‘Shot Caller’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan
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Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind your favorite song lyric? Or why certain melodies make your skin tingle? I'm Cole Kushner and these are the kinds of questions I try to answer on Dissect, a podcast that dives deep into one album per season, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. I've dissected full albums by Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Tyler, The Creator, Beyonce, Kanye, and more. Our latest season just launched all about MF Doom's Mad Villainy. Listen to Dissect wherever you get your podcasts.

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On August 16th, the scariest movie of the summer, Alien Romulus is coming to theaters everywhere, including IMAX. This movie looks terrifying, and I cannot wait to see it. Alien Romulus comes from Fede Alvarez, the director of intense horror movies like Evil Dead and Don't Breathe, and it is produced...

by the legendary Ridley Scott, the mastermind behind iconic films like Blade Runner and the original Alien. Can't wait for this one. Alien Romulus, rated R, in theaters everywhere, August 16th. Get your tickets now. The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find The Watch with Chris Ryan. You're still doing them, right? I am. Is the regime still on the air? The regime's still on. We've been talking mostly about Shogun, though. Shogun? Yeah. Yeah.

Is that in the 1300s with Game of Thrones or is that another century? A couple of years ahead of that, but yeah, no dragons yet. Well, it's rock bottom month here on the rewatchables. Manchester by the sea was our first one. Controversial pick.

Some people are like, not a rewatchable. It's like, guess what? Sometimes we want to do great movies that we can talk about with all the categories. We love movies. It's not always going to be, you know, Tango and Cash. We didn't call it Feel Good Month, guys. Yeah. It's called Rock Bottom Month. We're doing another Rock Bottom Month, but it's a movie that we've been circling.

for a long, long time. Kind of like the Patriots are hopefully circling Drake May right now at the number three pick. We've been circling Shot Caller for a while and now it's here. It's on Netflix so you can watch this whenever you want. We're going to do it right now on the Rewatchables. Next. How did the light? People don't go away for accidents. The only thing that matters is you getting home to your family in one piece. You'll get your hands dirty like the rest of us. Yeah!

Everything you do in this game has a consequence. We got your rules and we got the gang's rules. And theirs matter. Once a dude gets institutionalized, anything is possible. You're handling the deal for heavy shipping with guns. Before you say another word, think of your family in this decision. It's a whole different ballgame, brother. Nobody's touching my family.

All right, CR, you're a simple guy. You like butter in your ass, lollipops in your mouth, and a good prison movie. And they just don't make a ton of them. And Shock Hour came out seven years ago. I didn't see it in the theater. It was on cable one night. I'd heard a couple people say it was good, but just really didn't know. And I dove in about halfway through.

And I'm like, what is this? And, um, ended up watching the last hour. So unfortunately I knew where it was going, but then doubled back. It's on a lot. Now it's on Netflix and, uh,

It just, it checks a lot of boxes for us, CR. Yeah. I mean, I think at the time it had the reputation of that movie with Jamie Lannister and the Aryan Brotherhood. So you were like, oh, okay. Interesting little turn from him. I mean, not exactly the most touchy-feely character on Game of Thrones, but certainly a fan favorite. And then, you know, just imagining Nikolai Kostor-Waldau being like this prison gang leader, essentially, was sort of hard to imagine. But when you go back and watch it,

It has a lot of the homies in it, man. It has a lot of our guys. It's about like... It's told in this really compelling way with these dual storylines kind of overlap like different chronologies.

And it's just like a real, real, real tight prison thriller and really provocative in a lot of ways about you do. You do have a lot of like, what would you do in this situation moments while watching this movie? Yeah, there's so many reasons. I love prison movies, but I think that's the number one reason, right? You're constantly going, what would I do? How would I handle this? Would I go this far?

What would I do if people were turning on me? Would I be the one that the first day in the yard, I would have to set the tone and be like, nobody fuck with me. I'm happy to go in the hole because I just got in a fight with somebody.

what would you do all day? It just takes you to this alternate universe. Like what kind of books would I read? Even when the beast near the end is like, Hey man, I have some good psychology books. Really into those. I can drop those off later. It's like, Oh, interesting. The beast is trying to learn. The beast lending library is open. This is great. The beast is like my club is $9 a month. There's some interesting books.

Big picture meta commentary here about Jacob, who's the stockbroker in Pasadena, kind of a go, go, go money guy. And you're trying to climb the ladder in that world in a different way. It's innocent, but you're trying to gain power and gain access and gain information and try to get money. And then you go to prison and it's

completely different, but also maybe not that much different. Do you think that's one of the points of the movie? Yeah. I think that the thing about prison movies that are, aside from like, you know, you have a whole sub-genre of prison movies, which are essentially about escape, right? Where it's like how, if you were facing this kind of incarceration, like, would you contemplate and how would you execute an escape? And that's Shawshank and that's Escape from Alcatraz and we'll get into those. But then there's a whole other brand of prison movie that's essentially about

Prison has a backdrop for the morality and ethics of people that most people would assume these guys lack morality and ethics. But then all of these different structures from society come into play in prison. Politics, pecking orders, hierarchies, traditions.

there's a prison economy, there's prison, there's illegal substances in prison, which are essentially the currency. So I just get deeply fascinated. I'm reading a book about women in prison right now called The Mars Room. It's just a really, yeah. It's just a spare time, little woman in prison movie? Yeah, it's not a novel. Yeah, by Rachel Kushner. It's really good. But I was just, I'm just always fascinated by stories that come out of prison. And it's as an American kind of,

I think it's both appalling and really fascinating. Do you remember the first time you became hooked on prison content, movies or TV? Like what broke your cherry? I mean, you know, it's Oz, baby. Come on. You know, it's Oz. Oh, so it was, it was late nineties. My parents used to watch,

Escape from Alcatraz and like Papillon would be on. Like I remember like there was like always like a couple of things and you know, you could even go as far to say that The Great Escape is a prison movie, although it's like much nicer than the prison stuff that we watch now. But yeah, I think Oz was the first time I started thinking about the sort of social tapestry of prison in a different way. So I was way earlier and I was also an only child, but you had from, from 79 to 83, you

You have Jericho mile. You have longest yard and reruns. You have brew breaker with Robert Redford, American, uh, the, uh, American X midnight express for some reason was on in cable mainly because we didn't have a lot of movies back then. And that one gets really dark. Um, then bad boys is 1983, uh,

Brubaker was weirdly one of the first ones because in that one, Robert Redford is running a prison, goes undercover before he gets the job so he can find out what's going on in the prison and kind of crosses a couple lines. And then at the end, they give him the slow clap, which I'm still convinced created the slow clap. But I remember seeing that over and over again. And at some point along the line was just like,

man, prison content, just really good stuff. I just, and your brain starts churning. What would I do in this situation? And you know, it, all these different, I wrote down, I didn't, I was going to do this in what stage the best I'll do this now, but like things I just love about prison movies, the hierarchy, how they just figure that out, who gets where, how you have to get to where you want to go, who you have to make friends with, who you have to be afraid of.

Crooked prison guards are incredible. Amazing. They always have them. I don't really know if it's how it's worth it for them or what they get out of it, but they just can't help themselves. You know, your money will be deposited every month. A lot of that stuff.

I like that the friend groups or in other circles, gangs, but everybody just gravitates toward numbers and you just want the numbers. You don't want to be the lone wolf. You want to be, you want to belong to something. Racial components to that. Well, there's that. That's where the dark side of that. But everyone's like, how can I have numbers? I need numbers. A lot of teamwork. Yeah. The reading. I was a big reader as a kid. Just, you know, you're trapped in yourself. Yeah.

Just like, what am I going to read? You know what? I'm going to read a separate piece today. Haven't read that one in a while. This is a staple. The poor guy who cries the first night when they all come in. I like when the guys come in, everyone's like, oh, new blood's in.

And then there's that one guy who just can't handle it. And I don't care what movie it is. It never turns out well for that guy. He's the guy who's like, I'm not supposed to be here. Yeah. I'm not supposed to be here. Or he's just sadly sitting in his bunk, like crying. And you're like, oh, don't cry, dude. I love the nicknames. Prison movies have phenomenal nicknames. We'll go into some nicknames in this one. You always have the one character in this movie, it's Bottles, where they do the, the only thing we have in this life is respect. Yeah.

It's the only thing you have in here. If you lose your respect, that's it. Yeah. It's always amazing that guys like bottles are never like, Hey, do you like the, the giants or the Dodgers? Like, no, there's no, yeah, there's no sports conversation. What do you think of Tyler Glass now? Right. What's your favorite mafia movie? Yeah, no, it's all like this big picture respect stuff. Yeah.

Riots in prison movies or TV shows. I mean, this was an Oz staple. Oz would like, we're not going more than a season without a riot, but the riots, the setup for the riot, when everybody starts hiding their weapons or coming out or passing weapons along, I like that. The shanks, I like the different kinds of shanks. So,

Sometimes you have like the screwdriver shank. Sometimes you just have the knife shank. Incredible shank action. I would say some of the best shanks we've ever had in a prison movie. And then I like when people meet their cellmate and they have to size each other up immediately. It's almost like it's a speed date for roommates where it's like, am I going to have to fight this guy right now? Is this guy a potential, you know, is he going to try to sexually assault me at three in the morning tonight? Are we homies immediately? Can I trust him? You just have to. Do we have similar body art? Right.

Do you like lifting too? I like lifting. It's like the dirt. You want to lift me? That's great. It's like dirt meeting Reed Rothschild, but in a prison cell. What else? What else do you love that I didn't mention? I love the verbiage. And Shot Collar has a ton of it, but I love all the slang, like...

who's got the keys. Are you inked? Are you clicked? Like are you validated? All that stuff. Like I love having to like, in this one it's wood. Yeah. Yeah. I love having to go to the glossary to like figure out like, Oh, what are these guys talking about? I love the way language will emerge from places because people are kind of trapped there over time and they start to think of new ways to talk to each other. I think this movie has that in, in abundance. Yeah. Yeah.

That was one of the things I loved about Jericho Mile as a kid. I mean, we haven't done Jericho Mile yet. It was the first Michael Mann movie. It's one of the great TV movies ever, and it's set in prison.

And the dialogue that the guys had with each other, I just never seen anything like it. It's like, what is this? It's like another language. Prison's been an obsession of man's the entire career. Like when we talked to him about heat, he clearly had was still thinking about like where guys like Neil had become who they were. Right. Like being at Folsom or being at San Quentin. And then like even in black hat and stuff. And the guy is like,

Yeah, you do your time. Don't let your time do you. Work on your mind, your body, and your spirit. It's like all this philosophical stuff. It's an obsession of a lot of filmmakers. One of the things I like about Shot Caller, if you had told me, what's the guy's name? Rick Romanois? Yeah. Who did... He wrote Den of Thieves. Wrote Den of Thieves. He did Snitch. He's...

I don't know if we'd be best friends with him, but I definitely think we'd have a fun dinner with him. It seems like he has a lot of arches. If you could have stopped me and I wrote Den of Thieves and I wrote and directed Shot Caller, I'd be like, all right, we should at least be acquaintances. Yeah, let's go to a Kings game. Come on. But if you told me Michael Mann was Rick Roman all along and that this was his movie and he was basically...

wearing a disguise and just, this movie has so many different Michael Mann elements. Now he's coming out of like Michael Mann's made a bunch of movies. I'm sure they influence this, but this is, this checks a lot of the Michael Mann boxes, right? Oh, even down to like money driving around downtown Los Angeles when he gets out the first time.

And like looking at his old offices and stuff, it looks like collateral. I mean, like it kind of feels like that. So yeah, it's a, it's a very cool, I can't, I don't know exactly where they shot it. So I, I think I made this mistake with den of thieves where it was like, this was shot in Atlanta. I know you say it's gardenia, but it's not, you know, but it's a cool LA movie too. Just like a cool California movie. It really obviously pulls from some of the same places, man, man shoots in. There's a little Jacob, AKA money in this movie and Neil McCauley, uh,

They're definitely on a text chain. I feel like they would know each other or they've definitely been in the same support group or something. These are guys who are basically like, I'm now a lifelong criminal. I don't want any attachments. I'm probably not a great person. All I have is power and my dignity.

And that's it. That's what I care about. The text chain probably would be a little bit delayed because you've got to write the text, give it to the prison guard. Then 30 minutes later, he hits send. Then he brings it back. So it's a little like carrier pigeon-ish. But yeah, I could see Neil and Money having some interesting anecdotes for each other. Yeah, they're definitely in the same file. All right. So I did my...

I did when I wrote my book of basketball. Well, it actually goes back to when I did my old column and I did a baseball hall of fame pyramid. That was an idea from my buddy, Gus's dad, Wally Ramsey. And we blew it out and we created levels and we did this whole pyramid. So then when I did my basketball book, I really wanted to do the basketball hall of fame pyramid, which was five levels, 96 players in all. And the bottom level of the pyramid, the concept was you walk into the hall of fame,

The lowest possible level are all the players that basically just made it. And then as you start going up the stairs, the next level is a better level of players. And it keeps going until you get to the fifth level, which were the best players. I was thinking about a mini pyramid for prison movies and what that would look like. So basically you have the first movie at the top. The next level is two movies. The next level is three movies. The next level is four movies. The bottom level is five movies. And I think Shawshank is at the top for me. Okay.

You probably disagree. What would you have at the top? I think I'd probably have Kool-Aid Luke at the top, but I acknowledge that Shawshank is probably going to be most people's pick. Also, Shawshank, if we hadn't done it yet, would have been a lock for Rock Bottom Month.

Cause I don't think anyone hit a bigger rock bottom than Andy Dufresne. No, the sister's raping him for two years and reds going, I do believe those were the worst two years for Andy new bruises every day. It's like, yeah, it was probably, that was probably the worst for Andy. All right. So you have cool hand Luke. I had that in the second level. So Shawshank next level, cool hand Luke and bad boys, which we are dead. Then rewatchables. Then the level right below Jericho mile, longest yard,

and Shot Caller. So I have Shot Caller as my six favorite prison movie right now. Yeah. So above Blood In, Blood Out, above... Yeah. Yeah, okay. Next tier, Blood In, Blood Out, Brubaker, American History X, and Escape from Alcatraz.

And then the bottom level, the entry level, when you walk into my little mini pyramid hall of fame, American me, midnight express sleepers lock up and the hurricane. I couldn't get there with green mile. Yeah. I don't, I'm not a green mile fan particularly. Yeah. Yeah. It's not. And I, you know, it's a prison movie, but not totally. And I just couldn't get there. So out of all of those, what do you think? What's the most underrated for you? Blood in blood out.

Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, American Me and Blood In Blood Out both are amazing. The only other editions or ones that I would nominate are like these two ones called Bronson with Tom Hardy that Nicholas Wending Refn made. That's like early 2000s. And then Start Up, which is this movie with Jack O'Connell.

and Ben Mendelsohn. It's really, really good. That's set in England. So I would, uh, English prison movie. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus. Um, but those are the ones you picked are awesome. You know, I mean, I guess some people might be like, is a great escape. A prison movie is, you know, it's Pappy on too long or too, too boring. I don't know, but in the name of the father. So what about, let me ask you this. Do you consider the rock a prison movie?

No, not in the traditional sense. Okay. And you don't consider Con Air a prison movie?

No, I don't. I think it's adjacent. Yeah, there's prison adjacent. Okay. For it to be a true prison movie, and this is why Lock Up, which is a mostly terrible movie that we'll end up doing in the rewatchables, almost definitely with Kyle Brandt, and has an amazing football scene. In the middle of the movie, there's this eight-minute football scene that is one of the best sports scenes of any random movie that's not a sports movie. But

I need prison culture to make it a prison movie. Yeah. I need somebody to be incarcerated in dealing with the other prisoners and the guards for at least a section of the movie. That's why blood in blood out, which, you know, Shay Serrano is not at the ringer anymore. We still love Shay.

he has to come back to do blood in blood out. Like I don't even, I don't even know if he moved to a different country or whatever. He still has to like fly back and do it. We would never do blood in blood out without Shay. I didn't even really feel great about doing shot caller without Shay. I know, but I feel like his presence is here. He's like right over my shoulder. I texted him last night. I was like, Hey man, long time, no talk. We're doing shot caller tomorrow. I was thinking about it. And he's like, I love that movie. But,

But yeah, I think there has to be some version of... Prison culture. Behind bars. Not just passing through. Yeah. Yeah, so Blood In, Blood Out, a significant section of that movie is in prison. But it's not a complete prison movie, right? So in this movie, a significant section's in prison, but not the whole movie. I would say it's probably like a half and half. Yeah, so like, I mean, obviously Rounders would never be considered a prison movie, even though I...

deeply enjoy the prison stuff in rounders right it has to you have to really spend time there but the card game in rounders gets an honorable mention that's a fun side list is just random prison interludes in movies that weren't prison movies yeah we um we when my dad took me to alcatraz when i was a kid because we went to san francisco here we go yeah oh you're ready you're ready i'm ready i'm ready for this story anecdotes yeah

They were filming Escape from Alcatraz when we were there and they were on a set break, but we saw some of the actors. My dad's like, that's Clint Eastwood. Did your dad purposely plan the trip because Eastwood was going to be there? No, we were going to Alcatraz and they were filming stuff. Did your dad lose his mind? Isn't Eastwood his guy? Isn't Eastwood his favorite actor? Well, here's the thing.

This is what I remember now. I haven't checked with my dad lately. You know how those stories happen with your kids and they kind of balloon? Yeah. Eastwood might not have been there. It might've just been like Fred Ward. And then you wouldn't believe it. Dwight Gooden bought us dinner. Right. But that's the thing. So now in 2024, I'm like Eastwood was there. Maybe he wasn't, but as far as I'm concerned now Eastwood was there, but they were definitely filming the movie.

But I've been to Alcatraz a bunch of times. We talked about it when we did the Axe Burner movie. The Alcatraz movie itself, that's all prison. We got to get out of here. It's pretty slow. I don't think it's quite rewatchables worthy. But even that one, I've probably watched, what, eight times?

When it's on, you're like, oh shit, all right, I'll watch when they make the dummies. There's also geology shit in Alcatraz, right? Because he's scraping through the rock really consistently. I actually grew up down the street from a prison. The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is just down the street from where I grew up. It's no longer in use. It hasn't been for quite a long time. Any field trips with the grades or any grade four field trip to the penitentiary? Now they do haunted houses there.

So they do like the haunted Eastern State Penitentiary and it's like a huge attraction now. Guess what? Probably haunted. Think about all the people that die in a penitentiary. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And die in ways that they probably weren't 100% psyched about. All right. So we've established we love prison movies.

We loved Den of Thieves. We did that movie pre-COVID. We did that in person with Shay. I mean, that was one of those almost immediately became, we got to do this on the show. I think that movie had been out two years. The other piece of this is our guy, Jamie Lannister, who I'm just going to say this theory now. If his name was like Nick Walden, I think he's a bigger star. I think his name actually hurt his career. I don't even know how to say it now. Yeah.

I'm trying to think of like a, who is the most famous person with a name that you have to blink twice to like remember? I still can't say it. And he's in one of my favorite prison movies the last 20 years. And he was in Game of Thrones, one of the greatest shows of all time. And it's like Nikolai Costar Waldo. Is that how you say it? But if you were like, if it was Nick Walker, you'd be like, this guy is huge. Yeah. His name was Paul Walker. RIP Paul Walker. Yeah. It was like just a quickie, memorable, nice name.

If his name was Chris Evans, is his career a little bit different? I don't know. I always felt like the name, even seeing him in this, and he's got this whole background. He's Danish. Is he Danish, right? He's Danish. And he's got the little accent. And you can feel the accent a little bit in a couple of the scenes in this movie. But-

Man, I always thought that guy was really good. I thought he was excellent as Jamie Lannister, too. He's also... He brings a real weird... He has a soulfulness once he turns into money. There's still a lot going on behind the eyes. And I think he has a really cool physical presence in this movie that's pretty unique. I was trying to do casting what-ifs in my head, and I have one for you, but... Yeah. I don't know. It's not like... I know that some people might be like, this guy...

doesn't, you know, he just has like a, he seems like his accent's strained, but I thought he did a great job in this. Me too. So he's in Thrones for the entire 2010s. Yeah. He's in Oblivion with Tom Cruise, 2013. He's in The Other Woman, which is a beloved movie with my wife and daughter, 2014. Yeah.

He does two prison movies in 17, Small Crimes and Shot Caller. And Shot Caller, I think, became the one that was enduring. Small Crimes is pretty good, though. That was kind of his moment, though. It kind of came and went. It reminded me, I feel like every decade there's a guy who's awesome in a signature TV show. And we just assume big things are going to happen. I think the Waldau-issance could happen. Well, I was going to give you the guy from the 2000s. There's a specific guy that I'm like, I still kind of can't believe it didn't happen for him.

And maybe there were other reasons. Maybe there was some reasons off the court. Off field reasons. Okay. Sawyer from Lost. Oh yeah. Well, he, and he was, he's popped, he's, he's hung around. He's been in different shows. He's done. He's been fine. I just don't, I'm not quite positive why he wasn't like an A-list movie star. Great name. Josh Holloway. Josh Holloway. Craig, did you watch Lost? I did. Yeah.

Didn't you think Sawyer at some point, like could, what was the difference between Sawyer and Brad Pitt? Was it like, was it like a sizable chasm? He was definitely like the first crush that I remember. Like my friends that were girls having growing up, every girl was in every fucking woman loves Sawyer, like loved him. Like Mallory would probably, if he snapped his fingers right now, Mallory is probably out of her house, leaving halo and Adam behind. I think, I think it's a wrap. Um,

But yeah, so sometimes it just- What a mal drive by in the shot color pod. Sorry, Mal. Mal's nodding. You think she's like, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. But yeah, every decade there's somebody on an awesome show.

I always felt, I don't think John Slattery should have been an A-plus lister. But when he was on Mad Men, I was like, man, what kind of movie career is this guy going to have? And then he did. He was in some good stuff. He had an awesome career of playing variations on his Mad Men character in awesome movies. In Spotlight specifically. Yeah. But yeah, so sometimes you can get pigeonholed by the character. I think that was a big hurdle for Jon Hamm. That's why he leaned into the comedy industry.

and uh started hosting snl and then he's a bridesmaids and then he kind of was able to eventually break out of it but sometimes you have that one character and you're just kind of stuck aaron paul i feel like i suffered from that a little bit oh yeah i would say aaron paul's the number one for that i guess so i mean aaron paul also was on west world and works really consistently he just hasn't had a character as big as jesse pinkman sometimes it's just like

If it was easy to just come up with like 10 characters, like more people would be Tom Hanks. But it's like sometimes you just get that one part. I mean, you can make the argument that Cranston's never going to be bigger than...

Breaking Bad. You know what I mean? And he's worked pretty consistently. But the thing is, when you have that part or you have Gandolfini's part in The Sopranos, the rest is... It's gravy. You're just working at that point. It's like you would take on her after the poor take on her. That's why I'm just coasting. It's like, what else can he do? Yeah, he can mess around with Tyler Parker, do this NBA podcast thing. Yeah, it's like, what's left? So this movie was written and directed by Rick Romanois, who...

who used this prison was the same prison where he filmed the movie called Felon with Val Kilmer, which was kind of like, it's like the brothers McMullen. This is, she's the one where it's like, it was the tester for the bigger budget of the same version of the movie. I'm kind of into this though. I think more filmmakers should get to do this where they're like, I'm going to go make the JV version of what I'm about to like. And then when I, but you just got to let me make this again in four years. Yeah.

It's Craig says this to me all the time about the ringer fantasy show. He's like, what if we redid this, but not with high fits, we just go bigger. We just get larger. Craig, Craig, have you ever figured that out? I cost her wall down. Is that a high fits? Would that work? We need one Danny on the show. We've known that for four years. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's Craig, Nick and Danny. What's the NCW? No budget for this movie that I could find.

It made $3.4 million. No review for Roger Ebert, but I have a special gift for you. I didn't tell you we were doing this. You know, it's 2024. We're trying to...

Be cutting edge on the rewatchables. People say we do too many old movies. People say, you know, they don't want the podcast to get old on them. We're trying to do cutting edge stuff. I went in a chat GPT. I knew you were going to do this. Eventually, this is really creepy. And I asked chat GPT what Roger Ebert would have thought of Shot Caller. Is this a sin what we're doing right now? No.

So chat, chat, chat, JBT said Roger Ebert known for his insightful film criticism might've appreciated the intense character development and gripping narrative of shock collar. He would have likely praise the film's exploration of themes such as the consequences of choices and the transformation of its protagonists.

Ebert might have also commented on the performances, particularly Nicolai Costa-Waldau's portrayal of the lead character's evolution. This is all pretty solid. However, he might have also critiqued any elements of the film that felt overly sensationalized or lacking in subtlety. I don't know, that felt a little AI-ish. Overall, Ebert might have given Shot Caller a positive review, acknowledging its strengths while offering constructive criticism. That's fair. Given the film's critical acclaim and

And the potential for Ebert to appreciate his themes and performances, he might have awarded it a rating in the range of three to three and a half stars out of four. Chat GPT. I think three and a half out of four would be a high ranking for Ebert. I think he's three. I think Raj goes three. Yeah. Craig, what did you think of AI Roger Ebert? You know what? Not bad. It's probably sacrilege, but look, I'm an AI right now. You don't even know that. Yeah.

It was interesting. I don't know if we would do it for every post-2016 movie, but I would. There's something there. Yeah, I just think if you're going to do it, we got to like really break the seal and be like, dear ChatPeteGPT, like what would money from Shot Caller have thought of January 6th? What does money from Shot Caller think of Q Shaman? All right. On that note, we're going to take a break.

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Money goes to the Bernthal party. We haven't talked about Bernthal yet. Let's save it. Let's save it like it's like a dessert wine that I'm going to bust out. It's a palate cleanser. Yeah, yeah. No, let's save it. Because I don't know if we've done a really good Bernthal movie since Wayne Jenkins. We've got something special in the back the chef's been holding on to. Have we done Bernthal since Jenkins started? We did something where he was in because I was like, I can't do Jenkins because Johnny Burns is in this. Okay.

All right, so first we're watching the Money Goes to the Party. It's been a minute, huh? Welcome home, brother. Jason Horvath. Honor. I bet the name's Chef, huh? It mean anything to you? Don't let me tweak us all the folds from those last night. Every single one of these bitches in here are all fucking dirt legs, dude. I'm telling you, man. Every single one of them, man. They're fucking cheerleaders, brother. You can literally do whatever the fuck you want to them. You want a drink? Smoke? I got you, brother. He looks good, don't he? He looks good.

There's just a lot of girls and a lot of people who had just gotten out of jail. Not a party you and I would probably be invited to. You don't think you go to any parties where you meet the every tweaker south of Folsom knows who you are guy? Right. And where they say they point it to the girls in the room and you can literally do whatever you want. I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. Yeah.

He goes to the bathroom because he gets freaked out. Our guy, who we don't have a lot of history on at this point, comes back out. One of the girls is naked. And then he's like, hey, you know, put on your clothes. Like, blah, blah, blah. He's like, what if we went and got a drink? Yeah. And they're like, oh.

Our guy, Jamie Lannister, maybe he's a good guy down deep. Like, I like how he handled this. Comes out and somebody's shooting at him and we're off. Here comes Shotgun. But it's also, it's a cool kind of like, I mean, obviously if you'd seen the trailer or if you had known anything about this movie, you knew you were going to get the whole trajectory of this character from Jacob to money. But-

When he walks into the party, everybody is like kissing the ring and they're like, oh my God, that's him. That's him. But then when you see him personally, he's obviously got a lot of anxiety and is going through something. So it really is like a cool twist because he's not running shit. He's just sort of pretending to. Yeah. One of the cool things, we talked about the structure before, how we bounced back and forth. They set up in this scene, his stature in this whole prison community.

But then we go backwards where he has no stature at all. Well, actually we see him as a stockbroker and, you know, on double date. And then we see him going to prison with zero stature. And we see later in the movie when he meets Bernthal's character and Bernthal clearly is higher in the pecking order than him. And it's basically like, I own you now. Cause you're like, you're my drug mule. Yeah. Right. And then it just flips. And so, you know, we're constantly about, Oh, he was here. And you're just watching like the seesaw of somebody.

Um, next rewatchable scene I have is the double date into the car accident. I dirty secrets. You are a good car accident scene in a movie is always going to get me. I don't know why. Does that make me a bad person? I don't know. I had forgotten his crime this time around. So I was like, Oh, this is a long, long car driving scene. And then like, I really, I remembered like, Oh, they had their bottle of wine. You know, he was going to blow a 1.0 or 0.10.

It's a tough one. What do you think memorable car accidents in movies are?

Cause singles is a good one. Singles is a good one. Kira Sedgwick and Campbell Scott. I like car accidents where nobody gets hurt, but it's like a fun car accident. Whiplash has a pretty good one. Whiplash. No country for old men has a good one. Oh, no country is a great one. Yeah. That one is like loud as shit. You're like, Oh my God, I feel like I got hit by a car. It's not even a car accident. It's the surprise car accident. Yeah. It's always the T-bone out of nowhere. Yeah. The, uh, Pulp Fiction, I guess.

Oh yeah. I can factor that one in there potentially. But yeah, so that's just a good scene. It's well shot. I also like that we start with the typical double date, like the kind of double date, you know, you probably had in Portland with Chuck and his wife. Just a nice dinner, some friends having a drink, and then all of a sudden he's in jail in his shot collar. Can I ask you guys a question? How many bottles of wine, if you're on a double date, four of you, how many bottles of wine would need to be ordered for you to blow a .1?

It sounds like they did. I bet a cocktail each and two bottles of wine. So that's a cocktail and three or four glasses each. Yeah. So you're the wine guy. Double date. That's a two and a half hour, probably dinner, right? At least two. If you show up before the table is ready and everybody gets cocktails. So that's the cocktail plus the two bottles of wine.

That's two glasses of wine for everybody at the table. So that's three drinks over the course of three hours. I would say that's the 1.0.

And maybe he like the waiter came over, maybe he had like three and a half. Yeah. Yeah. You need more than three glasses of wine. I feel like to blow a 0.1. I think that they had a, I think they had a margarita before they got started or like they had like a something, or maybe they have like a little, like a shot of a morrow afterwards. Because there's food too, which can kind of dilute some of the effect of it too. But, um,

Jacob goes to jail, I have as the next scene, which has a great pep talk slash warning speech from his lawyer. Uh-huh. Look, man, I know you're scared. All right, I would be scared. But you need to know this. All violent crimes, from domestic battery to capital murder, get housed together. It means you'll be with the big boys. And they will test you whether you like it or not. Rest of you, single file. So you got to stand up for yourself. Because once you're marked in there...

It will never end. Got a lot to say about this lawyer. You got to stand up for yourself because once you get marked in there, it'll never end. How does this guy have all this inside prison info? He's like fucking, he's like Adriel Wojnarowski of prison. If you've got all this intel on prison, shouldn't you have been better at keeping me out? Right.

Right. Because my favorite scene, you just skipped it, but it's like when Jacob gets his plea deal and the lawyer looks like he just got like reamed out by his boss. He's like, oh man, I don't think I can even negotiate here. And it's like, what if Dan Hurley was doing this for the Yukon? Like, I think we're going to get our ass kicked. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah.

Like what the hell, man? Like work with something here. He's like JJ Redick on first take. You'll be with the big boys. He's just doing this whole monologue. He's breaking down what prison life's going to be like. I have no idea how he knows any of this, but it's a very important speech for, for our guy, Jacob, because he's like, all right. Then he learns don't cry the first day of prison.

They go to bed. They're all in the bunks. And as soon as the lights go out, the security guard walks away. And all of a sudden, like four guys hop on the crying guy. And they assault him, yeah. We've seen enough prison movies where we're just like...

As soon as that guard goes away, you just know something awful is going to happen. I think it's like one thing I would say about this movie is that it's pretty artfully and tastefully done. Like I, it's obviously got a lot of blood, but I don't think it's like excessively gory. Yeah. For what it could have been. And that scene is like terrifying, but not like exploitative. It's really, it's, it's kind of cool how they do it. Yeah. They set on a,

On Jacob. Yeah. And he's just kind of listening. It's his POV. Yeah. Yeah. So I watched this movie last night and my daughter wanted to watch a movie. And I was like, I got to watch Shot Caller. So she ended up watching with me. And she was like on her phone, like not really watching, but then immediately got sucked in. Okay. And I don't think she'd ever seen a prison movie before. My daughter, for people listening, is 18 and a half. So it's not like, you know.

But she's also your daughter, so I'm kind of surprised you haven't been like... We haven't subjected her to some prison. It's American Me Night. Hey, Zoe, have you seen American History X yet? So then my wife came in, and during that scene, my daughter was so... I realized how innocent my daughter was. She was so confused. She was like, what are they doing? Are they beating him up? And I was like, no, it's actually way worse. And she's like, way worse? Like...

they're having sex with him. And she was just so horrified. Why would they do that? Why don't the other people stop it? And I'm like, man, we got to start watching more prison movies in the Simmons house. Um, it's basically the, it's, it's the underlying theme of every prison movie. Yeah. I think it's, it's the terror that lurks in all of them. Yeah. Yeah. Among many other terrors. Um, but that leads to the big fight the next day. Um,

When he bumps into that dude and that guy's like, now Jacob is like, I have to, I have to get associated with somebody here. I can't make your mark alone. Yeah. Plus when somebody calls you Peckerwood, it's time to throw down. So that guy said to him, Hey, Peckerwood, but Jacob bumps into him, right? Yeah. I think accidentally, but maybe not accidentally. Maybe not. Yeah.

Smart move. Want some respect. It was basically like, you know, we're going through the draft stuff now. That was his combine right there. All the scouts were there with their stopwatches. I would be more like Caleb Williams. I'd be like, I'm not working out. You guys, you guys just see my tape. I'm not working out. I'm good. Now he's like, I gotta, I gotta get some tape on the board here. I gotta show my dash off. Next one, the reveal that our guy Bernthal, AKA Shotgun,

It's a snitch on the outside. It's working for the other side. Yeah, man. Monica. They got Monica put away. We just got to get her out. It's tough. So there's some times in this movie where I feel like maybe some stuff got left on the cutting room floor and we'll get to that. But the Bernthal thing where it's like when Shotgun's talking about his girlfriend who's obviously got busted on a drug trafficking case. It's a scene missing. It's great though. But like, because it's like you just...

Shotgun's still kind of a weasel, but you kind of understand what's going on. Yeah. Plus it's Bernthal. I don't think there's a scenario where I'm not rooting for Bernthal in a movie, even when he's directly opposed to the hero in our movie that I'm watching right now. Right. And he's not a great guy. And I'm still like, ah, maybe you guys can work it out. It's Bernthal. He does a good...

He's a couple scenes in here when the character is clearly going off the rails and is using drugs. Like he snorts cocaine in the car as he's driving, but his eyes are like super bloodshot and fucked up. And yeah, he changes his demeanor and he's just more fidgety and, and once you know that shotgun is a snitch, if you go back to shotguns party, you're like, Oh my God, that makes all this like his nervous energy and his like try hardness makes so much sense here.

Yeah. Next we watch, we'll see Money's First Murder. Great slow-mo. One of the better slow-mos in recent memory of that moment when he's like, oh my God, I'm actually about to murder somebody and nails him. And then you hear Bottles' voice in the background going...

The fact is, we all started out as someone's little angel. And the fact is, this place turns us into warriors or victims. Nothing in between can exist here. And you've chosen to be a warrior. Now it's up to you to remain one. So this is when money saves...

Herman, right? Saves the guy, the Mexican guy during the riot, right? No, I'm going back earlier when they commit their first murder of the guy in the cell. When him and the other guy throw that guy in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And he hears that voice about the warriors are victims. Really good speech. Good scene. I really like the dad-son scene when the son goes up, Lake Bell's son goes up to the room and is like, you didn't send me a letter in seven years. And just the way our guy Nikolai

plays that scene i think's really good i like when he escapes from his hotel room you don't know it seems like he's gonna hang himself but he does for a second you're like yeah yeah it's really and and just the ability to like keep the it's like a jail trick he's obviously learned of like how to keep a window look closed but be open kind of thing yeah the riot's great

Just great. I mean, all riots, all riots in a good prison movie are great. This one's really good. It's also awesome how like, I love when there's something, a riot where someone tells him some of the rules, like make sure you go in the middle of the cameras, get down on the ground when they tell you to, and otherwise you should be okay. And he knows when he, when he looks up at the camera, he's like, shit, I got caught. Craig, you took notes during that scene, right? Like you got to stay in the middle in any riot. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very strategic, but we're all kind of planning our attack soon, so be ready. You got to just give a nice little look, find out where the cameras are, and just stay where the masses are, and that's usually how to do it. Jacob meets the Beast, played by our guy. Holt. Holt McAllen-y. Unrecognizable in this. Yeah, I mean, the beard is incredible. And also just like...

It's so visually striking. The guys in shoe all wearing just like just white boxers and chucks. It's such a sick look. Yeah. I got to start bringing that back. You're going to just, why don't you test drive it around the house? See what Phoebe thinks. Just going to see. Phoebe. And a couple of tats. Yeah. Just ready to roll. The beast says those cops, they need to understand that we run the show. These cops, they need to understand that we run the show.

Some get it, like Roberts. But the rest think the more they lock us down and isolate us, it strips us of our power. They even think we close the books. We're a dying breed. They're dead fucking wrong. I have some questions about that for later. And then you like to read? A good collection of psychology. All of a sudden he turns into like your buddy from book club. Thanks, LeVar Burton. Appreciate it.

Two more scenes. Jacob kills shotgun. Yeah. This is everything you ever want from an action movie scene, right? It's so good. It's a great fight. I just like, I don't know whether it's aged the best or the worst, but the, the shank stab seems so awful. Like the lots and lots and lots and lots of little stabs kind of, it's just such a tough way to go. And, and, you know, shotgun just being like, I'm no punk. I'm no punk. Well, our guy Bernthal,

dials up the death scene. Yeah. I think he, he asked the director, like, what do you think? Like five seconds, 15, 25. How long do you want? And Rick Roman was like, do you like 30 seconds of dying? How about that? And, and maybe like at near the end, you could just start spitting out dark blood. Berthold's like, got it. And just goes for it for literally a half minute. He's dying, spitting and mumbling. And it's really good.

Last one, the showdown, him and the Beast. I'm leaving out when the gun, I had the gun, that whole scene's coming up. Yeah, that's coming up later. In Palm Desert, yeah. The showdown of him and Beast and Beast just immediately knowing that he was involved. He wants to film out to find out exactly what he knew. How does it feel to be the walking dead? And then of course brings up the family. Nobody's touching my family. And then one of the great moments

Get out of the handcuffs tricks. I don't know how he did it. I don't know how he did it either. We'll talk about it. Yeah. Is this, is this, was there a missing scene? I know he goes to the convenience store, gets the razor blade, gets the every, all the stuff, but how does he conceal it is the only thing I'm trying to figure out. No, they have that split that like really short scene where he's basically shitting out. Right. That's where it was. So when he went back in, somehow he ran that way up his ass.

It's got better and better ramming, you know, contraband up his ass. But really good. I'm going to give this the great shot Gordo the tail end when he's standing over him covered in blood with the sunlight behind him. Really nice. Mine is not that much different. It's the intro. It's the first shot of the beast. It's like coming out of the right of the indoors. And like you see this one guy in the cages and he's just like, I run this whole fucking thing.

It's an interesting fight scene because it seems like they're just going to go at it like Rocky two style. It's amazing that they, it's over so fast. Cause if you were doing that, if you were money, you're like, this has to end in five seconds or I'm dead. Like it, this is, I have to, I have to catch this guy flat footed or I'm it's over. My daughter watching it.

was like, wait, what? Like, it's like, cause it's, you just assume we've seen so many movies that it's going to go two, three minutes. Somebody is going to have the upper hand. The other guy is like, so you don't understand. He's been stuffing things in his rectum for years. Remember when he was on the toilet? Uh, but he gets them and that's it. What do you have for most rewatchable?

Uh, I think it's the money kills the beast scene just because it's so visually overwhelming and like him being covered in blood and these white shorts and kind of then telling the prison guard, like what's what, like how things are going to work going forward. Um, so it's either that or it's, uh,

It's, it's money's party. It's like his welcome home party. It's just such like a crazy like world to be dropped in feet first. And meanwhile, we're in that world a lot. Cause it feels very similar to the training day. Yes. That house that he's in, it feels very similar to two or three fast and furious movies that we've had where they're in like those kinds of things. Um, I have the riot.

I think the riot is just excellent. I love how, uh, I love when they're all passing the shanks and they're like digging up the dirt and pulling stuff out and just to just how they're getting the contraband ready to go to actually fight with. And then, um,

I like how they line up with the other gang and then they head toward the other side. They realize what's happening. And then it's just chaos. Yeah, it's chaos. And then him saving his buddy is a good one, but I think it's a really strong one. Craig, what did you have for most rewatchable? I think the scene at the end, I think that whole setting of like those cages. In the middle of the desert like that. In the middle of the desert. Like if those were in Venice, you could charge like a hundred bucks a month for people to work out in those. Like those are so cool.

It's a great business plan. Sit in the shot collar cages. That's right. People would absolutely go in those cages and film themselves, pull up bars, weights. That would work. You don't need all that expensive material, brother. All right, we'll get on that. We'll launch that business. What stage is the best? Can I go first for this one? Yeah, you know what? Actually, let's take a break and then we'll do it.

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All right, CR, what's aged the best? What do you got? I love it when getting caught is part of the plan. Oh. And I would like to call this the John Doe has the upper hand.

I love when a guy is like, wait, why is he getting caught? Oh, it was all part of the plan. He was going to go back in to get the beast and he's like thrown his life away. Basically. Now he runs the Aryan brotherhood. It's so insane. But I fucking, what other movies have done that? Well, uh, seven did that. Obviously that's the John Doe. Uh, Joker does that in Batman, uh, in dark night. Um, you know, I think that,

you could say that Hannibal Lecter does that in Silence of the Lambs where he allows himself to get caught so that he can, he can, he can do stuff. So like, they do it in face off with Travolta, right? Yes. Yeah. That's a good one. Great call. I had my number one was the concept of a shot caller. Yeah. Who's got the keys, man?

Do we have cool enough terms for things? Like in football, we have these like general terms, like offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. In general, in sports, we have all these terms that we've just had forever. Like in baseball, it's like the closer and then everyone else is just a reliever. And I always was saying how we should call the eighth inning guy, the cooler. Shot caller is great. Like why is an offensive coordinator just the shot caller?

Or there should be a special, because you know how now they're getting so many offensive coaches where it's like passing game coordinator, run game coordinator. It's like, why don't we get a guy who's shot caller, but he only calls the shot plays where they're going for the end zone? You know what I mean? That would be a great use of shot caller. Right. Or like the GM. Maybe the GM is just the name is the shot caller. Or we say like...

Bob Kraft is the owner of the Patriots, but he's saying Elliot Wolfe is the shot caller. Yeah. Well, that would be a good way of determining who actually runs the team. So it's like, even though there's a GM and all these other people, it's like, yeah, but Daryl's the shot caller on the Sixers. Right. So in the Celtics, is Wick the shot caller or is it Brad Stevens? I would just want to know. I'd want to know who all the shot callers were.

I just want everyone to know I'm still the shot caller of the ringer until further notice. But I could get, somebody could come after me like the beast and just take it from me. I'm ready every day. Who's coming? Ben Solak walks up to you wearing boxers. He's covered in tats. He's just like, Ben, why'd you want to see me? And all of a sudden I'm on the ground. I also had the outdoor box cage cells that we mentioned earlier for what's aged the best.

And I also think that has to be Den of Thieves, Benihana Awards scene-stealing location. It's just that wide shot of the six cages. It's so fucking cool. It's incredible. Speaking of little mini awards and what's aged the best, the heroin balloon in the ramen.

Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink. I love when they smuggle in stuff in the food or the toothpaste is always great in prison. I had a Money's Cheese Steak that he's about to get into with him and Howie. But yeah, the ramen one is really good. What's the best movies where guys get shot when they have a bulletproof vest on and you think they're dead for a split second and it's a little viewer trick?

crossed with movies where characters have to use prepaid cell phones. Yeah. Like my Pythagorean formula is if those two things are in a movie, I'm probably going to like it. Just those two. It could be about anything else. But if I have those two things, I'm in. Also just Howie's level of loyalty to Beast where Beast is like, get out of this car and take a bus now. And he's just like, you got it, but whatever you want. Oh yeah, to mean to Jacob, not to Beast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, to the money. Yeah, right.

Another one's aged the best. The Hanlon's living in Pasadena and then he gets caught. And then just a little subtle that now they're in Eagle Rock. I thought it was just good LA geography. So he sold the house in Pasadena, living in a little two bedroom in Eagle Rock. It's near the old Oinkster. Yeah, but they probably were doing- Yeah, we're renting for now, trying to get back on our feet. Yeah, my husband, he actually wound up getting another seven concurrent years for participating in a prison riot. Yeah.

You think that little, little, little small talk at the Montessori pickup, you know, looking at places down in St. Bernardino, but we'll come back. Jacob's rising through the brand. So we're really hoping that, you know, he has a chance to be shot caller. We're going to find out a little later. If he runs meth in all of California, you know, maybe we'll go to Harvard Westlake. Uh, what else? What, what other, what stage of best you have? Um,

Um, I had just like the little, like I said, the little details, all the vocabulary of prison stuff, but also like when Kutcher, the RMR hardware character, when he first gets, uh, when he first gets Jacob on parole and he's like taking all the pictures of the tats and it was like, oh, I thought you might have a shamrock. Like, cause just like the little details like that are really, really, really awesome. Yeah.

And then also Bernthal's peak in this movie is when he goes and picks up Jacob and Howie at that restaurant and

And, you know, Jacob's just like, I'm not supposed to be seen with anybody validated like I am in broad fucking daylight right now. Like, you know, he's made this mistake of hooking up with money on the outside. Yeah. And Bernthal goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the way he says that. I'm going to fucking hit him. I'm going to check their fucking asses. I'm going to find out who took those shots. I'm going to fucking hit him. Not until the deal's done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm on him.

I had Bernthal in What Saves the Best with an exclamation point next time. And then I had Bernthal movies in the Wayne Jenkins era.

where we've been doing the Wayne Jenkins character really for almost two years. Yeah. And now whenever Bernthal is doing Wayne Jenkins, who he created because it was his character, it's just like seven times more enjoyable for me. I know. And that was one of those scenes where it's like he became Wayne Jenkins a couple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's each of the best prison movies? What's each of the best? The 2010s and Lake Bell. Speak on it.

Really important how to make it an America character, early 2010s HBO character. A lot of Dave Jacoby conversations over the years about Lake Bell. Always enjoyed her work and a bunch of different things.

And she's got this nothing part in this movie, but I believe in what she's doing in it. She does a good job. And it's a lot of like, what would you do if you were her? Would you give up on this guy? He's not even writing letters. Like, why would you even stay married to him? Honorable mention most rewatchable scene is their first coffee together after he gets out. It's good. And you find out that he hasn't communicated with her in seven years. Wow.

Well, that's another Michael Mann scene, right? Like he loved diners. He loved awkward conversations between people that used to be together or thinking about being together where there's like small cups of coffee. Yeah.

I have to ask you, this is, I didn't notice this. So she's supposed to, is she supposed to be dating anybody in this era? Like when she's... They shied away. It seems like she's been broken from a dating standpoint, which I understand. You know, I got to say it might be a deal breaker for me. Even if I got to like go out with Lake Bell and I'm like, so like, what's your ex do? And it's just like, wow.

He's kind of rising through the ranks of the Aryan Brotherhood. And I'm like, well, you know what? I got a crazy early meeting tomorrow, but this has been awesome. Do me a favor. Can you take the battery out of your cell phone and break that? He's in prison, but it's actually, it's been good. Like he's, you know, he's number two right now in the AB. He knows so much about human psychology now.

I like his letter to his son for what's aged the best. Make your mark on this world. Be your mother's protector no matter what you hear about me. Keep moving forward. Don't look back. I might just email that to Ben tonight with no context. I will say that if you ever write your kid a letter and the other parent is like, we thought you were going to commit suicide, maybe not a great letter to send. Right. Well, especially then signing it, your father would like that sincerely. Yeah.

Love. Miss ya. No, none of that. Just your father. Oh, God. I have two more things. A couple of phenomenal mustaches in this movie. Incredible. Really peaking with the final, the mustache finals of... Jacob has a couple different iterations. He goes big, bushy, goatee at one point. He goes mustache, the girlfriend mustache with the chin. Yeah. But then he settles on that horseshoe mustache.

Which we talked about before we started taping. I think you, me, and Craig were all jealous of it. Like, it just... You really have to grow it in all the right spots. It's got to have the right kind of girth. Benjamin Bratt's got a pretty good stache in this one, right? Well, so he's in the finals as well. Whatever. He's got this giant, bushy, kind of crazy mustache. Good stuff, yeah. Those are two. There's some other good ones, too. Just quickly, I did some research on this. Well, there's two different things on research. One is...

Just the hierarchy of the prison. So money goes in. He's a, he's a wood. Wood is like Packerwood. You're yeah. You're basically a white guy. You're not really in any of the better gangs yet. Um, not the better. Yeah. You're it's like in the social network where the, uh, what's his name? Andrew Garfield characters trying to get into that special club houses. Yeah. Zuckerberg can't get into. He's like, Oh, I made it to the next level.

Shotgun was a pen one, which is a gang called Public Enemy Number One. Yeah. That's below Aryan Brotherhood.

So in the pecking order, that's kind of like the MLS and Aryan brothers, like the premier league. Ripper. Can you imagine premier league comms guys right now? I'll be like Bill Simmons, who said that we were like the Aryan brotherhood of world football. Love some of the stuff you said in shot caller, but just, I wanted to, wanted to clarify a couple of things. Ripper, his roommate that he gets when he moves to the special two man cells. Yeah. He was a Nazi low rider.

So eventually money becomes number three in the Aaron brotherhood. And the beast, right? Right. And Redwood goes to death row because he kills the guy. So now it's beast. Now money's moved up to number two. I loved Redwood. Would have loved to have got a couple more minutes. Would have loved. Yeah. And the TV series, I think Redwood gets his own backstory and all that stuff. So, but for whatever reason, the AB is the highest in the gang hierarchy.

So they usually, whoever is the number one person in the Aryan Brotherhood, they run at least a lot of the prison. Yeah. Right? And when money gets out, he's the only guy from Aryan Brotherhood

on the outside. He's the highest ranking guy, which is why he's treated with such deference. I will say that What's Aged the Worst has been my search history for the last three days. Mine as well. I just want to let you guys know it was just for research. Yeah. The eye in the sky up there is like, why is everybody watchables thinking about joining the Aryan Brotherhood? A lot of Department of Justice press releases. Yeah.

And then last but not least, here are all the books that were on Money's Prison bookshelf near the end. Tell me how many of these you read, C.R. Okay. The Book of Five Rings, The Art of War. I have that one. The Holy Bible, New King James Version. The Selected Words of Nietzsche. The Prince by Machiavelli. Deep Black Jihad. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Aztec Revenge.

Of Mind and Matter? People aren't sure if that was a real book. Yeah, I think they think because it's written by a guy who worked on the movie. Yeah. And then The Human Animal by Karen Sequoia is the one he was reading. Gotta say, front to back, only read Hemingway. Only read For Room to Belt Holes. I've dabbled in some of the other ones, though. Any other What's Aged the Best for you? No? No. The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film. This...

Two things bug me about this movie. And I guess one of them could be in one stage, the worst, and one could be here. But one is he becomes a gangbanger in prison, just a whiff too fast. Yeah. Now he's in prison for a while and they're cutting some stuff. So like if this is happening over the course of a year and a half, that makes sense. A year and a half is a long time. But I would say for a weak link, I don't understand why he's so anxious to cut all cords with his family.

Like, especially when he gets like the extra seven years and he just says to his wife, it's over. Forget I exist. I think he knows that to survive, it's not going to just be seven years. To get, to get, because to basically to secure his own safety, he's going to have to do things in the prison that will probably extend his sentence.

Counter, is there maybe a more diplomatic way that's not as hurtful to tell your wife and son? Could he just have said, just so you know, I have to join a gang to live? Yeah, maybe you don't want to put that in writing, but you could also say, hey, I love you guys, but I've passed the point of no return in here. And we are not going to be a big, happy family again. I would urge you to move on, but my love will always be there. But

Just to do the, it's over, forget I exist is pretty tough. What'd you have for Butch's girlfriend? Just, I find the dynamics of the gun deal, the like sort of crucial gun deal and like all the stuff between the two Mexican gangs and like how Shotgun is working with Herman and whether or not Shotgun is like, that gets a little bit convoluted or compressed. And so I just would have liked to have understood what was going on a little bit more. Ultimately, all you need to know is that money wants to get put back in jail.

Yeah. I almost put this for Butch's girlfriend that the actual payoff, big shootout, gun deal, all that stuff. It's a little slow. I don't think it 100% works. Yeah. It's not like the strongest part of the movie. You kind of just want to get back to him and the beast. And it's like he throws that guy, he throws the Emery Cohen character out of the cab. And when they get out of the truck, the guys are just like, where is he? It's just a little rushed. It gets a little sloppy. I'm with you. What's aged the worst?

His accent is tough a couple times during this movie. We were like, oh, that guy's clearly not from California. It kind of breaks a little bit. Yeah. As you know, one of my real passions with TV and movie culture is terrible soccer scenes. I was waiting for this. Joshua. There's an alternate universe where professionally...

I don't know what I'm doing to make ends meet nine to five, but my passion is really at nights, just finding soccer scenes from movies and TV shows that are terrible. And I have a whole website where I do commentary on them. And there's also an Instagram account. The soccer movie dad. Yeah. There's some of the worst soccer scenes. I don't know why nobody can figure this out, but they're always filmed where there's like only three people running. There's a spot in this one where

They're setting up like a shot he takes. And there's just like four people standing on the sides in the background who are supposed to be playing in the game. And then he makes a, whatever, terrible shot. And it's just, I don't know why they can't figure this out.

Soccer should be the easiest one to figure out. Did Zoe watch this scene? We were appalled. But there's been worse. You watch any Lifetime movie or some of the other ones. There's appalling soccer all over the place. I also think we left a huge comic moment on the table with like, couldn't money go to one of Joshua's soccer matches? Just in the cage? No, when he's out briefly when he's out. Oh, okay.

That's a great point. I didn't even think of that. Couldn't he go to one soccer match where he's just... I like the idea of them bringing the cage to the soccer field. Like Adam Electer? He's just pacing and doing pull-ups. They put it behind one of the nets. Way to go, Josh. Track back. Josh, you gotta take that guy out. Kill him. More with Sage the Worst. Things I don't love about prison movies.

Really narrow it down to, we talked about the sexual assault stuff, which is just a staple. The sticking things up your ass as contraband, I just, it's rough. I know we have to do it. I know we're trying to be as realistic as possible, but man. And then just handing it off, like, here, shotgun, here's the balloon. It's been my ass for nine hours. You just watch it, and you're like, oh man, is he going to get hepatitis B? Yeah.

You think that's what he's worried about? Yeah, but probably not. Any other one stage of yours? The parole board. Like when they just are like the obviously corrupt prison guard is just like, he's just been a great citizen ever since he got to the shoe. And they're just like, sounds good. You're out. Good.

Good luck. Yeah, it doesn't look like you've gone under any negative transformation since you've been in the prison system. You've added 20 tattoos. You have Pat Riley's hair with a horseshoe mustache. You've put on 20 pounds of muscle. Yeah. And everyone's afraid of you. Good luck. I think there's also a couple of scenes where you can tell... I don't know whether... We didn't really even talk about the basketball scene that much. But you can see that...

uh, Nikolai has money's physique, but like is wearing a suit or wearing like a, a t-shirt or whatever. Yeah. Like trying to hide that. Like he has it like he would. Yeah. I did think about some, how they did some of that stuff. Like Bernthal's hair, he has shaved hair. Yeah. And then it's like grown out so that they might, they definitely put some thought on how they filmed some of this stuff. Um,

The Ruffalo Hannah Rubinick Partridge overacting word. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me lady. I come in here. I give these things to you. Give me all you got. Give me all you got. I treated you like a son. You fucking stabbed me in the heart. Fuck you. Fuck you.

I thought, I like Omari Hardwick in this movie, but he really goes for it in that one scene when he's in the car with Benjamin Bratt and they're talking about flashbacks about when he got shot that time. And Omari Hardwick's like, I know I'm in power, but on stars and people love that show. And it's probably not that realistic. I can win a best actor Oscar.

But if it's in play, this is the clip right here for me. And he really, really goes for it. And I feel like he actually underacts a little too much, but he's dialing it up. He's really going for it in this scene. I think it's either this or it's Bernthal's death scene. Was there a better title for this movie? No way. Somebody suggested we change best quote to the Can You Dig It Award for most memorable quote. I think for me, it would be, you got your rules and we got the gang's rules and theirs matter.

That's a good one. I like The World Went On Without Us, Holmes. The guy in the flower shop. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. He's in here 17 years. The World Went On Without Us, Holmes. What do you got for the CR? Thanks, Luke Wilson. Could have been Harrison Ford. How does it take a word? I have that this movie is amazing the way it's structured, but if you want it to achieve maximum rock bottom, it should have been linear.

Like, so we start with him as a successful stockbroker and we're like, what's going on? This is like 15, 17 minutes of this guy just kind of having a family in Pasadena. Yeah. And then the car accident. And then you're like, okay, but he'll get like a plea deal or something. Right.

and it just gets worse and worse and worse. So you're saying they should do the Godfather Koda cut with Shotcaller. Shotcaller Koda cut. Rick Roman-Wass said that, he was like, I'm not comparing the two things, but this is kind of like the prison version of the Deer Hunter, which has the same sort of similar structure. But I just think that if you wanted to maximize how hard you hit rock bottom, you would show normal guy going into prison.

Interesting. Because you already know he gets out when you start the movie. Craig, what would the millennials have wanted from this? Like straight linear or would they have wanted to go back and forth? Well, it's definitely grabbier to start the way it does. If it starts out with 15 minutes of him just being a stockbroker, that might make people get bored and click away. So I get it. Yeah. I'm with Craig. Casting what ifs, there are none. Part of the problems with doing movies from the last 10 years is that there's never enough intelligence on the movie. Yeah.

Best That Guy Award. The guy who plays Chopper? Evan Jones, man. Yeah, Evan Jones. Is Evan Jones, is he officially shed that guy status or is he still Evan Jones? I think he's Jarhead, 8 Mile, Den of Thieves. He's a great that guy. And I always have to look him up, no offense. Hall of Famer. Yeah, I'm with it too. All right, Dion Waiters. One of the great Dions we've had in a while.

I I'll just read you the three nominees. I had the beast ripper and bottles. And you didn't put Redwood in. Oh, Redwood should have been in there too. That's great. That's even better. Um,

It's got to be Holt. It's got to be McAllen. I was going to say, I really was trying to figure out a, it's like trying to figure out Jokic MVP this year and be like, Oh, maybe it's shit. No, it's Jokic. Come on. Don't ever think this. Jeffrey Donovan, his bottles is incredible, but, uh, and even the way he like does the prison walk, uh,

is fantastic. I love when Jeffrey Donovan in the riot scene, when he stabs the guy and he does the three-step back, getting away from the guy after. It's just like, but like while kind of looking around and see if anyone caught him. And then puts dirt on his bloody knuckles so that he can see that he was fighting. Yeah. Did Jeffrey Donovan have a good enough career for how much we like him? He's one of my favorite character actors right now. He shows up in a lot of Taylor Sheridan stuff. He's so good. When has, have you ever seen Jeffrey Donovan where you're like, oh man, he's so good.

Why? I don't know. This guy's in this? I'm always the opposite. I'm always like, Jeffrey Donovan. Oh. Yeah. Flipping recasting couch a tiny bit. I have a conversation we need to have here. Well, I'm changing the actual premise of it. It's not just recasting couch now. You can recast the role, the director-

Or the city the movie is located. So in this movie, the city doesn't matter. Director, you could probably say Michael Mann. But this movie needs to be related to the California prison system because of the gangs that are in it, kind of. It definitely can't just be in Vancouver or something. No. So let me just thought experiment this with you. Because we both love this movie. If it's Michael Mann and it's Brad Pitt as Jacob...

Is this like one of the biggest movies of the last 10 years from an action standpoint? Yeah, but it's going to be a lot different. It's going to be a lot more about like what he's reading and it's going to be a lot more about like what he's doing to expand his mind. I think, I think it would just be a much different film. I, it would be, we would have done it on the rewatchables like 150 movies ago. What's your recasting? It's a little bit more playful just because Rick woman, Roman wall wound up writing dead of thieves. Yeah.

I would talk about Pablo Schreiber or Gerard Butler as money. Gerard Butler is money. But it's like a little bit younger Gerard Butler and you could see his life being like, he would be a very convincing like smart meat stockbroker. So, I mean, I could see Schreiber doing it too, but just because those guys have been in later works by Rick Roman Waugh. Craig, who would you have as money?

Of the names you just listed or just- No, anyone. You can have anybody from the last 10 years. Chalamet? Couldn't do one pull-up in that cell. I don't know. That's hard. I'd have to think about that. I don't have anybody off the top of my head, to be honest. Could this have been our guy, Chris Hemsworth? He's too young? Well, he plays basically this person in Black Hat. A bit younger. Ryan Reynolds, I wouldn't have believed it. Me neither. Gosling? Gosling?

Gyllenhaal? I don't see it with Gyllenhaal. Driver? Oh, Adam Driver. Wow. Oh. Adam Driver. Adam Driver as Shot Caller. That would have been amazing. Yeah. All right, that's the winner. Tony Romo or Chris Collinsworth for the director's commentary. He's going to get raped, Jim. He's got to stand up for himself in there, Jim. He's got to do it right now, Jim. Yeah.

Oh, God. Half-assed internet research. So Relativity Media acquired the US rights to this film for $3 million and then went bankrupt in 2015. And this movie did not actually come out for another two years until somebody else acquired it.

So our guy, Jamie Lannister, red hot in Game of Thrones at that point. And this is going to be his crossover action movie breakout. And then it gets delayed by two years. Shay, we talked about when this happened to our guy, Glenn Powell. Sometimes you get bad luck with this shit. It's like, oh, Glenn Powell would be pretty interesting in this. He's too young for when the movie comes out. But I think. No, I know. Right now, Glenn Powell. Yeah. Yeah. He would be good in this. Yeah.

So Bernthal's character, the Pen One, which is public enemy number one, that is a white street gang from Orange County, California. And the beast was, I guess, based at least loosely on this white supremacist named Steven Single. Yeah. I don't know if he was in your search history. We had to Google him, so you might as well mention him. Okay, Nikolai, he married former Miss Greenland, actress and singer Nukaka...

Costa Waldo in 1998. So landed Miss Greenland. Way to go. Way to go, money. I mean, I remember that 98 competition was fierce. Apex Mountain. I have one and it's like the only one of this movie for me. What is it? Uber. Because if you watch this movie, you'll never drive buzzed again. It's like if Jacob gets an Uber that night,

Well, now in 2024, there's no question it's Uber. They're not all piling into a car. If you ever want to make an advertisement for Uber, just show someone's shot collar. Yeah, just put the picture as your screensaver on your phone. Nikolai, so I would say probably a little earlier Thrones when he's in The Other Woman. No, but what season of Thrones? Is it like third season before he loses his hand? His character really gets...

pretty like he's like a hero in the last season or two of Thrones so like I think this is around this time because I think they shot this between seven and eight so this is around this is it Omari Hardwick definitely because power is crushing it at this point he's got it all going Bernthal not yet from a that guy standpoint I think this is the peak prison movies no the book the human animal I'm gonna say yes yeah shoving balloons of stuff up your ass it's way up there

It is. Yeah, I guess it's up there. Prepaid cell phones? Probably not. I'm trying to think of other burner phone movies that are really good. Aryan Brotherhood? I don't know. Have they ever been commemorated like this in a movie? Cinematic Aryan Brotherhood? Cinematic Aryan Brotherhood? It's way up there. All right, I'm really excited for this one. A new category, and I haven't gone through all the mailbag stuff, but this was the one no-brainer new category that we're just having forever. Cruiser Hanks. Yeah.

cruiser hanks is your lead of shot caller you can have either one from any point in your career

Who do you want? Is it Cruz or is it Hanks? I want Cruz. I want Cruz after Eyes Wide Shut. I put Cruz with like seven exclamation points. This is the Cruz movie I always wanted. He gave it to us in Collateral, but I would have wanted this. He would get so into it. He would get so into the bodybuilding stuff. He would be lifting a guy doing squats with a guy on his shoulders. That scene when he's lifting Ripper, when he's doing squats with Ripper on his shoulders.

Cruz definitely would have done that. He would have figured out some like the shanking. He would have been like, I've practiced this all day in a mannequin in my mansion. Um, he would have done that. I feel like he would have learned some sort of skill in prison that he would have convinced the director to have in prison for three months. I have to learn the way, you know, like he would just be like, I'm going to wear like a, like a fake beard and go to jail.

He would have figured out some form of like prison yard pickleball that the guy would have been like one of the best guys at. So he could have learned how to play like prison barrel, prison yard, prickleball. Cruz would have been the hair slick back the weird faces. I just think Hanks has no chance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So now since we've started Cruz versus Hanks, it's now a one, one tie through two movies. Good to keep, keep track. Yeah.

Racehorse rock band wrestler fantasy team name. Shotcaller wins all of it. Yes. Shotcaller's amazing. Yeah. Picket knits. So Jacob blows a 0.1 at the accident. Just hold off an hour and do the police station blood test, right? Jacob, you're supposed to be a smart guy. I think that it's the trauma of his buddy getting killed. Right. Of Tom. Why did Money give the extra 2,000 guns to Kutcher?

I think he is working on a broader morality and justice plan. So a lot of my Andy and Red stuff is like, what's money's long-term vision for the brotherhood? Right. Is he going to tear it down from the inside? Take it to Vegas? Right. Get a mansion in Lake Tahoe? Try to become a legitimate family? Would the shot caller really have this much control in prison? I don't really understand how prisons work.

I mean, crucially, what happens if they don't have this guard in their pocket? Because that guard is pretty much like the fulcrum for the entire thing. What if the guard's like, hey...

I was thinking about it. Like I'm going to need, I'm going to need three times as much money. It's like, Hey, by the way, I'm taking the wife to Epcot. So like, I won't be here to do your text message. Hey, just FYI, I'm on vacation. Those two weeks at the end of March. Yeah. When you need your illegal cell phones and your balloons, I'm going to be out, but I'll be back on April 2nd.

You have any pick and nets? Cause I have one big one. Uh, just stuff that might've been left on the cutting room floor. Like what Redwood's beef with the guard was, they refer to it as if it was something that we should have known about. I don't know if I missed it or something, but like Redwood's got all this promise as a character and then goes off. And then, like I said before, the, the gun deal just gets a little bit naughty where you're like, wait, so shotgun and Herman were working together, but shotgun and, and Kutcher were working together. So yeah. Yeah.

Here's my biggest pick and knit. And I'm upset that we weren't consulted because I don't think, I think we're two of the foremost prison movie authorities. Yeah. No cafeteria scene. Come on guys. Yeah. It's a fucking staple. You gave us the riot. You gave us the new guy shows up. You gave us the guy who cried the first night. Those guys are eating in their cells, right?

When it, well, when, when they're all in the bunks in the first part, right. Yeah. And they're all like crammed in that one. There had to have been someplace where they all ate. Give me 40 seconds of it. Give me the one, like somebody takes somebody else's food. Yeah. Somebody spills his milk. There's too many good ways it can go. There's food, there's silverware that could be potential fights. There's fights. There's the guys walking around. There's little groups, like who sits at what table. It's just a staple. Got to have that in.

sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. Um, what is this as a, as a prestige TV, uh,

kind of concept i think it's much because it's hard to imagine anybody making something this raw and like male centric like i think you'd get a lot more lake bell if it was like a more of a series but i would i would be curious to know like i think there are a more detailed and expanded version of this would be pretty interesting it's like when do you reveal the shotgun twist

Yeah. How, how, how do you execute like the last couple of episodes with like all the different like confrontations that have to happen and, and, and do you end it with, with money taking over like this? You know what's interesting about the prestige idea? I forgot to mention this earlier. If this movie happens probably even three years later, Bernthal is the lead of Shot Caller, right? Yes. Yes. There's like no question. Yes.

So the prestige TV of this, it almost in my head, it's almost Bernthal is the lead guy. So he's doing this instead of American Gigolo. The other thing I was thinking was,

Should this be an advanced stat of for action movies like this? How many guys could John Bernthal have played in the movie? This movie had a Bernthal rating of like 4.5. Yeah. I mean, I would see Bernthal as his son on the soccer field. Free kick. Could have played the lawyer. Yeah.

He could have played basically any of the five key guys. He easily could have played just the guy who came back from Afghanistan who just was, you know, he could have played it down. Emery Cullen's really good in that role. Yeah, I like that. I think this is a six Bernthal movie. Speaking of Bernthal. Six Bernthal.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, evil laughing Ramon Raymond, or Philip Baker Hall? I wanted to make the case for evil laughing Ramon Raymond. Sure. Just be in there at some point when before...

When they're in the yard, like before the riot, when he's trying to get in with the Bernthal crew, and he's like, what are you going to do? Are you going to put a balloon in your ass? I mean, obviously, honestly, like, first of all, I stated this breaks two rules of Wayne Jenkins. One is Bernthal's already in it. Two, these guys are already going away a long fucking time, big boy. Right. But obviously, Danny Trejo should have been in this movie.

Yeah, this is a rare... Danny Trejo absolutely wins the category. You're right. You're right. Good call. Just one Oscar who gets it. I know it's a hometown decision, but I'm going to say Bernthal. It's Berns. Yeah, I think so. I thought he was the best in this. He easily could have been best supporting actor. Probably in Invisible Questions.

We know definitively why they shot money at the house party, right? Or tried to. That was Bernthal trying to just take him out so he didn't have to be the rat? Yes, but it's Herman. Yeah, I guess that's right. But then what's Bernthal going to do when money's dead and now he still owes Kutcher some sort of deal, right? Like he still has to like serve up some sort of crime on a platter to get his- It's almost like his way of getting out of it so he didn't have to do the deal. Yeah, maybe that's it. Yeah, this is a good one.

Craig, feel free to join in on this one. How do you learn how to quick stab people in prison? Is it like a little course?

Only in prison do they do those quick. We don't see that in any other form of movie when somebody gets stabbed. Go Space and Scream never does that. It's always in the side. It's like right around the rib cage. Yeah. Ian, how do they know all the spots? Is that what they're just reading all day in prison? Well, they have a lot of time to read. Like the nine points? Yeah, the physical anatomy books that they get to read. I think it's probably passed down. It's like, yeah, you go for this, this, or this. It's like kidney-

side of the neck, straight in the heart. There's like a leg vein sometimes they go after. What else is there? Yeah, arteries. You want to hit the arteries. Yeah, you had any arteries. So they just study where all the arteries are, but it's like that quick, quick, quick, quick stab. And it's almost like if you're casting one of the actors for this, some people aren't that coordinated. Like, oh, sorry, I can't get the quick stab thing down. Cruise would be practicing at his home for four months. Well, Dow obviously did Shiv training.

Because there's a couple of times where it's like he goes for the butter knife in the cheesesteak restaurant. And then when he goes after Bernthal, it's pretty intense. And along those lines, just having the razor blade handy, but not cutting yourself on it. Like we saw in Pacific Heights, Michael Keaton has it where he's just kind of playing with a razor blade. It's like...

I'm terrified of any razor blade. It would seem just so easy for nine things to go wrong. How do these characters get so comfortable with razor blades? One of my weird secret phobias is, or not even, but it creeps me out. I was watching guys get shaved in movies. In the new Roadhouse, the guy's getting shaved while he's on a boat. It's rocking a lot. I was like, I just can't. There's something about the throat cut stuff that really gets to me. I'm with you.

What'd you have for best double future choice of this movie? Can I do a couple unanswerable questions? Oh, I didn't know you had any. Let's hear them. Yeah, so sometimes, you know, you watch these movies and you write something down and then a couple of days later you're doing the pod and you're like, why did I write that down? I just have, should there be NIL prison gangs? I don't really have any reason. I'm just like, if the NCAA can change. Maybe you're in the brotherhood, but you know, it's like the Mexican guys made a really compelling offer, you know?

Wasn't expecting to switch sides, but they said no balloons up my ass for two years. All the ramen I could eat. The other thing I had written down for probably unanswerable is, is the hit money puts on the dude making a run at Herman the greatest hit by a white safety since Eric Weddle's retirement?

There's a couple of white defensive backs in the draft this year. Maybe they could be money. Yes, that's a good one. What'd you have for double feature choice? I had the Jericho mile. I would go Jericho mile than this. And that's a great three. I had dead of thieves, but Jericho is great. Dead of thieves is good. Indian reds. I want an award for what happened the next day. I talked about this, but what's, what's his vision? What's the five-year plan for the brand? You know,

Yeah. How does he, you know, like when Andy finally got some control in Shawshank, the books, the library became a big thing for him. Yeah. How do we build the library up? I'm just going to write letters twice a week. We need more books. Do you think that he's going to get the Aryan Brotherhood into like Robin Hood style stock investing? Go back to his roots? He's big into crypto. Yeah.

It's like, yeah, money, money's telling us this Bitcoin. Crypto is the new meth. We got to get out. Yeah. I don't know if I'd want any memorabilia from this movie. That's a great point. I don't know if I would either. So I'm going to maybe pass on this category. Yeah. It would be, it would be cool to just have one shiv, but I wouldn't really want it. You know, I wouldn't keep it sharp or anything. It's like, what's that? It's the beast bloody boxers from the final scene of shot caller. I don't know if that's going to work. Um,

Coach Finstock Award for best life lesson. Okay, so we didn't really get into any of the rock bottomness of it. Obviously, best life lesson is don't drive drunk. Yes. Start there. You know, I would also say that once... I mean, like, what else would you have for this? I would say if you're getting thrown in with the big boys, you got 24 hours to prove that you're not going to be a victim. Okay. Yeah.

Can he be a warrior or a victim? That's my life lesson. Warrior or victim? Pick a guy in the yard and take a shot at him. Okay. Really interesting. Who won the movie? I'm going to go Rick Roman Waugh just because he goes on to write Den of Thieves. He's kind of created this subgenre with this trilogy of prison movies that he makes and Den of Thieves of contemporary LA crime thrillers. So I'm going to go with him. I'm tempted to go Bernthal, but I think he... It's definitely...

Yeah, I think you're right because I don't think it's Nicholas Castor Waldo because really like a couple of years later, nothing incredible career wise is happening for him. In this case, and it's interesting, we've seen this sometimes, but

My guess is people are going to be fired up that we did Shot Caller because either they loved it and didn't realize other people loved it or they don't know about it yet and they're going to watch it and be like, holy shit, that movie was awesome. Yeah, and it's on Netflix, so it's pretty easy. My guess is this movie is going to have a pretty awesome tale, especially with the Netflix bump. But sometimes it takes a couple of years. We talked about it when we did the Rounders pod. Rounders took a couple of years and then within...

four years, I wanted to do awards with quotes from it for my ESPN column because I was like, I fucking love this movie. And I don't know, maybe other people do, but who knows? I do feel like Shot Caller is going to move into that. I definitely agree. I think it's like a classic, like Netflix, like just spits it out every once in a while. And you're like, oh man, maybe I'll watch a little bit of Shot Caller now. I'll tell you what, who else is...

Inching toward it is triple frontier. Oh my God. It's just baby step in its way. Say the word. It's getting closer and closer. Well, we'll know if our instincts are right. We're going to bring Craig Corral back. Let's hear it, Craig. What'd you think? Well, first off, before I even tell you what I thought, I wanted to check. Obviously, our legal and justice system has a lot of issues, but watching this movie, I was like,

is it really right that if you drive drunk and you get in a car accident and somebody dies, do you really go to prison with the serial killers and the rapists? Like, is that right? So I asked my dad, who was a lieutenant for 30 years, and that is correct. Like, you actually just get dropped into that scene. And I really enjoyed this movie. And I got to say, one thing it does a great job of is it really makes it seem as though

prison gangs and violence is impossible to avoid. Like if you go to jail, like you're, don't they even reference like when he's like, doesn't bottle say something like if you thought you were going to come in here and teach us math, like that's not what, what we're doing. Like genuinely, I don't, you have to join a gang. I don't know how he could have just like, like,

did his 18 months and gotten out. There's no way to avoid that, which I thought was insane. They said that to him. They say that lone wolf shit's not going to work here. Yeah, yeah. And that's just how it goes, period. But I was a little dubious, you know? This movie, never heard of it, made $3 million. Yeah.

Jamie Lannister playing a prison leader, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's tight. It's like very kind of easy and smooth to follow. It does a great job. Like every five minutes, there's a new supporting character that comes in and kind of takes over the scene. It's got a really deep bench. I did have a few, I had a few notes I thought that could take this movie from an eight to a 10. Okay.

I think it needed one kind of like cool heisty scene to take it to the next level. I think that's the gun deal and it's right there and it just doesn't come off. Yeah, and they just couldn't land the plane on it. They didn't do a great job of depicting like how something was orchestrated or sneaking something in. I think they could have added that. The second thing is I didn't think they did a great job with Jacob, like who he was before.

I think his character obviously grew and developed, but I didn't, was he like a seedy stockbroker? Was he a kind of a good guy? I feel like we didn't know who he was before. Really? It was like, he was a family man. He's like, seems like he's like, we should do this because this Republican might get elected. Is he like a scummy finance guy or not really? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, I was trying to interpret the pickup basketball scene because they show him getting knocked over. Yeah. And he's kind of a pacifist about that. It was like, it's okay. It's okay.

My number three note is that this huge miss not to have a prison basketball scene follow-up where we see him at the beginning of the movie. He's the biggest guy in the court. He's like 6'5", and he's soft as hell, big man. We need him to develop into Draymond Green an hour into the movie, and he's on the court commanding shit, throwing elbows, maybe even a shiv on the court. Huge missed opportunity having prison basketball and showing his character arc through basketball. You know what? I got...

Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's an incredible point because I mentioned earlier we missed the cafeteria scene too. If you're doing a prison movie, you have to have a cafeteria scene and a basketball scene. It's just a rule. Yeah. He's such a disappointing big man. He goes down like a bag of doorknobs and he's like 6'4". The second he gets into the paint, he gets boxed out. Right.

Right. You're also onto something here, Craig, and it's why you and me probably wouldn't do great in prison, but I think Bill might be okay. Because here's what happens is you and I probably get jumped into gangs and destroyed, but Bill could still maintain... What if Bill had his wife smuggling some podcast gear? 100%. And then the next week is doing inmate trade value pods? Right. I'm just...

I'm immediately inviting, like, can I get the beast? Beast, you want to come on my new prison pod? He's got a studio set up in one of those cages. Beast, let's go through your filmography, you know? Well, the move is you have to get in a fight and maybe even try to kill somebody in the first 24 hours and serve your...

Serve your 30 days. At least let people know, like, if you're going to come at me, like, you might take a couple hits too. He's ranking all the books. He's got the re-readables going on. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the thing. You got to basically eventually end up where Andy Dufresne did, where...

You're contributing something to the prison that brings other people into it. So yeah, the prison podcast, I think, you know, I think the counter to a prison podcast would be there's just a lot of stuff with podcast equipment that could be used as weapons. Sure. Yeah. But I mean, maybe they have it all in like a secure location. And I think also, honestly, calling yourself the podfather would be like up there with the beast, you know?

It's like, this is the beast. This is Redwood. What's your name? Podfather. From the inside with Bill Simmons. I'm here with Redwood. It's the podfather here. Redwood and I are going to talk about the beast. Redwood just put up 23 and 8 on money. Can I see it for more than a month? Is that okay? Can I see it?

You guys are ready to give money MVP. I just want to see it for more than a season.

Oh, man. So, Craig, you think this movie will have legs? Yeah, it's hard. There's so many movies now. Like, if this movie came out 20 years ago, I feel like it would have tons of rewatchable legs on cable. Now it's like, I don't know. How's anybody going to find this movie? It's on Netflix. Netflix. Yeah, Netflix is going to have it. But there's so much. I mean, that's not even saying anything. There's a million things on Netflix. Like, why somebody who would click this movie? I don't know. Well, you know, this goes back to one of my greatest ideas of all time was...

An all prison movie channel called bars, B-A-R-Z. From the people who brought you heists. And it's everything has to have some sort of prison connection. And then we're just running Oz every day, seven o'clock, eight o'clock. That would be good on like Tubi.

Or HBO 8. There's nine HBO channels and it's like HBO Family, HBO 3, HBO Z. Just make one of them a prison. I think if I was running HBO, I would take HBO 4, HBO 5, and each month would be a theme or each...

you know, every three months. And it would just be like doing prison. This is all prison stuff. Or it's like, we're just going Sopranos for the entire month of May. Just you come here. Here's the Sopranos. I don't think they theme month and enough. It's too random. It'll be amazing. If you bought Turner classic movies and everybody was like, great, Bill's going to save cinema. And he's like, no, we're just going to show shot. Not at all. Have you seen the rewatchables? There's going to be no saving here. You'd have no movies before 1972. Yeah.

And I'm just showing American me for a month. All right. This was fun. Produced by Craig Horlbeck. As always, this was rock bottom month. And then, uh, I don't know. We got a couple left. We might do get ready. There might be a live rewatchables podcast coming on one of the YouTube channels soon. So be ready for that. Thanks to everybody who sent in mailback questions for us. And we'll see you next week. Thanks. Podfather.