‘Magnolia’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find The Big Picture with Sean Fennessey. You can find The Watch with Chris Ryan. You can find The Bill Simmons Podcast. You can find complete episodes from The Rewatchables and The Bill Simmons Podcast, as well as fun clips and shorts, too, on youtube.com slash

Bill Simmons, we do not have video from the podcast you're about to hear because we taped it in 2019 for our special Rewatchables 1999 feed that we did for Luminary. We did a little special series and one of the episodes was Magnolia. Paul Thomas Anderson's third movie, his follow-up to Boogie Nights, one of the most fascinated movies of the late 90s, and we dove into it.

not realizing that in the spring of 2024 on the rewatchables feed, first of all, I would have been amazed and delighted that the rewatchables was still going in April, 2024, but we did not realize we would be doing rock bottom month and Magnolia has some rock bottom, man. It has frogs too. There's a lot of frogs there.

When we did this episode, we did not have some of the categories in place. Most interestingly, we did not have the Cruise or Hanks category that we just added over the last month. But Tom Cruise is in this movie. We debate during the episode whether it was the best performance of his career. But I think Cruise wins this one. So Cruise is now leading Hanks three to one in the Cruise or Hanks category. You'll also notice that Julianne Moore

in the moment as we're doing the episode gets credit for the overacting Ruffalo. And we decided to just move her into the categories. When you hear Linda Partridge, when we do the Ruffalo Ruben egg Partridge, I forget who the other one is category. This is the birth of that. This was a really fun episode. It goes in a whole bunch of different directions, just like the movie. It's got some flaws, just like the movie at the end of this episode, but,

I clipped five minutes from when Sean and I interviewed Paul Thomas Anderson in December 2017, talking about Magnolia and talking about Tom Cruise. So at the very end of this episode, you'll hear that five minutes as well. Magnolia is next. Here we go. The answer is four. The answer is 22. The answer is gravity. The answer is the life of Samuel Johnson. Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again?

My name is Donnie Smith and I have lots of love to give. It's not what you hope for, it's not what you deserve, it's what you take. He's dying. He's dying very, very rapidly. Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven. We did our. Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, we're here to talk about Magnolia, which Bill, you described as the weirdest fucking movie ever made? My son actually came down. Oh my God.

During the last 20 minutes of this movie, because I was watching it, and it was raining frogs, and he kind of stopped, and he looked at the TV, and he's like, what's going on? Why is it raining frogs? And I was like, Ben, people have been asking this for 20 years. I don't want to shit on this movie, because I really like it, but it's also one of the most frustrating movies, I think, of the last 30 years, because there's the potential for...

It really could have been great. And I think he knows it because when we had him on the podcast, he's like, oh, man, what was I doing? I should have cut 35 minutes from this thing. Now, what he should have cut, I guess, is its own question. But it's just there's so many brilliant moments in it. And the fact that Cruise didn't win the Oscar is the biggest outrage probably of this entire series of podcasts that we've done. Chris, the he that Bill is referring to is Paul Thomas Anderson. Yeah.

Big hero of mine, as you know. Yeah, I love Paul Thomas Harrison. Where were you when you first saw Magnolia? What stage of life were you at? Way too young to really appreciate what this movie was about, probably. I had not really gotten in touch with the idea of regret yet.

Which I think this movie, when you watch this movie again, you see that that's how much it's about. It's about whether or not you can move on from the past, whether or not you can atone, whether you deserve to. This is just like the cokiest movie I think I've ever seen. It really like makes Goodfellas, the second half of Goodfellas seem like it's on like downers. Every single scene, everybody is like panicked and screaming and crying.

And they're already in the mid-crisis. There's no building up to anything. Everybody is already at 11. That's saying something, by the way, because Julianne Moore is in Boogie Nights where she has a whole scene where she's totally coked up with Roller Girl doing coke. Will you be my mom? Can I call you my mom? And she's crazier in this movie. Her performance in The Pharmacy makes that look like Helen Mirren. When she's just like, you called me late!

Every scene she has this movie is completely unhinged. And it's like, they don't really make a ton of sense. We're like, why is she in her lawyer's office? She acts the same way in every single office that she goes into. Her lawyer, her pharmacist, her doctor. It is just a wild ride. But I have to say that watching it again recently, it is at times dangerously close to Crash.

Yes. So, I mean, it's really interesting. You called it the kokiest movie of all time. It's not just because of the performances or the storytelling, but even just the way that he sets the movie up. The camera is always moving. It's the fidgetiest movie of all time. Zooming in, panning across the room. It's all over the place. The game shows, especially. Yes. He really, Scorsese would have shot it that way. Absolutely. He's aping his heroes. And it's basically like if Scorsese and Robert Altman fucked,

and they had a misshapen baby, it would be Magnolia. That is kind of what this movie is. He wanted this to be his Altman movie, directed by Martin Scorsese. Exactly. And so the reason this movie happens the way that it does is because, as Bill mentioned, Boogie Nights comes right before it. It's, if not like a major box office hit, it's kind of an announcement of a major American filmmaker. So he kind of gets, PTA kind of gets a blank check. It was a beloved attempt, right?

And he says it and all the stuff after. It was the one time people were like, whatever you want to do, man. During really the last decade where somebody would say that to a director. Whatever you want to do. You want to make it three hours? Great.

Do your vision, dude. And sometimes that's a bad thing. And we've seen that with TV and we've seen that in movies. We've even seen that in certain personal experiences we've had. It's true. When you give somebody carte blanche, sometimes that's a little paralyzing and they end up not wanting to take anything out. Too much freedom. He gets $37 million from New Line to make this movie. It actually did decent business. It made $48.5 million, which is a lot. And I think most of it is because...

There's just an insane Tom Cruise performance in the middle of the movie. And even though they didn't really aggressively sell the movie on Cruise, you could at least say Tom Cruise is in my movie and people will probably show up for it. But it's a pretty wild cast to look back on it. It's Phil Baker Hall. It's Philip Seymour Hoffman. It's William H. Macy. It's Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Jason Robards, Melora Walters. Plus like one of the biggest that guy cast.

corners ever I mean there's so many that guys in this movie it was nominated got just Cruise Cruise 20 years later becomes kind of the legacy of this movie I think for Paul Thomas Anderson it's the weird movie he had to make

Yes. I thought at the time, I liked this when it came out. I thought it was way too long. I didn't understand the John C. Reilly part at all. And I would have cut that completely. We can talk about that later. I think that's an interesting litmus test for this movie is what you would cut. Right. So for me, it was just like every scene with this guy isn't working. I love John C. Reilly. But I understood everything. It was like, this is part of the process. Every great filmmaker has to do some version of this movie.

I think the revelation was Cruise. And this is a really fascinating five-year stretch for him. That starts with the interview with the vampire where he's like, I want to get weird. I don't really know how to do it. Then he goes back to being Jerry Maguire, who he's basically Cruise. Then does this crazy Kubrick movie, which we broke down on the rewatchables earlier. Eyes Wide Shut. And then Eyes Wide Shut culminating in this.

Which I think it's the best performance he's ever had. And not only should he have won the Oscar, but I got to say, I didn't totally know he had it in him. And that was the revelation watching it the first time. I was like, wow, Tom Cruise, didn't know. Yeah.

Yeah, there's been a conversation going on about Joaquin Phoenix and Joker right now about the acting, the way that a person acts. And a lot of times at the Oscars, the award is for the most acting. It's not for the best acting. Tom Cruise, this is the most acting Tom Cruise has ever done in a movie. He is physically super present, ripping his shirt off, doing gymnastic moves, but also having a complete mental breakdown, giving speeches about respecting the cock.

And what does he tame, Chris? Tame the cunt. That's right. It's just, it's like an all out. You made Chris say that. That was by design. He got nominated for an Oscar, but he didn't win. He lost to Michael Caine in Cider House Rules, which is outrageous. Just a travesty. It's really bad. He would have won, I think now with the way the internet works, he wins. Cruise and PTA is a really interesting relationship.

Because it's obviously, he gives PTA a lot in this movie. And I think that... Well, he wanted to be in it too. Yes. And you could make the argument... He loved Boogie Nights. ...that he really looms over Anderson's career in some ways, you know, with The Master especially. And some of the things that Paul Thomas Anderson is interested in and some of the things that are kind of, you could shoot through Tom Cruise's life there...

They're like never really turned into De Niro and Scorsese, but it would have been an interesting what it would have done for Cruz's career in terms of how we view him as an actor and probably what it would have done for Anderson's commercial viability if they had continued to work together as a really interesting what if. Well, and also it was at a time when he was still considering this and something that side of him died in the early 2000s, but he also had this whole Cameron Crowe thing and even Vanilla Sky. I don't feel like that's a movie.

He wouldn't necessarily made in 2007. Something, some switch flipped with him in the early 2000s. Couch jump. The couch jump. Well, but that was like 05. I thought it could happen even before that. Yeah, I think he made a couple of movies that didn't do well at the box office. And it was the first time in 10 years that that has happened to him. And he got scared. I think he got scared about being the biggest movie star in the world. And so, and also he didn't win. I think if he had won...

It would have done something different to his mind. Maybe he would have been the star of Punch Drunk Love. Maybe he would have been the star of There Will Be Blood. If he had won and people would have said, you are validated. You are one of our greatest actors, not just one of our greatest movie stars. But we didn't get that. There's a director savior complex that Tarantino started building

In 93, 94. I can unlock this person. Yeah. Yeah, this guy was great. What happened, almost like a coach or GM trying to find some athlete who had won a Super Bowl at some other team and bring him over and rehabilitate him. And I think PTA got caught up a little with that with Cruz. Like,

I'm going to unlock this guy. And, you know, I look at the potential of this movie and he's had an unbelievable career, obviously. I think we all love his movies, but I do think it got a little goofy there from 2000 to maybe till there will be blood basically. Yeah. I think he didn't totally know what kind of movies he wanted to make. Yeah. And I think, I think he was a little paralyzed by all the choices he had and all that stuff. But the one, the one thing I was thinking watching this movie, there is a parallel universe with his career.

Where this is just his cast for every movie. For Anderson's career. Every 18 to 24 months, he just makes another movie with these 15 people. And they're his regulars. Because you can see the potential of that. But then he kind of veered away from it. And it's really disappointing. Because all the people in this movie, except for Melora Walters, who I have never understood.

I really think that could have been a cool outcome for him. Well, I think you could make the argument that he poured all of himself into Magnolia and then he needed to find different ways to interface with the movies and with life. I think that's exactly right. I think that he basically wrote his 1,000-page autofiction, his autobiographical novel about all of the pain that he was having, put it in 30 characters,

And tried to make it happen all at once. Yeah, it's telling, I think, you know, we'll probably talk about this, but that Claudia was like his first character, the Melora Walters character. Yeah, who is an addict and has been abused and is like just completely hysterical throughout the whole movie. Yeah, it seems like he's some cross between that character and Cruz.

But I think also John C. Reilly and I think also Philip Seymour Hoffman and I think also Jimmy Gator. Like all these characters I think he's putting a little bit of himself into. So it makes for like this really difficult thing almost to criticize because everybody's so fucked up. The Cruz Robards thing seems intensely personal. Oh yeah. For everybody involved. For all the people. It's Robards' last scene. Cruz is talking about his own. I gotta say that I know we're gonna get to it but that's one of the four or five most raw scenes I've ever seen in a movie. I remember being in the theater for that

And that was one of those you could hear a pin drop, like nobody's even moving. Yes. Just echoing. I know we'll get into the specifics, but were you guys moved on rewatch? Yeah. In some parts, yes. I think if you don't respond to the crew's breakdown scene, like you don't have like a soul. It's just like it's so intense. We're also older. Like when I saw this movie, I wasn't even 30 yet. And nobody potentially dying that I really cared about was even on my radar. Now I'm older. And you think like...

that I could be in this in this room with one of my parents I could be the parent like I'm not that far away yeah yeah for sure and you think like how hard that must have been for Robards just to play that character because it wasn't like he was going to be around for another 20 years no nine months earlier he had his own bout with cancer yeah and he fought through it and that's why he took the part because he wanted to reckon with that it's a really really raw performance by him where it's like the camera it's just he looks so old yeah you can see like a scar on his lip and

Just he looks like he's dying. It doesn't even seem like there's a lot of makeup. That part's grim. There's not a lot of laughs in this movie. There are a couple if you go looking, but it's not like Boogie Nights where for every freak out, you have something hilarious happening. You have Philip Seymour Hoffman, you know, just being absolutely absurd. Guys, will it shock you to know that Roger Ebert gave this movie four out of four stars? He loved it. I remember. This was like he was the protector of the flame with this one. Can I read you a quote that he wrote in his review? Yeah.

Magnolia is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy. Now, I will say, I completely relate to that. I think that this movie is way messier than I remember it, and it's way too long. I was shocked by how way too long I thought it felt. It's like two movies. Yeah, but...

I still have that feeling like, you know what? Movies are just not like this nowadays. It's really hard to get a movie like this done and across the line and into a lot of theaters. And I appreciate that somebody's just like, fuck it. I am going for it. And he's really going for it. The movie climaxes in a torrential downpour of frogs. You can't be going for it any harder than that. So I still really respect and appreciate that about it. I also like that, just his ambition for the movie. I remember at the time he was saying something like,

I want to make the greatest movie anyone's ever made about San Fernando Valley. Yes. Yeah. I was like in Boston. I was like, I don't even know what San Fernando Valley is. Yeah. I live here now. I'm not positive where it is, but it was really, you know, North Hollywood. No, I get it. But it was like, go all the way moving west. It was really crucial to him that he nailed this one region and that for decades after people be like, what was the best San Fernando, San Fernando Valley movie? People be like, oh,

Oh yeah, Magnolia. Yeah. But that's what some, all of his heroes did. You know, Martin Scorsese makes Mean Streets because it's like, this is what life is like to be an Italian American in Brooklyn or in the Bronx or in Manhattan in the 1970s. But did you feel like this really captured San Fernando Valley? Because I certainly didn't There's a lot more interiors than I remember, but then you think about Los Angeles and you spend a lot of time indoors. Yeah. Especially people in the valley where it's 10 degrees hotter, 15 degrees hotter, and they're all making TV or they're all working on

in different things and you could go from your job inside the studio into a bar and then you go home to your nice but kind of weird house in the valley. I thought it seemed pretty real. You know, the electronic store, the bar, the Foxfire Room in the valley, which I think is still there. The bar was totally North Hollywood. Totally dead on. I thought, you know, the homes, like Earl Partridge's home is that classic, like mid-century modern house

you know rich guy house like producer guy house you know it's got all this wood paneling everywhere and it's got big ceiling floor to ceiling windows and I thought it felt like a very very LA movie in a specific kind of way who is the what's the name of the actress who I've always liked the mom Melinda Dillon

always like Slapshot's Melinda Dillon Melinda Dillon was always one of my favorites for 20 years and it was I thought this was a really fun role for her she's in Close Encounters right she's been in a lot of stuff she's one of those people that's had a way better career than anyone's realized but I remember seeing her in this movie and being like oh wow

He dug that one out. That's a good one. He's got so many people like that in his back pocket in this movie that are in three scenes. Baker's been like, Baker was like that for a long time. Like he had the iconic Midnight Run cameo and things like that, but nobody unlocked him. And PTA just looked at him. He's like, I'm unlocking that guy. Yeah. And three movies in a row, he makes him incredible in Heartache and then in Boogie Nights, his iconic Floyd Gondoli cameo in Boogie Nights. And then in this movie, which is like, Chris last night messaged me and he was just like,

Like Julianne Moore is really going for the overacting award here, huh? Yeah, all-time Rubenek. Like really, really going for that. Actually, I was... Well, let's save it for when we get there. But I was going to say Philip Baker Hall is kind of the opposite. It's kind of like there was not even a conversation about best supporting actor for Philip Baker Hall in this movie, but he's fucking amazing and he's so good in it. He does it. I agree. He does it correctly. Did this movie make money? I don't remember. Just like $10 million over its budget. A very modest amount of money. Hmm.

There's one weird thing that I came across, which I could put in half as internet research, but I wanted to raise to you guys to see if you are aware of this at all at the top of the show. There are a lot of references to a Bible verse called Exodus 8.2.

And it reads, if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs. So, of course, a reference to the frog rain. But apparently throughout the movie, 8-2 keeps showing up everywhere. You know, the blackjack story with Patton Oswalt, obviously, he needed a 2, he gets an 8. There's like, I have a list of 60 references. So, he did like a weird Kubrick thing with that. Exactly. Did you, are you aware? I didn't know that at all. It's really crazy. And you can see like, that's to Chris's point too about how kooky the movie is.

There's all this kind of like you don't need this in it. Like don't worry about trying to outsmart everybody and put a bunch of Easter eggs in it. Just tell the story of the characters. But he's a really young guy when he makes this. Is he even 30 yet? I don't think so. I think he's like 27, 28. I forgot how fucking long the whole opening montage is with that. Where you're like wait this is like 20 minutes of this stuff. I also think

We don't take into account enough with filmmakers specifically when you have a monster hit like that or something that's so critically acclaimed and beloved how paralyzing that is. Oh, for sure. And I think, you know, I've seen, I've had it happen to a friend of mine. There's no way to top it. You can't do anything

That is going to live up to whatever expectations somebody has in your head and you end up getting weird. And I think he knew that pretty quickly. He was like, I just have to get fucking weird with this one. And if anything, it seems like he got even more ambitious. I think he's still the most proud of this movie, weirdly, probably. I think he knows that he made the most mistakes on it, though.

But I think he's good with that, though. Yeah. I think it's like it's part of the process. It's a testament to him as an artist that his career survived this. Not that it was a failure by any means, but that he was able to then recalibrate. And, you know, when he does Punch Drunk and on into There Will Be Blood and The Master, he's completely changed his filmmaking. I think Cruise really saves him in a lot of ways with this movie. Because if this movie's three hours with whoever, Ben Stiller in that part or Adam Sandler, I mean...

And Cruise is like the, we always say this, the shark in Jaws. Like when he shows up, it just stops. It's like, oh my God, he's so mesmerizing. Would you have preferred a movie that was just about Frank T.J. Mackey to this movie? No, but I mean, we could talk about this, I guess, when we get to the what's the most 1999 thing about this movie, but it's Frank Mackey. Because this is that whole Tucker Max, Maxim era where it was like realistic for somebody like this.

Masculine self-help. Yeah. And it all peaks with Neil Strauss. When was that book? Yeah, I have that here for what's aged the best, though. I think you can make the case that Frank T.J. Mackey presaging mystery and the game and all that stuff was... I mean, he had amazing foresight. Yeah, he tapped into it. But...

I think that character is just really smart. Like P.T. Anderson, he clearly saw something that was going on in society and was like, I'm getting in on this. And it was what was happening, but it was very internet heavy. This episode is supported by State Farm. Think about your first reaction after you have an accident. What do you do? You scream, oh no, or man, why did this happen? On the flip side, let's say you buy a new car or you lease a new car.

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Most rewatchable scene. I've got a few suggestions here. I will say, before we get into them, I find this movie a little bit confusing because every time a scene really gets going, he's like, cut onto the next person. He interrupts the momentum of his characters. I agree with you 1,000%. It's really confusing that he doesn't let anybody get a headwind. Even when you get on Julianne Moore's rhythm and you're like, okay, I get it, and she's coming down off of it, then it cuts away and it goes to Donnie and you're like, okay, now we're back to...

Like with Donnie the Wizkid. Or Cruise and Robards where first he's like so angry at him and then it comes back and he's broken down and he's crying and then it just cuts away again. Yes, it's so confusing. It's like Tom Cruise having the best moment in his career. Pite is like, cut, let's move on. That part in particular, I wanted to talk about that specifically. But anyway, most rewatchable scene

I think this is a bit of a controversial suggestion, but I'll say the opening vignettes as rewatchable scene. Maybe it's just because I've seen those scenes the most, but the whole... The story that Ricky Jay narrativizes and explains to us about how sometimes things happen in the world and we can't explain why. They just happen. And it's... It's an interesting portal into the movie, and it's like a thematic table setter. Do you guys like those scenes when you were revisiting them? I liked it. I think...

We can throw this category out. It's not a movie that's strung around like the most rewatchable scenes. I mean, the answer is like basically every Tom Cruise scene. Yeah, I would say like, you know, I agree with you. I think the vignettes are really dazzling the first time you see them and then the subsequent times you're like, okay, like we could get through this. I actually really love the Patton Oswalt scene. That one. The scuba diver. The suicide jumping one. I was like, I get it. Yeah.

weird things happen feels a little more drawn out the ones that I listed were Frank T.J. Mackey makes his grand entrance respect the cock and tame the cunt it's great to the 2001 music yeah Julianne Moore's pharmacy meltdown yep

The frog deluge, obviously. Yeah. Because the first time you saw the movie, you were like, what the fuck is going on here? And then Stanley needs to pee. What's the problem? What's the problem here? Nothing happened. I'm fine. Why didn't you answer those questions? I didn't know the answer. Bullshit. Bullshit. You know the answer to every goddamn question, and I knew the answer to those questions. I'm not half as smart as you, so what the hell happened? I don't know. He pissed his pants. He pissed your pants.

No, I didn't. I'm fine. Stand up. I said I'm fine. Stand up. I'm fine. Oh, Jesus. Stanley, what the fuck did you do that for? I just want to keep playing. I just want to keep playing. I'll keep playing. I'm fine. That's great. I mean, you know. See, for me, it's cruising Robarts. I'm flipping channels and that's about to come on or it just started. I watch it because it's just an incredible scene. God damn it, you fucking asshole.

oh god you don't go away you don't go away you don't go away you and it's weird to say like the the most depressing scene of the movie is the most rewatchable but

It's just such an unusual cruise performance. I would say when he comes, it starts even when he comes to the door. He's like, I'm going to drop kick these fucking dogs. Love that. All of it. And then him and Hoffman. And then, you know, in that scene when he starts breaking down,

And he pans back and Hoffman's in the background and he's crying. I've never seen that in a movie before. And it's like, was the character supposed to cry or was he so moved that he actually just started crying? But like, I just thought that scene was like unforgettable. And PTA told Tom to mine his own feelings about his own father's death for the scene, which is like...

Pretty close to the line of emotional terrorism, you know, to be like, think about your own dad dying while you perform in this scene. It's pretty intense. Like, they must have had a lot of trust between the two of them to do that. And then when the frogs come, it actually jostles Robards out of his whole stupor, which was kind of cool. Yeah. I mean, we can argue about the frogs later, but there is a purpose. So you're going Frank T.J. Mackey confronts Earl. Chris, do you agree? I agree. That's the best scene in the movie. Yeah.

what's aged the best we already said Frank T.J. Mackey and The Game and Neil Strauss and all that stuff that he got ahead of I think that whole character that whole performance all of it is amazing I like seeing Patton Oswalt in this as the blackjack director because this was really really early to have Patton Oswalt in a movie yeah I don't even think he was like famous enough to be on Kimmel's show when I was when I moved here three years later for Kimmel I probably hadn't seen him do stand-up comedy in 1999 he's also one of those people that has looked the same for 20 years that's true

But yeah, I'm sorry I interrupted you. That's okay. Amy Mann soundtrack. Love it. Really good. Obviously a huge inspiration for the movie. It was a huge part of the whole like Paul Thomas Anderson's making a movie, but it's all Amy Mann songs in there. Yeah. It's very high concept. It's very, very Nashville. You know, like Nashville is the same way. The whole movie is organized. Allman's movie is organized around all the songs that the actors who played the characters wrote for the movie. And then he kind of builds the movie like a living soundtrack. This movie is kind of the same way. Yeah.

I'll save one thought about it. Boston's a. Boston's a me man? Yeah. You big Till Tuesday guy. I am. Yeah, I figured you were. I've always wanted somebody to make a movie of all Counting Crows songs from their first two albums, which makes me, I think, strange. But I like the concept of taking one artist and, you know, taking the music from some time period in the artist's time and weaving that through the movie.

It's effective. I think the... She's perfect for this. Yeah, she's... Absolutely. Incredible. It's also... Well, we'll get to that. The frantic, coked-out shooting style. I think maybe it's not aged the best necessarily as a way to watch a movie, but it is like... Certainly not for more than three hours. No, but it's aging well to represent where this guy was at at this time in his life. Well, it's also something that I think has been ripped off. Now, you could argue it rips off Scorsese and some of the Goodfellas stuff, but it

I do feel like that specifics Tyle and what he did in the game show and stuff like that. One thing you can tell when you watch a movie assembled out of that, though, is you have to be really fucking good to pull it off. And he's good. You know what I mean? To be able to match all the cuts, to choreograph all those camera movements so that they also then lead into whatever you're going to do next, you can't really be like...

I had like three or four takes I'm choosing from here and maybe I'm going to move this or it's like that. This movie is essentially put together like a giant Jenga tower and it occasionally wobbles for sure.

but you can't really like kind of mix and match stuff there. Like everything there has like this erratic, but very discernible rhythm. There's a documentary on the DVD of this movie called That Moment. And it's basically a diary. It looks like a traditional featurette, but it's way deeper and way crazier. And you can see the first 30 minutes of the movie is just pre-production meeting after pre-production meeting. Like they talked about how they were going to do this for days and days and days and weeks. And you have to in order to do the things that we're talking about.

I've got here Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah, unusual Hoffman performance. Probably the most pulled back he's ever been in a movie. And you kind of forget he's Hoffman after a while. He just becomes the nurse. But so different than Scotty J. So different than 10 other characters he played. The most innocent person in this movie?

Yeah, the most empathic. Clearly, PTA wanted to write a part for his friend that was just like, showed his decency. Like, that's the whole point of the character. And it's like, it's very sad to watch him in this movie for me. It's sad when you take this and you take 25th Hours, probably three years after this, but a similar type of character. But this was when...

I think from 99 on, he really figured out what he was trying to do with his career. Yeah. And trying to play different people that stood out from the next person he played in the last person. Best actor of his generation. I also wrote down Supertramp. Two pretty jamming Supertramp songs in this movie. Pretty good. In general, the music's great in this movie. Phenomenal. Supertramp is very well used. I would throw in The Bar as just the best possible...

and I also really like the obviously gay bartender who's like the classic beefcake bartender who would be in a bar like that who's flirting with the guys who are 30 years older but none of them actually have a chance also some LA shit there was like just very inside LA I liked it anything else on what's age the best Frank's hair the man the ponytail up top

Kind of borrowed from Last Samurai a little bit. Yeah, he got ahead of Man Bun too. Cruz's character is really ahead of the curve. I'm excited for What's Aged the Worst. I'm going to read you a quote for What's Aged the Worst. You ready? Okay.

This quote was from 1999. It's Paul Thomas Anderson. I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life. And maybe I'll make some clunkers. Maybe I'll make some winners. But I guess the way that I really feel is that Magnolia is, for better or worse, the best movie I'll ever make. Ron Howard narrator voice. It wasn't. It was not. It was not.

That's amazing. It's probably the one he was the most personal to him and that he loved the most. You could make the case that it is his worst movie. It is his movie with the most flaws, which is amazing. He also made There Will Be Blood, so that conversation's over. I should have said this for What Stage Is The Best. One of the fun things about rewatching this movie is all the things you wish he hadn't done.

It's almost like as a viewer, you got to save your complex with it. Like, oh man, why'd you do that? Didn't you have anyone? He needed a conciliary. Do you want to talk about who we would cut out now as part of What's Aged the Worst? I just think the whole John C. Reilly thing just didn't work. And I felt that way for 20 years. I know other people feel differently about other characters. Julianne Moore is definitely too dialed up. It's way too long. Way too long. I'm not even...

really positive you need all the game show stuff which was great I was gonna say that you could actually lose Stanley and Donnie and it's more or less the same movie who's Donnie Wizkid oh yes Donnie the Macy the two the old Wizkid and the young Wizkid

But I think this is kind of the point of the movie is everyone's going to have a different thing you could probably lose. Like when we did For Love of the Game on here, it was so clear like what you just take out 35 minutes of Kelly Preston scenes. It's a better movie. And this, it's like, I think everybody would have their own opinion. Yeah, for sure. I think the game show stuff is really compelling and captivating. I'm ultimately not positive why it's in the movie. But you can make the case though that Jimmy Gator, that character also is kind of 20 years ahead of like a lot of

older Hollywood types that are abusing their power and... Or abusing their children. Abusing their children. Like, there's a lot of, like, kind of Me Too reverberations in the Jimmy Gator character. Oh, I think it's more than reverberations. Yeah. I actually think

We should have put this in which is the best. It's watching this now in the Me Too lens, knowing that he intended this guy to be a Me Too character, but we didn't realize that in 1999, I thought. Yeah, and you got to know PTA's father, Ernie Anderson, worked in broadcast television for years. He was the voice of ABC for many... Was it ABC? Yeah. ABC for many years. And, you know...

PTA grew up around a lot of people like Jimmy Gator. He knew a lot of people who were on television who did bad things. Creepy, gropey people. I think the number one what's aged the worst for me, and ironically, I feel the same about Boogie Nights, is I just never understood the Melora Walters thing. I don't get it. I never thought she was a good actress. I think that opinion has been vindicated by the last 20 years for, I don't mean to be harsh, but I think if you put a really good actress in that part, the ceiling of this movie goes way up.

Because she's in a lot of scenes. It's a really complicated part. She's a druggie. Her life's fucking shambles, but I'm supposed to feel bad for her. There's a lot to work with. There's a big range with emotions and stuff she's supposed to have. I think there should be a sexiness to her that I don't feel like she has.

And then in the end scene, she's just kind of a zombie. And I don't think the last scene works. And I think one of the reasons it works is because I never figured out what her character was because I don't think she's a good actress. Chris, what do you think of Melora Walters? I think that she's just like playing at a very specialized frequency. And you're going to get reactions like Bill's and you're going to get reactions of people who are like, I know exactly who that is.

You know, like people really glamorize like coke in movies and TV shows in terms of like what it does. You know, like the Bobby Cannavale like head flies back and then he's like rock and roll and he goes out. This is a pretty accurate representation of what it's like to be addicted to cocaine, I think. And her kind of, you know,

Being weirdly introverted and jittery and then getting this visit from this guardian angel and like rejecting the salvation that comes along with it. It's a really acquired taste, but it is a very specific performance that I think is successful in certain ways. I wouldn't say that I'm like dial up the Melora scenes again, but I'm like, I know what she's going for. If this is five, six years later, maybe seven, eight. This is like Amy Adams.

It's somebody of that caliber, right? Sure. It might even be Emma Stone, who really wants to be in a PTA movie. I just think there's a different caliber of actress. He was really enchanted with Maura Walters for some reason, even in Boogie Nights, where I don't even really understand her character in Boogie Nights at all. But she's in the movie a lot. I think he really likes her as a kind of like babe-in-the-woods figure who can be damaged, you know? And that's what he's trying to convey. It's...

The thing is, is it's an unpleasant character and you never like her and you're not supposed to like her. So it's a little hard to like the performance. A lot of the things that she's doing, you know, she, she, it looks like she's trying to hurt John C. Reilly, who is supposed to be this, like Chris said, like this guardian angel. Like she doesn't even know how to be around somebody who's decent. And it's a little hard to sympathize with her, even though she's had these terrible things happen to her. It's tough. But that's the other problem. And she's with John C. Reilly, who's the other like really weak character in this movie where she's

And he kind of did this in Boogie Nights too, but it was funny where he has...

I don't know, almost plays the character like the guy's a dimwit. I think that's purposeful. He's like a rube. No, but he's actually stupid. He's got like a 70... I don't know much difference between this guy and Forrest Gump. I guess would be my point. He has a mustache, less running, but he's basically Forrest Gump and I don't really understand the decision to play the character that way. So you have these allegedly deep scenes with him and this recovering cocaine addict who's been abused by her dad apparently.

And he's, it's like having Forrest Gump in those scenes. I think you could make the case that a lot of people in LA are really simple. And, you know, he's like, he's a cop who loses his gun. Like he's incompetent. That's fine. But do I need to spend 40 minutes with him? No. I can figure out in two minutes that he's a rube. Like, that's fine. I've figured out this character. Let's move on. I would have cut him the most. The character I would cut is Julianne Moore.

Oh. And I love Julianne Moore. Julianne Moore might be in like my hall of fame. Then we lose the pharmacy. I know. I know. And that seems hilarious, but like, it's not actually good. It actually doesn't make sense. Logically. It's like what, in what universe would a pharmacist talk to you about the drugs that you're getting? Like that's not, that's,

weirdly offensive. Like it doesn't track to me that scene at all. Like it feels like a fever dream. Like the Pat Healy character when he's like, I got a lot of crazy stuff here. Don't mix them. I mean, I think he's saying don't kill yourself. Of course, but that's, pharmacists are trained to not do that. They're trained to not like invade your personal life when talking about what you've been prescribed. Then she has that scene later when she's like, I cheated on him.

"All these guys I fucked and the dicks I sucked." It's like, "Oh!" The look on Michael Murphy's face throughout that scene is amazing. His lawyers. I can't wait to do this cool scene with Julianne Moore. "The dicks I sucked." "I sucked so bad!" "I'm his wife. We are married. I broke the contract of marriage. I fucked around on him many times. I sucked other men's cocks." Adultery is not against the law. It's not something you can use in court to discredit the will. Linda.

Linda, calm down. I can't. You don't have to change the world. It's great. It's a really... Emily! It's a bad performance. I'm sorry. I also wrote down the chance of rain in LA for What's Age of the Worst. Oh my God. It doesn't fucking rain here? 99% humidity? What is this? Come on. That's not how it works here in LA. No. It doesn't rain. No. It did also rain frogs, so maybe we should nitpick. Do you think that the Wise Up sing-along works?

When all the characters slowly each get their chance to sing a lyric from Amy Man's song. I think that 20 years of network television shows doing that bit has kind of soured me on it.

Yeah. It seemed pretty novel at the time. That's a good one for what feels the most 1999 in this movie. I would have thrown that one in there. But years of Buffy and Grey's and other shows just being like, it's the musical episode. We're going to sing pop songs. So let's go to that category then. What's the most 1999 thing about this? I would say Frank Mackey. I would also say the sing-along stuff. And also the kind of homage to...

Like he's obviously in love with 70s Hollywood, which he grew up with, and his dad doing the voiceovers for Charlie's Angels in Vegas and just this specific type of Hollywood, which in the late 90s, which is when you would have felt the most strongly about that. I don't think people now would care. I just think the role of like the self-help stuff, but also like it being on with television as your portal to like Vice and kind of...

your basest instincts where it's like when Phil's kind of flipping the channels. That was like kind of what TV was like in 99. Like you had a lot of options, but they weren't very good. And you would wind up like watching like some weird 35 minute Foreman grill commercial because like you had nothing else to do. Pre-reality. Another 99 is when he orders the magazines and it's like hustler.

It's just the concept of ordering porn magazines. The person at the grocery store is just like really... It's like, yeah, we got a hustler. Yeah. Yeah, we got a pet hustler. Yeah, I thought the idea of just calling a place to order something was very 1999. Like nowadays you just dial up Postmates and you just get it delivered to you that way. Yeah. I mean, the most 1999 thing about this movie is that he was dating Fiona Apple during it. And that he was wearing like a bucket hat. Her apex. Her oocleys, yeah. I think they definitely...

They definitely probably didn't bring out the best in each other after a while. And it's hard for me to separate Magnolia from that relationship, which I always thought would have been a top five documentary that will never happen. There's some scenes in that moment, that documentary feature that I'm talking about where...

It's in post-production. The movie's being edited. And Fiona is in the editing suite with PTA. And she is doing a sort of interpretive dance as the movie. And he's directing her. And she's like shrinking down and getting very small. And then she's exploding and getting very big. And while he's directing her, he's describing what the criticisms of the movie either are or are going to be. You were too ambitious. You're too long. You think you're better than you are. And it's...

crazy how smart and ahead of the curve and inside of his own mind PTA is. And the way that he's basically using his genius pop songwriter girlfriend to be his portal into talking about all this stuff. It's just, I would highly recommend people watch that documentary. It's so wild. I think it's my favorite celebrity couple of all time. They're wonderful. Bill! Because when she put that first album out, it was so intense.

And she was so obviously like damaged from whatever, but able to process it into all this music. And then the videos and just her persona, it was just like the type of person you'd want to be at a bar at if you were my age at the time and just like spend 20 minutes talking to, and it would be the most intense 20 minutes of your life. And then she ends up with PTA, who's his own kind of crazy, intense filmmaker. And I've just never, the combo is just insane.

It's never been approached. Yeah, I mean, I was like a... I can't imagine what they were like at like four in the morning. I was like a 15-year-old boy when she hit the scene. I was like, this is insane. This is like my dream girl. You know, it's crazy how fascinated by her I was. She was so unlike anything. Yeah, she's really interesting. I mean, I find it nice that he still directs her videos and that they still have a friendship even though they're not together.

It's like a good outcome for that relationship. It's a credit to Maya Rudolph. Great job by her. She's being like, yeah, that's cool. You can direct your video. I would probably not want my husband around Fiona Apple. It's a great call. She's the best.

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Casting what ifs? I can only find three. If you found more, let me know. One, Debra Winger was considered for Linda Partridge. Oh. Which I thought was an interesting choice. Marlon Brando was considered for Earl Partridge. You know, speaking of Debra Winger, it seems like a lot of directors have kicked the tires with her over the last like 20 plus years. She doesn't like to work. Yeah. I think it seems like all the noted filmmakers have tried to get her for something. She did like four seasons of The Ranch.

Yeah, she's taken some weird jobs which make people confused based on how she rose to fame. I think she's all-time quirky. She seems like a quirky figure. She was arguably the biggest A-list actress we had for like three years. Yeah, in the early 80s. I would say the movie is better if she takes Julianne Moore's part, honestly. It's tough because we all love Julianne Moore and...

it just feels too close to Amber waves in some ways. And I, you know, he was really careful of taking each character who had been in a previous movie of his, and at least making a little different. And her thing, it's,

I don't know. We've been talking about Joker a lot. And I think that Julianne Moore's performance in this movie is like a lot like Joaquin Phoenix's Joker performance. It's already in mid, like burning out. Like when you start the film and you're like, I have no prep for this. I don't know who this person is. I don't know why they feel this way. They just keep screaming about their feelings. And then it's over. It sounds like the internet. Speaking of the internet, the DN Waiters Award for the biggest heat check.

I wrote down two names. The first name... Cruz is ineligible, right? Well, I have Cruz. I think he's in too many scenes. What about Stanley's dad? So I think he could win all of the awards. Michael Bowen is his name. The overbearing dad? Yes. I think that he could win Heat Check, That Guy, and Overacting.

It's tough to take overacting from Melora or Julianne, but he's in the conversation. Julianne, we have to rename the award for her. What's her character in this movie? Linda Partridge. Her in The Pharmacy is, since we've done, I think, 85 rewatchables on the MedFab. You're calling me lady!

It's so insane. It's one of those scenes that if you're watching Living Room and somebody walks by, they think like a nuclear apocalypse is happening or something. I think when I was a kid and I saw the movie, I was like, this is really deep acting. She's really going for it. And then I watch the movie now and I'm like, what's wrong with her? Fuck you two! Don't you call me lady! I'm coming!

I'm in here! I give these things to you! You check, you make your phone calls, look suspicious, ask questions! I'm sick! I have sickness all around me and you fucking ask me my life? What's wrong? I'm using death in your bed!

In your house? Where's your fucking decency? And then I'm asked fucking questions. What's wrong? You suck, my dick. That's what's wrong. And you, you fucking call me lady? Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you. I don't think anyone in real life has ever been this upset that wasn't a risk to themselves. Yes. It's weird that there are two...

bizarre drugged up women in the movie. Like you could we could have done without one of them. Or is it weird? Well nevertheless I you know I wrote down there's a lot of pairs two whiz kids two patriarchal film television figures two very drug addled women. That's true. Yeah. Any other what other DN Waiters nominees do you have?

It's weird because so many people are in this movie for around the same amount of time. There's not a lot of Deanne Waiters' performances. What do you think about— What about Felicity Huffman? She's just good. She's in like three scenes just being like evil Felicity Huffman. Yeah. She's good. I think Louis Guzman as one of the contestants on the game show is really good when he's talking shit to the little fat kid. That part is great. Who's the guy who talks to Macy in the bar?

The old guys like your doll. Oh, Henry Gibson. Yeah. Who is one of Robert Altman's go-to guys over the years. He is a classic. I mean, he should win the that guy award.

He's on my list. Yeah. He's going for it too. I can't even remember what my favorite Henry Gibson is, but I feel like he's been in 140 movies. It's dangerous to confuse children with angels. There's just a mountain, an absolute mountain of half-assed internet research. I feel like we should just publish it rather than read it all here because we're going to waste too much time talking about it. Is there anything in particular that...

you need me to say about all this stuff here? Just give us like your best six things. Yeah, what's your favorite joint? Well, I just referenced this, but you're working out your psychoses on everyone else's 850. I still love you, but you're no Boogie Nights. That's PTA play acting as the public's reaction to Magnolia with his then-girlfriend Fiona Apple, who is play miming as the movie Magnolia in that moment. Oh, man. I gotta find that. Very special. Do the Hoffman Cruise one.

Batnugget. Which one is that? Why don't you do it? Okay. Philip Seymour Hoffman stated during the deathbed scene, everything after Frank's I'm not going to cry for you was improvised by Cruise. Cruise didn't feel the scripted lines worked and Paul Thomas Anderson told Cruise to think of when his own father died and let it move him. During the next take, Cruise broke down sobbing resulting in the scene seen in the film and Hoffman stated Phil's reaction to Frank sobbing was his own since he didn't know Cruise would enter such a zone and he felt the purity of Cruise. Oh, so he did cry? Yeah.

And that shot, it's a very theatrical scene because it's just these three actors. But Hoffman's like still acting out of focus in the background. It's unreal. That's amazing. Extraordinary scene. That's definitely the best scene in the movie. New Line wanted to push this movie as a Tom Cruise movie, but PTA refused, saying it was an ensemble piece. He ended up designing the poster and edited the trailer himself. So I knew that. I remember he made the poster himself, which is like the height of...

You know, somebody who's been told, do whatever you want. Yeah. Pretension, but also like creative freedom. That's where the right studio should be like, hey, dude, we're designing the fucking poster. We have five people who know how to do this. Yeah. Yeah. We're good. PTA screened the film network to his production team before filming break began. This was my favorite movie when I was a teenager. This movie kind of intersects a lot of my interests. Before Anderson became a filmmaker, one of the jobs he had was as an assistant for a television game show, Quiz Kid Challenge, an experience he incorporated into Magnolia.

He also claims in interviews that the film is structured somewhat like a day in the life by the Beatles. It kind of builds up note by note, then drops or recedes, then builds again. I mean, there's just a number of items along these lines. Maybe we should keep it moving to keep the show moving. The word fuck is used 190 times in this movie.

Wow. Also, the telephone number 877-TAME-HER is shown on the Seduce and Destroy infomercials within the movie. Dialing this number used to give a recording of Tom Cruise giving the Seduce and Destroy pitch. Remember when people used to do shit like that where it was like, oh, that phone number in the movie, if you call, it's like Robert Redford tells you the weather. That should have been what's the most 1999 about this movie, that they'd had the Tom Cruise answering the phone gimmick. That

That was really good. Over 7,900 rubber frogs were made and used in the frog scenes. The rest were created by CGI. No real frogs were harmed during production. Oh, damn it. For what stage the best, we should have put how realistic the frogs were. It works pretty well. For 1999, they really seem like they're just killing frogs. I agree. I'm going to go to Joey Pants Award here. Okay.

I got a lot of candidates. Just run through them. Michael Bowen. He's the dad. Patton Oswalt. I mean, Michael Bowen's probably the winner because I didn't know what his name was. Did you know that there is an actor who plays the young Jimmy Gator?

in some of those television flashbacks. Thomas Jane. Oh. Didn't notice him. Porn star Veronica Hart. Yeah. As one of the dentist nurses. Noticed her. Cleo King as Marcy, the black woman who John C. Reilly... Veronica Hart was also the judge of Boogie Nights. She was. Yeah. She was a pal of PTA's. Alfred Molina. Not really that guy, but like Alfred Molina showing up for one scene I find funny. With an accent. Yes. As Solomon.

Felicity Huffman we mentioned Orlando Jones who got cut out of the movie but played a pretty significant part of the movie but he is the figure running into the woods in pursuit of the gun that's who he was supposed to be Clark Gregg who would go on to appear in the Marvel movies he's the guy who's the director or the countdown guy on the TV show Henry Gibson we mentioned big Grant Lamb fan oh nice Ricky Jay

Oh, is it PTA staple? Jim Beaver, yeah. Jim Beaver from Deadwood, who is at the bar with Henry Gibson and Quiz Kid Donnie Smith. I think the answer is Michael Bowen, but I also think Henry Gibson should get a career achievement and possibly this should be even named the Joey Pants Award. It should be the Henry Gibson Award because I can't even imagine how many movies he's been in that I've seen. He's iconic in the burbs. I would say Ricky Jay just for the... He also narrates the movie. Oh. I like Ricky Jay. Okay.

The Saul Rubinick Award for overacting. What's Julianne Moore's character's name? Linda. Linda what? Partridge. The Linda Partridge Award for overacting? Yeah, I think we're renaming it. I'm down. The pharmacy scene makes the Saul Rubinick scene look like he's pulling it back. Is there a case to be made for Tom Cruise in this category? No, how dare you? I think that he's... It's all intentional. If you didn't have the deathbed scene...

Like when he's hanging out with Guinevere and he's got his pants down and he's like, great questions, great questions. Like that he's really going for it. But you have to view the whole thing in its totality and watch him get stripped down in the hospital. We forgot to do For What's Aged the Worst. It gets a little uncomfortable when he stands up at the end of the interview. Oh yeah, he gets in her face.

Yeah, but there's a hint of something not good going to happen. He's a bad guy. Yeah. He's a really bad guy. Michael Bowen is also a candidate for overacting. As I said, I think Michael Bowen could legitimately win all three of these categories. Triple crown. Have we ever had a triple crown winner? No. Wow. I can't wait till we get to that moment. No, Michael Bowen, man. Nice run. Apex Mountain. Yeah. I don't think it can be Cruz. I mean...

Ironically, it's Melora Walters because this was it for her. And I would say for Amy Mann's solo career. I have Amy Mann down here. It has to be Amy Mann. I think Amy Mann wins. Yeah, you're right. San Fernando Valley. Nominated for an Oscar. San Fernando Valley. San Fernando Valley Apex Mountain. That's right. She performed it with John Bryan at the Oscars, right? That's right. Yeah. Not PTA. Not a lot of Apex Mountains for this. Frogs? Stanley? Poor Stanley.

Wait, you think it might really be... I can't believe Phil Hoffman really cried in that thing. I was always a working theory. I didn't know we had evidence that that happened. Wait, what was your question? That might be one of the greatest scenes of all time. Do you think this is Apex Mountain for frogs? That's what I want to know. Is it Apex Mountain for frogs? What was a better moment for frogs? The actual Bible. And also any story where a witch turns a prince into a frog. Good points. I'm going to say this is Apex Mountain for my mom. Okay. Oh my God. My mom turned 52 years before...

This is one of her five favorite movies. She would get in violent arguments with people about the frogs and is just a keeper of the flame of Magnolia for 20 years. When's your mom going to be on BS Pod again? Your mom and I agree on a lot of stuff. If my mom had been on this podcast, it would have been twice as long. She has a lot of thoughts. I can't believe you didn't invite her. Does she mind recording podcasts in extreme heat? No, I don't think so. Let's pick some nits.

Frank T.J. Mackey doesn't think a journalist is going to research his life. Yeah. What's going on here? This guy's going on TV. He's a quote-unquote famous person with infomercials all over the country, and he's mad. Although, you know, like that Notre Dame guy got the job, and he was like, I didn't actually graduate from college, right? Remember? What was it? Who got the Notre Dame job? And it was like, turns out, you lied about your resume. Ty Willingham? Oh, yeah. No, it was George somebody. I don't know. I know what you're talking about. George somebody. Shit like that used to happen more in the 90s, where somebody was like, maybe nobody will check. George O'Leary. Yeah. Yeah.

George O'Leary. I have a real problem with them not letting the little kid go to the bathroom. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Just pause the taping. It's a game show. He's going right there. It's little kids. They've never had a little kid that wanted to take a piss before on the show. That scene, I think, is just absurd. Not as absurd as frogs coming out of the sky. It's a good take. It doesn't rain in LA, so this is a nit to pick. It's important. William H. Macy's dental work.

His teeth just didn't seem that bad. No. They didn't have like buck teeth or something. It's a fine little wrinkle. It's weird that it's like the entire driving force of his character. This is kind of a nit but kind of a purposeful thing that PTA does, but I want to point it out. At one point, Quiz Kid Donnie Smith says...

Samuel Johnson never had his life shit on and taken from him and his money stolen. Who took his life and his money? His parents, his mommy and daddy make him live life like this. A man of genius who got shit on as a child. Actually, all of those things happened to Samuel Johnson. He was a child prodigy who was exploited by his parents. His parents also stole all of the money he made as a child prodigy. Good stuff.

I have another small nit. I don't see Jason Robards and Julianne Moore together. Oh, I do. I get that completely. You think so? A trophy wife? Yeah. Those two together, though? Yeah, he's Aaron Spelling.

He's Aaron Spelling. He's got a wife who's 25 years younger than him. I just meant the two people. I'm not even talking about the concept of a trophy. Well, we don't get to see Robards upright, so you wouldn't see their interaction. Robards is a complicated dude, man. If you ever read Lauren Bacall's biography, he was... Complicated. Tough times. Nice way of putting it. He was...

little scary stuff in Robards' life. The goddamn regret, which is the thing that he says when he's giving that kind of wandering speech, is like, you really feel like he's actually saying it. When Linda Partridge is swallowing pills in her car, it's raining outside. A few minutes later when she's passed out, the car is bone dry. One mistake. Best quote, we may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us. It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes, and the book says...

We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us. Too obvious? I like I'm not going to cry for you. Respect the cock? Bill? Probably the most memorable. Respect the cock is incredible. Can we just hear that whole speech, Craig? Respect the cock. And tame the cunt. Tame it. Take it on headfirst with the skills that I will teach you at work and say no-ah.

You will not control me. No! You will not take my soul. No! You will not win this game. Because it is a game, guys. You want to think it's not, huh? You want to think it's not, you go back to the schoolyard. You have that crush on big-titted Mary Jane. Respect the cock. You are embedding this thought. I am the one who's in charge. I am the one who says yes. Yes!

No! Now! Here! I loved her. She knew what I did. She knew all the fucking stupid things I had done, but the love was stronger than anything you can think of. The goddamn regret. The goddamn regret. And I'll die now. I'll die and I'll tell you what. The biggest regret of my life, I let my love go. Goddamn regret. The goddamn regret. And I'll die. Now I'll die and I'll tell you what. The biggest regret of my life.

I let my love go. Pretty intense. What do you think of, you don't really like anything that John C. Reilly says, like his monologues inside the cop car when he's talking to himself? I just think they made him too dumb. I'll never change that opinion. Take that opinion from my cold, dead hands. What about when Guinevere and Frank, TJ Mackie are talking and she says, come on, Frank, what are you doing? And Cruz says, what am I doing? I'm quietly judging you. Pretty good one.

I'll tell you everything and you tell me everything and maybe we can get through all the piss and shit and lies that kill other people. I'll tell you everything and you tell me everything and maybe we can get through all the piss and shit and lies that kill other people. This movie is very intense. I said that last night to my son. Last one. Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven and sometimes they need to go to jail.

That's you and the Jets. Absolutely a fact of life. Could this work as a 10-episode Netflix show in 2019? I mean, that absolutely would have been the destiny of this. Yeah. He would have made this 10 hours, and it would have been fucking awesome. And it's kind of a shame that it didn't play out that way. And all the beats where it would be like the before and after beats would have been fleshed out. Oh, my God. It would have been so much better as a 10-episode. So I was thinking about this. Would you guys have made it? Would you have preferred it be made?

Each episode is about a different character or each episode just moves more slowly and we get all the characters in every episode. I think you do each episode centers around a character, but then the first and the 10th probably tie people together. Yeah. And then in the background of these, you get moments with other characters. That would've been cool. Yeah. I don't think there's ever been a better example of this would've been better as a Netflix show. In my opinion. For that we've done as a rewatchable. Unanswerable questions.

Yeah. What's up with the frogs? I mean, that's the most unanswerable question we've ever had. It would be... It's completely insane. I don't know how anyone comes up on it. The biggest story in America for a year, if that happened. Right? A decade. Yeah. A generation. Bigger than Daryl Morey in China?

This is me not commenting. Do you think that it only rained frogs in the San Fernando Valley? Or did it rain frogs nationwide? Here's the thing with the frogs that my mom has drunkenly explained to me more than once at dinner. It's not about whether it's realistic or not. The whole point of the movie is...

You never know when something crazy is going to happen that alters whatever you thought was going to happen and goes in another direction. So he's like, here's the single craziest thing that could be the example of this. But is it any crazier than anything else that happens in your life? Yeah. And actually, it's kind of brilliant. In the movie theater, especially 1999, Not Knowing, they were pretty good at keeping secrets. So it was like...

You know, you didn't know that was coming. And when that first one hits, it was like, is that a fucking frog? And then the next one hits and Riley's freaking out. And it was unforgettable. I love that moment when Melora Walters is sitting in her room doing lines and she's got the sheet up and you can see one frog fall, the shadow of one frog. And you know that she's like, am I hallucinating this basically? And then it leads to Melinda Dillon going to her house. And I mean, it...

He changes all of these different things, which is he set up in the movie 17 hours ago at the start of the movie. But I don't know. I thought it worked. It's crazy. My mom's talked me into this. She's beating me down. I think her case is really compelling. I think it's actually one of the things in the movie that I wouldn't change at all. I think it's a really kind of quote unquote brave and really fun choice. It should have made the movie like really more of a phenomenon. Also the poster, there were falling frogs. So the fact that we didn't see this coming...

It was on us a little bit too. It's interesting that this movie comes out the same year as Fight Club, which was another super masculine, guys need to grab control of their destiny kind of thing. This really was an era. Also like an is this really happening kind of movie. Yeah. That's something that Blair Witch was the same way. A lot of the movies, being John Malkovich, a lot of the movies we talked about on this show are really like, what's going on? Three Kings. What's going on here? Is this real? Or is this just in my imagination? Nobody...

would ever make this as a movie now no it would automatically it would automatically be sold to Amazon or Hulu or Netflix or HBO Max or whatever unless the William Macy character was the Joker's origin story what other unanswerable questions do you guys have about this movie I guess it's like the what happens next is kind of big you know what do you mean the next day after they clean up the frogs what's Linda what do Linda and Frank talk about the next day

I think after the- What's date three for Claudia and John C. Reilly? It's not lasting long. I think after the Trump presidency, the frogs are way more realistic. Like Trump's our president. He's been the president for three years. He was hosting a reality show and was just a bozo and became the president. And I think that makes the frogs thing makes me think there's a puncher's chance it could happen in our lifetime.

Frogs come on the rewatchables. That's all I have to say. I have... Oh, we got to do who won the movie. I'm about to ask you. Who won the movie, Bill? I mean, Cruise. Cruise. But, you know, I was thinking about this yesterday and I think, I know it's one of the reasons my mom loves this movie so much because she has some unresolved stuff with her mom because her mom died when she was 16. I think this movie did the best example of when you realize somebody that you love is about to die but you have so much unfinished business with them you don't know what to do with it.

And that's been a theme in a lot of different movies. And I think for whatever reason, this movie did that the best, which is why I'll always defend it. I think it's super flawed. It's way too long. Half of the characters don't work. But man, it taps into some shit. People use the Freudian motivations and the childhood trauma as explanation for future behavior in really flippant and easy ways. Superhero movies and pretty much anything. It's like, because of my dad. But this movie really grapples with it.

And it really grapples with the idea that this stuff is so fucking complicated and that sometimes you can love somebody who's a demon, you know, and that sometimes you can find love with somebody that doesn't make any sense to, like, a movie-going audience. We didn't do this and probably didn't answer real questions because it seems pretty clear that he molested Melora Walters' character. Mm-hmm. Right? I think so. I think so. I think you're meant to believe that, yeah. And then he was kind of drunk and fucked up all through the 70s and 80s. They keep it ambiguous. Yeah. Was that the right move or should there have been...

Did you want more or less information or do you even want that plot in there at all? I think it explains a lot. I walked away feeling pretty clear about it. Yeah. But did it need to be in the movie? I mean, honestly, I always understood it a little bit as a nod to the Woody Allen story. That there is a very clear kind of like, we can't say for sure if you're sympathetic to a person that says that they're a victim, then that is what happened. And if you're not, then you're not. But I mean, it's very, very similar to that story.

Hmm. Cruz wins. Cruz wins. I can't believe Cruz never won an Oscar.

It's not over yet. Mission Impossible 7 coming soon. I think it's over. No. This was his best chance. No fucking way. Are you kidding me? He'll never get to the place that he got to in this movie again. Al Pacino had to wait for Sin of a Woman, which is his 38th best performance. Pacino takes chances. Cruise doesn't take chances like this. He's taken a chance for 15 years. These things are sick. He's fucking Jack Reacher now. He's going to come back around. I'm confident that he's going to go for it one of these days. I don't see it.

I think it's like Eddie Murphy. People are like, no, it's not happening. Ship's sailed. He needs to find a part that fuses the two things that he wants to do right now, which is he wants to be in populist movies that people want to see, and he wants to be physically active. So he needs to play like a boxer, or he needs to play like a military person in a serious movie made by a real filmmaker. Or a marathon runner. Yeah.

Something like that. Something that specifically underlines that he's still Tom Cruise and he's still the man, but also requires him to act a little bit more than just jumping out of a plane. So this is the end of the Rewatchables 1999 feed, if you enjoyed it on Luminary. But we have two more movies I think we're going to do on the other Rewatchables feed. What are they? At some point, either this year or maybe next year. But Fight Club we have not done yet. Yep. And the one I'm the most excited for...

just from a weird standpoint to Talented Mr. Ripley. Oh, yeah. Tommy, how's the peeping? How's the peeping? Think back on Philip Seymour Hoffman's 1999. So how many was he in? I think he was in three movies. Mr. Ripley, and then he was in one more, right? It's funny because even when he was Scotty J, I never felt like

something magical was going to happen. You know, it's like, oh, that guy's cool. Oh, the guy from Set of a Woman. It's great when an actor's career though can make you go back on their earlier work and you know where they're going. Even Twister. Yeah. Yeah. Where he's like great in Twister, which is a bad movie. Yeah. And, but it's just like, oh, that guy's really fun, but not thinking that anything, what was the third one? It's Joel Schumacher's Flawless, which is a movie that is not aging well. However, Rosie Price. Not like Joel Schumacher's 8mm. In 2000, he appears in Almost Famous.

Yeah. In one of the great, another movie that we'll really have to do at some point. Star making. You have friends? They all hate me. Well, you meet them again in a long journey in the middle. Bill, Chris, this has been fun. Thanks guys. All right. That's the end of that episode, but I did promise you a little five minute snippet of Paul Thomas Anderson talking about Magnolia and Tom Cruise from the interview we did with him in December, 2017. Me, Sean, PTA. Here we go.

So when did you feel like you had complete command of the craft? Like for where you want it to be, where you could just be like, I'm making a movie. I'm just good at this. And this is every detail is going to be perfect. And I know I'm just going to nail this. But well, I mean, if I admitted to feeling that, wouldn't that make me like psychotic? No, no, no. I'm not saying like you're perfect. I'm just saying like with a baseball pitcher, at some point a baseball pitcher is like, I know what I'm doing. I have these four pitches. I know how to throw them.

And I can do this. Confidence. Well, yeah, confidence came for sure after Boogie Nights. During Boogie Nights and during the editing of it and feeling like, looking at it and feeling like this is, I aimed it this way and I've kind of meant to do this. Oh my God. It worked. It worked. There was definitely a confidence boost from that.

Big time. And then to have, to feel that way, but then turn around and have other people feel that way and have, you know, sit in a big theater. I never had that opportunity for my first film, sit in a big theater and watch people watch it and laugh and really get into it. It was like, right, okay. Not only the confidence boost, but more just a wider understanding of like, okay, so...

I think I got the job. I think I know how to... I think I can do this. But let me figure out what more I can do with it. What else can I do? And then I wrote Magnolia, which that was just like too much confidence, probably. But that's okay. That's good. That was going to be my question. Was it supposed to be a challenge for yourself? I think it was just a challenge. It didn't... It would be a challenge... It was a challenge to write so personally and to write so...

so nakedly about my life at the time and just blah like throw it all up and put it out there um but that seemed like the right thing to do at that time just seemed like i had no other experience except the one right in front of me which had just happened um we're dealing with the last couple years of my life and like um it all just came out did you know cruz had that in him oh yeah what movie made you think he had it in him

You know, Rain Man. For sure, Rain Man. He's the MVP of Rain Man. That's one of my Oscar redos. Cruise has way harder role in Rain Man. Way harder. Yeah. Because he's an asshole, but I have to like him by the end of it. He's got so many, he has got so many more moves he has to pull. I get, yeah, I'd always loved Tom Cruise like everybody else loved Tom Cruise, but Rain Man, man, like.

I think I love Tom Cruise more than anybody loves Tom Cruise. And then Born on the Fourth of July was an amazing performance. And Color of Money. Yeah. I mean, those three, those were strong, you know? There's a little Frank T.J. Mackey in all three of those characters, too. A little dickish, something that you're attracted to. He's funny, too. Yeah. Cruise is funny. But, you know, I was thinking about it. I mean, Cruise...

When you see Tom Cruise on screen, name anybody else that can do that right now, that can do what Cruise can do, whether it's in his action films or whether it's in his dramatic stuff.

Cruise is the fucking king. If you step back a little bit, you're like, right, come on. Game's on. It's fucking Cruise. I love watching those Mission Impossible movies. The body of work, if he was an athlete, we would be wondering what the hell was going on. Totally. Because Risky Business was 1982. Right. And he was a kid in the movie, but he was probably a tiny bit older than that. But Edge of Tomorrow...

Was that one with Emily Blatt? Yeah. It's a good movie. Yeah, but in that sports analogy too, I mean, as he gets older, if he loses his ability to jump off buildings and stuff like that, I'm not nervous about that at all because he's got so many moves to fall back on because he's got a big bag of tricks. A couple months, maybe a month ago, I wrote about what Cruise's next move is because he saw the great actors that we grew up with, like Paul Newman when he made The Verdict.

It was an important moment for his career because he kind of aged. And it was a character that you don't really play when you're trying to be the A-list action hero actor. You play it when you're moving into the next part of your career. And I think Cruise is ready for one of those. He's ready for his verdict. Just you wait. That could be your next challenge. Just, I think, right around the corner, you're going to see that. It's going to be, yeah, Cruise's. Don't bet against Cruise. All right, that's it for the podcast.

I kind of feel like we have to hear from Craig though, because it's, you know, it's part of the rewatchables in 2024. We got to hear from Craig. So Craig, insert yourself in with a monologue right now. Okay. Let's talk Magnolia for a movie that, you know, I likely will never watch again. I've now seen it twice. And I watched it for the first time back in 2019 when we were doing the rewatchables in 1999. And,

It has a lot of moments that will stick with you and performances that you will never forget. Julianne Moore as Linda Partridge is all time, made its way into the overacting awards sound drop. And Cruise as Frank Mackey. Just like Risky Business, this is a top three Tom Cruise performance for me. Seduce and Destroy. And Cruise as a pickup artist. I wish this movie was made 20 years later because what Frank Mackey would be doing online right now

With the YouTube channel and TikTok and Instagram and whatever boner pills he's shilling and brain octane juice. I just would be all in and maybe we should revisit this. And if Cruz does anything in the future, it should be a Frank Mackey sequel. But I do think this is his most memorable performance outside of, you know, for people my age who...

we're more focused on the last 25 years of cruise. We are not as, you know, stuff like born on the 4th of July risky business, even though we maybe have seen those movies, that is not what we think of when we think of cruise. We obviously think of mission impossible, but I would also say tropic thunder is,

is a huge, huge moment for Cruz for young people. And it's like, you know, why we think that he has that funny kind of interesting bone in him. And I do think this is his most memorable performance, maybe outside of Tropic Thunder. And it's a bummer that Cruz has limited himself to one note action heroes for the last 20 years, because when he needs to pull something out of left field and play a twisted, weird, funny, complex character, he's more compelling than anyone.

But in general, with this movie, this movie reminds me a lot of Babylon, Damien Chazelle's movie, because this was PTA's third movie. He's around 30 years old. He was coming off an exciting, buzzy, kind of coming out party of a movie with Boogie Nights. He gets more leash, goes bigger, bolder, longer. This movie's three hours. And it got critical praise, but it didn't perform well at the box office. And now if you look at Chazelle in Babylon, it was the fourth film he directed. He's in his mid-30s. He's hit on two of his three first movies with La La Land and Whiplash.

And he gets the leash to go bigger and he does, and he pulls no punches and he makes his three hour epic. And again, critically less acclaimed than Magnolia, probably also not a success in the box box office. I loved Babylon and liked it more than Magnolia, but like Magnolia, you know, Babylon was deemed a miss. And so I, I just like that these directors are given chances to take ambitious risks. Obviously I want these movies to work and be seen and, and,

And last, but ultimately, I'm happy these movies are getting made. I liked Babylon more than Magnolia, like I said, but more than anything, I want to make sure directors get their chance to take a swing when they get up to the plate. So if you're under 30 years old listening to this, one, amazing to have you still here. Two, if you're not going to sit down and watch Magnolia, look, I get it. But at the very least, do yourself a favor and watch Tom Cruise play Frank Mackey as a pickup artist on YouTube and then decide.

All right, thanks to Craig Horlbeck, our producer. Thanks to Sean and Chris. That's it for the rewatchables. We will have one more rock bottom movie for rock bottom month. And then we're going to have to do some bangers to make up for it because rock bottom month, you know,

This is what we'd love doing on the rewatchable. Sometimes we like to zag. Sometimes we just like talking about movies that are fascinating for whatever reason. Remember, the goal is always to have an awesome episode about a movie, not just to do a rewatchable movie. Cause I gotta be honest, we're over 330 movies at this point. We're starting to run out of rewatchable movies. This could be the last year for the feed. I'm just preparing you now. 2024, it could be it. It could be the it for mankind too.

Who knows? Maybe the frogs will start falling out of the sky soon. I will see you next week on The Rewatchables.