  see again that gravity. Yeah, gravitas, if you will.
• 57:52
  When Gina Gershaw's character comes in and calls him Mike,
• 57:55
  Yeah, we're on the same team, Mike.
• 57:56
  He delivers that perfection. Yeah, beautifully.
• 58:00
  I'm back with Mike Wallace because I want, I want to like
• 58:04
  this guy, of course. And I was really upset with them
• 58:06
  for siding with corporate. You know, I was not impressed.
• 58:09
  It's a great scene and one that I think stands up and and holds
• 58:13
  up for for a character and actor that is not in the movie very
• 58:16
  often. It's for scenes like this that
• 58:17
  you go, yeah, this guy is worth an Oscar.
• 58:20
  Now what happens after that, however, is my least favorite
• 58:24
  scene in the movie. Here it is folks.
• 58:26
  And it is the edited version of the on the TV.
• 58:30
  And why, again, watching it and eventually feeling kind of
• 58:35
  suicidal. A little bit.
• 58:37
  He's not in the best mental. Space and the room, kind of.
• 58:42
  It becomes alive. It becomes something out of
• 58:44
  Minority Report, if you recall. It's a little CGIE.
• 58:47
  Yeah, I don't, I don't enjoy this.
• 58:50
  OK, I didn't like it either. I'm glad we were on the same
• 58:52
  page. I do want to reference something
• 58:54
  that happened and around this time.
• 58:56
  I don't know if it's before or after, but Pacino's character
• 58:59
  while all this is happening on Damage to Control, is he's
• 59:03
  talking about leads, and I wrote down again with the leads all
• 59:08
  about the. Leads All about the leads.
• 59:10
  Leads weak over. Meanwhile, he's on the beach.
• 59:15
  That's right up to his, I want to say knees, which would not be
• 59:18
  good to up to his ways. Little John wouldn't farewell in
• 59:21
  this situation. No, no.
• 59:23
  And here's kind of fighting this ocean and standing in the ocean
• 59:29
  getting kind of beaten. He's like, I'm out of moves.
• 59:30
  I got nothing left. I Steve, I'm still fighting for
• 59:33
  you, but I'm kind of stuck. And plumber, of course.
• 59:36
  We have another scene with them. It wants to be a legacy of
• 59:39
  sorts, right? Because people tend to remember
• 59:42
  the last thing you do. Yeah, right.
• 59:44
  It's. And he's getting close to
• 59:45
  retirement. He's 78.
• 59:47
  That was made clear in this movie near the beginning.
• 59:49
  Right away. Yeah.
• 59:50
  It's another really powerful, beautiful scene between these
• 59:53
  two guys. And Wallace is talking about,
• 59:56
  you know, the other side, right? You're on the back end of your
• 1:00:00
  life. You start thinking about legacy.
• 1:00:02
  You start thinking about where you're fit into the world.
• 1:00:04
  And this is a guy he's like, I've covered.
• 1:00:06
  Oh yeah, 25 things, he says. But they're only going to
• 1:00:09
  remember the last thing. And it's same thing actually
• 1:00:11
  with with Dan Rather, who is an anchor that was at the
• 1:00:15
  forefront. He reported the assassination of
• 1:00:18
  President Kennedy. Like this guy was the head of
• 1:00:21
  news divisions forever and ever and ever and ever.
• 1:00:23
  He gets one story around the president's George W Bush, his
• 1:00:29
  National guardsmanship. He starts kind of they they
• 1:00:31
  unravel the story That wasn't maybe 100% accurate and they
• 1:00:36
  basically tore him down to the point where he spent the last
• 1:00:39
  part of his career doing interviews with aging rock stars
• 1:00:43
  on AXS television, despite the fact that he had 50 year career.
• 1:00:48
  The last thing he was doing was caught up in some other kind of
• 1:00:52
  bullshit with politics and whatever else.
• 1:00:55
  So but I but I would. Argue that like when I think of
• 1:00:57
  Dan Rather, and obviously I don't read up a lot about him,
• 1:01:00
  but I don't remember him as that.
• 1:01:02
  I remember him being like quite the.
• 1:01:04
  Sure, quite the fella. Sure.
• 1:01:05
  If you if you pay attention, though, that's where his career
• 1:01:08
  went. Yeah, but who?
• 1:01:09
  Really is paying? Attention.
• 1:01:11
  That's the problem, I suppose, with the culture and the society
• 1:01:14
  that we're living in. Yeah.
• 1:01:15
  But it's a really great scene. And when they're referencing
• 1:01:18
  that, he says, you know, they accuse us of betraying the
• 1:01:21
  memory of Edward Murrow, and he kind of throws the newspaper
• 1:01:25
  down. Now, Edward Murrow, of course,
• 1:01:27
  factors into good night and good luck.
• 1:01:28
  Yes. Great film, great film.
• 1:01:30
  Brilliant film. 2005, which we talked about earlier, lost the
• 1:01:33
  Oscar to Crash. Yeah.
• 1:01:34
  And just this, this week, it premiered live on Broadway.
• 1:01:38
  Yeah, Broadway's killed. These.
• 1:01:39
  Days, CNN Yeah, it's great. It's a great season.
• 1:01:41
  I disappointedly weren't. It wasn't able to go but between
• 1:01:43
  Glengarry Gunn, Ross and Goodnight and Good Luck didn't
• 1:01:47
  didn't make it this year unfortunately.
• 1:01:49
  Yeah, Clooney's a hell of a guy, though.
• 1:01:51
  Let's say that. Absolutely.
• 1:01:52
  There you go. And then we have Philip, another
• 1:01:54
  big powerful scene by our good friend Al Pacino.
• 1:01:57
  And Philip Baker Hall. These two guys together, Phil,
• 1:02:00
  this is what I'm talking about. He's like, after all that, Like,
• 1:02:04
  come on, guy the. Cat's out of the bag.
• 1:02:06
  Come on, the cat. Fully out of the bag, that's
• 1:02:09
  what he says. And yeah, I just think it's just
• 1:02:12
  just powerful. It's really this movie, as much
• 1:02:15
  as I wasn't a big fan of it going in, I really did like the
• 1:02:17
  last but half hour or so with Pacino mostly and Baker Hall,
• 1:02:22
  because they're just killing it. Yeah, it's really wonderful.
• 1:02:24
  And he kind of has this great reprieve where Baker Hall kind
• 1:02:27
  of looks to Mike once again for support.
• 1:02:30
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:02:31
  And Mikey, just like we fucked up.
• 1:02:33
  Yeah, we did. We caved.
• 1:02:35
  Yeah, we did. Everybody knows it.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah. It's foolish.
• 1:02:39
  We air it right. I'm so glad Wallace came around.
• 1:02:42
  Totally. And it's a brilliant, brilliant
• 1:02:44
  thing. Yeah.
• 1:02:45
  It's so good. They air the interview as it is.
• 1:02:47
  Get Wyand gets to feel like the the hero that he is in in
• 1:02:52
  relationship to his kids, seeing and knowing what it all was
• 1:02:55
  worth. Right.
• 1:02:56
  Like the value of it wasn't. It wasn't all for naughty
• 1:02:59
  because when you're a whistle blower, you know.
• 1:03:01
  You become the target. You become vilified.
• 1:03:05
  Yeah, I'm gonna lose. I think he's better off without
• 1:03:06
  or just. Sure, I'm gonna lose my whole
• 1:03:09
  life for the greater good. For the greater good, and I
• 1:03:12
  think Star Trek. Told us the many the.
• 1:03:16
  Good of the many, of course. And we have Pacino and he bumps
• 1:03:20
  into Mic again for the last scene together and he says I
• 1:03:24
  quit. Yes, that's right.
• 1:03:25
  Yes, and. Mike is shocked.
• 1:03:27
  Like, come on, we got it. We'll do it now.
• 1:03:29
  You're doing this for how long? And he says what's broken here
• 1:03:33
  doesn't get put back together. And I think that's a good point.
• 1:03:35
  I think it's sadly so fucking telling because we're living in
• 1:03:38
  this goddamn world 25 years later where it still never got
• 1:03:42
  fixed, it got ignored, it got subverted, it got distracted,
• 1:03:47
  the media went on their own thing, television created this
• 1:03:50
  other thing, politics got what they wanted out of the world.
• 1:03:54
  And now it's like it's so broken and lessons have not been
• 1:03:58
  learned that it's so prescient to watch this movie.
• 1:04:01
  I'd watch this and Good Night and Good Luck live in the same
• 1:04:06
  couple of days and it was just both harrowing heartbreaking
• 1:04:12
  that the world is what it still is after Goodnight.
• 1:04:17
  Good Luck is 70 years ago like the the story.
• 1:04:19
  Of the game, same mistake. 70 years ago.
• 1:04:22
  Nixon was 50 years ago. So like the idea that these
• 1:04:26
  things just nobody seems to catch the lesson and yet we're
• 1:04:29
  all fucking on our phones and we're all just in our own little
• 1:04:33
  ecospheres. It's what they wanted, Phil.
• 1:04:35
  It's 100% what they want. Absolutely all distracted.
• 1:04:38
  Fucked up that this stuff is happening and we just don't care
• 1:04:40
  about it. And also, I want to make a note,
• 1:04:42
  and I know I saw this in the movie.
• 1:04:44
  I don't know which one, but after this is all done, the
• 1:04:47
  story's out. All of a sudden, the Unabomber
• 1:04:50
  story gets put on TV. Sure, and I feel that.
• 1:04:54
  Boom, now this is taking over. We're all going to forget about
• 1:04:57
  tobacco company. Sure, all is gone.
• 1:04:59
  All is forgotten. Yeah, another salacious story on
• 1:05:01
  the horizon. Exactly and then we our memories
• 1:05:04
  are short and then everything that Jeffrey.
• 1:05:07
  Yep, put on the. Put out there everything that
• 1:05:10
  Bergman did, Wallace, everything that was done, all that work
• 1:05:13
  that put in there, all all the sacrifices, poof, gone.
• 1:05:16
  Because now we have this other story that's bigger, more
• 1:05:19
  entertaining, more what's the word, Philip?
• 1:05:22
  Salacious, salacious. Thank you.
• 1:05:24
  There we go. So I I found that unfortunate.
• 1:05:28
  Yeah, it's the. Nature of the 24 hour news
• 1:05:29
  cycle. There's always something in
• 1:05:31
  ratings. One of the things I read many
• 1:05:33
  years ago, but it was talking about how the news when they
• 1:05:36
  were granting the airwaves like the FDA or the FCC.
• 1:05:40
  FCC. Was putting out, you know,
• 1:05:43
  here's your network. Have it in exchange, you can
• 1:05:46
  have one hour for the news and there will be no advertising.
• 1:05:51
  And if they had just agreed that news wouldn't have advertising,
• 1:05:55
  some of the news would have been spared some of these corporate
• 1:05:59
  ideologies. But now they're on these big
• 1:06:01
  conglomerates that you know, you're not just a media company,
• 1:06:05
  you're 25 other things you're trying to put together.
• 1:06:07
  So it ends up being a real disaster.
• 1:06:09
  However, this movie is incredible.
• 1:06:11
  I loved it. I was it.
• 1:06:13
  It was such a a great watch and I'm happy to keep it on the
• 1:06:16
  shelf for as long as possible. Again, watching an old DVD
• 1:06:19
  because there is no no. 4K. No, I've seen a 4K.
• 1:06:22
  It's certainly not even a Blu-ray at this point, so I'm
• 1:06:25
  happy to have it on the shelf. And David, what are your final
• 1:06:27
  thoughts on the movie? Well, thanks.
• 1:06:28
  For asking Phillip I I will say I would have preferred
• 1:06:31
  ultimately the arcade version of this movie. 92 minutes, Yeah, I
• 1:06:40
  felt conversations. No, no, no.
• 1:06:42
  I just felt there was a lot of scenes, a lot of fat that I
• 1:06:45
  think they could have trimmed out.
• 1:06:47
  Now, obviously we're keeping everything with Pacino and Baker
• 1:06:50
  Hall like that's that's not going anywhere.
• 1:06:53
  But there's a lot of little scenes I think could have been
• 1:06:55
  done a little bit better to move this movie along a little
• 1:06:58
  better. Because I, I just, I found
• 1:06:59
  myself, especially the first half, really hard to get engaged
• 1:07:03
  in the film. And you know, it could be a
• 1:07:04
  matter of just being in the right mindset as well.
• 1:07:06
  But I did really appreciate Pacino's performance.
• 1:07:10
  I thought he really stood out. Plumber stood out.
• 1:07:12
  So from a performance perspective, I thought everybody
• 1:07:15
  was hitting home runs. I just felt the runtime and it
• 1:07:18
  just, it didn't always keep me engaged in all the movie.
• 1:07:21
  Ultimately there was jarring. I don't think I would probably
• 1:07:24
  ever watch it again. Couldn't disagree more.
• 1:07:27
  Wouldn't be a wouldn't be a week if not for a complete.
• 1:07:31
  Disagreement. I think we agreed.
• 1:07:32
  Lately, more so, I think we were sort of dude.
• 1:07:35
  But I do appreciate you taking it off the show, Phil, as
• 1:07:37
  always. It's my pleasure and we'll do it
• 1:07:38
  again next week for one of yours.
• 1:07:40
  We will. Yeah.
• 1:07:41
  Yeah, absolutely all. Right Gino, Thanks folks.
• 1:07:43
  Thanks for listening. We always appreciate it.
• 1:07:44
  Please rate US five stars in your podcast of choice.
• 1:07:47
  Subscribe to never miss an episode and share with any
• 1:07:50
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• 1:07:54
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• 1:07:57
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• 1:07:59
  Absolutely. Bye.