Joel Radio #283: Movie (kinda) Mania 2023

all righty there joel radio welcome back it's joel radio

talking movies today how about that that's the show y'all like

that was one of the three shows i did last year i think i think after the movie show i took the

rest of the year off but no not this year actually i don't know you can't speak to that but you know

how it is when we do the movie show the man who's been here for the last several years talking

movies jason phyla mores is here hello everybody say hi thank you for having me hello everybody

well it's good to have you back dude it's good good to be here my friend joel radio is here

joel

radio in the house talking literally yes and we're gonna get to that in a second there's a

lot going on we had uh as we're recording this the oscars were last night yes they were and uh

i think there's a couple things to talk about from the actual ceremony i don't know how much

did you watch much of the ceremony it's watched very little yeah and then we have the winners

and the movies we've seen now look in the past the format i was gonna wait to do this but i'll

try to

see all of the oscar-nominated movies give you my list of the best movies of the year to show you

how wrong hollywood was this year i didn't even bother seeing all of the oscar-nominated movies

and there's reasons for that and that actually is a rant i want to get into in fact let me make a

note for later why didn't i watch all the movies and it's funny because i had this conversation

with miss lela the other night yeah and she goes you used to watch all the movies what happened

And I think it's I think it's a reason a lot of people don't watch all the movies.

So we'll get into that.

So we have our thoughts on who won and who lost.

We'll get into all that stuff.

We'll talk some TV.

Jason was like, I'm watching this.

We're going to talk about TV.

Absolutely.

He's excited about a show.

Very excited.

And I am, too.

I got show.

I always got show.

You know me.

Absolutely.

But what's going on in comedy, dude?

What's going on with you?

Comedy is very, very good.

In fact, I would say that was that would be the reason why I've stepped back a little bit on my movies this year.

You know, comedy has been hopping.

I'm very blessed.

Yeah.

Working hard as you are, Joel, and the comedy world.

Right now, we're pushing a big show that we have coming up with J.

Chris Newberg.

Very excited.

Yeah.

The first time we're ever doing two shows in one day.

We're doing a 2 p.m. and a 6 p.m. on Sunday the 2nd.

Wow.

It has also Melissa Hager and myself.

Oh, my God.

It'll be great.

It's fun times.

And we're also trying to get the mental health message out there.

We're booking shows at high schools and colleges and trying to get the word out, keeping kids safe and healthy.

And people want people to know that they're not alone if they're not feeling great.

Joel, that's kind of the bottom line.

So we're here for them.

Terrific.

Thank you.

Tell everybody where they can see J.

Chris Newberg, who's been a guest on this show.

Yeah.

And a longtime friend of mine.

Yes.

Melissa Hager, also guest on this show and a longtime friend of mine.

One of my students like you.

She's great.

Yeah.

So thank you for reminding me.

Yes.

So our shows are at Grafkapp Brewing in Oxford, Michigan.

It's right there at Washington, Washington Street, M24.

Yeah.

We have our monthly show.

We're also available for hire.

But if you're looking for us specifically for a monthly gig, it is Grafkapp Brewing,

Oxford, Michigan.

Very proud.

Joel has been there.

Yeah.

Joel will be back there.

Yeah.

I hope so.

We had a great time.

We're always putting that.

You're doing this as a Sunday night?

This one is a Sunday.

Sunday.

Okay.

Do you normally run Sunday?

We do Sundays or Fridays.

Okay.

This time Sunday just worked out.

The 6 o'clock sold out in like three days.

And Chris was like, what do you think about it?

2 p.m.

I'm like, I do like that.

So far it's selling.

Well, you know, when you got no football, Sunday is probably not a bad day to run.

Correct.

I think if it's a bar and the NFL is on, you're probably ain't doing a whole lot of business

for that.

True.

It was funny because when we had Mike Green, it was in between the championship games and

the Super Bowl, but that's the night of the Pro Bowl.

Yeah.

And like nobody cares enough about the Pro Bowl, so it wasn't a big deal.

Nope.

But we're always very careful about things like high school spring break and June is

always a tough sell.

July.

But then we end up selling those, too.

So a lot of good comedy fans in Oxford and they come from all over.

How about you?

What's going on?

Well, I mean, Comedy Castle, you know, I think I announced the last time I was on that I

was going to be the host of Comedy Castle podcast over at Comedy Castle podcast dot

com.

Fantastic.

Tom McCarthy, who had been doing it since its inception and did think he did about 125

shows.

Wow.

I was his producer for those.

So I was actually cutting them up.

Oh, OK.

Making the website and doing all of that.

But Tom was doing the interviews.

Now I'm doing everything from beginning to end website to hold.

Congratulations.

Yeah.

So it's really great.

It's it's a promotion for me of some kind.

I guess you could say it gets me a little, you know, kind of closer to some of those

headliners and getting to meet those guys and meet some of their people as well.

Sure.

Absolutely.

There is a lot.

It's out.

Here's the thing I will say, and I'm having a good time.

So go over to Comedy Castle podcast and listen to some of those interviews.

I think they're fun.

I've had Josh Blue on there.

T.J.

Miller.

Was on there with me recently.

Isabel Hagen.

I think Isabel Hagen.

She was the first guest I did by myself.

OK.

She's great.

And she's great.

Her and I get along really good.

And it was fun.

But then I'm meeting new comedians that I didn't really know.

Sure.

Emma Willman.

We had I had on there and Emma did one night on a Sunday.

She could be one of the biggest stars in comedy in a couple of years.

I really believe that she's unbelievable.

OK.

And she's just so cool to talk to, too.

Like she's got a real swagger about her, which is like.

Maybe not what you think, like because she makes a lot of jokes.

She's a lesbian.

She sort of has a vague across the room resemblance to like Ellen DeGeneres.

Oh, yeah.

But yet actually, when you talk to her, it's absolutely nothing like Ellen DeGeneres.

It's more like talking to Jim Norton or something.

Oh, nice.

So it's it's it's she's really cool like that.

And I said that on the show.

I said I could.

I said, Emma, I never met you.

I could have talked to you all day about comedy.

That's great.

She just we talked about, well, how do you write?

And we're just doing all this like real in-depth comedy nerd.

I'm going to go back.

I can listen to.

Yeah, she was really good.

Now you've got me.

I had a I had a we had a lady that did a one night show called The Depths of Wikipedia.

Yeah.

What was that?

I didn't really.

It's literally she stands on stage and she reads funny stuff from Wikipedia.

OK, but she puts a lot into her name's Annie.

What's her last?

She's got a strange last name, but she's from Michigan.

And I think she's 23 years old or something.

Wow.

And she started it's basically an Instagram.

The Depths of Wikipedia.

OK.

She turned it into a live show.

She's got some agent booking her.

Wow.

She sold almost 300 tickets to the comedy.

She really to see her live.

And it was a fun show.

Wasn't it?

So it was.

Yeah, it was a fun show.

I mean, it was way different.

It wasn't stand up comedy at all.

OK.

But the stuff that she finds in Wikipedia, like her curation of what she thinks is funny

from Wikipedia is like dead on.

It's really, really funny.

Is it like PG 13 ish stuff?

Yeah.

I mean, it's for adults.

I mean, it was, you know, it was nerds.

And she even she'll even say that.

She said that in the area.

It's like I go, who's following this?

And she's like nerds.

And I go, yeah, I guess so.

But I'm a nerd, too.

So for sure, I would think the the thing that would really make that show work.

Did she have like that?

The thing that every kind of live show needs that kind of pacing up, down and then like

kind of a little bit.

I mean, it was it was basically a PowerPoint presentation.

And then she had some live elements to it where she brought people on stage and asked

sort of doing almost like a.

Late night bit.

Was this real or was this not?

We're almost like when you see like Jimmy Kimmel might do like a man on the street.

Or Jay Leno or whatever.

Or Leno or Fallon.

It wasn't as dumb as some of the stuff Fallon does.

He's smarter than that.

So that was kind of a neat show.

And, you know, why would I be talking to her?

You know, but that was neat.

I was I was recently at the Comedy Castle for T.J.

Miller.

And I made every time I go out to the comedy club and I'm going to sit in the front row.

I'm always very, very conscious of what I'm wearing.

For some reason, I thought, let's go cable knit fisherman's sweater in the front row.

And I saw T.J. eyeing me.

And I thought he's going to get me on something.

Then he was like, are you you look so uncomfortable.

I'm like, well, I am now.

But no, it was great.

It was fun.

But I'm always conscious of that.

And then I thought, yeah, why did you wear this sweater?

It was so hot.

There's 400 people.

Did he do?

He did some joke about it.

What are you protecting your neck from something or something?

Yeah, exactly.

Because I think later in the week.

Yeah.

There was a guy in the front row with a turtleneck.

So he's got lines.

Oh, of course.

He's got lines.

He's great.

You know how comedy works.

When comics do crowd work.

It's all good.

It's all pulling from a certain pool of insults.

It's all good.

It was fine.

Yeah, you were good.

I was at that show.

I was.

Thank you.

I was happy to see you.

But when when a comic goes to you.

Yeah.

You do what you're supposed to do.

And I'm going to explain right now.

If you don't mind.

Yeah.

You help out here.

Sure.

If you're at a comedy show and the comedian talks to you, just answer the questions.

Of course.

It's not.

OK.

Don't think in your mind.

OK.

Now it's my turn to be funny.

No.

Right.

Funny.

Answer the question.

The guy's got a joke.

Yeah.

It's it's it's in the barrel.

Yeah.

You say the line.

He's going to pull the trigger.

Everyone's going to laugh.

Just smile and you're fucking it up.

If you do anything, then just answering his question.

Exactly.

If he asks what you do for a living, don't go.

I'm a pimp.

Yeah.

Not just fucking say you're a plumber.

It's fine.

Right.

Well, he's going to make fun of being a plumber.

Yeah.

He's going to make fun of whatever you say you do.

That never bothers me.

But I do.

I don't mind getting picked up.

But I do see people that do that exact thing.

Like, oh, I'm going to out T.J. Miller.

T.J. Miller.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Do that, man.

There's no way.

It's like you're not, you know, you're part of the show, but it's literally just all they

are looking for is some acknowledgement of the thing that you have a joke about.

I can bounce it off.

You have a joke about married people.

Sure.

You know, you guys don't have sex anymore or whatever.

Right.

It's just a line you're trying to get to.

So if you're married and you've been married for a long time, the comic can do his joke.

Of course.

All you have to do is acknowledge those things.

Answer it.

You know, just answer the questions.

It's really that easy.

It's not.

But people think it's, you know, oh, we're doing a show together.

And it's like, no, you're not.

Well, I think.

You're not.

I think people get nervous.

I think having done comedy for a few years, I understand, too, that, you know, that just

answer.

And I would never do otherwise anyway.

Mm hmm.

I do see people that are like, OK, I got to really load up something good and think

of something good or they miss cues.

I saw our buddy Mike Green doing a show and, you know, he does a bit where, you know, somebody

leaves and he asked somebody in the audience to say something or have a cue and he got

the person to agree to it.

Then when it came time to it, the person just totally dropped the ball and messed up the

whole bit.

Really?

You know, so, I mean, it happens.

It's a lot of responsibility.

It's pretty safe if you just say the thing.

Just say the thing.

We can all move on.

It is so easy.

The show will be so much better.

Doing nothing is so easy, but sometimes people can't do that, which I don't understand.

It's very simple if you, you know, and, you know, most people will just do it and then,

you know, sometimes they feel walking out that like, oh man, he really picked on me,

but all he did is he asked you where you worked, if you were married or not, how'd you guys

meet?

Something very simple like that.

You see that show more than once.

Of course.

Yeah.

You're going to see another person essentially answer those exact same questions.

Yeah.

You're just, you know, you're just filling a chair and don't be, you know, and like you

said, the thing that you wore, he was able to find humor in it, but it didn't really

matter what you were wearing.

Right.

It could have been something else.

He would have found that.

If you were wearing, if you were wearing jeans and a t-shirt, okay, maybe he talks to the

guy next to you.

Yeah.

But you don't mind being talked to because you know what to do.

Not at all.

You know how it works.

Not at all.

It's fun.

He was having fun.

Yeah.

TJ was a lot of fun.

He was a good guy.

Yeah.

John Rudnitsky.

We just had.

Yeah.

Uh, was the guy who had done Saturday Night Live for one season.

Okay.

About six years ago.

Okay.

I don't remember the name.

And he's a guy from Jersey and, uh, you know, um, but again, another guy that I think could

be very, very popular going forward.

Yeah.

Because he's young.

He's still young, even though he was, I think he was on, he was 24 or 25 when he got that

show.

Handsome.

Mm-hmm.

Um, does a lot of movies and television.

He played Reese Witherspoon's boyfriend.

Okay.

In a movie.

All right.

Which I think nobody saw, but it was one of those Reese Witherspoon chick flicks.

Chick flick.

Yeah.

Right.

And, um, he's done a bunch of, you know, TVs done curb your enthusiasm.

In fact, there is some movie they're shooting in Detroit.

That is a comedy.

I have no idea what it's called.

I know John is part of it.

I forgot to ask him what it was, but a bunch of the, the cast and crew came out.

Oh, cool.

Uh, for, I think the Friday night show, one of the Friday, the late show Friday.

Very cool.

Including a lady named Cassie Davis.

Cassie David.

I just mentioned something else.

If you can, if your brain can make the connection between Cassie David and curb your enthusiasm

and Cassie David.

It's not happening.

Larry David's daughter.

Oh, okay.

There you go.

Yeah.

And then she's an actress.

Talk about putting on a TV.

And her and John are friends.

That's great.

And she came out to the show.

So she was at the comedy castle.

Our buddy.

Hanging out.

Our buddy, Greg Sharp was the host.

Who was the feature that weekend?

She used to date Pete Davidson.

Cassie David did.

So does everybody.

Well, I'm next, I think.

Sorry, Layla.

Yeah, I think you're next in line.

Yeah, exactly.

No, it was, we had Greg Sharp and Martin Butler.

Martin Butler.

And Martin, Marty, I call him Marty because I've known him for so long.

I've known Marty for 23 years or something.

Kind of went into semi-retirement in a way, I think.

Uh-huh.

And got a day job.

But he's always been really funny.

Yeah.

And I think the deal there is, I think, Bill Beshear.

Beshear called him up and said, you're going to do the comedy castle because he's like

not doing shows.

And Bill's like, I want you at the club.

I love that.

And he did the club.

He did great.

Bill's great like that.

Yeah.

Awesome.

So it was a really good show.

It was a fun show this weekend.

So yeah, again, comedycastlepodcast.com.

Go over there.

I'm talking to all those folks and enjoy those as I've done Joel Radio a little less frequently

than I like to.

But you know, hey, but you know, you also get to the point where, you know, this show,

well, it's been good.

It's been a good promotion for my comedy.

And I've met lots of people through doing it.

Comedy Castle Podcast is my job.

It's literally a thing that they pay me to do.

Right.

So that has to take priority over something like this.

So when it comes to, you know, not watching as many movies or doing as many of these shows

as I've done in the past, that's a lot of the reason why maybe I'm doing a little less

of this.

But you got to do that.

You know, you have to sort of prioritize things and you have to compartmentalize.

All right.

I can do this on this day and we'll have this.

There's compromises.

You know, and then it's like, OK, like tomorrow night, I'm doing an open mic with my students.

OK.

Oh, right.

That's tomorrow night.

Wednesday night, I work at the club, you know, and then Thursday I'm off.

So I'm going to hang out with Layla that night.

Give her a night.

You know, it's the best thing in the world is to have things on the calendar that require

your time and attention.

Yeah.

Because, you know, when I'm not busy, well, shoot, I can do this.

I can do this podcast all day long.

Right.

Yeah.

But, you know, the thing about this.

Show two versus comedy guest podcast is I'm mainly talking to people on the phone for

that one.

Right.

And, you know, for this one, I always like to have somebody live.

Yeah.

You know, I've done them by myself or it's literally just me.

Yeah.

You know, I in the past have been hesitant to use phones or web chats because of the

audio quality.

Right.

Sort of had the standard of audio that I've been trying to keep up now.

And I know this is the first time you've been here.

I have new gear.

I've done a couple shows this way.

I did the show with Layla.

I did the show this way.

You've got your Casio keyboard in front of you.

No, this is the Rodecaster Pro 2 is what this guy is called.

Yeah.

And it does all kind of fun stuff.

It looks very shiny.

It is.

And very light bright-ish.

It looks.

What was that other?

It looks very expensive.

And it was.

Remember the 1980s kids game Simon Says?

Simon Says.

Oh, yeah, Simon.

That's what it looks like.

Well, it was Simon.

Yeah.

You would just hit these buttons.

Pressing all the buttons.

But if I hit these buttons now, it plays different sounds.

Yeah.

No, it's actually really cool.

That wouldn't be appropriate to play any of those.

Yeah.

And you also can change your voice, too.

I guess you could do that.

You want to do that?

Have you got a deeper voice now?

No, I got a higher voice.

But I think it only affects me, right?

That's terrifying.

Yeah, I think it's only my voice that is affected by that.

Yeah, there we go.

So that's.

That's a nightmare.

Yeah.

It could be a nightmare.

For sure.

That sounds like when Will Ferrell got hit in the neck with that thing.

On whatever movie that was.

I forget.

But if you had somebody who didn't want to reveal their identity, you would perhaps put

one of these on.

This is like when you're like a whistleblower and they show your silhouette and everybody

can see who it is based on the silhouette, but they still disguise the voice.

Well, I would have a comic on and be like, you know, and then Jason Feynman did 17 minutes.

Yes.

I only gave him 10 minutes.

Who the fuck does he think he is running the light at my show?

He didn't see the light.

I mean, I'm Tom Swan.

I mean.

It's a joke.

It's real inside there.

Yeah.

That's some inside baseball.

Right on.

He's got a big giant clock.

Yeah.

Oh, he does.

Yeah.

He's launching the space shuttle.

There's a clock.

At the Tiki Bar with the clock.

There's a clock at One Night Stands as well.

Yeah.

You don't.

You're not a fan of the clock.

I like the clock.

I don't.

Okay.

Real quick.

Is it just a purist thing or what?

Because I love it.

Well, I mean, a part of the thing is, I mean, you could have certain clocks.

You'd have a clock that just tells the time.

Right.

On stage with the comedian.

And I don't really have a problem with that.

I've played theaters and places where, you know, they have a clock and everybody or there's

a clock in the wings, meaning you look off to your right and there's a clock.

You look off to your left and there's a clock.

There's a red countdown timer that goes into like hundredth of a second.

Like it's the Olympics or something.

And Usain Bolt is running.

And like.

If you're trying to tell jokes, you don't need this red thing going.

I've done the Tiki many times.

I guess he has a clock.

And then the other thing is like, well, you know, you have an MC.

It's their job to get the comics on and off and signal the comedians when it's time to

go.

It's true.

And because you have an MC, there may be times when you want to get the person off earlier

than you agreed to.

Maybe they're not doing well or maybe like somebody walked in and you got to bump them

in a couple of minutes.

Sure.

And sometimes you need somebody to go long because something happens.

Kill time.

Yeah.

So that's why the MC can sort of give you a little bit of a tolerance one way or the

other to make the set a little longer, make the set a little bit shorter versus saying

this hard in and out time thing.

But I also find that like, you know, the shows where people don't know what they're doing,

meaning like when people don't know what they're doing in comedy, they learn like you have

to respect the light and you have to do your time.

Two absolutely important things in comedy.

I teach them in my class.

They're very important.

Okay.

You don't enforce that with guys who've never done it before.

You know, you have to like they have to learn.

And it's like, you know, you can't put up a clock like their head's going to explode

if that thing hits six minutes.

Comedy is inexact.

It's an art.

It's not a science.

Right.

It's an art.

If you do like, you know, when I tell people at the Comedy Castle, I'm like, OK, got five

minutes, but, you know, like 25, 20.

Mm hmm.

You're not in any trouble.

Right.

I tell the opening act like this.

You finish off the joke, yeah.

You got 15.

If the light goes on, you got a minute left, you know.

Right.

Wrap it up.

And I always say, if you go a little short and the emcee's there, that's OK, too.

It's just to have a clock there that's constantly running down.

I hear you.

It's sort of, well, one, it's just you have a person whose job it is to do that.

You don't need to put it up there to, like, make me sort of beat the clock or something.

I understand what you're saying.

It's like, you know, I.

You know, first of all, when you're a veteran, you generally know how long you've done.

Yeah.

Just because you learn it.

Like, that's the thing that you learn from doing it.

Sure.

You learn how long the jokes take.

You know, the more people there, the more laughter.

Maybe it takes a little longer, whatever.

But it's also you're enforcing this time thing stricter.

Because I say to him, I go, Comedy Castle doesn't have a clock.

These I played all these clubs coming up.

None of those clubs had a big red clock with them.

And so it's like you're making you're taking it so far to the extreme.

Right.

That now it's.

You've you're losing out on the spirit of what those rules mean.

The spontaneity, maybe.

Yeah, I think so.

And I think it's just would the comics be better without having that clock up there?

Would they be more relaxed?

Would the show be more fun?

I think so.

And I just think it's sort of like, you know, like, like, you know, there was a time when

you, you know, you couldn't buy a clock like that on Amazon for forty nine dollars.

Sure.

So what did we do before that for 50 years of standup comedy?

Just.

We had a guy hold up a candle.

In the back of the room.

Are we time?

Fine.

Sure.

We knew it was fine.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was fine.

We don't need that.

It's it's it's just it's sort of laughable.

Like, OK, you're you're enforcing the rules.

OK.

Right.

And not to mention, like, if I'm up there, I don't give a fuck about your clock.

Right.

I don't get it.

And I don't mean that I'm going to blow the clock.

I know.

Don't invite me to your comedy show.

But if I'm telling I'm not going to run off the stage because your thing got to whatever

it is.

Oh, shit.

I'm going to do this.

I'm doing a show for the audience.

Right.

Not doing a show for the booker.

Right.

He's going to pay me.

And that's what I want.

But my performance is for the audience.

Right.

So if I need an extra minute to do another, like, sometimes I do this and I'll literally

say this sometimes on my show, like, I was going to leave on that one, but let's leave

you on this one.

And I can give him one more.

Sometimes it gets short and I go, usually I have, like, the typical closure that I do.

But the joke that goes for it is really pretty strong.

And I can close on it if I need to.

Right.

If I feel like I need to go.

And it's a big enough laugh.

I'll just go.

See you later.

And if not, I go, I'm going to give you this one.

Well, I've never been a big fan of the whole.

Well, that's my time.

Well, that's my time is bad, too.

That's my time.

Yeah.

It just looks so amateur.

Because you want the audience to feel like this person completed their thing.

Yeah.

That you saw what they went there to do.

Correct.

And that makes for a better show.

That's my time.

It's like, well, I really enjoyed that guy.

Why?

Why does he get more time?

And you bring up some schmuck who's not funny.

And it just.

That's my time.

But it's.

I don't know.

It's all.

You know, sometimes comedy.

You know, again, one thing I stress in my class.

And I know you know this is.

Think of it from the audience's perspective.

Stop worrying about, you know, time.

And in terms of that.

And a lot of people also, I think, in the beginning, when you're open micers,

that time is sort of.

It's not a payment, but it's sort of like a hierarchy of.

This guy's good.

He gets seven.

Oh, yeah.

You get five.

Yeah.

And this guy gets five.

And why is this guy get five and you get seven?

And it sort of pits people against each other in a way.

Yeah.

It's sort of like.

And I know Paul Pepitone does this at New Way.

And it's the thing I used to do at my open mic at Club Bart for years is,

you know, if a guy's on a roll and he's good.

I'm not going to pull him off the stage.

Right.

You know, I mean, I'm not going to let him stay up there all night.

But, you know, it's like he can have an extra couple minutes because he's good.

Let's have some more fun with.

And if a guy's dying.

Even if I said you got five minutes, if you're dying after three minutes,

I don't want the audience leaving the club.

You know, I want them to stay and eat and drink and make money for the venue.

You can hear that energy suck.

So it's like, I'm going to pull you off for three minutes.

And I'll tell you, anytime I ever pulled people off early, I do it a lot.

But I did it, you know, once a show or every other show or something.

I pull the guy aside, usually brand new guy or something.

I said, listen, come back next week.

Yeah.

You can come back next week and do it.

No big deal.

Right.

And get him next week.

Tonight's not your night.

We're going to move on.

Get some other funny people up there and you come back next week.

Yeah.

And for most people, that's fair.

Because I get that.

Like, if you go up there, you light a guy early, he might want to fist fight you.

Like, that's only a thing that would happen.

That would be.

Or could happen.

Unfortunately.

I'm telling you, when you say to somebody, just come back next week.

That's all they need to hear.

Yeah.

You're doing them.

You're doing everybody a favor.

They're probably relieved.

Yeah, exactly.

You're saving the audience.

But you got it.

It has to be a pretty.

Pretty.

Some death if you got to.

Because if you pull them at three, that means you were thinking about it at two.

You know what I mean?

You already knew.

There are certain.

When you don't know a person, you know, when you know it's like their first time on stage

or their second or third time on stage, like, you got to watch that person close.

And like, if you're running a show, like I said, you know, like New Way is sort of the

new one where, you know, I have no idea who some of these people are.

Right.

Like, you should really be in the room watching them.

If you put Josh Adams on stage and you want to walk outside and have a smoke or whatever

you want to do.

Or maybe go to the men's room.

Killing it when you come back.

It's safe.

You know, that person's not going to be, you know.

No.

Doing anything bad.

Appropriate or anything.

So I think in those cases.

But I think when it's somebody brand new, you really should watch the show.

And again, it's for the sake of the audience.

And if you take care of the audience, the audience is going to take care of the bar.

I mean, that's how those things work.

I mean, you have a show that has been running successfully.

Yeah.

Because you're making money for your venue.

That's it.

So, you know, are you making money for yourself?

Yeah, I sure hope so.

I don't know.

But I'm assuming you are.

We are.

And you're paying comedians.

Yep.

So it all comes from that.

Serving that audience.

And, you know, if the audience didn't want to hear.

Because I know this happens at places where, you know, people do it for a while or six

months of the show in a certain room.

And then the ownership goes like, yeah, we can't do this anymore.

Yeah.

And sometimes the comedians are really taken aback.

They're like, oh, my God, we're packed every night.

Or it was so good.

And they don't get that.

You know, there might be people that aren't coming that night.

Right.

That would have come.

Yeah.

And those people spend big money.

Yeah.

And what they'll do is, you know, they're not there on Thursday night when it's comedy

night, when it's open mic night.

But Friday they come in.

Yeah.

And go, man, I wish you'd get rid of that comedy night.

I'd love to come in on Thursday.

And, you know, this guy's dropping.

Yeah.

Some big money on stuff.

And so you kind of got to go, well, you know, I got comics drinking waters.

True.

Yeah.

And look, I don't believe it's the comedian's job to keep these places afloat either.

I don't think comedians need to eat and drink.

If you want to, you can.

But, you know.

They're there to do their job.

Yeah.

They're there to make people laugh.

And that's their obligation to the place, not to eat a bunch of crap.

I know that when we're running our show and I don't your point to people being beginners

yet, because sometimes you worry they're just going to dive into like the most inappropriate

thing just to get a reaction.

Yeah.

But I know even at our shows.

And we've never.

We've never actually had anybody bomb, I would say.

But just because these are people that I care about and like, I am usually when they're

doing their thing, I'm usually in the hallway pacing.

Yeah.

Because I'm very nervous because I don't want anybody to be rude to them, but I don't want

them to be rude to anybody or take something wrong.

And it's all very tense.

But then I think this is the biggest thing I would tell anybody that wants to produce

a show is that, you know, start by making the show you want to see, but then also remember

that that's not necessarily the show you want to see.

Right.

That's not necessarily the show everybody wants to see.

That was the thing I had to learn.

If it was up to me, you know, we just have like, you know, Tyler and Charles and Finkel

and Cam on every single show, of course, Camilla.

But, you know, people want a nice variety.

And I think that's what we try to give them.

And yeah.

And it's, you know, these open mics get canceled, too, because people say inappropriate things.

Really inappropriate.

Not like comedy funny, but just like.

It's just like, well, yeah, this place doesn't want that.

Trying to get a reaction.

And again, probably one guy complained.

Right.

It's all it takes is one guy.

Exactly.

In some cases, it's all it takes is one guy.

And sometimes, like in a club, if you get a complaint about you're the thing that you

said, you just may not come back.

I got, I got, we were doing a private show and we got complaints about me.

Oh.

I was the only one that they complained about.

I'm glad those, I'm glad they found the right place.

Right.

Exactly.

After I wrote them down.

No, it was, you know, here's the thing.

I was hosting only doing seven and I had like my darkest, dirtiest stuff.

And I, it probably is better served in like a 30 minute set.

It usually does really well.

But I made the mistake of like trying to cram three or four of these jokes into seven minutes

as the host.

And it was hard because they were very hard to get their attention.

And I thought, oh, this will get them.

And it's just kind of backfired.

So lesson learned.

But as far as when I put people on shows, I really only hire people I know and trust.

And because it's my reputation, you know, I mean, I don't want, you know, like you just

said, we've seen the open mic or who goes up to, Hey, and we know I'm a guy, name it

under the sun, racial, sexual, pervert, you know, something about kids and some shit.

Nobody wants to hear, you know?

I mean, Hitler wasn't that bad.

Let me tell you why.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Because it's shocked.

I'm doing a quote of a bad comedian talking about how there isn't bad.

This is not me saying, Hey, Hitler was terrible.

Let me get.

Is that right?

This is like tar.

She says things out of context.

But, you know, the transcription of the podcast, of course, thing now.

Yeah.

Joel Fragomeni.

So bad.

Yeah.

And then print that out.

Yeah.

Nowadays, man, it's how it is.

That's how it is.

That's.

Oh, believe me, if I get anything like if there's like we're going to hire you to be

on network television, it's like you'll never hear these Joel radios ever again.

Oh, so you'd bury them?

They'd be gone.

One.

I can push one button on the control.

Panel.

Isn't that a shame, though?

Boom.

I just.

Well, it's it's a minefield.

You know, like that's the guys like the Shane Gillis thing.

I mean, they announced him for SNL.

Right.

And that's when people started going through his history.

Yeah.

What did he do again?

It was a podcast.

What did he say again?

I do.

I don't even remember.

Yeah.

It was racial or.

And it's just like, you know, there was a guy.

There was a video game guy.

Yeah.

Who's who did a thing.

And this is not funny to me.

OK.

This is funny.

This is funny to a guy who doesn't know what funny is.

But also at the same time, no one should be offended and cancel a guy over.

It was International Women's Day, I think, which was it was recently this year.

A couple of weeks ago or something.

Yeah.

Oh, it's International Women's Day.

Go make me a sandwich, women.

He said that, which, you know, is just a bad joke.

That's just tired.

It's just a bad, lame, like easy.

Yeah.

Layup.

Joke.

Yeah.

That look, if it's.

Not even a joke.

If it's five guys sitting around watching the football game and you say that,

I'm sure the other guys would chuckle at it.

Like, you can't say that on a podcast or.

I think he actually did a tweet.

That was a tweet, I think.

But it's still like, you know.

One of our comedians.

Oh, I won't name him.

I think if you knew who it was, it would make sense and be hilarious.

But he used that during crowd work because there's a woman giving him some flack.

But if you knew who it was and I can tell you off camera, but it works and he can get

away with it.

Totally.

If you get everybody on your side, that's one.

And she was I think she really wanted to be part of the show.

So he made her part of the show.

And it was hilarious.

But it was, you know, the old make my make me a sandwich.

Make me a sandwich.

The oldest line in the book.

The oldest.

I don't think my wife has ever made me a sandwich.

No, she doesn't.

You know, she never made.

My wife's never made you a sandwich either, as far as I know.

Well, your wife has not made me a sandwich.

I can assure you that.

I don't think my wife has made anybody a sandwich.

My wife's made me a bunch of sandwiches.

Wait a minute.

No.

She made me a sandwich.

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She makes me a sandwich.

She loves you.

That's just.

So I'll.

And it doesn't matter what day.

It is.

It's always welcome.

My wife makes me tea.

Is that.

It doesn't seem like the same.

Hey, woman, go make me some tea.

That kind of does.

It's not of the same.

I make tea.

Yeah.

For Layla.

Absolutely.

When we're watching TV.

She'll go, I'd like a tea.

Yeah.

And I go, OK.

Or I'll go, I'm going to make coffee.

Because sometimes I get a little snoozy.

Oh, God.

As I say, after dinner and kind of ease on, turn the lights out.

Yeah.

And I go, I probably should have some coffee to watch this show.

Yeah.

Or this movie.

To pop back up.

And she goes, oh, make me a tea.

And I make her tea.

And it's fine.

That's what we do for the people that we care about.

All right.

It's a beautiful thing.

Speaking of watching stuff, I think it's movie time.

Sure.

What do you think?

Absolutely.

Good to get into it.

All right.

So the Oscars were last night.

And again, all right.

I did not.

I'm going to do this rant that I wrote down why I didn't watch all the movies.

OK.

So I did not make my best and worst list.

I physically probably only saw.

I mean, I saw less than 20 movies for the year.

Oh, wow.

I think.

Now, look, when I say movies.

When you get into streaming, I think that line gets a little blurry.

Yeah.

You know, but I mean, I went to the theater.

Three times.

OK.

Four times.

I mean, like very few.

Yeah.

Just because there's.

And then that's part of what goes into my rent.

So anyway, here's my deal.

For years and years, the Oscars used to do a thing.

And it would drive me crazy on this show.

And I would talk about it.

And even before this show, where they would have these nominate.

They would nominate movies.

And the nominations would come out early.

And many of those movies had not even played yet.

Right.

Meaning they hadn't even opened in a theater.

Now, look, they do the New York and L.A. one week.

Of course.

There's some like.

Thing that they have to do to be nominated where it plays at a theater for the public.

Right.

For a week or whatever long it is.

But then they hold it back until it gets its nominations.

Then they let it out.

But then it's only in a few.

Then they would even wait till after the Oscars to release the thing wide.

Right.

And I was like, wait a minute.

How can we get excited for these movies when we literally can't even see them?

Right.

Like they were using the Oscars as a way to like sell tickets to the show.

And I think for a while that did work for some things.

But it also made me very uninterested in the Oscars because it's like, why can't I don't know if this movie is any good.

I mean, I move on to different things.

Very quickly.

Yeah.

So when I see that a movie, I like the idea of it.

And then I feel like I have to really track it down.

I'm willing to do that for a little while.

Yeah.

Then when it becomes where I can't find it, I just give up and move on.

Now.

Yeah.

With the pandemic, more and more things went to streaming and they went to streaming more quickly.

They did.

Yeah.

Since I mean, not that the pandemic's over, but now in twenty three, twenty two, they really started pushing these things to streaming early.

Where I believe I believe if you have.

Enough services, you could have watched all ten of the best pictures correct at home on your couch without ever having to go in movies, you know, since I think when stuff got nominated, like that's when I started doing a search for some of these.

And I think a couple of them still hadn't quite come out yet.

So they kind of did what I wanted them to do for years and years was make these movie accessible.

Yeah.

OK, now the movies are accessible.

And I think to some people now.

Now, the feeling is it's sort of like a pendulum that swung the other way.

Now it's kind of like, well, really, this fucking Netflix thing.

That's the best picture.

Right.

The thing that's sitting next to all this garbage on Netflix.

Right.

That does seem strange.

The floor is lava.

And then this movie is supposed to be the best movie of the year.

So now I feel like they've sort of ghettoized.

I don't know if that's the right term, but, you know, there's this content has just become more content for these streaming services.

Well, they call them prestige.

Yes.

And it's hard to.

Yeah.

Think of them as prestige.

Exactly.

You're right.

What you said when they're in amongst, you know, whatever other silliness.

Yeah.

I mean, you actually look up on Netflix all quiet on the Western front.

It's there.

And then there's just like garbage on either side.

It's just junk.

And, you know, people like that junk.

And that's fine.

I'll watch some of it, too.

It's like junk food.

So.

So I think now you kind of go, well, you know, do I even like do I even want to watch this thing?

Am I?

You know, it's like you get to a point where you go, am I just watching these things?

For the sake of this show, which for years and years I did.

And I go, boy, it's going to be exciting when I can watch the Oscars and I'll know what all the movies are.

And for the last seven or eight years, that's what it was.

I'd watch the Oscars and fuck.

I saw all those movies.

What a great show.

Now, I'm like, the show's not even good.

Yeah.

Do I care if I know what these movies are?

I also feel like looking at what one best picture and we'll get into that.

They're starting to do and you could say they've been doing this for years.

Where they want the Oscars ceremony to be a story in and of itself.

Meaning's like they're, you know.

This year, you know, Asian whole largely Asian cast.

Yeah.

You know, Asian director.

Best director.

And it's kind of like we're getting the Asians.

You know, last year, Coda won.

You know, everything, everywhere.

All I want is a good movie.

Coda that won last year.

Another good movie.

But it was.

About deaf people.

It was not a great movie.

Right.

It was a good movie.

I liked it.

And I recommend people watch it.

And, you know, my girlfriend who, you know, did not go to film school and does not read

reviews of stuff.

That was her favorite movie of the year last year.

I remember you telling me that.

Yeah.

Because she goes, oh, this is like, because it's kind of like, well, this could have been

a like an ABC movie of the week.

They don't really do those anymore.

But you know what I mean?

It was sort of like, it was a feel good movie.

It was sort of predictable.

It hit all the beats you thought it was going to hit.

Sure.

Good movie.

But I also feel like, well, look, you know, it would be cool as if the deaf people got

up and accepted the Best Picture nomination.

That'd be a cool thing to see.

It'll be a cool thing to see all those guys that haven't been, you know, Brendan Fraser

and these guys who haven't been acting in a long time.

And they've been in all these garbage movies.

It's just a story.

They can think.

So it's the comeback story.

Yeah.

Everyone wants these feel good moments at the Oscars.

Yeah.

You know, when they would give it when they were giving it shit to, you know, James Cameron

for Titanic and stuff.

Yeah.

Everyone was like, look at this fucking rich motherfucker.

Oh, he's a billionaire.

Rolling in it.

Yeah.

The most successful movie of all time.

Yeah.

He's got all these awards.

He doesn't even really give a fuck.

No.

He didn't even show up this year.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Potentially.

So it's just like, I think people are kind of done with that.

And I think they want these, all these underdogs to win Moonlight.

Fuck that movie can blow me.

I hate that movie.

I mean, the Moonlight was actually okay parts of it, but I, I don't know what it, you know.

It sounds like what you're, you're kind of touching on is like kind of a.

Kind of like a patronizing kind of.

Yeah.

It's sort of become.

Condescending in a way.

The queen for a day kind of thing where it's like, we're going to, but it's also like,

does the Academy feel like, you know, all the criticisms of Hollywood and the insiders

is, you know, it's not racially diverse.

It's, you know, women are not represented well.

Right.

You know, physically challenged, handicapped, you know, whatever.

We're, we're trying to support those things.

And it's like, so we're going to reward those things.

Right.

Maybe rather than what would be just a great fucking movie made by, you know, like in my,

in this year, we'll talk about it.

Possibly the best guy that ever made movies might've made the best movie he's ever made.

And yet that doesn't win.

And it's kind of like, well, you guys, you guys don't know what the fuck you're doing.

Right.

I've, I've never liked the idea of the award as a lifetime achievement.

Yeah.

There's that too.

Yeah.

There's that too.

And you know, like, Hey, do we remember, uh, uh, what was the, the, the guy doing the

pushups from city slickers and all that?

Oh, Jack Palance.

Yeah.

Jack Palance.

That's a memorable thing.

That's a, but I mean, it's fucking city slickers.

And he won the Oscar for that, right?

He won the Oscar.

And it's kind of like, that's a cool thing to see him, but you know.

I forgot about that.

The movie city slickers even existed.

City slickers.

Exactly.

Yeah.

All right.

So do you want to get into these Jason?

I mean, uh, we can start with, uh, here's what I thought we'd do is we'd go through

these.

We'd talk about what won, um, what we thought should have won based upon what actually did

win.

We can do that.

And then if we have a list of some other movies, cause there's some other interesting movies

this year that I did see in addition to these that I've never talked about on the show.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, let's go ahead.

Best picture was one, as I mentioned by everything, everywhere, all at once.

Yeah.

Um, and that's just, well, I'll tell you, we'll just do this guy all quiet on the Western

front.

I didn't see.

And you said you saw some of it.

Oh yeah.

And you liked what you saw.

I did.

And I, and so the plan is to watch the rest.

As I mentioned, I fell asleep, but I did not fall asleep because it was boring.

I fell asleep because I was exhausted.

It was good movie.

It's very long.

It's very long, right?

Yeah.

It's in German, I believe.

The first 10 minutes I was hooked.

I'm like, wow, this is really good.

I loved 1917.

So did I.

Which is a great world war one movie.

So did I.

So I feel like all quiet on the Western front would be something I'd like.

I didn't get to it though.

Sure.

Um, Avatar, the way of water.

If you listen to the last podcast I did here, we went to the theater.

They put us in the wrong theater.

They literally, a hundred people were in the wrong theater cause they told us to go to

the wrong one.

Oh shit.

And then they started it across the hall.

And so we missed the first 10 minutes of it, but I enjoyed, I was very pissed.

I still have free passes to go back and I haven't, but I enjoyed Avatar.

Did you see it?

I didn't.

I didn't like the first one.

Okay.

Fair enough.

They have Avatar rides at Disney world.

They're really, really good, but I've never really enjoyed the movie.

I just couldn't get it.

Did you go in the theater to see the original?

I did.

Cause that was pretty thrilling at the time.

It was very well done.

I just, I couldn't get into the story.

I didn't feel like there was anything there for me to connect with.

Okay.

It was obviously a major, major achievement.

Yeah.

You can't fault him for that.

We had Banshees of Inishirin that didn't win.

Saw that.

Yeah.

What'd you think?

I'm looking for the word.

I mean, I don't want to be that person that, Oh, it was weird.

I didn't get it.

It was weird.

I did get it.

Yeah.

I do think it was trying to draw.

You saw it, right?

Yeah.

I did see it and I liked it, but I also kind of know where you're going with this.

Well, I agree with you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It was just the, the conflict of the movies established in the first five minutes.

And then it's sort of an unraveling of why this conflict exists.

But at the same time, you have the civil war going on across the water, which I think what

they were trying to draw a parallel between that and then the destruction of this friendship.

Yeah.

I think apparently, so if you didn't see Banshees of Inishirin, basically two guys are friends.

It's, it's 1923.

In like rural Ireland.

In Ireland.

They're on an island off the coast of Ireland.

Right.

There's a war going on on the mainland of Ireland.

So in a way they're in a good place.

There's no war going on.

They're safe.

And they're very simple people.

They go to the pub, they raise their crops or whatever they do.

Yep.

And one guy, the guy that Colin Farrell plays, not the brightest guy in the world, kind of

a simpleton.

Just a simple guy.

But his buddy who is played by Brendan Gleeson one day just decides, I don't want to hang

out with you anymore.

Right.

And he tells him, he goes, you're dull.

Yeah.

You're dull.

I don't want to hang out with you anymore.

Yeah.

And so the movie kind of goes from there.

Yeah.

Now I've read that the director, uh, Martin McDonough.

Said that this is really about, you know, husbands and wives or that kind of relationship.

It's like, what if you took a marriage, transpose that onto a marriage that's falling apart

and transpose that onto a friendship.

Just a regular heterosexual.

But how ridiculous it would seem.

Yeah.

I think in a way too, for someone to say, I never want to talk to you again as long as

I live.

To see something dissolve like that.

And the other person doesn't understand sort of the empathy you feel.

But yeah, the movie is very weird.

It felt definitely like.

If I was like in high school and someone was like, well, you don't have to read that

book because here's the movie of, you know what I mean?

Like some old novel that was like, I remember there was something, uh, you might know better

than me, right?

Cause you taught English.

Yeah, I did.

There was, there was, there was Bartleby the Scrivener.

I remember reading, that's a short story.

Yeah.

And I can, it might be Melville.

It's one of the big, well, kind of authors.

Herman Melville.

Yeah.

And, and, and Bartleby the Scrivener's thing was this, he would say, I would prefer not

to.

They would ask him to do something.

He ends up in jail.

And I would prefer not to, would you prefer to, you know, and then they, they try to

feed him.

He said, I prefer not to.

And the guy dies and it's supposed to be some allegory for life.

Sure.

Kind of felt the vibe of that from this movie a little bit.

It did.

Um, it's beautifully shot.

It looks amazing.

Stunning.

Um, I thought, I thought Colin Farrell and, uh, and, uh, uh, the other guy, Brendan Gleeson,

I thought those guys were fantastic.

Amazing.

Um, they were in, in Bruges together.

Yeah.

In Bruges is a great movie.

Yeah.

Same director.

That's, that's a more.

It's a more fun movie to watch.

Very fun.

For sure.

It's really good.

Um, I mean, I would recommend this movie to somebody who knows what they're getting into.

Yeah.

I don't think like my girlfriend did not watch this with me and I think that was the right

call.

Yeah.

I watched it alone too.

I watched it.

It was, um, yeah, you obviously, yeah.

You're watching something that, you know, has some layers to it that it's not just all

on the surface, but it really was, uh, sad.

Yeah.

And, and bizarre and it almost had like a strange David Lynch quality to it with some

of the stuff that happened.

You're like, wait, did I just do what I think he just did?

Right.

So I don't want to get in.

I don't want to spoil it because if you do want to watch it, it is on HBO max.

It's really, I mean, I wouldn't not recommend it.

Like you said, beautifully shot, great performances.

I think Colin Farrell is slowly developing into one of the great character actors.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

You know, he's, he's, he was such sort of, they wanted,

they wanted him to be a great actor.

Yeah.

They wanted him to be this next leading man.

Yeah.

Kind of action star or romantic comedy star.

Yeah.

But he's found, especially with Martin McDonough, like kind of these little roles, not, I mean,

he's the star of this movie, but it's also, his character is so not what you would expect

from a major Hollywood star.

No.

And that's really good.

So.

And you flip him over to playing the penguin.

Yeah.

In the Batman movie.

Yeah.

Which just shows a lot of flexibility.

So, yeah, I think we both recommend that sort of with an asterisk.

Yeah.

A little bit.

Absolutely.

This is good.

Elvis.

I loved Elvis.

I think I talked about it on the show.

I loved Elvis.

I think that I love Baz's movies.

I always know that they're going to be a spectacle and they're going to be beautifully shot and

there's going to be a lot of eye candy.

I do think that it almost seems like a tale of two movies.

I thought the first half just ran so fast through every single event in Elvis's life.

Yeah, it did.

Yeah.

And then I think the second half.

My girlfriend got up to pee and she comes back.

Oh, yeah.

I go, he's married now.

Right.

No, exactly.

It flew.

He hadn't even met Priscilla, I think, before she went to pee.

It's crazy.

It's hilarious.

But then when we get back to like the Vegas years and stuff, it slows down.

And, you know, we can talk about this.

It could be its own podcast, but I'm never a huge fan of the musician biopic because

it's always going to be the basically the same story.

But that is the story.

You know, rags to riches, crash and burn.

Yeah.

Maybe they rise back up again.

And the young man that played Elvis was Austin Butler.

Austin Butler.

What can you say about that?

That was awesome.

Amazing.

And I guess if you if you it's sort of that deal where you look right at him like, well,

he doesn't he's not a dead ringer for Elvis.

Not at all.

But he embodies.

Yeah.

That's way more important.

Yeah.

He was great.

And I thought the movie was a lot of fun to watch.

I did, too.

I think they made the music really good.

Like they used they picked great music.

They did.

I saw that in the theater.

It sounded unbelievably great.

It was super fun to watch.

Same.

You know.

Super colorful as a lot of those movies were.

And, you know, the 68 comeback special and all that stuff.

Yeah.

I mean, there's probably a lot more that you could have gotten into with Elvis.

Sure.

That was sad.

And, you know, the Tom Hanks as the colonel was pretty lousy.

Let's be honest.

Thank you.

It really is not good.

Why did you why do you say because I agree.

But why do you think so?

I mean, he just he just he felt like a Batman villain.

You know, he brought up the penguin.

He kind of.

Yeah.

And like his mustache and the colonel.

Now, I guess.

So here's what people.

A lot of people didn't realize that the colonel was European.

He was from the Netherlands.

OK.

But he kind of carried himself as a good old boy as an American.

Right.

But Tom Hanks, I guess, didn't bother to even find out what the colonel sounded like.

Because there's interviews.

You can watch him.

He's on Nightline.

Right.

Like after Elvis dies, Ted Koppel interviews him on Nightline.

Yeah.

And you can hear what the colonel sounded like.

And he does not sound like, oh, Elvis.

Get that.

Hey.

And it's so European.

And it's just like in this prosthetics.

And it's just kind of like, what the fuck is this?

And it almost ruins it all.

Like for some people, I think they came.

Oh, that ruined the movie for me.

It didn't ruin it for me.

But it's also like there were other ways to do that.

When he first came on screen, I rolled my eyes.

Yeah.

I'm like, what?

Because even though I didn't have that information that you did about the colonel, it just felt

like a lame mailed in.

Yeah.

I mean, do the homework.

Well, I guess if you're Tom Hanks and you're going.

What do we assume the colonel is?

Well, he's this cigar chomping fat guy, you know, spitting out tobacco.

You know what?

Elvis, here's what you're going to do, man.

We'll put you in the movie.

Right.

And we're going to have you.

And it's like, so he's not doing that.

Right.

But what he chose was kind of not great.

And I think if you're if you're Tom Hanks, the problem with if you're Tom Hanks is you're

going to make a decision to do something.

OK.

Baz Luhrmann, as much as he's accomplished.

I'm guessing probably doesn't go to Tom Hanks and go, hey, look, dude, this sucks.

Do something else.

Right.

It would take balls to go up to Tom Hanks and go, hey, man, this ain't working.

Right.

There's something else.

And maybe Spielberg would do it.

And maybe Zemeckis would do it because him and Tom work together a lot.

Right.

I got the feeling maybe Baz would just be like, yeah, I guess.

I mean, I actually think for for Baz, Tom Hanks seems like a very weird choice.

Yeah.

It seemed like he would go with somebody.

Yeah.

Maybe not as.

Maybe less well-known, but just more to Tom Hanks, a great actor.

But I just don't think fit in that role.

And it's very rare where I will watch something and say that person was miscast.

But in this case, I would say a little bit.

I mean, look, I did not really hurt my enjoyment of the movie.

Me neither.

And I was fine with it.

I mean, it had had that character been better.

I think maybe this movie.

And I think it's also sad how little love this got from the Academy is in terms of the

wins.

I mean, it looked like it got lots of nominations.

I don't want any of the Baz get nominated for best director.

He did not.

Yeah, he did not.

We'll get to that in a second.

But let's let's talk about the next movie that did not win the Fableman's.

Yes.

You see it.

I did not.

Oh, Fableman's is fantastic.

I mean, my favorite movie of the year was the Fableman's.

OK, that's what I'm saying.

If I was doing my list, which I did not do, I think the Fableman's would be number one.

And I'll tell you why.

Because.

And again, maybe this would be more.

My thing.

But I think there's a lot of people that would be like me and feel like they could see themselves

in this character.

So the Fableman's is really the Spielberg's.

OK, so it's basically his life.

The kid that you watch from age six through high school and into his adult working years

on at Universal Studios.

You is the story of Steven Spielberg.

And I think I saw myself in, you know, they showed the first movie he went to.

And.

And how cool he thought that was.

And I think it was it was I think it was the greatest show on Earth, which was about Ringling

Brothers.

And right.

There's a train crash.

That's, you know, clearly models like however they did this.

Sure.

You know, the 50s.

But, you know, he goes home and gets his model trains and his little eight millimeter movie

camera and tries to recreate that.

Yeah.

And what's also great is it's not just him doing it.

You see his parents helping him.

That's nice.

To do all of this stuff.

Yeah.

Well, which is really.

Really nice.

And of course, his family had a lot of stuff.

Maybe people didn't know.

There's a there's a documentary about Spielberg that's on HBO.

It's supposed to be very good that I never saw.

But I really should watch it now because a lot of that was in that movie, too.

But, you know, his mother had some issues, mental issues, mental health issues.

Right.

You know, the parents broke up.

At one point he moved.

I think he was born in New Jersey and he moved to Arizona ultimately.

And.

And went to high school and stuff in Arizona, bullied in high school.

Yeah.

Anti-Semitic attacks from other students.

You see, really, one of the most fascinating things is the movie that he made in high school.

Yeah.

It was Beach Day for high school Beach Day.

Oh, yeah.

And they give him.

Actually, at this point, was he in Southern California?

No, where was he?

He was in Northern California.

So I'm in the Bay Area at this point in high school.

And they go to Beach Day, go to Santa Cruz.

And the girl he's dating, her dad was a cameraman for the news or something.

Oh, wow.

So he gives him this like 16 millimeter camera.

Wow.

To shoot like this high school movie.

Yeah.

And then when you see what he did, like with the cutting and stuff, like he makes the bullies

look really bad.

I'm kind of ruining it.

But that's OK.

I love it.

You'll love it when you see it.

It's like he's he's like he gets his revenge on all these assholes in his own way by making

this movie.

And he's like the toast of the town.

It's really cool.

That's the best kind of.

Yeah, it's a great movie.

It's long.

Yeah.

All the performances are really.

I mean, Judd Hirsch got nominated and Judd Hirsch comes on and just kind of acts like

a maniac for about 10 minutes and leaves and leaves.

And I know they gave him a nomination.

He's 85 or whatever.

But come on.

Is Paul Dano in this?

Paul Dano is the dad.

Yeah, I love him.

His dad, Michelle Williams, is the mom.

Love her.

I said Judd Hirsch is the crazy uncle.

Seth Rogen is his dad's best friend, who is also very pivotal, pivotal in his support

of.

I love the kid's art.

I like that.

In a lot of ways.

And there's some other stuff in there with Seth Rogen I won't ruin.

Sure.

But he's a big part of the family and a big part of the story as well.

It's refreshing.

I think you see so many movies where, and I know this is kind of based on a true story,

but the old cliche of like the kid wants to do it, but the parents don't understand.

No, this isn't that movie.

And they won't support it.

And it's so tiresome.

So it's nice to see that parents like supporting the kid.

His mother was a singer and a piano player.

Yeah.

And you see that a lot of that.

Very cool.

So he would watch her.

So yeah, cool movie.

And then speaking of arts and people being artists and their struggles, we have Tar,

which was nominated for Best Picture.

Yeah.

I'm going to go first on this one.

I know you have thoughts on Tar.

I think we both, probably before the mics turned on, I said, in the last three days,

I finished Tar in Banshees of Inisheeran.

Exactly the same thing for me.

Boy, what a, what a.

One, two punch.

Yeah, what a one, two punch.

Two nights in a row.

Here's the thing.

And, you know, you might even be.

You might be mad at me, whatever.

I'm sure people think.

No.

You don't need to see Tar.

Okay.

That's my review of it.

Really?

Okay.

It's not that Tar is a terrible movie.

I don't believe that.

First of all, I think Cate Blanchett is fantastic.

Love her.

She's great in almost everything.

She's one of my favorite actresses to watch.

Yep.

And you could watch this movie and go, you know, the true story of Lydia Tar is so sad.

Yeah.

And Todd Field captured that in a feature film that really explodes, exposes all of

her flaws.

And you go, oh, Wikipedia, what is this?

Oh, the whole fucking thing's made up.

It's not a true story.

Right.

Well, what the fuck am I watching?

Right.

That's kind of how I felt about this.

Is that so you had the impression at first that we were watching something about a real

person?

I think I looked it up.

Okay.

And figured out it wasn't.

Yeah.

But I also went like, if you're going to make up a scenario, because the movie is really

about sort of power dynamics and maybe teachers and students and she's the maestro.

So it's about a symphony.

Cancel culture stuff.

Cancel culture.

Cancel culture stuff in there.

And yeah, it's important.

And I think he's, I feel like he's critical of it.

Yeah, I agree.

I think the tone of this movie ultimately is that, you know, Tar was a genius and that's

how genius sort of has to get things done sometimes.

Sure.

And, you know, there's all this personal stuff with, you know, having sex with students and,

you know, sort of your, you know, I guess if you're the maestro, you're considered the

boss, the manager.

Oh, yeah.

The musicians are not there for.

Personal relationships with them is sort of foreboding, I guess you would think.

Sure.

And you see all those things.

But it's also a thing where, and maybe because she's a lesbian, they don't want to be too

titillating.

A lot of that stuff happens off screen.

Yeah.

Yes.

Where you only hear about it in sort of news articles or you see like there's this thing

and it was actually pretty well, good filmmaking where, you know, while she's, I can't remember

if it was where she was doing the New Yorker interview, but you just, the camera pans around,

you just see the back of a head.

Yeah.

And it's red hair.

Yes.

And you're wondering who this person is.

And that does pay off.

And that's good filmmaking.

But this world of symphony orchestras and maestros and taking private planes, I could give a

fuck.

Yeah, I know.

That's true.

I could give a fuck about this.

And if, if, if the lesbian maestro is boning some young cellist, give me 10 seconds of

that.

Yeah.

You know, I, I, I'm not trying to say I'm going to sit there and beat my meat to this

movie.

You're not saying you're not though.

That's not what I was looking to do.

You're not saying you're not though.

I've got a lot of things I can beat my meat to that ain't tar.

As do I.

You know.

Just, just, just give us something.

Well, you know.

Because, because the problem is if we're not seeing how tar really was bad, we do see that

interaction with the student on the piano bench and all that stuff.

You know, that scene I'm talking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In that hall.

She takes him down.

And she, she, hey, she's tough.

Yeah.

You know, and that's, but it's also sort of like, you know, whiplash kind of covered a

lot of this.

Yeah.

That's what it felt like.

In a way that was just a way better movie than this.

In my opinion.

Well, you know, remember when Natalie Portman played a stripper and then, but she never

stripped in the movie.

And it's not because we're guys, we want to see her naked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wouldn't argue against it, but, but I think there, I think what you're asking for, honestly,

is just some authenticity.

Yeah.

And it, it lacked tension because we didn't, everything was sort of hinted at and sort

of in the background and we're sort of watching, oh, she's doing so well right now.

And it's like, oh no, she's really not.

Well, it's they told instead of showed.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

A couple of quick things on this one.

Yeah.

I think Cate Blanchett is amazing.

I think this is one of the best performances of her career.

And I think, and I thought about this too.

The reason why we didn't see a lot of this, I think, and I'm just going to guess to get

into Todd Fields head, maybe it's because they don't want you to, they want you to know

maybe she did this stuff.

Maybe she did.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

I guess it's a little ambiguous.

Sure.

Yeah.

But you don't notice that it did take a very strange, like psychological horror turn at

a certain point.

Yeah.

I won't spoil, but.

She's hearing these noises that she goes to give that girl her teddy bear back.

Right.

And there's all that weirdness.

She's sort of haunted, like, are these people coming to get me?

Are all of these things.

She's getting paranoid.

In my past coming at you.

And you could understand, like, if you were somebody who had all these, you know, like

Harvey Weinstein or something.

Yeah.

Psychologically, what would be going through is that one day they're going to get me.

Yeah.

You know, one day they're Les Moonves.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

One day all this is going to.

It's going to catch up.

All these girls are going to come out of the woodwork.

They're coming out now.

And then I'm fucked.

And that kind of thing.

That kind of happens to her in this movie.

But.

But I think.

I don't know.

I think it's an interesting take.

I can't.

I can't recommend it.

Because as she's playing a woman and she's playing a woman who's a lesbian, I think because

she's taking some of these different stands, like when the young man says he doesn't listen

to Bach because he's a white cisgender male.

And she's like, fuck that, you know.

And I think so.

Todd feels going against expectations.

But two real quick things about it.

And we can move on without spoiling.

There's two scenes at the end, which I think are brilliant.

One is the massage when she's.

Sure.

You know what I'm talking about?

She's trying to get a massage.

And yeah.

And what happens there.

Why?

How she reacts.

Yeah.

And then the very, very last scene is a real gut punch because you're like.

Yeah.

And that's funny because.

Wow.

Well, it wasn't spoiled for me.

Yeah.

I was reading.

There's a guy on.

Here's without spoiling it.

There's a guy on Twitter that I follow.

OK.

Who is the editor of a video game website.

OK.

And he goes, my God, the last scene of Tar.

Oh.

Is this.

It's an amazing thing.

Now, this guy, you know, also writes about movies because he's just a fan of movies.

Sure.

So I was not tipped off in any way to what the end is going to be.

And you could sit there and go, oh, man, that sounds cool.

I want to see the movie that ends that way.

Like if I spoiled it right now, there would be people that go, I need to see that movie.

And I would say you could literally watch the last 90 seconds of Tar and you would get all of it.

It would rather than spending the two plus hours watching it.

Just watch the last 90 seconds.

And it is a cool scene.

It is.

And the end.

And also the end credit music.

Yes.

Going along with it.

I thought that was a nice touch.

But it also I don't know how we talk about that.

Spoiling it.

Did the ending sort of was it a commentary on that music that you hear at the end of the movie, too?

Was it putting that down in a way saying that this is low sort of high art versus low art?

I think so.

And if that's the case, we'll fuck you because I disagree with that.

So fuck you.

All the way around.

Exactly.

And the last movie you made with the lesbians in Cape Blanchett can fucking suck a dick, too.

That sucked.

Which one was that?

Yeah, I don't even remember.

It was it was her and it was her.

And oh, God, who's the girl with the dragon tattoo?

One of the Mara's.

Rooney Mara.

They were lesbians and they made some movie.

And Blue Jasmine was that.

No, it wasn't Blue Jasmine.

That was a Woody Allen movie.

That's right.

No, but they made it.

But nobody.

She don't even know.

Yeah.

They made this movie a few years ago.

Them.

I think it was Todd Field.

It sucked.

Anyway.

Yeah.

Let's move on.

Yeah, that's fine.

More Best Picture nominees.

Yes.

In fact, at this point, I haven't seen any of them.

So no problem.

Top Gun Maverick.

OK, listen.

Hell yeah.

Listen, you know, I love Layla.

You know, Layla is one of my favorite people in the world.

Layla's great.

She refuses to see Top Gun Maverick because she hates Tom Cruise.

And I go, look, I also hate Tom Cruise.

Oh, do you?

But I'd watch Top Gun Maverick.

I got no beef with the movie.

What's the beef with Tom Cruise?

He just doesn't like him.

Yeah.

I don't know.

She doesn't like him.

What's your beef with him?

He's a maniac Scientologist, for one.

He kind of plays the same character in every movie for two.

More or less.

But I've heard this is good.

In fact, you told me this is good months and months ago.

And I said, I'm going to watch that.

And when I'd sit down for movie night with Layla, I'd say, you watch Top Gun?

Yeah.

Nope.

OK.

Really?

That continued up until this week.

OK.

Well, that's the only reason I didn't see it.

It's just Layla wouldn't watch it.

And, you know, for like Tar and Banshees,

I watched them late at night when no one was around.

And I think I was also thinking that maybe Cate Blanchett was going to win.

Yeah.

And I should really make sure I've seen.

Plus, I heard a lot of good stuff about Tar.

It just didn't pan out.

But anyway, talk about Top Gun.

I mean, Top Gun, I went to see it with my very patriotic flag-waving family.

We've always been very patriotic people.

But it was nice to see.

And I mean this from both ends of the aisle.

It really has no agenda or purpose other than to tell an exciting story.

And it is – I will say this, too.

You know, Tom Cruise fought hard to get this movie made.

And originally, they were going to make with Tony Scott.

And remember what happened with him?

The poor guy committed suicide.

Yeah, yeah.

Which people still don't understand.

He didn't have any history of mental illness.

So to make sure – I mean, there's no way Tom Cruise is doing this movie with CGI planes.

I mean, we had real planes, Miles Teller, Tom Cruise, a really fun cast, a great story,

a story that Jon Hamm was in it.

And a sequel that didn't feel like it was made to have a sequel.

It justified its existence by having a really, really good story.

And Tom Cruise connecting with Miles Teller, who plays Goose's son.

Okay, yeah.

Goose played by Anthony Edwards in the original, yeah.

And Miles Teller is great.

He's one of my favorite actors.

And so top to bottom, a crowd pleaser.

And if I'm not – am I right on this?

Was it Top Gun Maverick, the highest grossing movie?

Over the past – that or Avatar?

I think Avatar passed it.

Probably passed it.

But Top Gun like set all kinds of records.

And I think it was like the highest grossing movie like since the pandemic.

It was so exciting.

So it was like this movie brought people back to the theater.

Yeah.

In a way that – because I think people chose to see – I think it applies to Avatar too.

Those are things people wanted to have that big screen experience with.

Oh, that you needed to.

You couldn't really watch it on the phone.

And so that's great.

And I didn't go to the theater.

I got a couple of big TVs.

So when I do decide to watch it, if I do, I think I'll get something out of it.

So that's cool.

No, it was really cool.

And the only reason I didn't see it is literally my girlfriend refused to watch it.

Layla wasn't having it.

Okay.

I get what you're saying.

God bless her.

All right.

So Top Gun was pretty good.

It didn't win.

Triangle of Sadness.

I don't even know that much about this movie.

Didn't see it.

I think the Triangle of Sadness is watching Inner Sharon and Tar and then probably All

Quiet on the Western Front in three days.

Well, look.

Look.

I'm just going to say the name.

I'm just going to say the name of this movie and we can move on if you want.

Women Talking.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's move on.

Bob Phillips had a great.

I won't spoil it.

Oh, I bet.

Oh, I know.

I'm sure Bob Phillips has a.

Fucking great.

Go look it up on his Instagram.

Yeah, I'm sure Bob Phillips has a joke about Women Talking.

Just a home run, man.

We won't be making that joke on this show.

No, no, no.

Home run.

But Sarah Polley was a very good actress and has made some good movies.

I always liked her.

Yeah.

She won the Screenplay Award for her.

Good for her.

But then Everything Everywhere All At Once is the one that won.

Yeah.

And you said you didn't see it.

I didn't.

I did come in here ranting about one thing, though.

I'm really, really happy to see for Kihue Kwan.

Yeah.

And I think that he, didn't he tell his story about being an immigrant?

Yeah.

When he gave his acceptance speech was very much, you know, he was in a, he was in a,

what do you call it?

Like a refugee camp.

His family was separated for a year.

For a while, his family was separated.

It talked about how he was out of the business.

Oh, I forget the guy's name, but his Goonie brother will never die.

You know, the kid who played Chunk.

Chunk is his lawyer, I think, or whatever he does, or he produces the movie or something.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

He's, he's in the business.

Okay.

Like, I think he's an entertainment lawyer more than anything.

Jeff Cohen, I think is his name.

Truffle, Truffle, or what was it?

Chunk.

Do the Chunk.

Well, if you see Jeff Cohen now, he's like in good shape and he's not fat and stuff,

but he's an entertainment lawyer and him and, you know, they're, they're still tight.

So that was cool to see.

Yeah.

His speech was unbelievable.

And this movie is very good.

And here's the only reason that it was not.

My favorite movie of the year is after I saw it because it's, it's a very weird, um,

it's, it's a multiverse movie.

Yeah.

So it does feel a little Marvel-y.

Yeah.

You know, in fact, if you said this was a Marvel movie, you'd probably be okay.

It's a Marvel movie.

I'm so burned out.

It's a weird Marvel movie.

Well, exactly.

I haven't bothered seeing a Marvel movie in years and years.

I don't blame you.

Um, but it's about a family and all of those actors are fantastic.

And you see, those are the ones that won, you know.

Michelle Yeoh as, as the mom.

She's great.

And, uh, Ki, what, uh.

Ki-Hoo Kwan.

Ki-Hoo Kwan was the dad.

And their daughter who, uh, uh, Stephanie Su, uh, was nominated for best supporting actress.

She probably is the best, has the best character in the film.

Yeah.

And she lost to Jamie Lee Curtis, who's also in the movie.

Yeah.

But Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't even do a whole lot in that movie.

I feel like that was a little bit of.

That's a lifetime achievement.

A lifetime achievement award.

So Stephanie Su had kind of the coolest character in there.

But it's just all this weird.

You know, they'll be fighting and then their hands turn to hot dogs and they're beating

each other with dildos at one point.

And, you know, it's like a family.

What family doesn't do that?

They own a laundromat.

They're having a hard time paying their taxes.

They go to the, I think they go to pay their taxes.

Jamie Lee Curtis is the woman that works at the office.

Then the whole thing turns into this whole fantasy.

The office building turns into whatever they want it to be for the purposes of.

I mean, but here's the thing about it.

And that's what, maybe I'm having a hard time describing it.

The.

Yeah.

I enjoyed.

I enjoyed this movie a lot.

Layla watched it with me.

She enjoyed it.

She liked it.

Okay.

The next day.

And now three months after seeing it, I'm kind of going, what, what happened again?

Right.

It definitely felt like a Marvel movie where you go, Hey, I enjoyed it.

I can't tell you what happened the next day.

Yeah.

Just, I couldn't tell you what happened the next day.

And I know that sounds like a bad review of it, but while I was watching it, it was super

fun.

I get why people like it.

And, you know, I think people, again, maybe voted for it because it was Asian American

and all that whole thing.

But, you know, it's, it's a good movie.

It's fun.

It's unique.

It's original.

You know, I think most people, I don't feel like it's too highfalutin art movie or anything,

which again, Coda wasn't last year either.

Right.

So in a way, I'm glad that's something that was a little more of a major movie.

Although this thing came out, I think in the spring.

Yeah.

So it was one of those that sort of simmered all year and people eventually caught up to

it later.

But, yeah, I mean, I, you know, again, I think again.

With the Fableman's, you have the greatest director who's ever lived, arguably making

the best movies ever made, arguably, and it doesn't win because people want to give awards

to Asians this year.

So the Academy doesn't look like a bunch of racist assholes.

Right.

And, you know, if that's fine, if you want to do that.

But to me, it's its own kind of unfairness in a way, because then it's if that's the

reason, then that's also disrespectful to the movie that did win.

You know, the best movies don't win.

I mean, look, the Goodfellas didn't win.

You know, even more recently.

What did it lose to?

Goodfellas lost to Dances with Wolves.

OK.

Still a good movie, but yeah.

Goodfellas lost to Dances with Wolves.

Oh, Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan was the big one.

Right.

Yeah.

Pulp Fiction lost to Forrest Gump.

You know.

That's more of the.

I mean, like, that's sort of like.

It was a good year for movies.

It was Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction losing to Forrest Gump.

Those are all.

Yeah, I mean, come on.

I'm not a huge Forrest Gump fan, but I respect it.

But you have two all time classics losing to Forrest Gump.

That people love.

You know, I mean, La La Land losing to Moonlight.

Even, you know, it's like.

I love La La Land.

La La Land's fantastic.

It's one of the best movies ever made.

Yes, I agree.

Get the fuck out of here with this Moonlight bullshit.

I agree with you.

La La Land is amazing.

So, you know, I mean, it is.

The Academy does not get it right.

And there's tons of articles you can find about, boy, they could have voted for this

this year.

Hindsight, you know, is 2020.

So I will say, hey, this is what we all thought was the best movie this year or something.

Whatever.

Yeah.

But at the same time.

Yeah.

But at the same time, you know, no one's watching some of these movies, you know, no

one's watching The Hurt Locker all these years later.

That's a good point.

It was another one.

No one's watching that.

And I don't think anyone's watching CODA either, even though it's a good movie.

Hurt Locker.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

I enjoyed it when it was out, but I haven't really thought of it since then.

No one's watching that.

What was it?

Zero Dark Thirty.

That didn't win, did it?

Zero Dark.

I don't think it won.

I watched it once and then.

I didn't think Zero Dark Thirty was that good.

It was fine.

And I was excited for that because I love that story and I've read books about that

rage.

They've read two different books about that rage.

Crazy story.

I know Osama Bin Laden is one of the most important stories of our lifetime.

Yes.

And they made a movie about it that kind of wasn't that great.

It was kind of just there.

It was all right.

All right.

Let's go on to some of these other awards.

Everything All at Once.

The two, the Daniels, as they were called throughout the ceremony, won.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner.

Martin McDonough was nominated and lost for Banshees of Inishere.

Spielberg for The Fableman's Lost Todd Field for Tar.

And a guy named Ruben Ostlund for Triangle of Sadness.

You know, it's kind of a lot of what we talked about with Best Picture.

I mean, people were saying that, you know, James Cameron didn't show up at the ceremony

because he wasn't nominated for Best Director.

Sounds on brand.

I don't know if that's true.

And, you know, and other people, I think somebody either on the red carpet or at the ceremony

itself says, you know, Baz Luhrmann really needed to be nominated for Elvis.

And it's like, yeah, he was great, too.

But.

You only nominate five.

You're picking ten movies.

Right.

Exactly.

That's a good point.

I don't know.

I know you got a list and I don't know.

I think it's probably in a different order than mine.

Yeah.

For adapted screenplay, Women Talking 1.

I think that's based on a book or a play.

Top Gun Maverick.

And when it's a sequel like this, it's really just they call it adapted from the original movie.

Oh, I didn't know that.

That's how that goes.

Yeah.

If it's a sequel, it has to be considered adapted because the characters existed.

Already.

OK, that makes sense.

So that's that's why Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery is nominated for adapted screenplay

because there's because the character existed in the original movie Living, which is adapted

from a Kurosawa movie, which I didn't see living.

And I don't think I saw the Kurosawa movies based on and then All Quiet on the Western

Front.

But Women Talking 1, Everything Everywhere All at Once, won Best Original Screenplay

over Banshees of Inishirin, Fableman, Tar and Triangle of Sadness for Best Actor.

Didn't see this one.

Brendan Fraser won for The Whale.

I think everybody's happy for Brendan Fraser.

He's a very likable guy.

I did not see The Whale.

Neither did I.

I heard it was very grim and kind of hard to watch.

And I like that director.

What's that director's name?

Oh, good call.

No, he made a bunch of cool movies.

No, he didn't.

Can you look that up real quick?

I'm old.

I can't remember anybody's fucking name anymore.

I'll buy a few seconds on that.

We'll talk about the other best actors if you want.

Austin Butler.

Colin Farrell.

Yeah, I would say that, as I mentioned before, I think Colin Farrell is really developing

into something different than we all expected.

And I think it's something much better than he would have been otherwise.

Colin Farrell.

Brendan Fraser.

Brendan Fraser, people remember him from the Mummy movies, but he's been doing really good

solid roles his entire career.

He had a very, he's been telling the story for the past few years about some type of

sexual abuse, I think, that happened to him.

That's interesting.

You know, that's kind of the thing, you know, people are open about talking about lately.

And he disappeared off the face of the earth and now he's back.

And I think what you're going to see, actually, Brendan Fraser played the villain in the

cancelled Batgirl movie.

Did you know that?

Okay, no, I didn't know that.

He played a villain called Firefly.

I saw him in something.

I can't remember what it was.

I think it was like a television or a streaming thing recently.

Yeah.

And he gained a bunch of weight.

Yeah, he has.

So I don't know if he was doing, he was actually thinner last night at the ceremony than I

remember him seeing recently.

But I wonder if he was, he had just done that movie or was going.

Yeah.

Into the whale, even though the whale was prosthetics or it was actually digital prosthetics.

I think he just was.

I think he just gained a lot of weight.

Yeah.

I think he just, his people tend to do, yeah, it's not.

And then Paul Mezcal was in the movie After Sun, which I did not see, but he's a good

actor.

He made a TV series called Normal People.

It was about a romance in Ireland that takes place over years.

It's on Hulu.

Okay.

And me and my girlfriend watched that during the pandemic and it was really good.

So he's a good actor.

I didn't see the movie.

And again, I didn't see Bill Nye in Living.

And yeah, that, The Whale was directed by Darren Aronofsky.

Oh God.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Who made Requiem for a Dream.

The Wrestler is fantastic.

He's got all kinds of great resumes.

The movie Pie is fantastic.

Didn't he do the biblical movie too with Russell Crowe?

Yeah.

What was it?

I don't know.

Well, I got to look up Darren Aronofsky now.

Hold on a second.

He was contracted to do a Batman movie before Christopher Nolan did.

Yeah.

He's one of those guys that kind of didn't.

I think people thought he was the next Kubrick, you know, kind of guys, people get known for

that.

He made a movie called The Fountain.

The Fountain with Hugh Jackman.

Yeah.

That kind of flopped.

Yeah.

But you know, hey, he's still talented.

He's made some great stuff.

What was the movie he did with The Wrestler?

What was after The Wrestler?

It was called The Wrestler.

Director.

Let me see.

Oh, that one with Mickey Ripper.

He's credited as the director on.

See, I have all these other movies, but he didn't, he didn't, Noah, did he direct the

Noah, yes, with Russell Crowe.

Okay, he directed Noah.

That's what I was looking for.

And all these, yeah, see, it's hard to figure out which movies he, anyway.

Let's move on.

Supporting actor, Keiho Kwan, we talked much about him.

I would have given, again, I would have given best actor to Austin Butler.

For supporting actor, I like Brendan Gleeson in Banshees of Inishirin.

Agreed.

I thought that was great.

I did see the movie Causeway with Jennifer Lawrence.

It's on Apple TV.

And this guy, Brian Tyree Henry, did a nice job.

The movie's, movie's pretty skippable.

It's fine, but it's, not a whole lot happens.

It's kind of a character.

Study.

It's kind of two people talking.

Yeah.

She's back from the war, and he lost his leg in a car accident.

She's a veteran?

She's a veteran.

She has PTSD.

Okay.

Best actress, Michelle Yeoh, won for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.

This is the one where I actually agreed with who won.

Michelle Yeoh.

Because for me, the other actresses, Michelle Williams is good in The Fablemans.

You know, I could have given it to Cate Blanchett in Tar.

I would have been fine with that.

Because she is good, even though I didn't like the movie.

I didn't see Blonde with Ana de Armas.

She played Marilyn Monroe.

Yeah, I know, but I didn't see it.

Yeah.

And Andrea Risborough in To Leslie, I did not see.

And then we got, next category, supporting actress.

I sort of already tipped my hat on that one a little bit with Stephanie Sue,

who played the daughter.

Yes.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was very good.

And Jamie Lee won it over her, right?

Jamie Lee won over her.

And again, she's in it for five freaking minutes.

How dare she?

I said maybe more than five minutes.

But she's not, like, it's not a major role.

Carrie Condon, again, she's not in Banshees of Anishinaabemowin and all that.

She's the sister of Colin Farrell, who goes away.

Oh, I loved her.

Yeah, she was good, but she's not in it that much.

She, I think, is, in a way, the heartbeat of that movie.

Yeah.

She's a kind-hearted.

Yeah, oh, absolutely.

Is Colin Farrell?

Oh, I don't want to spoil.

Is he, like, he's just supposed to be, like, kind of a simple guy.

He's kind of a simpleton.

There's not something wrong with him, right?

I, you know, in 1923, they weren't diagnosing people as whatever.

Right.

But he was smart enough to tend to those cows and whatever.

And his donkey and everything.

And his donkey.

Hong Chao in The Whale.

I don't, yeah, you didn't see that.

And Angela Bassett in Black Panther, Wakanda Forever.

It's interesting.

I don't know that that Black Panther sequel,

I think,

without having, what's his name?

Oh, Chadwick.

Chadwick Boseman.

I feel like that movie, a lot of people just gave up on it.

Or just weren't that excited for it, and it didn't do all that much.

My, real quick.

Here's Marvel fatigue, too.

Marvel fatigue.

I didn't see it.

I have a friend who's a super hardcore Marvel fan that said he didn't like it at all.

If you notice, too, doesn't it seem like they're, just from trailers,

that the CGI quality is declining significantly?

Oh, I think that's absolutely true.

And I saw the trailers for Wakanda Forever, and I thought,

what, this looks so bad, you know?

Yeah, it's, they're doing so much so quickly that you can't make, you know, the photorealism.

I always find, like, a lot of times, especially, like, in Marvel,

it's just like, the physics don't feel real.

Yes.

Like, these characters have no weight.

They just kind of zip and zip.

They look ragdoll-y.

Yeah.

I agree.

That's a good point.

And, you know, I mean, and in a way, you can go, well, look, it's comic books.

Yeah.

If you read a comic book, it's not photorealistic.

Right.

It's exaggerated.

Right.

That's what I try to tell myself, yeah.

But I also feel like Marvel has tried to be realistic.

Exactly.

That's the problem.

In the past, and, you know, they're just doing so much so.

That's the problem.

You can't have it both ways.

Animated feature, the Pinocchio that Guillermo del Toro is the one that won, that's on Netflix.

I've heard it's cool, but, you know, Pinocchio, I never really cared for the story of Pinocchio.

Me neither.

And then my girlfriend went, like, yeah, it's scary.

And I go, well, apparently this del Toro one is supposed to be real scary, so.

Well, he's, yeah, he's got a great mind.

He's good for scary stuff.

Yeah, and it's stop motion.

Remember Pan's Labyrinth?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, del Toro's terrific.

I'm a fan of his.

Me too.

So, maybe I should watch that.

I don't know.

Apparently, so, you know, they did do a Pinocchio, Disney did one last year.

Which I heard was.

Which was, I heard was, like, the worst.

Brutal.

But it's like they did the animated Pinocchio as, like, a 3D thing, and he's interacting

with real people.

And I heard it's just terrible.

Oh, that's.

That sucks.

Yeah, it's like, because you know how they're doing, like, like, even on the Oscars, they

showed the live action Little Mermaid trailer.

Sure.

And, you know, they did live action Lion King that nobody really cared about.

Yeah.

They're not hitting with those, taking the animated movies and making them live action.

What's funny, when you say live action, but it's still CGI.

It's still CG, but it's.

So it's not, yeah.

It's real people in real settings and all that stuff.

The Lion King is so perfect, like, it doesn't need it, you know.

But I think the audience kind of voted with their wallets in a way.

I guess.

Yes.

The Jungle Book was good.

Yeah, that one was good.

Yeah, I remember seeing the Jungle Book.

John Favreau directed that, didn't he?

And John Favreau directed Lion King, too, bruh.

Oh, he did?

Yeah.

Did he really?

Yep.

I didn't know that.

Yep.

Come on, John.

Yeah.

Hey, what do you want, man?

Exactly.

He's making Mandalorian.

What do you want from him?

Yeah, right.

And then these other ones, I didn't see any of these.

I almost never see the animated movies, so.

I don't.

I can't.

Yeah, I don't really.

Do we need to go through the rest of these?

It's all quiet on the Western Front for cinematography.

Sounds right, right?

Yeah.

You know.

But, I mean, Banshees of Inishira isn't even nominated.

We'll see that.

And that's an amazing looking movie.

That first shot of Colin Farrell walking to his friend's house, I was like, I'm in.

I don't care what this movie's about.

I'm watching this.

Yeah.

I agree.

Black Panther, Wakanda Forever did win for costume design.

That, yeah, I could see that.

There's some cool stuff.

Here's how you know I've slipped.

I saw none of the documentary features.

That's what I was wondering, because I know how much you love them.

And I tried to see all of them.

I mean, God damn it, I didn't see any.

The one that won is called Navalny, and it's about Navalny, who was, I guess, a spy or

something in Russia.

Wow.

He's actually doing time in, like, Siberia right now.

Oh, really?

And so his family was at the award, you know, accepting the award.

Oh, wow.

On his behalf, saying, you know, free Navalny.

Well, he's, you know, he's pro-Ukraine.

Okay.

And so, you know, it was a little, yeah, he's a political prisoner.

He's been waiting a while.

But I guess that documentary's really good.

I didn't see the other ones.

I do know that, you know, like...

Navalny was on HBO Max.

Fire of Love is on Disney.

All That Breathes is on HBO Max.

So, because that's always one that they bury.

You know, those movies, sometimes you never see the doc in.

Yeah.

And in past, I've been like, I would have seen this documentary, but I don't know where

You really got to dig to find it, yeah.

You got to dig to find it.

The Shorts, Who Cares?

Everything Everywhere All at Once, one for film editing.

Okay.

Production Design was All Quiet on the Western Front.

If you watch the show, the RRR song...

You know, they perform all the songs on the show.

If you didn't watch it, Not Too, Not Too from RRR, which is an Indian epic action movie.

Oh, I've heard of that, yeah.

Yeah, it's on Netflix.

It's like three hours.

Oh, shit.

But people say it's insane.

Okay.

Like, it's all kind of crazy CGI elephants running around and stuff.

I'll do it.

It's supposed to be fun, but they had this song, and the live performance on the Oscar

show was really good.

Okay.

Like, it was as Indian as fuck.

It was like Indian as an MF, man.

It was crazy.

It was fun.

You know how Indian stuff goes over the top?

Fun.

Crazy.

500 people dancing.

Yeah, yeah.

Crazy outfits.

Yeah, that was good.

The whale one for makeup and hairstyling.

Do-do-do-do.

International Feature was All Quiet on the Western Front.

Top Gun, one for best sound.

Okay, there's that.

Oh, for sure.

And Avatar, one for best visual effects.

And how could it not?

The whole movie's a visual effect.

Yep, exactly.

The whole movie.

What else you got that was good this year, Jason?

You got anything else to recommend?

Yeah, there's two other movies.

Yeah, please.

Two other movies I wanted to mention.

The first one would be Jordan Peele's Nope.

I saw Nope.

What did you think?

I liked it, but I didn't love it.

Okay.

You know, and again, he's a guy that people are like,

that's kind of slipping.

What the fuck do you mean?

But not everything's going to be Get Out,

because Get Out came at a certain time.

It had that, you know, kind of that political overtones,

the social commentary that that movie was making.

He can't make movies that are going to have that much of that in it.

As a piece of work, as a piece of film, it's fantastic.

Yeah.

It looks great.

I think he shot it on IMAX for the most part,

or at least a lot of the big scenes.

You know, I think as a sci-fi movie,

I don't think it had a really great payoff.

Right.

But it's cool.

I mean, I enjoyed watching it.

I think it was.

I'm not sad that it didn't get nominated, because, you know.

Yeah, I don't think it would, but it was sometimes terrifying.

I thought it had a really original premise,

and yeah, maybe the payoff wasn't what you thought it would be.

I think Jordan Peele's best movie is his second movie.

Was that, was it called Us?

Us, yes.

That was.

That was a real horror movie.

That blew my mind.

Yeah, that was a real kind of scary movie.

With the Hands Across America stuff and all that.

Yeah, it was.

Very original.

Us was good.

I mean, look, he's got a body of work now.

Yeah.

I mean, and you can count Key and Peele, if you want, in there.

Sure.

To know that this dude's really talented.

I'm excited for what he's going to do, but I know,

like I know even when that movie came out,

there were people that were, you know, really,

huge fans that went to the theater for Nope,

and were like, what the fuck, man?

Disappointed, yeah.

What's this guy doing?

He's not making, blah, blah, blah.

Because everybody wants that thing.

Right.

And you're not making that thing.

I mean, look, Tarantino has gone through the same thing, right?

It's because you made Pulp Fiction,

everyone wants another Pulp Fiction,

and he's never been able to make another Pulp Fiction.

He's made movies that people have liked,

and movies that have won people awards,

but a lot of people go, yeah, it's not as good as.

The same thing with.

The stuff he.

Was doing.

With rock bands, you know?

Yeah, sure.

Like, why aren't you making, you know.

Or comedians.

Yeah, right.

Chris Rock, maybe he's going through that right now.

Sure, right.

Which I didn't watch the Chris Rock special.

I didn't see it yet either.

I saw him live when he was here in September, so.

Because I wonder if you watched that,

how much of that was what he was doing then?

From what I understand, and what I read,

there were a few of the jokes he had done.

Okay, yeah.

I would imagine that's usually how that works.

But he didn't do that much on the Will Smith,

but I guess in the special he unloads a little bit,

which is good for him.

Yeah, I've heard that, and I've sort of heard those jokes,

at least quoted, and they're okay.

But I know that, you know, he did this thing live on Netflix,

which is sort of a first for Netflix.

He apparently, and I wish I had the example.

I'm not going to bother looking it up.

You can look it up.

There's a, he botched one of the lines.

Oh, shit.

Oh, he was referring to a Will Smith movie,

and he said it's not emancipation,

but he listed the, he said the wrong movie.

So.

So the one that he made reference about him getting whipped,

I think it was emancipation.

Yeah, yeah, emancipation, but he called it something else,

and then they go, I think he was talking about concussion,

and he said emancipation, and he goes,

this guy was in emancipation, and then he tried to give me one.

What he should have said is,

this guy was in a movie called Concussion,

then he tried to give me one.

I think that was the line.

It doesn't make sense at all.

But he said the wrong line.

Ah, shit.

But I guess live, he then just did the joke again

and got the movie name right.

Okay.

Well, now if you watch the replay on Netflix,

it's out, they edited out the mistake.

Oh, good.

Which is why you tape fucking comedy specials, Netflix,

you dumb fucks.

Right.

Idiots.

Because things happen.

But they want it live.

They wanted to make a fucking big spectacle out of,

what was Chris Rock going to say about Will Smith?

A year later.

It's like, he's, first of all, he's been saying stuff.

It's not like he hasn't said anything.

Like, oh, he's been silent for a year.

I mean, it's like, but then what he said ultimately

was disappointing to people,

because the jokes weren't that great.

And, you know,

the jokes, it's not almost, you know,

I think to me, it's not even a laughing matter.

It's kind of like, eh, Will Smith is a fucking dick.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, you're not going to laugh at that,

but that's true.

So do you want to put me on live Netflix?

I'll do it.

Yeah.

Joel Fragamenti live on Netflix.

And Will Smith, you can go fucking suck my dick,

you asshole.

I'm team Chris all the way.

Yeah.

But I mean, that's not funny.

Right.

But what Chris is going to say has to be really funny.

And what Chris said was kind of lame.

So, you know.

Because I don't think what he could say

could be funny.

Could possibly equal.

No, it's not going to live up to what people think

Chris Rock is going to do.

The other thing I wanted to say is,

I would say my best movie of the year.

Oh, okay.

Was the Batman.

Oh, God, I want to see that.

Matt Reeves.

Yeah.

I won't spoil a single word.

I will tell you this,

that I think we finally got a,

it's a little bit of Nolan,

a little bit of Burton.

Yeah.

Rob Pattinson's fantastic.

But I think we finally got what I've always wanted.

It was like a noir-ish detective,

sort of like big city crime.

You know, like the old noir movies

would have like a voiceover.

You got a little bit of that.

He's solving a crime.

You've got this,

you've got the Riddler.

You've got this, you know, Catwoman.

And it feels a little,

a little derivative because,

you know, like there's like some Nolan

kind of grounded stuff.

Yeah.

But fuck, it's a good movie.

All right.

It's three hours and it's a beast.

Well, that's another one that my girlfriend is like,

nah.

Oh.

Why not?

She's not unlike Robert Pattinson.

I'm like, he's like good and stuff.

He's very good and stuff.

She was wise.

I didn't like Twilight.

And I go, well,

he's been doing,

he's done other movies since Twilight

and they're good.

He's been trying to distance himself from that.

Yeah, and he's good in those movies.

He's a great actor.

I don't know.

I think what's really interesting.

She's on her own trip.

Yeah, that's fine.

I think what's really interesting in this movie

you'll see too is,

whereas previous Batmans kind of play into like

the Bruce Wayne playboy thing.

In this one,

he plays more into I'm Batman than he is I'm Bruce Wayne.

Like he just wants to kind of be Batman.

Yeah.

And then he's kind of got this struggle

with Alfred trying to kind of pull him out of the closet

in a way to be Bruce Wayne

and represent the family.

Yeah, that was one that I wanted to see

and I probably should see it.

That would be my number one.

I think it debuted on HBO Max.

It's been on there forever.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I saw a movie,

again, this got no awards,

but BJ Novak from The Office.

Oh, I know this movie.

I didn't see it.

He made a movie called Vengeance.

Yeah, how is it?

And it's good.

Is it?

Yeah, it's good.

He's a podcaster.

Okay.

And he decides,

like some girl that he knew in New York City

was murdered.

And she disappeared in Texas

or she disappeared in Texas.

Disappeared.

Under weird circumstances.

So he, the city slicker,

has to go to Texas

to try to figure out what happened.

There's that trope.

And so it's sort of that

fish out of water detective story,

you know, podcaster as detective.

This is like a dark.

A couple things they've done now.

Dark comedy.

There's humorous elements in it,

but it's, it's...

More of a drama.

Yeah, it's a real mystery

and it's a thriller and it's good.

Okay.

And I believe this is the movie

that John Mayer is in.

John Mayer,

in the...

So when you see B.J. Novak in New York,

he's hanging out at a party with John Mayer.

Okay.

So you can see John Mayer do some acting.

There you go.

I like B.J. Novak.

Yeah.

So that was a good movie.

B.J. Novak is a stand-up, isn't he?

He used to be, I think.

He used to be.

And I mean, I think he's...

Dabbled in it.

I think he kind of did it,

you know,

until he didn't need to do it anymore.

Right.

I don't think he tours or anything,

but yeah, I mean,

he was hired as a writer

and a performer for The Office,

but I think primarily hired

as a writer.

Yeah.

You know, and Mindy Kaling

was hired in the same way.

She was primarily hired as a writer.

Did she ever do stand-up?

To be on that show.

She, you know,

she had a sketch show.

That's what I thought.

Her thing that she did

that made her famous,

because I know I read her books and stuff.

I followed her career pretty closely.

At least I used to.

Maybe not so much now,

but back then,

yeah, she was doing

the Ben and Matt,

like an off-Broadway comedy

Ben and Matt.

So I forget if she was Ben Affleck

or Matt Damon,

but her and her girlfriend

were being, you know,

it was like,

what is the real relationship

between Ben and Matt?

Okay.

And that was those two ladies

acting out what they thought

Ben and Matt were like offstage.

And it was funny.

I mean, you know,

they were, look,

Ben and Matt were, you know,

the biggest stars in the world

for a while there.

For a little while there, yeah.

And so this show,

you know,

through New York,

you know,

off-off-Broadway

and eventually,

I think they did like

the New York Comedy Festival.

Somebody saw it

and then they hired her

to do The Office.

Sure.

Based upon that show.

Sure.

Because it was, you know,

satire and it was fun.

Yeah, people love satire.

And so that's what

she was kind of known for.

So she wrote it

and acted in it

and the whole thing.

Good for her.

Yeah.

Smart girl.

Smart lady.

What else did we see this year

that was good?

I was going to bring up Nope.

I think I saw it in 23,

but a confess for,

Fletch was pretty good.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

Did you see that one?

No, but I was all about it.

John Hamm as Fletch.

And I don't think

anybody saw this fucking thing.

I don't think so either.

And again,

I didn't see it at the theater.

And when I looked it up,

it said it came out

in the fall of 22

and I maybe only saw it

like when it was on streaming

or whatever.

Yeah, I've seen it around.

Confess Fletch, I enjoyed.

Okay.

It's a fun one.

But you know,

here's the thing.

Those Fletch movies,

you know,

it's kind of that thing

like that would be

a streaming show now.

Yeah, definitely.

You know,

with that,

it's like,

well,

why not just do 10 episodes

or something,

make a series out of it.

But John Hamm

was very good as Fletch.

It was a fun movie.

I love John Hamm.

And otherwise,

you know,

I saw no Marvel movies.

No, good.

You're smart.

I saw,

trying to think

what else I even saw.

I don't know.

I thought it was,

and again,

was it a week year for movies?

I don't know

if it was a week year,

but I don't think that,

well, first of all,

this year could have been weak

or had less things in it

because of the pandemic.

Meaning these are the movies

that would have been being made

in 2020 and 2021

that came out in 2022.

So for example,

Elvis,

if you remember

when people found out

that Tom Hanks,

he was in Australia

and he got COVID

and that was the big kind of thing,

the worldwide thing.

He was there to shoot Elvis.

That's right.

And that's when that happened.

And I heard an interview

with Austin Butler

where he said,

you know,

he was hanging out

with Tom Hanks one day

and literally the next day,

Tom Hanks was there

and he was in the hospital,

you know,

in this like COVID ward.

And he said,

and then they had to send me away

for 15 days.

Oh, wow.

To just not be around anybody

because they thought Austin

would have had COVID as well.

Sure, but he didn't.

Yeah.

And then that movie

ended up getting pushed back

because, you know,

all that whole thing.

I remember that.

But yeah,

probably all of those movies

have been made

with some sort of COVID restriction

and, you know,

everyone wearing masks

between shots

and that whole thing.

So you can see

why there'd be

less movies.

Tom Hanks.

I know.

Shit.

This is real now.

This is real.

Now it's real.

Now it's a party.

But now you get COVID

and you get COVID.

All right.

See you next week.

You know,

it's not really a big deal.

But so, yeah.

Anything else on the movies

or you think

we'll get into TV stuff here?

And so I would say

this speaking of COVID

and I don't know

that it's COVID,

but I had an experience

recently.

Very excited

that Bruce Springsteen

was going back on tour.

Yes.

With the E Street Band.

Yes.

After six and a half years

of not being on the road.

Yeah.

The current tour

being pushed back two years.

Wow.

Because of COVID.

How old is Bruce now?

Bruce is 73.

Really?

I think this year.

Anyway.

So.

Buy a ticket.

Uh-huh.

You know,

and then he did the thing

where the tickets went on sale

and they were $5,000

and everyone freaked out

no one could go.

Bah, bah, bah.

This week, Monday.

So a week ago today

as we're recording this.

I see.

Well, Bruce is in Columbus,

Ohio on Thursday.

So I should go to that.

Three and a half hours.

I check the weather.

The weather is good.

Look for a ticket.

I go,

okay, this ticket's

behind the stage,

but I've sat behind the stage.

It's great.

It's 200 bucks.

Let's go.

Buy my ticket.

Buy your,

you're going to buy yourself?

Going by myself.

Okay.

Because I'll bring people,

but if it's a thing like Columbus,

I'm not looking for anyone to come

because I know it's a pain in the ass.

You're going down,

you stay in the night?

No, but for Columbus,

I go down and come back.

Okay.

If the weather's good

and the weather was supposed to be good.

Okay.

And also,

if I'm going to stand for Bruce,

like they do like the pit thing

where you just stand the whole time,

I generally will stay the night

because I'm going to be too tired after that.

Yeah, for sure.

But if I have a seat,

I'm just sitting until he comes out

and then I'll stand.

Yeah.

So I won't be as tired.

But anyway,

here's the thing.

Thursday,

I drive down,

leave about 1.30,

two o'clock,

stop for dinner around five,

open up my phone.

The Bruce Springsteen canceled,

scheduled for Nationwide Arena in Columbus

has been postponed.

Oh, shit.

I'm 20 miles from the venue.

Oh, shit.

Motherfucker.

What?

Why?

So I eat my dinner

and go,

it's because of illness.

That's the saddest dinner ever right there.

Well,

it's Bob Evans in Columbus,

Ohio for one.

It's already sad.

And it's already sad

and it's me

eating biscuits by myself.

Oh, shit.

So then I go,

you know,

whatever.

I go home.

Hey, whatever.

Bruce is coming to Detroit

in a couple of weeks.

Then I hear Saturday,

his Sunday show,

the next show

that he's scheduled to do,

Connecticut,

postponed.

Albany,

New York,

scheduled for this week,

postponed.

Okay.

This is nobody really knows

what's happening with Bruce right now.

So it's kind of scary.

Really?

Yeah.

But it affected me

because I got fucked.

So you got fucked.

So to this moment.

Yeah.

You,

we still don't know.

Still don't know.

Here's the rumors.

Okay.

I love rumors.

Bruce has COVID.

Okay.

Now,

a couple of the members of the band

have gotten COVID.

Yeah.

They've done the show anyway.

Meaning,

so when,

when Nils Lofgren

got COVID,

Bruce and Stevie Van Zandt

can handle the guitar parts.

So Nils gets the night off.

No big deal.

Right.

The sax player,

Jake Clemens got COVID.

Well,

they got this other sax player

from Jersey

who's played with Bruce

in the past.

Eddie Mannion.

Eddie comes in,

does a couple shows.

No big deal.

You know,

some of the backup singers

get COVID.

Well,

they got a bunch of backup singers.

Rotate them.

The Susie who plays the fiddle

and does backing vocals.

She got COVID.

Well,

we just don't play the song

with the fiddle that night.

No big deal.

Right.

So they've been able to do it.

The rumor is,

well,

if Bruce gets COVID,

Bruce can't do it.

Right.

Max Weinberg is the drummer.

If Max gets COVID,

can they get another drummer

to do that?

Right.

You know,

I mean,

Max's son did do some shows

for Max

while he was on

The Tonight Show with Conan.

Right.

That was years ago.

And I think Max's son

is in Slipknot now.

So it's like,

you have to get the Slipknot

guy to do Bruce's show.

But yeah,

it's Max's son.

So maybe you could do it.

But the piano player,

Roy Bitton,

kind of irreplaceable

to the sound

of the E Street Band

is that piano.

He's been with Bruce

since 1975.

I don't think he's ever

missed a show.

I don't know if he's so,

it could be him.

So,

you know what I mean?

You don't know.

Yeah.

And nobody knows.

The other story is that

maybe Bruce's mother is,

Bruce's mother is in her 90s.

Yeah,

I was going to say.

And she has dementia.

And,

you know,

so if she was ill

or in her last days,

you can understand him

wanting to be with her.

But no one's saying anything

and it's pissing everybody

off because,

you know,

for Bruce,

people are like flying in

from overseas

to go to some of these shows.

Of course,

yeah.

You know,

I drove from Columbus

and yeah,

I got fucked out of,

you know,

I got fucked out of,

you know,

a couple gallons of gas

and stuff,

but.

Did you get a refund

on the ticket?

Well,

they're going to reschedule it

and your ticket will be good

for that if you want it to be.

Yeah.

If you want a refund,

they'll give you one,

but I haven't asked for one yet.

When is the Detroit show?

March 29th,

so in a few weeks.

It's coming up.

Yeah.

And I'm planning to go

if it happens.

Yeah,

absolutely.

It'll happen.

But I don't have a ticket.

I kind of did that one again,

but that's all right.

You ain't got to buy

all these tickets,

by the way.

If you're listening to me,

first of all,

if you're listening to me

and the tickets go on sale,

if it's Taylor Swift

or somebody

and you get excited,

go ahead and buy your tickets

because here's why.

Because guys like me

who are smart

will wait until the week

of the show

to buy the tickets.

Right, exactly.

Not all these chumps

that are going out

and spending thousands of dollars

because they think

they can't get in.

Yeah,

you're going to get in.

There's going to be

a concert

and you'll hold up a sign

and say,

I need a ticket

and someone will sell you

one for 20 bucks.

I've sold tickets that way.

You're going to be fine.

Yeah, exactly.

You're going to be fine.

You'll get in the show.

Yeah.

You know what they do

at the Grateful Dead

if you need a ticket?

You know what that is?

I don't even want to guess.

You hold up a sign

and you go,

I need a miracle.

Your sign says,

that's what it's called

in Deadland.

Okay.

If you need a ticket,

you go,

I need a miracle.

And then somebody

comes over and gives you

I got a miracle for you.

Yeah.

And you give them a joint

and they give you

a Grateful Dead ticket.

Hell yeah.

I think that's how that works.

Sounds like a fair trade.

Anyway,

so hopefully Bruce is good.

I'm going to put a little

good karma,

good juju out into the world.

Absolutely.

And I was disappointed

that I haven't seen Bruce.

I saw his Broadway show

but that was 17.

Okay.

But I haven't seen Bruce

in the E Street Band

since the fall of 2016.

It's always great

to see your favorites.

Yeah.

Especially with everybody dying.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that.

Yeah, but the classic rock guys

are getting old.

They ain't going to be

with us long.

David Crosby just died.

Yeah, David Crosby just died

and I went to the last Stones tour

because who knows

when the Stones will be back

and Charlie Watts had just died.

Is Mick in his 80s now?

I think Mick might be 80s.

He's 78, 79 or something like that.

But I think Bob Dylan's

in his 80s at this point.

He's touring.

He's touring right now.

I saw Bob Dylan in 89.

Did you really?

Yeah.

He was still young

and spry back then.

Shit, man.

I remember at the time

it was like Bob Dylan is so old.

Right.

And he was probably like

35 or something.

38.

I think I saw McCartney

and he might have been 40.

Shit.

He might have.

No, this was 89 or 90

at the Palace of Auburn.

It was the first time

I saw Paul McCartney.

That was the time

to see those guys.

It might have been

and they were like,

I don't know if he can still do it.

He's getting up there.

I know.

Isn't that weird?

He's getting up there.

It's like 35 years later.

Wait a minute.

That's crazy.

Also, the thing with McCartney

is he did not,

after John Lennon got shot,

he didn't tour.

You know,

he didn't tour

till 89.

Right.

Because he was,

he sort of,

he was,

he had a very weird relationship

with Beatles fans

for most of the 80s.

Yeah.

Even though he did lots

of records and stuff,

he was not doing

a lot of live shows.

So he eventually,

he came back in 89

and hasn't gone away.

He's always out there.

Which is great.

And I went to his last show

in Detroit.

Did you?

How long ago was that?

It was Comerica, wasn't it?

No, it wasn't Comerica.

It was the,

it was,

yeah,

like the second or third week

that Little Caesars Arena

was open.

Oh, okay.

I went to his.

He might be due to come back soon.

He probably is due to come back.

I know he's doing dates this year,

but.

All right,

what do we got?

Anything movie-wise?

No?

Let's talk about TV then, right?

Sure, yeah.

We had a couple things.

Real quick,

we'll wrap this up.

Jason,

TV shows,

what are you watching?

Give people some suggestions.

Well,

I was,

I was really,

and I'm not the only person

to say this,

we watched Wednesday on Netflix.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of fun.

All right.

But I think as far as things

that I'm,

really,

really excited,

looking forward to,

it would be season two

of Yellow Jackets.

That's this month, yeah.

Is that Showtime or HBO?

That's Showtime.

Showtime.

Yeah, that's Showtime.

If you guys don't know,

and I won't spoil anything,

but if you take like,

Lost,

Lord of the Flies,

and The Blair Witch Project,

and mix it together with

a group of high school soccer players,

young women in the 90s,

if that sounds appealing to you,

it's dark,

it's graphic,

it's creepy,

it takes bizarre turns.

I've seen it.

It's a good show.

You said you had one gripe.

Well,

here's what I,

I think we should tell people that

it takes place in sort of

two different timelines.

You see the girls in high school,

and it's all these young actresses.

Right.

That most of them

would be unknown to you.

Right.

Then you see them in their 40s.

Right.

And it's all like

these 90s actresses,

Christina Ricci.

That's true.

Juliette Lewis.

They all kind of know.

Who else is on there?

There's a lot of people

people will know on there.

I know the young lady

from Six Feet Under.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who's going to be on there

this season,

but yeah,

I don't know off the top of my head.

But it's kind of like

this show where it's,

you know,

you sort of see

all these old actresses,

not old,

but you know what I mean?

Like people you watch

just teenagers acting.

Well, Melanie Linsky.

Oh, yeah.

Is one of the,

the older.

Yeah, she's great.

Is that Juliette Lewis

is in there.

It's,

it's,

it's a good,

it's a fun group of actors

doing it for sure.

And,

but,

but the thing about the show

and one of the things

that made it so good,

but also disappointing is

that,

in the first episode,

you,

and I'm trying not to spoil it,

but it is the first episode.

Sure.

So I guess I can give

a little bit of a spoiler.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is you see

that because they're trapped.

Right.

After this plane crash.

Right.

That in,

in a sort of

Lord of the Flies way.

Yes.

Or something like alive.

Yeah.

That they have to resort

to extreme measures

to stay alive.

Extremely extreme.

And you,

you see that teased

in the first episode.

Yeah.

And you wait all season

to see this paid off.

Yeah.

And the season ends.

And the season ends

without that ever paying off.

Yeah, you never,

they never go back to that.

So in a way,

I felt like Yellow Jackets

is a thing that probably

should have been like

a one season show.

Sure.

And I don't know if

halfway through,

they went like,

oh, this will be really cool.

Let's make two seasons.

Everyone's going to love this.

Rather than trying to resolve

the story in one season,

they've now stretched it.

Yeah.

Which may make

the second season,

because if you're going

to have to wait two seasons

to get the answers

that the very first episode

of season one asks.

Yeah.

To me,

I think that's

kind of lame.

I think that might even,

depending on how many seasons

they go,

I think you may not

see any of that

until the very end,

which is crazy.

Well, that's too long.

And that is what Lost

kind of suffered from, right?

Fatigue, yeah.

A little bit.

And by the time you get to the end,

it didn't really pay off.

And I'm trying to think

of other shows

that sort of did that, but.

Lost, I think,

would be the best example.

Yeah.

Because they also did

the two timelines.

Yeah, I didn't really watch Lost,

but any show that sort of

does that, to me,

there was a show called

The Killing,

which was,

it was on AMC,

and it was about

the murder of a young girl.

And I think midway

through the show,

they decided they want season two.

So they were going to resolve it

in one season,

and then they added season two.

So the mystery that you see

in the beginning of season one

isn't resolved

until the end of season two.

And it's kind of like,

yeah, you fuckers

could have resolved that.

Then they did two more seasons.

Yeah, which were

different mysteries.

Right.

But that first mystery

was two seasons.

Was two seasons,

and it should have been

one season.

It didn't have,

they didn't have enough

plot for that.

No, they didn't.

But anyway, so yeah,

Yellow Jackets is back.

I'll be watching it.

Hopefully it's good,

but I don't know.

My favorite show,

and it ended last night,

and I didn't see it yet.

Okay.

So I can't speak to the finale,

but I know what happens

because it's The Last of Us

on HBO.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is based on a video game

called The Last of Us

that I have played three times

all the way through.

Oh, nice.

And I think it's a great game,

and I think they did

an unbelievably great job

making that show.

I really love it.

I was waiting

until all the episodes

were out before I watched it.

Well, they're out now.

Yeah, they're out now,

and it's great.

And if you've played the game,

you will sort of be spoiled

for the major plot points.

Sure.

It is not an exact

one-to-one copy

of the video game.

In fact, I would say

that one of,

and you could even complain

if you were a huge nerd gamer

that, you know,

there's not as many

zombie encounters

because, you know,

that's what the game is.

You're killing all these zombies.

Zombies, yeah.

And, you know,

in the show,

there's episodes where

there's not even maybe

any zombies to kill

in some of these

episodes because,

you know,

they're also fighting

other human survivors

of the plague.

So, you know,

there is that thing, too,

but Bella Ramsey

as Ellie

and Pedro Pascal

as Joel.

Awesome.

Like, really

incredible casting.

Yeah.

It looks incredible.