‘Before Sunrise’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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The Rewatchables, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the big picture with Sean Fennessey. Yes. Breaking down the most boring Oscar season in years. What do you mean?

Deadly boring. It's wide open. We don't know who's going to win. This is great. All the oppo researchers flying around. I won't be talking about one of these movies 10 years from now. Well, that may be true. That may be true. I am excited for Chalamet. Yeah. I'm excited for Demi Moore. Yeah, I'm excited for the Oscars. Come on. He's back. If Timmy wins, that'll be fun. Will he come on the pod before or after? Can he win? He can win. Yeah, he can win. Who's the favorite now? Adrian Brody for The Brutalist.

Do you do it yet? Do you fire it up? I need after football season. Okay. Let me get through football season. Especially in the football games last for four hours. And we also get through this Celtics swoon. It's an alarm, but it's not alarming. Right? Yeah. Okay. Are you playing team or no?

We're here to bond over love, right? And the possibilities. What are you up to? I do. I do the watch podcast. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Men's health pod. Interesting. You're looking, you're looking fit today. Yeah. You can find this podcast and all the movie stuff we do on the ringer movies, YouTube channel, a great channel, which we're going to be trying to spruce up during 2025. Subscribe to that coming up.

Before sunrise, three guys getting romantic about a romantic movie. Let's go.

I have no idea what your situation is, but I feel like we have some kind of connection. Yeah, me too. So listen, here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna and come check out the town. Since we're never going to see each other again, I don't think we should sleep together. Let's see each other again. Castle Rock Entertainment presents Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in a new romantic comedy from Richard Linklater. Before Sunrise, rated R.

At select theaters Friday. All right. This is an, I remember where I saw this and what theater I was in movie. Um, it's a movie that describes your view of life, both when you saw it and then all the years later, it's a true classic. It's before sunrise. It's a all time Gen X movie. Uh, it's a great nineties movie. It's aged perfectly.

And I almost don't even think we need to do the pod. I have no notes. See you later. What stage is the worst? I was like, nothing. Zero. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very... Have you ever started an episode like that? Thinking... You didn't start the Godfather episode like that. This movie... We had a mail... When we did the Rewatchables mailbag, there was that person who had that... They wanted to add the category about... Did this movie achieve perfection? Yeah.

It didn't have to be a perfect movie, but for what the movie was trying to do. Oh, because there's also a cigarette one too, yeah. Yeah, there's some good cigarettes. But for what the movie was trying to do, did it achieve it? Did it throw basically a no-hitter? And I think this movie achieved every single thing it wanted to do with the added bonus that it endured 30 years later.

That it's still, even though, you know, they don't have phones, they don't have, they're not texting, but for the most part, this is a watchable movie now, even for people like my daughter. Yeah. You know, this was in theaters while Pulp Fiction was still in theaters. Wow. So probably incredibly formative moment for all of our lives. Yeah.

This movie is pretty unique in that not only do you watch it and you're like, I remember seeing it or I remember the impact it had on me. It's overwhelming because you watch it and you're also like, I remember who I was. Do you know what I mean? Literally, there is a degree to which you kind of see a lot of the things that

that you were feeling at that time or would go on to feel very shortly afterwards, like reflected on screen. It's different than Dazed and Confused that way. You know, it's not a period piece in my mind, even though Zoe might watch it and be like, oh, so tell me about what the 90s were like and stuff like that. We're watching it. We're like, this is a photograph. Yeah. Of the way people used to talk and the way people used to kind of act. It's so mind blowing to see these days.

It reminded me of a few movies that you guys have done over the years that felt like they were their own subgenre. So Singles was one of these movies. Kicking and Screaming was one of these movies. Reality Bites was one of these movies. They're not all the same. They have like different tones. Some of them are more comedic. Some of them are more sincere. But the...

Like emotional, philosophical hangout movie was very present because independent cinema was getting to be a huge part of American movies. And these were kind of easy movies to make. You know, they didn't cost a lot of money. You just needed a couple of attractive people who knew who seemed who, who could seem smart. Yeah. And I'm wondering if this is the best possible version of that kind of a movie. I think it is. Well, when I think about those movies and you mentioned some of them, um,

And also this Gen X era. And obviously I was the age, I was probably a year older than Jesse when I saw this movie. But it's all pre-internet to me. It's this time capsule of what life was like before email and text and everything else showed up. And...

People were really lost just trying to find like connections. You would just go to a bar and hope you ran into somebody. You would meet some girl or if you're a girl, some boy, and you'd be like, maybe this is the one. And, but you'd have no idea. And you wouldn't even know if they tried to call you again. And it's like, was my, oh, my answer machine didn't work. There was just this sense of if I meet somebody, is this going to last? Is this going to get screwed up?

If they, if I lose their number, we'll ever see or hear from them again. All of these things that made like the value of a connection, um,

I really think we valued it more back then. I hate to be like the old man on the lawn, but it feels like it's so much easier to connect with whoever. You can go on the internet. You can find your people wherever. You really couldn't in the early 90s. So if you met somebody like this in one day, it was like the most important thing that ever could have happened to you. Yeah, it's also these people are at an age, that 18 to 25 or whatever age period, where everything that happens to you feels like it's the first time it's ever happened to anyone. Right.

And there's a moment in the opening, just few scenes of this film where Jesse is talking about how it's been a bad trip to Europe, but he's liked sitting on the train and having ideas. Right. And I was like, I don't remember the last time I did that. Like,

Like if I'm ever on a mode of transportation or have any downtime, I'm usually like looking at my phone, have my headphones in, texting with somebody. I know like I'm in constant contact with this external world. Right. And I was like, holy shit. I completely forgot being bored out of my mind. Yeah, you have a book. Both of them, when they meet each other, they're both reading a book. That's kind of what you did. If you're on a train, what else are you going to do? Suddenly you'd be like, oh, I'm going to go on Instagram. Yeah.

you were kind of stuck with your thoughts, some book or a magazine you had, or some conversation with somebody, like in a train like that, it's like, maybe I'll sit next to somebody. I remember flying places in the '90s and you'd sit next to somebody, talk to them for three hours and be like, "All right, I'll see you later." And that was it. You never thought about them again. 'Cause it was like, "Ah, that killed three hours." Now you would just kill the three hours on your own. I don't know if it's better or worse. - Guy next to you is reading Inside Sports. - Right. What is that?

Well, I think... What did they think of the Sun? Is that a Razor Reddick article? I think it's... I think it's 95% what you're saying. That, you know, it was impossible to distract yourself in the ways that we can now, right? And that there is like an inherent bad for our ability to socialize or be connected to other people. But then it's just, it's also 5% just being 21. Right.

Or 23. Where you don't... And idealistic. Right. And you have not been destroyed by the world yet. You don't have a lot of money, so you don't really have a lot of options. So you have to make good with what you have. And you don't have a lot of responsibilities that are otherwise weighing down that idealism. You know, these are people with no jobs, no kids, no boyfriends or girlfriends. You know, their parents are alive. Everyone's healthy. Like, they're at this point in your life where, like,

You can and probably should just fuck around a little bit. Yeah. And both literally and figuratively. And the movie really captures this time of like no responsibility. The fact that Selene can just get off the train in a foreign land. With some guy she met for 20 minutes. With a stranger. Yeah, yeah. And wander. And she's getting off the train before a nine-hour trip.

And she's like, you know what? I'm just going to, I'll go to. I don't have anything going on until Tuesday. I'm booked through February. Think about like when even Jesse just being like, I don't have enough money for a hotel. So I was just going to walk around Vienna all night until it's time to go to the airport. And then sleep outside. That would be like a pretty, something would have gone really wrong if that was like the circumstance I found myself in now. And that was like fucking romantic back then. But this is why Ethan Hawke was the Gen X hero because he played this character and he played Troy.

And Troy was bait. Would it try to say, all I need is a cup of coffee, a pack of cigarettes and five bucks lane laney laney. And so I need, and that was what all that character needed, right? This guy, he's like, yeah, I'm just going to ride the train for an extra two weeks. I'm just going to walk around Vienna tonight. Maybe I'll sleep on the thing, but that's kind of what a lot of people were like back then. Were you like that? No, I was sports was too important to me. I was, I was a mixture.

But if I was him, I would have been like, I gotta get back. Sports are too important. Like you need to get back. That's like round one NBA is coming up. I can't ride this train anymore. Clements is pitching. Mike Greenwell and Ellis Burks are really going to fucking put it together. Big picture though with this movie. And it's really this one other thing I love about this movie. And we, by the way, we're just going to talk about this movie because we want this movie to stand on its own. Obviously there were some sequels, but, uh,

But one thing with this movie, as you age with it, but your feelings on love have aged too. And if you see this when you're in your teens, like you don't even know what love is yet. If you see this in your 20s, that's when you're the most hardcore into love.

I kind of know who I am and I'm ready to be in love. So if you see this at the perfect time, this movie would be like your movie. And then as you get older, you're like, ah, those two, they're not going to last. Like you said, you start becoming more cynical, right? So it's, and they, the only time I'll bring up the sequel, he mentions in the beginning about the difference between a romantic and a cynic. That's how you see this movie. Are you a romantic or a cynic? So when you saw this, were you a romantic or a cynic, Sierra? I think that when I saw it,

I didn't see Jesse as cynical. Like, I thought Jesse was just being cool. You know, like in this movie. And then as you grow older, you kind of see him... He's working a little bit. Yeah, it's like, this is like, your cynicism isn't of itself...

It's like the thing from singles where it's like, I think your thing is not having a thing. It's like Jesse's thing is pretending like this is love is bullshit or that like because of his parents, it's like he thinks that romantic love is basically a fallacy, but he's the most romantic person in the world. And he's got his five or six bits that he's clearly done with other people. It's like, Hey souls, what's going on there? Hey everybody. Yeah.

Please remember, Tippi Barton. Yeah, real Jerry Seinfeld. I think that's exactly right. I mean, both of them show both sides of those two ideas. They both, you know, Celine in theory, oh, the ethereal French girl should be the most romantic person in the world. But she's also protecting herself with a certain kind of pragmatism throughout the entire movie. And they both kind of bounce back and forth. I was having this conversation with my wife last night, and I feel like

The movie is like 51% Celine's, ultimately, and 49% Jesse's. And in the future movies, you could say, which direction does it go in? But this movie ultimately has that drop of romance that outweighs the cynicism that is always being debated. Jesse is always circling back to the palm reader bullshit. Even the poem, there's the hint of like, are we sure about this guy? All the moments that...

in the wrong hands would make for like the worst movie ever. Oh my God. Like if this was not a Richard Linklater movie, it could have been a disaster because of the sincere borderline sentimental steps that the characters take. But ultimately I think they both have

the desire to love and be loved. And they both know that you have to protect yourself in the world because people will hurt you. Yeah, because Jesse's just gotten his heart broken. So he's going around being like, there's no palm reading. There is no poetry. He's had that poem. Like none of this stuff is, this is all bullshit. You made a key point there though about sentimental working or not working in a movie. We've seen people, Cameron Crowe is a great example. Almost famous. All the sentimentality works in that movie. And then he makes Elizabeth Towne

and it's a lot of the same beats, and none of it works. It's really hard to pull off somebody's falling in love with somebody else. You see it in a lot of movies, and it takes place over the course of weeks, months, however they do it. I don't remember another movie where it's like, this is about the immediate experience of falling for somebody over the course of a night, basically. And I don't remember another movie that nailed it like this. No, I mean, the best part about it

is the fact that even though they obviously have an instant connection, which is partially just due to the circumstances of the train car in which they meet and the other couple fighting, they have a pretty awkward first 30 minutes of the movie when they're first walking around Vienna and it's like, now what?

You know, like, this movie is a series of now what's, which is what's so great about it. It's like every time they achieve some sort of point that in another movie would have been like it's all building up to a kiss or it's all building up to sex or it's all building up to this. They actually deal with like what happens next for the most part. And I think it makes it that much more effective because they do. So at the end, if you think they're seeing each other in six months when the movie ends, not knowing what happens in the sequels.

If you leave that movie and you go, they're going to see each other in six months, I would say you're a romantic. And if you leave the movie going, nah, one of them's going to fuck this up, I would say you're a cynic. And it's weird how that one decision at the end probably says more about the viewer than it does about the movie. Do you remember having a take on it when you left the theater? Yeah. I was like, I really hoped. I was probably the most idealistic when I saw this movie. I was like, I hope they're going to make it.

But to this day, the movie drags you back to that feeling of romanticism. Like, I was kind of just laughing to myself watching the movie again. You guys know me. I'm very grounded and very cynical about certain things. You would not have liked The Fortune Teller. No, I would have been... I've identified with Jesse a lot in this movie. The poet, you'd have been like, oh, he wrote that already. Yeah, I really identify with him a lot in many ways. But the same way that Jesse can't help but feel...

lifted up, you know, taken away by this person who he's encountered who is just like filling him up with all of this hope and excitement. The movie does the same. Like it softens a hard heart. So what was your, do you remember the first time you saw this? What was your takeaway? Would they see each other in six months? Well, it's complicated for me because I can't remember the first time I saw it. And so I don't, I didn't see it in a movie theater. I definitely saw it on VHS.

And I don't know the circumstances under which I saw it. Did I see it with a girl? Maybe. I don't remember. Like, did we watch it in my parents' basement? Maybe. So I don't have the same... I just wasn't old enough. Just being a little bit younger. Whereas the next film, I remember everything about that. So we did Kicking and Screaming a while ago. A little bit similar. Yeah.

We don't know whether Grover's going to go to Prague to chase his old girlfriend down and they kind of leave it ambiguous. This was a very 90s thing. It's like, we're going to bring these characters in your life, you're going to fall for them, and then you will never know what happens. We'll see, yeah. Do they still do the we'll see? They don't do it the same way anymore. I don't feel like we'll see is a...

It's a huge move. I mean, this is a huge spoiler alert for a movie that not everybody has seen yet, so if you don't want a Nora spoiled for you. But like, that ends in an intriguing way in that very specific respect where you don't know what happens to the characters next. But to your point, it's really rare. Were you, did you, do you remember if you had a girlfriend, like a long-term girlfriend when you saw this?

I had a girlfriend when I saw this. Yeah. It was one of those movies that also makes you reevaluate whoever you're dating at the time. It was my first real girlfriend I had. It was my senior year of high school. And I was like, I'm pretty into this. I thought... You weren't like, she's not the one for me. No, I mean, it wasn't that as much as it was just like...

Being in love seems so cool. And it just kind of... It made me feel happy to have a girlfriend. I think if I had been alone, I would have been like, fuck. That's how I felt for kicking and screaming. I remember leaving the theater. I was like, oh my God. I got to get a job. One thing that... One quote from this movie...

being with you has made me feel like I'm somebody else. Jesse says that. I always thought that was a great quote and a good example of when you meet somebody like this, they don't know any of your baggage, they don't know anything. They're just seeing you as this fresh thing and you learn from your past mistakes, especially if you're in that 23-25 range. You've had some swings and some misses.

you've, you've run some goal line offense plays that didn't work. Yeah. You've, you've tried to make some stuff work out of the shotgun on third and 14. You kind of know a place to run a little bit more. Yeah. Kelly Moore has a dialed by that. Right. There's no, there's no basketball reference for, for your playoff record. And you can just meet this person.

And just start fresh with some of the, and Jesse's at that perfect point and not to bring up the second movie again, but it's one of the interesting things about the second movie is how they're not doing some of the stuff to do in the first movie where a lot of it is that they're not, I don't want to say bits.

But it's a lot of people kind of talking out of their ass in a really fun way. Yeah. And then in the second movie, it's not like that as much. It's definitely an extension of that dorm room kind of philosophy. Hanging out in the hallway at three in the morning. I have five, like you said, I have five or six things that I think are pretty uniquely...

that I've got going on in my head, even if I'm wrong. Yeah. And I'm just going to keep trying them out on people until it clicks. That's Linklater's stock and trade through his first five movies. Yeah. You know, Slacker, that's all Slacker is. It's just people popping into cabs and walking into bars and being like, here's my theory of the world. You know, that's what Waking Life is. That's what Dazed is. You know, think about Rory Slater riffing on George Washington and, you know, growing weed. Like, all that stuff. It's all like, he came up with like a thousand theories. Him as a crop, man. Yeah.

We have to read Dazed at some point, by the way. It's still one of the best movies ever. But he's like an accumulator of people's cool anecdotes. Yeah. And he knows how to reprocess them. Which Tarantino was good at, too. Same. But then the other thing, too, that I think makes it so special, I'm sure we'll talk about it,

casting actors who could write with him to make these people real is like the whole it's the whole thing it's the whole movie it's the reason why it works it's a reason why that sentimentality stuff works like he's just the whole movie just feels like it's happening in front of you for real and there's so few movies that you can really say that about so it just goes a long way it has a real angle on love and i think if i had to summarize the theme of this movie it's

obviously about connection, but she says that thing about how she worked for the old man. And once he told me that he spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work and he was 52 and it suddenly struck him that he had never really given himself of giving anything of himself. His life was for no one and nothing. He was almost crying saying that, which I think is the point of the movie. It's like, if you don't connect with somebody, you're,

your fucking life's going to suck. And it doesn't matter how successful you are. Because Jesse, he gets that question later. Would you rather be really good at something or would you rather find a connection? And I think that's whatever Linklater cared about, I think that was it. Because he probably had a little bit of a success, but he also hadn't found anybody that

you know, he was with, and he was probably battling that somehow became the movie. Yeah. I mean, the, the thing that Celine says to Jesse in the alley when they're talking about whether they would have families or, or what their futures might be like. And she's like, if there's any kind of God, it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me, but just in the space in between. So this idea that it's like the, the effort to become, um,

connected to somebody is where like this almost like holy holy magic exists well that's why she's the rock of the movie in a lot of ways yeah she's able to articulate these incredibly complicated she's just better at explaining her point in life but he's more interesting at it yeah the combo is really good jesse's doing jesse's doing power rankings yeah he's really good at the gimmicks and she's really good at the meat of the conversation she's like here's why josh allen should have thrown a shakir

She's talking about salt. She's like, it's not about the orbit. It's about the orbit of love. Forget the orbit route. You don't know what it's like to get blitzed by snacks!

Movie characters I always wanted to meet in real life, but they didn't exist in real life. Celine's way up there. God, she's so beautiful. She's so great. Conversely, I think I would have absolutely melted into a fucking puddle if I had met Celine at like age 24. It would have been lights out. I don't even know if I would have had the balls to do what Jesse did. Yeah,

He had even talked to her in the train. Yeah. Once that accent came out and she was so interesting, I just was like, oh my God. He speaks perfect English. Yeah. That's the thing. I would have screwed that one up. I think the reason that Jesse comes to life in the movie is because you can tell fairly early on

In part because she agrees to get off the train with him. But even before that, that great feeling when you're like, this person's into me. Yeah. You know, not just romantically, but just any connection you make with a person where you're like, this person's actually interested in what I'm saying. That gives you like a jolt. And they communicated so well because I think she's like, they're both reading. And she doesn't like immediately go back to her book. She like turns towards him to like, be like, all right, let's keep talking. Yeah. He's like, I can't believe this is happening. Yeah. This is crazy. Ultimate Gen X movies.

Slacker, Singles, Reality Bites, Kicking and Screaming, Clerks, Before Sunrise, Mallrats, Swingers. Yeah, you can throw a few. Throw in a couple, but the list could be 20, it could be 12, it could be... But I feel like those eight have to be at least eight of the eight, whatever the final number is. All movies about people in their early 20s talking about pop culture and love and existence, basically. Kind of wandering around life hoping to connect with whoever. Right? That's the theme, ultimately. Yeah.

Link later, you mentioned Slacker, Days, Before Sunrise. That's the first three for him. Solid. Good job, Rick. He's 34 when this movie is being made. This has got to be one of the most wise movies ever made by a person that young. Because it's not that what the characters are saying is wise, because it is very idealistic and very lovey-dovey at times and very like...

you know, just ripped a bong hit and started talking about souls. But knowing that that is how you are when you're 24 and being able to reflect on it 10 years later and like metastasize it is amazing to me. I mean, he's like in the 1% of capturing how young people really are in the world. It's also really cool to go and look at this movie and think about like 99 out of 100 other directors would have done this

so many things differently. There would have been more montages. Yeah. There would have been more cuts. There would have been... And needle drops. There would have been some sort of like...

I don't know, like there would be a crescendo to the film that was, this movie has like five crescendos. This movie peaks like five times, six times. Sometimes it's intellectually, sometimes it's sexually, sometimes it's, but like every other filmmaker, and then when you're watching it though, you're not overtly aware of him doing anything. It's not like you're like, oh wow, the camera hasn't cut in a while. You're just like completely locked in with their conversation. It's almost invisible filmmaking. Well, it's weird to be an indie director, especially from this era and not,

and also be a romantic and not have like weird shit in the movie because that was another thing that the 90s you know couldn't resist throwing in some sort of weird monkey wrench there are no monkey wrenches in this movie yeah where was the gimp in this movie you know right I think the poet yeah hawk dead poets which we've done

We talked about the position he was in when he did Alive. We did Reality Bites too. Dead Poets, Mr. Date, Weifang. Then he has Alive, Reality Bites. Stuff's happening with them. But this cemented it. I think after this movie, even though it didn't make a shitload of money, but I think the combo of this and Reality Bites and Alive, it felt like he was a young star that led to Gattaca and then they kept going from there. But I don't think he ever really shakes this off until Turning Day.

You know what I mean? I agree. I think training day was in some ways brought him into adulthood. It did, but I still think this is his most perfect creation as a character. It so beautifully capitalizes on the Ethan Hawke thing, which is that he looks like the coolest guy of all time, but once he starts talking, you're like, wow, this guy's kind of insecure and a little bit all over the place emotionally and really well-read, but maybe insecure about that too. Yeah.

He it's like it's just like when you talk to Ethan Hawke in real life and you're like, wow, he's really cool. But he's more like me than he is a movie star. Yeah. Which is a unique quality that he brings to movies. The other thing I just worth noting is that I think you could put Hawke and Linklater up there with any of the great director actor duos. Totally. Would they do 10 movies together? Nine. Yeah. But also like they're telling one big story like.

jesse's backstory is the story of boyhood you know what i mean jesse's parents divorcing and hit that impacting how he looks at the world and everything his dad and his mom told him about love that's just the movie boyhood like a couple you know a decade or so later so they're just basically working on like one american male project let's take a break and then a couple more things we'll get to get the categories

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LinkedIn, your next great hire is here. All right. So we talked about, uh, Hawk and Link later. So it took them nine months to settle on Hawk and Delpia. We'll get to some of the casting what ifs with that. But, um, but he was, this movie was like impeccably rehearsed. He spent a ton of time with them. They had a script, they had a screenplay. Some stuff was added after, um,

Julie Delpy was talking about, is anyone actually going to like this? This isn't going to be boring to just watch us. And Hawke said, Linklater said, we're not making the movie for them. We don't have to tell any jokes. We don't have to be interesting. You guys don't even have to act. He wanted to make a film about the power of connection. And that was all he cared about. And I don't even...

My guess is he never probably thought this was even going to be a big movie. I think he wanted it to be a great movie, but I don't think he was thinking, oh my God, we're going to crush, we're opening weekend, we can take it. I don't, I mean, he's not a careerist filmmaker, even though he does make films.

mainstream movies. Yeah, every once in a while there's a Bad News Bears remake in there where you're like, why'd he do that? He dips in there to be in the mainstream sometimes, but I don't ever think of him as like trying to get butts in seats or whatever. But this one is particularly unusual because Dazed wasn't a big hit, but it was an instant cult classic and it was made for a big studio. And this is something smaller. I really liked that

I don't know if you saw this, that Martin Schaefer, who was the co-founder of Castle Rock. Again, there's like, how many Castle Rock movies have we done on this podcast? It's like the best production company. But he was like, this movie was almost the rejection of or opposite of what romantic comedies were at the time. Like it didn't fall into any of those traps. And so when I read the script, I was just like, I want to do this because it isn't like...

you know, the Julia Roberts era, Meg Ryan, While You Were Sleeping, like all those movies that were so popular at that time, it was not doing those jokes. All those movies, like so high concept. Yes, all the tropey stuff that was in them and the like, I'm just a man standing before a woman and all that. Like it didn't, it's not about that. It's about something much more down to earth and also up in the clouds. Well, it's also just even wild to watch this compared to like Say Anything, where like Say Anything has like the whole thing

nursing home plot and all these other things going on. And it has like a big Joe, Joe kept lying. Yeah. Joe, Joe, why did you? And like, there's like, there's a huge gesture with the boom box. Like this is devoid of all of that stuff. It's just the talking. It's just this, these two people growing closer. I remember being super excited to see it in the theater. Cause it had some Sundance momentum. And I knew about that. Cause that was there when you're reading all the movie stuff, but I also really liked Ethan Hawke.

I liked him in Dead Poets. I liked him in Reality Bites. And I liked him in Alive. And I'm like, I'm ready for the next journey with him. And that was kind of all I knew. And the movie surpassed all expectations. Had you seen Killing Zoe? Or Killing Zoe? Because Julie Delpy is in it.

I think I had, but I don't remember having a huge opinion on her. She'd been in a lot of really big art house films in Europe. She was in three colors.

that Peter Weir encouraged him to write for his character. He was like, write backstory, write lines for your character. I want to hear what you think this character would say. And he was blown away by that experience. And he was like, wow, I guess this is how every movie is. And then he went on and did like White Fang. And they were like, sir, please keep your lines to yourself. We don't need this. And so the reason he did this movie, even though he could have been doing much bigger movies, is this, after meeting Linklater, they became fast friends. And he was like, I want you to write this with me. And he was like, that's all I want. I want to be in the creative process of the movie. Yeah.

Well, Linklater, he wrote it with Kim Krasan. They wrote it in 11 days, but they didn't know the ending until the final day of filming. And then they kept tweaking it. Do you know who she is, by the way, Kim Krasan? Who is it? She's the teacher in Days of the Confused, who at the end of the day... Yeah. She's awesome. Yeah, she's great. She's in the CR zone of Throw My Life Away. Really? The Falco Copland?

This movie premiered at Sundance 1995. I'm going to read the list of movies that premiered that year and see if Sean passes out. Before Sunrise, The Usual Suspects, The Brothers McMullen, Kids from Larry Clark, Safe from Todd Haynes, The Doom Generation, The Addiction, and The End.

Party Girl, Little Odessa, Miro's Wedding, and Crumb. Wow. These were at Sundance? Yeah. Same year. That's insane. Do you come back from that festival? It's like, what happened to Sean? He died at Sundance. You would have come back and been like...

The culture is changing, you know, like, or something. I mean, this is specifically, I'm sure I've said versions of this on the show before, but, like, this is specifically why I became obsessed with movies, is that this thing was happening in 93, 94, 95, and I was reading all the magazines and being like, how do I get closer to that? How do I, because if you see, like, Little Odessa or The Addiction, you're like, I don't know, there are movies like this? You know, you never, you could have never imagined. And then this movie is one of those movies, too. Party Girl, or Girl. Yeah.

I saw this and I was like, I obviously have to get a Euro pass. You've got to become an Austrian man. $2.5 million budget made $22.5 million. Everyone in this film jokes that it was the lowest grossing film ever to get a sequel. I don't know if that's factually true. I'm sure there was some junkie trauma movies that got sequels. Penitentiary 2 with Leon Isaac Kennedy happened. I'm just saying. I'm sure there were some sequels.

Roger Ebert, disappointing start to the year for Raj. Three stars. Thought for sure it'd be the three and a half. A little more muted in his praise. Yeah. He wrote, this sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, which I would call a love affair for Generation X. You're fucking A-right, Raj. Except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation.

Especially outside its boring insistence on being bored. Yo, Raj! Are you thinking about maybe asking Deep Seek if Raj has changed his mind in heaven? Well, he did write that Delpy is ravishingly beautiful and more important, warm, a matter of fact. And he says, this is Linklater's third film. He's onto something.

He likes the way ordinary time unfolds for people as they cross paths, start talking, share their thoughts, and uncertain philosophies. Boom, Raj. Roger Ebert was 53 when this movie came out. I think that's notable. Yeah. You know, we've always talked about, like, wire 50-something movie critics reviewing Billy Madison. You know, like, that's just not... That doesn't make sense. That movie's not for them. And you could make the case that this is a movie not for...

Not for Raj. 55-year-old men. Raj just couldn't get a grasp on Gen X. Nicely enough, it is now, though. It is now. It has aged nicely. Categories. New category. We have some new ones because we had that mailbag. Thanks to everybody who sent ideas. What's the exact perfect age to see this movie? I think it... Would you have? Freshman... I would actually say summer after freshman year of college.

You want to be aware that people do study abroad semesters slash go over to Europe to go backpacking or traveling around. But I don't think you want to have done it yet because then you may have like too many takes on like what Jesse did or didn't do right. But like if you just are like going into college or in college, I think that's the perfect time. I wrote down 24 because the two characters are 24.

I will say, I saw it probably when I was 14 or 15. The thing that it does if you're 14 or 15 is it's almost like a playbook. You know, it's like if you encounter a lady on a train, these are some moves you can make. And when you're 14 or 15, you don't have any moves. You don't know what to do. And so you internalize some of this stuff. So I don't think it's the best time, but I would say it was very helpful to watch, in general, Ethan Hawke as Troy, as this guy, and be like, okay...

Is this an archetype that can work? Like full of shit, tall brown haired guy. Like I'm like, can I do this? Um, so that was nice. But I think, I think being, I think being roughly where you were seemed right. I wrote down 23. Okay.

I was 25 when I saw it. I think I would have probably enjoyed it slightly more at 23 because you're like even a little bit more idealistic at 23. Yeah. But you are also, you have some of your full of shit moves down at that point too. But it's somewhere in that, I would say early 20s. But I got to say, it was super enjoyable to watch at my age now. I was like, wow, still, this movie still got it. Most rewatchable scene. So,

This movie starts with a mid-40s couple fighting in a foreign language, and it somehow works. Yeah, it's about... I think they're fighting about money. No. No, there's actually an answer to this. What is it? It's about drinking. Oh. Yeah. Who's got the drinking problem? The husband or the wife? Do you want to do the translation? I had this on What's Aged the Best. The man is reading in his newspaper how 70,000 women are addicted to alcohol, and he says, you're one of them. To his wife.

And she volleys back and says, he's the alcoholic. And he says, I have a reason to do it. I'm married to you. Wow. That's what they said in the other language. It's perfect. It's perfect in so many ways for this film series. But then it leads to, yeah, for the series, it's a really interesting way to start it. But it leads to, do you ever hear that when couples get older, they lose the ability to hear each other, which is one of those like might be true, might not be true. Yeah.

But a good conversation starter.

I think hearing gets really bad. I just think your hearing gets worse when you get older. I don't know if it has anything to do with who you're with. I now can't hear anything when the water is on. Oh, me too. I have the same problem. It just so happens that my wife talks while that happens. Next scene. Jesse gets Celine to leave the train. All right, all right. Think of it like this. Jump ahead 10, 20 years, okay? And you're married.

Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you picked up with one of them. Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me. So think of this as time travel from then to now.

To find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is. Totally unmotivated. Totally boring. And you made the right choice and you're really happy. Let me get my bag. Jump ahead 10, 20 years, okay? You're married. Well, your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have. I sound like Klosterman.

Great, great, great way to get her to come off the train. And then in some of the pieces about it, he said they really improv spitballed all kinds of scenarios for this and couldn't get Delpy in the right spot with...

No, I'd actually get off the train for that. And then they came up with this time machine thing. She said he would have to show me that he was really smart. He has to be smart and funny. That's the only way I would get off the train, the time travel thing. And she's like, okay, that I would get off the train for. And then they were off. Can you imagine if Julie Delpy was like, I don't believe it. Sorry, not buying it. You should have thrown to Shakir. Yeah.

I'm sensing a new category coming up. The Shakir what if. The Shakir what if. The Shakir. Next category, the long one-shot bus ride as Jesse does advanced metrics on souls. Yeah. I gotta admit, Jesse kind of blew my mind with that one. It was great. We paused the movie last night to discuss this for five minutes. One of the best theories I've ever heard in a movie. It's like, yeah, he's right. I mean, soul's

Can we break it down very briefly? Yeah. The pivot is all living things have a soul. Every leaf has a soul and that's how you explain it. Is that fair? Oh, so I used to be, I used to be a tree in Florida. So I kicked that to my wife last night and she was like, yeah, but when the earth started, we, it was all just bacteria. And I was like, I don't have a response. Yeah.

like i just shut me down like she just nailed it scientifically check out the big brain they should just turn first take instead of talking about sports it should just be like like steven and matt i would listen to that richard linklater's first take would be amazing uh the long one-shot bus ride and just long one shots like that in general

From a rewatchable standpoint, I had so much fun in the movie. Because I watched it twice leading up to the pod. And it's just so much fun to just watch the background and be like, did they cheat this? No, they didn't cheat it. It's all one shot. And they basically did it like a play. I love that the movie starts where the graduate ends. It was like them at the back of the bus. Oh, yeah. The listing booth scene. That's my next one as well.

which is, um, my winner for most rewatchable. Yeah. Interesting. Um, this is, I would not have guessed that if I had, that seems great. Um, no dialogue, no dialogue and really smart and really well played. Linklater said it was the only time he withheld anything from the two of them about what the song was going to sound like. They had never heard the song. Um, and he says, you can really see them listening cause they'd never heard that yearning creaky thing. The singer's Kath Bloom, um,

Hawk said, it's probably my single favorite take of anything I've ever been involved with. And then Delpy said, that was really special. It was like magic. Every time I felt Ethan looking away, I would look at him and vice versa. I almost fell in love with him right there. But then Rick said, cut. That's a whole separate podcast. The Hawk-Delpy relationship. I also talked about this a long time with my wife last night. There had to have been one night where they got drunk and things happened. I believe my question was over or under how many times have they hooked up? Five. I'd say at least...

At least three. Did they date? Did they date for like a week? They're very circumspect about this. The whole Uma thing too. Yeah. She doesn't come into the picture I think until 96. Yeah. Well, I don't want to... There is no way that they didn't get drunk and...

had at least a one-nighter. There's no way. That is the power of this movie is that you absolutely believe, in my heart of hearts, I'm like, they're actually soulmates. Like, no matter what happens, those actors are soulmates. There's one other movie, Jackie Brown, Bridget Fonda, De Niro. When it was fucking her standing up from behind, I was like, those two are soulmates.

What the fuck is her character's name? What's her character's name? Oh my god, I forget. That's De Niro's funniest moment ever in a movie. She's fucking incredible in that. She's great. I can't wait to do that movie. It's on the list. I can't wait. Listing Booth is great. And the fact that it was one take and that was all the first one, I just love that scene. Magical. Amusement parks...

This is more good Jesse theories. Rich parents give their kids too much. Poor parents don't give their kids enough. There's nothing in the middle. He's just whipping it all out at this point. All his material. Do you know any happy couples? I like being at amusement parks just in general, a movie or a TV show. Always a win. You get to see good scenery. A lot of people walk around. The homeless poet. My guy. This poem is great.

Written by a real poet. I went and I actually read it and it's just sweet cakes and milkshakes. I'm a delusion angel. I'm a fantasy parade. Real beat stuff. It is. Really good, like little short sentences. Yeah. I love poetry, Bill. Coffee shop, Bill? English major, Bill? Drop a tear in my wine glass. Look at those big eyes. See what you mean to me?

It's great stuff. Shades of woman, whoa, man. Yeah, I love it. That's a homeless poet. Thumbs up. His margins are low. He's like, if this poet doesn't hit, I don't know if I'm going to be able to afford smoke. Give me whatever you think is appropriate, too. Not putting a price tag on it. Love that era. Next one. Wait, so you skipped over the palm reading? No, he skipped over the kiss.

You said amusement park, which could include the Ferris wheel. Yes. Are you including the Ferris wheel in that? Yeah, that's a full amusement park. Okay. So you'd put fortune teller in there? I love that scene. Stardust. I like the actress. Yeah. The fortune teller actress is good. I've got her on my list here. I should have put that in here. Great question that is asked, would you rather find love or excel at one thing? That whole scene. Mm-hmm. You know, I believe if there's any kind of God, it wouldn't be in any of us. Not you or me.

But just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed, but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt. Right. And your answer to that question was, it's one great thing and it's crushing tape. That's what you do. That's right. You chose that over love. He's breaking down Spag's defense. Three blitzers overloaded on one side.

He's got to see that. The fake phone calls. Oh, yeah. I like that. Can you imagine telling Celine? I want to best day with you. I want to do this. But in about 20 years, they're going to invent something called All 22.

And it's going to take over my life. So I'm actually sparing you for later. The reverse time traveler. I've seen the future and it's all 22. They went empty backfield. Five wide. I'm sorry, Celine, but I'm a ball knower. Spags is blitzing. He's five wide out. Something's got to break. This is incoherent to like 30% of the audience. It's bad.

The fake phone calls should not have worked, but I really enjoyed the scene. It's really cute. It's awesome. It's really funny. It's a really good gimmick. It's one of those things like if you're an aspiring screenwriter or director. It's a Delpy thing though. Interesting.

She sells it. She is so charming and smart in this. She brought it. She was like, I used to do this with my friends. I like her American accent too. She's like, dude, you got a Kohler. She's so good. Jesse gets the bartender to give him a bottle of wine. It's great. Got a lot of questions about that. Yeah. More wisdom from Celine in another scene when she talks about love. When you talked earlier about after a few years, how a couple would begin to hate each other by...

anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms. I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone. The way he's going to pour his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love. Idealistic, great. I mailed that to my wife and I said,

This is how I feel when I know you're about to lose your keys. And she didn't think it was funny. Does your wife like this movie? Loves it. Okay. Like an all-timer. It might have been one of the first ones that we owned on DVD, but she bought anyway on streaming. It was one of those. It was like a double, one of the first double purchases. We got to get her that Criterion Collection box set. We have it. Okay. We have that now too. Great, great Criterion collection.

Look at him getting physical media pills. This is where I was going. What will you happen when he's like, now I must destroy Sean and get three times the work? No, because I'm only buying stuff. I go on Amazon and I have a certain price limit because I'm trying to not go crazy like Sean. But it's like total recalls, 57% off today. I'm like, fine.

$11. This is how it starts. I told you, this is how it starts. Fine. You start looking at deals and then all of a sudden you're like, eh, $39.99? $49.99? $79.99? $79.99? Oh, all five for $40? For the Bond movies.

All five? Yeah. Whoa. That's how it starts, man. I love it. I support you 100%. Thank you. I knew I'd have your support. Last scene is the ending, which I think is just brilliant and would be my other thing for most people. What do you consider part of the ending? Do you go sex scene, statue, train? No, I'm saying... Or just the train? The goodbye. First one, she's lying on his lap. Yeah. They drop the stuff off. Mm-hmm.

But I think the most genius part of this movie is when he shows all the places they were. Yeah. Love that. Which is obviously stolen from John Carpenter in Halloween. And I know that was a big influence on the movie. Yeah. But I thought it worked really well. You know, Myers. Myers was there. And then he was standing next to that hedge. And Linklater's like, this could work for romance. You just saw Selene get on the train and Michael Myers. He's just right next to her.

Bring it all back. Yeah. But I love that because I guess the point is like, you know, they gave all these places life. They're not there anymore, but it's still fucking cool. And hey, there's this memory that was in this spot, in this spot. For the record, I think it's Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Clisse where they do that trick before Halloween. Before Carpenter? Yeah, just for the record. Damn it.

There's movies before Halloween? Yeah, I thought that was the first movie. My first is the reverse of that. It's the first train sequence. It's them on the train getting to know each other because I just find it mesmerizing and so naturalistic. CR was a big cafe car guy too. Yeah. What was your order?

Oh, like I, this movie brought back to me that I just functioned off of like coffee and cigarettes from 20 to 30. See, I was in the smoking car hoping for Julie Delpy. I mean, who wasn't? Or Edie Falco. What's your must-re-watch mark? Well, there was one small one that you skipped over that is sort of the end, but I really love the cutaway

to not showing whether they have sex or not, and then they wander and they see a guy playing a harpsichord. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And they see him in the window and then they do the, let me take a picture of you, which I think is like a mesmerizing moment. Yeah, you're right. I love that scene a lot. My pick would probably be The Listening Booth 2. I love that one a lot. What stage is the best? Movies set on trains. I love a good train scene in a movie. Obviously, I was riding a train back and forth as a parent, as a child of divorce.

I have a bunch of them. Sierra, give me a couple. Yeah, just Jesse as a takesman. Just Jesse having lots of... I have a bunch of bits. Here's like, I have five of them. This is how I'm... Jesse going club shea shea. That was like me on my pod last night doing my Emmett Smith. I was like, I'm going to do my Emmett Smith bit. I stepped on this, but it was Jesse's story being the story

that boyhood becomes. Yeah. And the way that like his character kind of gets woven throughout Linklater's filmography are two of my favorite things of HBest. I mean, the Uriel. Have you been on the Uriel? I had it. It's incredible. It's just an amazing experience. I recommend everyone try to do it, even if you don't do it when you're 22 and idealistic. It's just such a fun way to travel. I think specifically that letting your actors

casting actors who can write and letting them write with you is such a cool idea. And it's, you know, Mike Lee does this in his movies too. This is like a hack for sophisticated filmmakers. Apatow does it. A lot of really good directors do this. And,

It's all about making the movie as good as it can be because the actors need to be fully on board with the story you're trying to tell. I think it's a little bit different when you're doing a drama versus doing an Apatow movie because Apatow, it seems like they're really working bits and they have like, let's riff on this or riff on that. And this is like...

They have character arcs that they really have to track in this. It's really impressive. Totally, yeah. It seems like they worked really hard on it. And the overlapping dialogue, it was kind of rehearsed to a T, like you said. Also, just the obvious stuff. Really realistic. Like Vienna in the summer. I had that. What's aged the best? Vienna. Which is amazing. Seems great. Vienna just gets wins left and right in culture. Never been there? Never been. Yeah. I went there on an Easter weekend once. It was shut down, so it was a lot like this, but it was very cold. Interesting. Also, French girls. I think that's aged well. You know, just...

a beautiful blonde French girl on the train that's like that's like an archetype yeah that's a 200 years old in real life I had movies that eventually have sequels where the characters age with the sequels it just I don't feel like that recipe is lost yet it's really hard to pull off yeah we got Dr. Loomis that's one who else who else is on that list the town too whenever that happens Doug McCrane Jim Shine yeah Shine now um

For what's aged the best, the anonymous cemetery I thought was cool because I just didn't know that story. I always thought that was a neat idea for a cemetery. So the film starts June 16th, 1994 and ends June 17th, 1994, which was also, we did a 30 for 30 about that day. That was the OJ car chase, the first day of the first US World Cup, Knicks Rockets game five, Rangers Stanley Cup parade,

Arnold Palmer's last US Open round and Jesse said goodbye to Celine. All happened on June 17, 1994. Instead of going to the bar with Celine, Jesse's like, I really think maybe if I get to the airport, they're showing Knicks Rockets. Or it's like the car chases on the train station. If at any point during the course of this day, someone had come up to them and been like, you guys are not going to believe what's happening with OJ right now. Do you think that they would have like...

Is Jesse from Texas? I, well... Oh, that's it. I had that for probably unanswerable. Where's Jesse from? I can't remember if they answered it. I was guessing like Ohio, but... Oh no, he said, does he say Ohio? I think he, or maybe he goes to college in Ohio? He feels like he's like a Sacramento.

Really? Like a Northern California somewhere. I can't remember. I don't know. Maybe I thought he said... I don't think he ever says that. He's from like Shaker Heights or something. Okay. The other thing is that it's June 16th, I believe, because that's the day that... Well, there's a whole bunch of... James Joyce. James Joyce's Ulysses is set. Just a couple quotes for what's aged the best. If none of your friends or family know you're dead, it's not like really being dead. People can invent the best or worst for you. That made me think. That was deep. Hmm.

You know what the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that's how little they're thinking of you. One of the best quotes of any movie like this. That's what I'm talking about with the wisdom of Linklater. That line is insane. Every person who hears that line can understand exactly where it's coming from. If there's any magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone. So I keep potting with you guys.

Great shot Gorda Award for most cinematic shot. What do you got, C.R.? I have Selene with her head in Jesse's lap in front of the Archduke Albrecht statue. I had the wide shot of Jesse sitting on the railing talking to her with that beautiful building behind them. I thought it was really cool. I think the ending's really good, too. I had the going down the cobblestone streets when there's a big dip and they've all been wetted Michael Mann style. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award for Best Neato Drop. Clearly the Cath Bloom song. Bach Sonata No. 1 coming in at the end. Yeah. There's a couple of classical pieces. Like I said that, I just know all the sonatas. I believe it. I'm a ball knower when it comes to sonatas. We have a new award. You guys don't know about this one.

The Sean Fantasy Award. Oh. You finally got an award named after you. I'm touched. The Sean Fantasy Award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. I came up with that word.

There are several in this movie. I thought for you it would be the Ferris wheel that they ride in Vienna is the same one used in The Third Man. My favorite movie of all time. There are several homages to The Third Man. The listening booth you mentioned earlier has... My Darling Clementine. Isn't that also... It kind of echoes into the future with Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise goes into the listening booth. Same thing, yeah. Except he's not looking at anyone. Is that Dead Reckoning? No, it's Fallout, right? It's the one before that, I think, yeah.

Or maybe even the one before that. It's the first one with Sean Harris. Yeah, that's not... It's the one before Fallout, whatever that's called. Anyway, sorry. The fantasy word. I'm moved. Do you like Criteriorgasm or Criteriongasm? I think I like Criteriorgasm. Yeah. Criteriorgasm. Criteriorgasm. Stealth homage. I'm touched. For the movie nerds.

What I want people to think when I'm talking about movies is that this is a sexual climax, so I really feel honored. New category from the mailbag. The Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers Award for Best Character Name. It's got to be Celine, right? It's got to be Celine. Easy. All right, we're going to take a break and come back with yet another new category. All right, coming back. So we added this category after the mailbag category.

Cause we took out some categories, but we also didn't want to remove them completely. So what we're adding is a flex category for the, uh, for the other hosts that aren't me. CR, you can flex any category that didn't make the blueprint cut and roll with them. Uh, is this the place where I could talk about smoking?

It sure is. Which one do you want to give out? I think we need to give out the Jesse and Before Sunrise award for the character that absolutely should have smoked but didn't. This also could be the Chris Ryan award for would this movie be better if the main character smoked. In my memory, I thought he was a smoker. Well, because in reality, he chain smokes. Why? Okay, so a college kid in 1995 in Europe where people smoke everything.

everywhere all of the time with a French girl who was probably still smoking as of like December of last year. And there's not a cigarette between the two of them. And they're watching this poet who's just like, all I do is smoke. Everybody like, but these two people in 1995 don't smoke cigarettes. This is not only a nitpick,

Not only a probably unanswerable question, but it's also the Chris Ryan Award. I don't understand the choice. Other than maybe Ethan Hawke felt like he smoked so much in Reality Bites. He's like, I don't want to be typecast as the guy who's just sucking. But he probably smoked back then. That's a good thing. It's not like he's like, I don't want to have to take all these fake cigarettes.

It's the only thing that bothers me about this movie is I have no idea why they're not having cigs. It's inexplicable. It's the most like, why aren't you guys smoking? Especially in this era, 94 and 95. Like, they're definitely one of the two is smoking, but probably both. Could you make the case, though, that it's a reverse what's aged the best? The fact that they chose not to smoke and there is no smoking in movies. Great call. And now it feels more like a modern movie because no one is smoking. Okay. Also...

Ethan Hawke, great smoker. You're just wasting a talent. I'm just guessing Delpy wasn't a bad smoker either. Yeah. French girl? Yeah. Good one. The Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film. What do you have? Do you have a weak link of the film? It's okay not to have one. Um...

not like there's no actor in the movie. I have, I mean, I have for, for the flex choice too, you could make the case is the weak link, but it's a, it's a bigger discussion. Do you have one? I don't have a weak link for this movie. I have one and you guys aren't going to be happy and I might not, not even berate, but I didn't want to just toss away the category. I was thinking about the closing credit song.

And I went back and I looked through all the 1995 songs that I have on every playlist, trying to figure out if there was a better song that would have made it feel more 1995-ish. Jeremy. I have two runner-up choices, and then the choice that I actually think could have worked, but just would have been more 1995-ish. Blue by the Jayhawks. I don't think it totally works, but it's a really good song. Incredible song.

And it's 1995. Good Riddance by Green Day. Probably too corny. Is that a 95 song? Oh, it sure is. Wow. I wouldn't have guessed that early. But Bread is Yellow by the Innocence Mission. That's the one I landed on. I like where you're at with that, but I think that the choice of music in this movie is to make it timeless. You know? Mm-hmm. It's fine. I forced it. I'm not sure I'm right. What's Aged to Worst? I don't have anything other than there was some screenwriting credit stuff that...

in the mid-2010s with Delpy, where she basically said, we got hosed on our screenwriting credit and Linklater and Krizan were on the defense. And it became a story that a lot of people wrote about. Then there was some pay stuff. Yeah, there was a pay gap thing too. She didn't make as much. But Ethan Hawke was a famous actor at that point and she wasn't. And that's just how she... I don't know. None of that stuff bothered me that much, but I just wanted to flag it. Other than that, I don't have any what's-its-or-worse.

Well, it's an interesting movie to put in front of younger people. I was talking to Jack Sanders earlier today about this movie, and he said it's one of his favorites of all time. And it's a big movie personally for him. And that's interesting. Do you think he's a romantic because he's a Mets fan? I don't know. That has hardened my soul, so I can't imagine. Although he is a way more optimistic Mets fan than I am. But I think it's interesting because it is a movie that

Forget about like whether or not you would have ever met Celine. Even just the way that they go about their day would be radically different today. You'd have, you'd have Google maps up and Yelp up and you'd have food guides and tourism guides. And even if you were, even if you still had the spirit of wandering, the absence of technology in the movie would

And even just asking strangers for help is something that I feel like people don't really do anymore, like when they run into the two theater guys. Right. So I don't know if it... It's not that it aged the worst, per se, that there are no cell phones or anything, but it has aged the movie in a unique way because it's right on the precipice of cell phones. You almost watch it now...

And it's more fantastical than it was in 1995 to see it. Cause now you're watching it at almost like a fairy tale. Yes. And there's so many things that they do where you're just like, where he's just like, let's just get off this train. And I would be like, so neurotic about like, where are we? Like, is this the right place to get? Are we going to be in the wrong place? Right. It's closer to 1500 than 2000. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, I watched it with my, uh, daughter and her boyfriend, Tommy last week. Cause I was in Boston. Um,

And Tommy's a romantic, so of course he liked it. Tommy. My daughter was on TikTok half the time and thought there was too much talking. Tough beat. Wow. Tough beat for Tommy. Tough beat for me. She was like, I told you I wasn't really in the mood for a movie. It was one of those, I'll watch it again when I'm more in the mood. I'm like, you're...

Tommy is on an unbroken streak right now. Tommy's doing great. Amazing stuff. That same night we made a video

of five leg parlay and the nuggets next games you and tommy that we hit yeah because he's 21 now we can both fit our fan shout out to fando and we hit it plus 125 indoctrinated him young yeah let's go all i can see is you you are jimmy conway and he's coming up the stairs it's like you popped it jerry uh the ruffalo hannah rubinick partridge overacting award again nothing

I don't have anything for this. Yeah, I mean, you could maybe say that the street poets put a little extra Austrian mustard on it. Yeah, Ernie Mangold, the palm reader, is putting a little extra on as well. Yeah, but you kind of need those distinct characters. All right, time for Sean's flex category. What do you have? Okay, so we already sort of mentioned with the criteria orgasm that the recent rod at the Prater Amusement Park is the Den of Thieves Benihana Award, I think. It's got to be a scene-stealing location. But...

The George Ellerbee Two Weeks with Pay Award, which I absolutely love. This is the character who definitely should have been fired. The fucking bartender who gives away a bottle of wine at a bar because one guy tells basically a lie. I'll send you money. And says, give me the address, and then never even gives him the address. We have to go straight to the bartender in this table. This is a shocking act. I had that in Picking Nets. He never gets the address.

Never gets the address of bartenders info. Nothing. Yeah. Just like happily watching them. A million questions. What kind of red was this that he gave him? Probably like he probably getting the cheapest. How do you get that bottle open? That's a good question. Had to have been a twist off. Otherwise, it didn't work.

I mean, gotta be less than $10 bottle, right? She's stealing stemware. Yeah. That's true. She's putting glasses in her bag. I love this scene. It's a really good... Also, honestly, like still we're in the AIDS era, like I'm not psyched about grabbing glasses from the table. It's a real hot take. We didn't know any better in 1994. You weren't like, oh, cool, let me drink this random person's glass. Yeah. Europe, you know, it's all different. Yeah. That's true.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. I actually have one. Did Jesse invent live streaming on the back of that train or the back of that bus in Vienna when he's just like, I think we should have a public access show that's just 24 seven people all over the world. Like, isn't this basically YouTube? Yeah, I had this and probably unanswerable questions. Did Jesse's 365 24 hour day create Instagram reels? So we're aligned.

It did feel like he was on something there. Yeah. I mean, there's elements of this in Slacker where I think Linklater's idea is like, you're just going around Austin and these different people are having these different experiences or whatever. But, you know, he's like, why is this thing beautiful but this thing isn't? It's a great take. I don't even, this isn't even really a hot take. Maybe it is, but I don't feel like we have enough random movie crossovers.

I guess this is a hot take. And I was thinking if they're walking around Vienna and they just run into Grover from kicking and screaming for five seconds because it didn't work out for him in Prague and then he went to Vienna and it was just never acknowledged or explained but he was dressed like Grover, that would have been one of the great movie moments of my life. Why don't we have more movie crossovers with just...

I love an extended universe. Yeah. I just like when things get weird. Yeah. We need to share a studio. We have the multiverse in these dumb comic book movies, but not in just indie movies. The indie movie multiverse would have been really fun. I like that. The Gen X. The Gen X multiverse. Talkative multiverse. They could have run into the redhead from Singles who was just on a trip. Yeah.

whatever her name was. She's been on a trip with some old dentist and she's just in the movie for 90 seconds. Campbell Scott's there studying European infrastructure. He's working on the Eurorail. I was also thinking of the guys from Barcelona

um, the Whit Stillman movie, maybe finding their way into this movie. Cause he's going to Madrid, you know, you could have seen those two guys. You could have seen Chris Agamon coming over. I didn't, there is a, there is a really prominent example of this that I can't think of where a character pops up from another movie in a completely different movie. God damn it. So I'm sure somebody listening to this knows. The best one ever was, I think I've talked about it when, uh,

Coolidge from The White Shadow ended up on St. Elsewhere as the janitor. Yes, yes. And then Salami from The White Shadow was playing a character on the show and he saw him and he's like, Salami! And the guy's like, I don't know who you're talking about, man. Were they on the same network? The two shows? Yeah. Okay. No, actually different networks, but same production company. Okay, okay. You don't have a hottest take, right?

I think that this movie is more romantic than Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Titanic. To me, this is the most... Because it doesn't need all of the accoutrement of the setting and the stakes. It doesn't need life and death to make this feel so emotionally impactful. Casting what ifs. Apparently, Aniston and Paltrow both tried out for...

the Delpy role. Was it going to be against Hawk the whole time? So, this is true. It came down to two women and two men in the end. The two that got the role. Michael Vartan was the other option for Ethan Hawke's part. And Sadie Frost, who never really 100%

She was in Bram Stoker's Dracula, right? She was. She was in a few things. Was she married to Jude Law? Dated Jude Law? Was she part of the Sienna Miller thing? Michael Vartan's a weird one, though. Yeah, I mean, eventually on Alias and Never Been Kissed and a couple of other things. But he's just a little bit more bland, for lack of a better word, than Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke has so much personality. Yeah.

Best Act Guy Award, nothing, because this is a movie set in Vienna with weird people you've never seen. Dion Waiters Award, though. We had the two guys who invite them to their play, Bring Me the Holes of Wilmington's Cow. We had the fortune teller, we had the poet, and we had the benevolent bartender. I'm going poet.

of the poet great poem and also seems to really take it up a notch for the two of them I'm 100% going Ernie Mangold the palm reader who is a beloved actress in Austria she's 98 years old still alive and she has more than 100 credits in her career I don't think any of them are in American productions other than this movie recasting couch director Sidney I got something here we gotta talk what do you got

The singer in the bar? Oh, no. I'm recasting the city, and I want to talk about what would happen if this was set in Boston. What happens if Jesse goes up to a Boston bartender at 1.30 in the morning and asks for a free bottle of wine? He gets hit over the head with it. You think you're better than me? Asking for a bottle of wine? Are you fucking crazy? Fucking OJ's on the TV. Go. Go.

So it would be, they'd be waiting to get on a train going from Boston to New York, but the Amtrak was shut down. Yeah. And it was out for six hours. So they had to walk around Boston. They go to Back Bay, they go to Beacon Hill. Is it still a French girl and a guy from America? No, it's like a really obnoxious girl from Rhode Island. Who's sensitive about her accent. Yeah.

Yeah, so they end up in North End for dinner. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a pretty good movie. They could go to Newberry Comics. They could go to the Middle East. But then she ends up getting in an argument with somebody at one of the bars they go to and he gets punched out. He gets punched out. Some former college football player. Murph's just wailing on him outside a bar. My choice for the flex category is one from the mailbag, A New Award.

The okay motherfucker award for the exact moment when the movie goes up a notch, which is the listening booth. Good test drive in the new category. You're good. You know what he's looking at?

Us. What's the 4Heat status? How far away are we? We're circling it. What kind of scouting has been happening? It's just on every streaming platform now and I watch it all the time. I watch it constantly. I started when he introduced OK Motherfucker to the

I watched that scene and then I watched like five other scenes and I was just like, I'm back. I'm in. Do you, I've hit the point with heat where now I'm analyzing the most meaningless scenes in the movie. Like when they go for the fake Van Zant drop off and I'm like, how did they not realize you're watching heat on all 22? I am. How did he not see design right there? With three shooters. Um,

I like to interview you guys about your obsession with Michael Mann. How responsible do you feel for the fleet of young men who are showing up at these repertory screenings of Michael Mann movies? Is that happening? Wearing heat t-shirts and black hats. It's the new version of the seven thing that you were talking about, where it's like this guy might murder you, but it's the opposite. It's like this guy might be your best friend forever.

Who you rob a bank with? These people sound great. Where are they? I mean, Jack Sanders will tell you, they're all over Los Angeles in the movie theaters. They're showing out. Yeah, they're like, Black Hat is screening tonight? I'll be there. I'll pay $80 for a ticket. You know, if we could say we played a small part, then that's all you could do. If there's any God in this world, it's between a bunch of men sharing a seat with each other again.

One thing I was thinking was, I think I could do an entire heat nitpick pod and not do any of the other categories. I could do that. Because I've seen it too many times now. I can nitpick literally every scene in the movie. Like the director's commentary, I could just nitpick. And by the way, this is like one of my five favorite movies, but I've just seen it too many times. Can I pitch an idea? Yeah. Nitpick? You guys, for the Ringer Movies YouTube channel...

remake before sunrise but it's just you walking around la doing a heat pod i thought i thought you're gonna say do our version of michael mann's before sunrise is how awkward his what's your reading dialogue book about metals yeah why are you so interested in me getting off this train lady with hockey masks and suits with open shirt collars

Michael Mann trying to write the would you like to go to the cafe car with me part would have been amazing. I mean, his version of this is like collateral. And yet, Jesse reading Klaus Kinski's memoir is a real Macaulay shit. Half-Factors Research, some good stuff. So, oh yeah, you mentioned those books. She's reading, I'm going to mangle the names. Is it Georges Bastille? Georges Bastille. Bastille. Bastille.

I don't know. I'm not, I'm not an expert. Ethan Hawke is reading. All I need is love by Klaus Kinski. Yeah. I feel like that's a book he picked up in a hostel somewhere. Yeah. Cause he looks at, he's like, I don't know. So this is sad. And I never knew this until I did the research, even though this is a movie I've seen many times.

The movie was inspired by a lady named Amy Learhaupt. Linklater met her in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989, and they walked around the city together conversing deep into the night, and then she died of a motorcycle accident before sunrise. But apparently one of the reasons he made the movie was he was hoping she would see it and hunt him down because this was the 90s, and once you lost connection with somebody, that was it. You couldn't find him.

But he didn't know she died for a while after that. I think it was 2010 when he found out. Yeah. And a friend of a friend reached out and sent him a letter. There's an episode of Fresh Air that features the three of them, Delpy and Hawk and Linklater, and he tells the story. And I remember the day that that episode aired because my wife listened to it and was just a mess and was like, you have to listen to this immediately because it's so heartbreaking. Yeah. So the cemetery they visit, it's called the Cemetery of the Nameless and Simmering.

The people buried have found anonymity and death. Apparently a famous place. First script for Before Sunrise. Do you know where it was set? This kind of blew my mind because this is one of the most boring places I've been to. I believe it was San Antonio. Riverwalk, baby. It took place in San Antonio and the guy was a rabid film fanatic who talked all the time about film. Better or worse movie? 95 Spurs won the...

Spurs were... Yeah, that's when Rodman kind of submarine the Spurs in 95 and he took his shoes off during the game. That's right. He was torturing David Robinson. Tough one. That could have been a scene. Rodman, what's up with him? Apparently, the last shot of the movie, they had to time it with the train and they rehearsed it and it had to be perfect. And if they fucked it up, then they would have had to come back the next day and do it. And they rehearsed it and it worked. And then...

Cath Bloom got a little resurgence from the movie. Ended up releasing more albums. Oh, that's cool. Got a little bump. You mentioned James Joyce's Ulysses. Where'd you stand on this book, C.R.? In your English major phase. We were just talking about this. When I went overseas myself for my semester abroad, I took Ulysses at an Irish university. So it was probably the ideal circumstances. It's an incredible novel. It's a lot of parallels. Both stories are on June 16th.

Both involve a journey taking place around a single city. Jesse says his real name is James, Joyce's first name. Jesse spends a lot of time wandering around the cities of Europe instead of going back home. Kath Bloom, Molly Bloom. They visit a graveyard. June 16th was the day James Joyce met his life partner, Nora Barnacle. Great name. Yeah. Link later. Joyce, he's an artist. Apex Mountain, Ethan Hawke.

I think he is Apex and a re-Apex, and I think Apex is Reality Bites, and then re-Apex is Training Day. I think it's Training Day, but I could be talked into this movie. But the only thing is this movie didn't do that well. He's been in movies since he was like eight. It was a slow burn. It just had a big cable run, and I think a lot of people loved it, but it took a couple years to really hit it. What are you thinking? I don't know. I mean, I think he had a third wave of...

in boyhood. Well, that's, I mean, it's connected, right? Like the purge sinister boyhood period of his career. The other thing that happened is he got really good at doing press. Really good. One of the best podcast guests ever. He's an unbelievable storyteller. He's just a great talker. And I think he like kind of cemented his place in movie history in some ways with that third wave of success. Um,

And so, I don't know. It's like this movie wasn't a huge hit. Training Day is a huge hit, but it's a huge hit because of Denzel. And he did a lot in that, you know, the Blumhouse plus I keep doing Linklater movie stretch that I think confirmed him in a way. I don't know. Maybe that might have been his apex. I mean, Sinister and The Purge made a lot of money. That's probably the answer. Joey Delpy, I would say Before Sunset. Your rail trains? Yeah.

sure uh austrian palm readers absolutely definitely yeah littering great littering in this movie they just leave the wine glasses in the bottle just in the park that's true that's a good point vienna probably the billy joel song uh yeah there's also there's a couple other cultural touchstones there but nothing like i mean i think the third man which is also said in vienna would be a good one yeah billy joel that song's multi-generational yeah

It's kind of the Kath Blooms come here of the late stage Billy Joel thing. People love that song. What about, is this Apex Mountain for first dates? It's the greatest first date in the history of love. So it's this or Neil and Edie in the finals. That's right. Neil and Edie starting out at a diner talking about a book about medals and then they end up in some awesome place of the view. And then he takes off in the morning. Then he takes off in the morning. I don't think I'm well suited to be the

The adjudicator of best first dates in movies. I wish we had thought about this more. We should have researched this more. No, you know what best first date is? Actually, Colin Farrell and Gong Li in Miami Vice go to get some movie tickets. That is the fucking answer. Top that. You like the mojito? I can't. Yeah, it's good. On another hand here, is this Apex Mountain for date movies?

If your relationship is going well, it's a great movie. If it's not going well, it's a confrontation. It's a great point. If you saw this movie in 95 and you weren't really getting along with whoever you were dating, you would leave the movie side-eyeing them and be like, I don't feel this way about you. You would say, why am I wasting my time when there could be a Jesse or a Celine out there for me? That's like my gotta-see about a girl story. Yeah, from Goodwill. Apex Mountain for Gen X. I...

I think it's a year earlier. I think 94 was the peak. 95, we're in the last remnants. Well, 95 is kicking and screaming in this, right? Yeah, but I think 94 was fresher, cooler. We got Reality Bites that year. I think it's 93 or 94. The music was better in 93, 94. Are we sure it's not the election of Barack Obama? For Gen X? Wow. That's interesting. Still the only Gen X president we've had.

Probably will be the only one. Listing booths? Apex Mountains? No, it's clearly Philip Seymour Hoffman and the talented Mr. Ripley vibing out to the jazz. I would go for this. Cath Bloom, definitely. Anonymous Cemeteries, no question. Okay, Cruiser Hanks, let's go. I got Hanks.

Oh, really? No. Oh, I think Cruz is clearly the answer. It's gotta be Cruz. You don't think Hank's... Cruz doing his motor mouth routine... Hank's would be fine. Cruz would be amazing. Cruz trying to do this movie would be mesmerizing. I think Cruz seems like he's wearing a skin suit if he's like... They go into like a time machine, okay? You know, like...

Sign me up! A lot of his parts are like this. A lot of his movies are like this. Honestly, he's doing... There's multiple scenes in Cocktail like this. Yes. A lot of his 80s movies. I'm very surprised that I'm on an island here. I'm going this far. This is the movie Cruise should have made. He's missing this from his IMDb, Young Man IMDb,

10-year stretch. I wish he made a movie like this. Yeah. I mean, I guess the closest he gets is Jerry Maguire, right? Yeah. Another fast-talking, emotional, romantic. Jerry Maguire's a huge movie. It's like, let's spend 24 hours with Cruz trying to win a girl over. He never did it. He and Leroy tried to do it once with that Meryl Streep movie, and it was a disaster. Frankie and Johnny? Is that the one? No, that was Pacino. Oh, yeah. What was the one? It was called Falling in Love, I think. Stanley and Iris? Is that what you're thinking of? No.

No, De Niro did a movie called Falling in Love. Isn't Stanley and Iris about two people getting sick or something? Or no? That was a different one. Falling in Love? I haven't seen that. It was De Niro and Meryl Streep, and it was positioned as these two huge actors are finally together, and it just was like they had no chemistry, and that's why you didn't even remember it. Stanley and Iris was De Niro and Jane Fonda. Yeah. So we trumped CR, Cruise Wins, two to one.

You guys dunked on me. Yeah. I got you on the Cruz side for once. That's great. Yeah, you guys are usually on the opposite, aren't you? Young Hanks. Well, we're in a death war until we die about who's superior. What do you mean? I love Cruz the most. What are you talking about? I fucking have defended cocktail multiple times in my life. Someone just had a criteria orgasm. I'm talking about. I love Cruz. Okay. Okay. But I think if you're going to say...

1984 range Tom Hanks in this movie. I think he would have been really good. I just personally, I think Cruz would have been hilarious in Vienna. Just like they would have had to work in some scene where he did something athletic. Like he played hacky sack with somebody. I think, I think that,

Jesse's neuroses are a critical part of this. And I don't think of Tom Hanks as a particularly neurotic actor. That's a good point. Whereas Tom Cruise, despite Matt and Idle Good Looks and the fame and success, there's something kind of nervy and weird about him. Cocktail. Cocktail Tom Cruise. I just think he'd be trying to do the magnetic smile thing the whole time. Can you imagine Cruise being like,

He'd be like... That is true. I don't know why you're digging a ditch for Cruise. No, he would have needed a bad hairdo to try to make it seem less realistic. Yeah. Yeah. He could pull someone off. I think one of the reasons why it shouldn't be Hanks is because this movie is kind of a rejection of Tom Hanks movies like this. Like Sleepless in Seattle. Like Sleepless in Seattle. Like, you know, soon to be when you've got mail. Yeah.

New category. Scorsese or Spielberg? I'm going to go Scorsese. Test drive. Scorsese. Yeah, because he showed that he can do one long night with After Hours. Yeah. Is he a romantic? Is Scorsese a romantic is an interesting question. I think he's spiritual. There's some spiritualism in this movie. That's true. And there is the history of the soul. I would say Spielberg.

There's the sentimentality. So is the question who made more sense or which version? Maybe this category is which movie would you rather have wanted to see, Scorsese or Spielberg? Because I think I'd rather see Scorsese's Before Sunrise over Spielberg's. I know what I'm going to get with Spielberg's. I know that they'd be smoking in that version. Yeah. But then the poet would have gotten shot and fallen into the river. That sounds amazing. There would have been a robbery. Yeah.

This is a tough category for genuinely great films made by serious artists. Because you're like, well, this is one of the quintessential Linklater movies. Maybe the quintessential Linklater movies. It's a little hard to be like... It's a lot easier when it's like... Maybe this category doesn't work. Dead of Thieves 2 directed by Steven Spielberg. This category works. Another new one. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? The poet. Oh, I had the poet. Yeah.

Oh, I like that. But I will say, I did test drive in my head him as Jesse in the mid-90s, whether that could have worked. The thing is that I think everybody in their mid-90s was like, I'm Jesse, but we probably all looked like Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah. You know what I mean? But the poet he would have been, I think that's the answer. Yeah, that's good. Or the actor, the Cal actor.

Yeah, that would have been good too. The Ed Norton Reverse Dunk Award for Did This Movie Need a Random Sports Scene. And we've already come up with like five. I think racing to the TV to see Houston Knicks would have been a great one. Yeah. And then stumbling upon the Bronco. Can I...

Can we talk about a possible hacky sack scene where they're in a park? Oh, yeah. The height of hacky sack. Where Jesse gets distracted by the sack. Jesse's like, I used to be really good at this. And then he does some hacky sack. You play hacky sack? I never liked it. I never liked anyone who did it. I wonder if there's an extended cut or a deleted scene where Jesse sees a bunch of Austrian guys playing soccer in the park. And he's just like, this is why football will never catch on in America. Here's my thing. That would work. Yeah.

This next category is blind call to Rosillo. He might not answer. He's not going to pick up, right? We'll see. It depends if he's doing stuff. So this new category, we're just going to call Rosillo and see if he's seen the movie and put him on speaker. Can you hear that?

Welcome to Verizon. No! Oh, for one. Man! Are you sure he doesn't have you straight to voicemail in his phone? No, I talked to him yesterday. He's probably like on hour two with Bruce Feldman right now. He's right in now. He's in Vienna. He's in Vienna. He's on a train reading Klaus Kinski's memoir. Pick a nitz.

Jesse wearing a leather jacket in Vienna in mid-June. It's got to be like 98. I'm going to say an unanswerable question is what are we doing with body odor? There's no shower right after the train. Oh, yeah. It's Ethan Hawke. Yeah, they've been drinking coffee. Not smoking, I guess, but walking around. Okay, this raises an interesting question. In the 90s, you were significantly there. You were less there, but still there. Were we just a little bit more comfortable with the human musk?

Were we less moisturized? I don't know. I felt like that was a big deodorant frenzy in the 90s. That was like, you get all sorts of different flavors in deodorants. Old spice, right? Because think about what a man in 1957 smelled like at the end of the day. Yeah, but everybody smelled that way. That's my point. That's my point is that would it have been okay if he was just...

riding the Eurail hostile sleeping. The French are used to that. That's what I'm saying. There's an odor thing that might have been a non-issue. He never gets the bartender's address, which we covered. I have one more big nitpick, but do you guys have any? Just that these guys suck at pinball. Oh my god, Ethan Hawke is so bad. He's never played. It would be really funny if he was just like, can you shut the fuck up? I'm trying to play.

When he's explaining what love is, he is atrocious. You know, we had a... Didn't we have like a Tom Cruise sports award? I get the point. Ethan Hawke not being able to play pinball. They're distracted by each other and they're just kind of like, what can we do here? Well, Hollywood stole Ethan's youth, so he never really got to play with childish things. Fair.

So the Playboy Playmate of the Month in July of 78 was in Crystal. Yep. It was Karen Morton, who has the distinction of being the playmate with the smallest breasts ever out of the playmate. She was the 32B. I did a deep dive on her. I'll bet you did. She played the best little virgin in the comedy feature History of the World Part 1. She played Jenny.

In the music video for 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 Jenny by Tommy Two-Tone. Yes. Wow. Her legacy is profound. Holy shit, that's a triple crown right there. This is why this is the best podcast out there. Because I just gave you a July 1978 Playmate deep dive. But you didn't find out why they changed the name? Yeah, okay. I think they screwed it up because they didn't know the internet was coming or podcasts. Sure. And that we would be deciphering who actually was the Playmate. Mm-hmm.

Right now, you've got many men at home furiously Googling this person's name. Karen Morton. Sequel, prequel, prestige to be all Blackcaster untouchable. Two sequels, so we know how that turned out. All right. Tweet category.

Buckle up. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harley Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm? Because we've tweaked the category, I do have a request that you do Long Legs reading the fortunes. Jesse! Jesse!

You seem to be moving around a lot. But if... Third adventure. If Wilford Brimley from the firm was talking about Jesse's trip to Spain, here's our Jesse, who has saved up all his money from working as a barista in a college town. And he goes all the way to Spain to reunite with his long-distance girlfriend. And what does he find instead? He finds heartache in the form of a fabulous matador named Gonzalo.

I asked him, there's a Tony Romo case too. Yeah? For the Ferris wheel. She's been claiming one, Jim! She just wants one kiss, Jim! He's just gotta do it right now, Jim! Jesse's gotta do it, Jim! I don't know if I could actually do this, but Daniel Plainview as the poet reading the poem... Oh no. I'm scared. It's really hard. Give him the poem. He's gotta see the poem. Look up the poem. I'm looking at it. I mean...

You know, it's... Come on.

Skip it, we're all friends here Daydream delusion Limousine eyelash Oh baby with your pretty face Drop a tear in my wine glass Look at those big eyes See what you mean to me Sweetcakes and milkshakes Milkshakes I am a delusion Sweetcakes and milkshakes I drink your milkshake Okay, that's all I got Good job, babe Thanks Should we add Tom Brady to this?

What is Tom Brady's signature aside from saying KB? Tom Brady would be like, that date went great. Jesse was so poised back there. Seems to be a real connection here, KB. I feel like they're going to maybe connect down the road, KB. That's why it's really important to have a strong offensive line, KB.

Right there, he was able to get her off the train, KB, and that was huge. That was huge for what's going to happen on the rest of the stage. You know, we're all just looking for love in this world, KB, and he may have found it. Just want to ask her who gets it. Probably Link later, right? For script or for direction? Well, if it's script, then they share it. Yeah. Along with Kim Krizon. Which I think would be pretty cool. The next two movies were both nominated for Best Screenplay. Yeah.

Probably an answerable question. See, I already covered Jesse's 24-hour idea. And then for this movie only, the question was, did they have sex? We find out the answer in a later movie. I got another unanswerable, though. Yeah. How many people threw emotional Hail Marys on first dates because of this movie? Like, how many guys out there do you think, like...

did insane bits or were like, we're in a time machine or we're stardust or tried to come up with something like really overly romantic and some girl was like, it's okay. Like...

It's like, it's this fucking guy I met last night. We're not in Vienna. We're in Syracuse. We're in fucking Bennegan's. Did you ever try to... We're sophomores at Denison. Yeah. You never tried to pull any of this material out for your own purposes. Oh, I did. I don't know. You did. Oh, yeah. I feel like I made, like, grand gestures when I was younger like this. Like... Like... I'll meet you back here in six months? No, but, like...

That kind of like just kind of going for brokenness of it is just like a little bit more common, I think. This isn't a nitpick and it might be an unanswerable, but it's something. It's the one thing I felt like wasn't authentic about his character, but it's based on what happens in the next movie where he writes a book, which tells me that if he wrote a whole book nine years later,

than he would have been writing at this age, right? You're writing short stories, you're writing all this stuff. And it feels like with, cause he's just throwing, you know,

He's running all the plays he can run. He does have a writer's mind in the movie, though. He does. But I'm saying at some point, I think he shows there's something he wrote. I think you play that move at some point during the night. Can I show you? Do you want to read this one thing I wrote? That's why he's mad at the poet. He's like, there's no way you could have come up with that on the spot. Well, he's always protecting himself. Even when he reads the Auden poem, which he obviously loves, he needs to do it. Is it in the Dylan Thomas voice that he does it in? Because he can't

totally turn himself over and become vulnerable to her. I just think he has writing and I think... I don't know. I just think he would have tried it. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. I thought about this a lot watching this movie. So you really don't like the English class guy. You know, the guy who's like, I'm looking for the metaphorical meaning and all these things. I did like them, but I didn't like them. I thought they were fun to argue with in college. This is what I want to talk about because...

You know, you employ some at the ringer and you're very drawn to movies that feature these characters. So maybe I just didn't want to admit what was lurking deep inside me. Well, that I, I'm just, I'm just asking.

It's never too late to crack open Ulysses, Bill. It is for me because my brain is leaking out of my ears. Do they have that on iPad in big print? Yeah, seriously. Do they have a version of it that is read by Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley? The Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson.

Connecting with someone for 24 hours is better than never connecting with anyone? I think human connection being the real religion of the world. Something about connection. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I would want the poem.

Oh. Oh. The poem that the guy wrote. That's a good one. That's nice. I had the actual Kath Blum album that he had. That's good. That's good too. I would not want that turtleneck. I could not pull that off. That maroon turtleneck he's wearing at the beginning of the movie. He gets rid of it. He takes it off at some point. He's wearing like a t-shirt when they're at the amusement park. But boy, that would be a tough look for me. The wine bottle is an interesting one. The poem I think is the right answer. Yeah.

Best double feature choice before Sunset. And then probably the toughest of all of these. Who won the movie? I think it's Linklater. I thought it was Hawk. I had Hawk, but I don't know if I'm right. Because I think he needs this for his kind of big picture thing. And Linklater was doing great anyway. But I also think it might be... It probably is Linklater. It's probably Linklater because if Hawk doesn't make this movie, he still has reality bites. Linklater really needs this. Because then it leads to the trilogy. I also think...

you know, you mentioned their collaboration and whether that's great. Like there was a couple of other interesting examples of this De Niro and Scorsese, George Roy Hill and Paul Newman. Like there are some people who you're like, when these two guys get together, something special is going to happen. But Linklater needed to find Hawk for this movie. And when they're together, even if the movie isn't a success, there's something alchemical that is really working. And I don't know, it just, and also just seems like it,

I don't know. What is his signature movie now? Linklater. Is it still Dazed and Confused? Is it Boyhood? Is it School of Rock? Is it Sunrise? Sunset? I would argue it's Sunset. I think it's the trilogy. Yeah, or the trilogy as a whole. Because it's both so crowd-pleasing but also so formally inventive and so breathtaking in its scope. You know he has two movies coming out this year.

Right. One of which stars Ethan Hawke. Yeah. Blue Moon, which I think he plays Rogers from Rogers and Hammerstein. Yeah. We didn't get to the big Kahuna Burger award. We cut that one out, but it would have been the wine. I also just have drinking coffee at night. The Dan Campbell scale for holy shit. Are they really going for this right now? I don't know if they had, I don't know if this movie had this one. We also, I was, I can't wait to do the Lena Dunham running the spawn ranch award for most jarring casting decision. Okay.

That's going to be great. We didn't have the Rosillo blind thing. The Devil Wears Prada word for is this movie actually perfect for what it tried to do? I think we could have given that one out. Yeah. When would I have died? Didn't get to do that one this time around. Yeah. When we probably the 40 year old version of myself is when we, we didn't have lunch. Like don't eat. It's a great point. Yeah.

They eat anything? I think that it's implied that they eat at the cafe where everybody's like smoking and playing chess and stuff. Or go to the bathroom. Nobody goes to the bathroom in this movie either. Yeah. Yeah. There's some semi-subtle cutting. I'm glad I didn't drop the kids off at the pool. Yeah. I'll be right back. That's funny.

Eating in front of someone is also a little bit of a challenge when you're trying to seduce them. A little hard to be elegant in that way. One other thing just to note is that he runs out of money with the poet, I think. So she's basically paying for the rest of the night. He's reaching out for coins there at the end with the poet. We don't get producer Craig's take this episode because he went to SNL this weekend and was somehow on camera in the monologue. So if you want to watch Timothee Chalamet's monologue when he goes into the

There's producer Craig. He's like the new Zelig. Just Zelig? Zelig, yeah. He's kind of, kind of, kind of, Chalamet kind of giving some Ethan Hawke vibes in the Bob Dylan performance, you know? It's an interesting one because this would have been the perfect Chalamet movie if you're really, if we're recasting this now, Chalamet is clearly the guy. Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan in Europe. That's the movie. I mean, they would be amazing. But it's, they're too big. But in Boston. He's too big. Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan in Boston. Yes, but in 20XL he's broke down. Yeah.

It's been eight hours in Boston. She's a nice Irish girl in Boston. Before sunrise. After last call. That's it for the pod. We are back on the regular schedule. Please keep sending us emails on the rewatchables33 at gmail.com. Thanks to Jack and Kyle for producing. You can watch this on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel where you can see all stuff from the big picture as well. And we'll be doing some bonus stuff too. Great.

Tell me when you want me to do my own personal Oscar awards for you. You know, Wesley's going to come on and do the big picks, which is all of the alternative Oscars. Do you want to come on? No, I haven't seen all the movies. It's not for a month. I don't belong on this. No, but you would come on and say what you want to pick. Like, forget about what's nominated. You know, like, what Oscars should Longlegs get, in your opinion? Oh, those movies. Just any movie that came out last year. Longlegs shouldn't have been anything. Other than it was a really good movie.

Thanks guys.