‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ With Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Andy Greenwald
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I'm Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Sean Fennessy from the Big Picture podcast. Andy Greenwald from the Stick the Landing podcast. Sean, keep your hands off my hobby boy. The Rewatchables Grand Budapest Hotel is next. This man is a ruthless adventurer and a con artist. How's that supposed to make me feel? From Wes Anderson comes a story of war and peace. Well, hello there, chaps. Love and death. She's been murdered and you think I did it.

Guys, 2014's Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson's love letter to a fading Europe as World War encroaches on

Here we are talking about this movie. It's the second Wes on the rewatchables. Andy and I did Tenenbaums last year, I believe. How'd that go? Very well. It was very gentle. I want to say it's an honor to be back here. I love listening to you guys. You always have a good time. You're talking about big tent movies. You laugh a lot, Twister, Cruising. And then when it's time to put on the pince-nez...

You call me up with my cardigan. Our little dainty boys. Yeah, me coming. The Bill and Sebastian fans. It's like the time Doris Kearns Goodwin was on The Man Show. That's right. So happy. I know that we were kicking around ideas of what we're going to do in Bill's absence. Vacation Bill. So we're filling in. We had dodgeball last week. That was awesome. And then I was asking Andy, like,

Bill's like, you and Andy, you guys should knock one out. And I was like, we were kicking some ideas around. And this one just kept coming up, even though we had done a Wes before. But Sean, I wanted to start with you. Why is a movie about the rise of fascism, young love, and the service industry so goddamn rewatchable? Well, I think it's an apotheosis of whatever we think Wes Anderson is. So it might be him executing most completely on...

the cliches of Wes Anderson. So it feels like very legible to a broader audience. But I will say, I remain a little bit confused by this being his biggest and most successful movie. And I was kind of hoping we could talk about that. This movie was a huge hit. $174 million worldwide. Which is fascinating to think about. It feels like it could not, something like that would not happen for a movie like this today. But it is, on its face, very funny adventure movie. Yeah. And...

It has great set pieces. It has a cavalcade of actors that you enjoy spending time with. And it's got a lead performance that is like for the ages. That it is like, I think this legendary English performer is...

perhaps at his very best. So, there's a lot to recommend it. Yeah, there is definitely. Sean, you don't think a movie about the creeping rise of fascism hits in 2024? I guess it is resonant in some ways. I have some notes on his perspective on this time in history as well. Yeah, it was a much debated topic in 2014 when it came out. I'm sure that there's like a school of thought that he treats this topic maybe too lightly or too obliquely by like

filling the frame with all these confections and kind of taking a step back from it, not looking at it dead in the eye. But I think that there's other parts of it that certainly suggest like,

what you want to maintain in the face of something dark rising. Andy, what is it about this movie that you find rewatchable? I mean, I definitely agree with Sean that I was very surprised at the time that this was in many ways his mainstream breakthrough. Because I think that for me as someone who, and I feel like you guys are the same, has been a fan of Wes Anderson from the beginning and has a very, very deep, very personal, very rewatchable connection to those first three movies, to Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and Tenenbaums. I think

I felt like I was a little bit in the wilderness with my own relationship to him and his movies during the subsequent years, Life Aquatic, Darjeeling. And the thing about this movie that really struck me at the time and then strikes me harder every time I watch it is that for me, this is the pivot

pivot point from a certain kind of sentimentality about his movies where he felt with good reason that he was sort of exploring the doll's house nostalgia of his youth and things like lost love this was the this was the time when it switched from um sentimental to elegiac and it became less about um you know being nostalgic for like childhood things and more about loving uh beauty and

and loving art and old women and loving deeply and elder sex which we're going to talk about but this idea that destruction so like getting older is inevitable which is something that i feel like his characters grapple with to varying degrees in all of his movies but the destruction fascism like the the crippling boot of autocracy is not necessarily inevitable it just keeps happening and there's something that it was just still it sort of hits me crossways how sad so

suddenly the movie is in spite of all of its lightness and charm. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that this is the apotheosis of what we think of him. And I think that there's something to that. If you were going to be the most unkind, I think you could describe...

a certain phase of his career, I would probably start it with Moonrise Kingdom and do this and Asteroid City and French Dispatch, all of those movies I adore. But you could say it's like hipster merchant ivory. So it's period pieces that are essentially low impact when it comes to like

the chaos on screen they can be chaotic but they're not flashbang action movies or anything like that there is a degree of distance that the audience can have from the subject matter because of the sort of costumey like we're putting on a play elements to it like everything's a box inside of a box inside of a box but each one of those films has like a very sad

emotional core, and most of them are incredibly funny. Like, really, really funny. This one, I think, is the funniest. I think because of fines, it becomes like this actually quite profane, violent movie throughout. Very much. And even Anderson's talked about how, like, he'd never made a movie before where there's basically a dead body every 10 minutes and people are getting torn up and maimed and stabbed. It's a full-blown shootout. Yeah. So, I think that... No one gets shot, I mean, in the shootout.

Yeah, but like the guy gets stabbed. There are a lot of guns. There are a couple of guns in Life Aquatic, but it is not something that you see frequently in his movies. Someone loses their fingers. That's the most violent. No, they do get stabbed when they're escaping. The guys who were stabbing each other. He's like, let's call it a draw. That's true, but then there's a joke. But yeah, I think that there's something to this movie that transcends like Wes Anderson, where it starts to become like dehumanizing.

deeply funny or deeply sad or whatever. And I actually am fine just staying completely at surface level, Wes Anderson. Right. No, but I think it goes back to what I was trying to say is that like this is fundamentally, there are broken boys in this movie, but this is not a movie about broken boys. This is a movie about a lost era, about a broken promise of a century in a way. Don't knock broken boys. They built this country. There are three of us sitting around this table right now. If you want to pivot to dad talk, we can do it. I am in too, for sure. But,

No, but I feel like the more time passes with this movie, it does bizarrely seem that this is his broadest brush, even though he only ever paints with the finest, finest, you know, what is it? Indian paint brushes that production companies... That is essentially the benefactor of the Wes Anderson mission. Yeah, which is, I think it has been a truly amazing project in American movies in the last 25 years. Like, I'm just with Andy. Those first three movies were very impactful for me. And I have really appreciated

with some distance the last five movies, with the exception of Moonrise Kingdom, which I think is like kind of his... Tweed. His tweed masterpiece. His tweed stairway to heaven. Yes, it is truly him like finally accessing the emotional core that he had been building towards, and he is now on this journey of...

taking apart, deconstructing things he loves and rebuilding them and surprising you with the choices he makes in the rebuild. So it's very, it's, things are very architectural now. Yeah. Wes Anderson movies and they're very story within a song, within a book, within an author's mind. Yeah.

So it's fun to unpack those things. It's harder for them to hit me on an emotional level. I agree with you that because this movie is so funny, it doesn't trip you up as much. Asteroid City was a movie that came out last year. A lot of people loved it. I definitely needed to watch it a second time because I feel like I could wrap my head around what it was he was trying to accomplish with that movie. Chris, what's your count on Asteroid City currently? Three, I think. Yeah, I think I saw it once in theaters, once when it was on Peacock, and once on a plane. And the plane one was one where I was like, holy shit, this movie's like really, really deep. And also I think...

And a lot of his films are either prescient or very reflective of the time they're made in. They just don't actually state it outright. So Asteroid was about these people quarantining and reflecting on their lives. And I thought that that wound up being quite poignant. Well, I think that to that point, it'll come up as we talk about it, that

Some works of art are just sort of prescient and Grand Budapest Hotel coming out in 2014 before a sort of rightward surge on the global stage is interesting and noteworthy and might have added to its residents. But I would also say maybe as the resident, well, at least emeritus head of Daddington Island, Sean, you moved recently. Yes, I have a dinghy.

Three broken boys in their dinghy. That was one of the Roald Dahl shorts he did. I feel like one of the most important Wes Anderson movies to think about in relation to this one is Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is...

I think unquestionably one of his best movies. Definitely the one I've rewatched the most due to the children in my household. But I feel like that's... They're not Darjeeling heads yet? No, they feel... Daddy, what is that in that dropper? Getting stoned to Claire de Lune. I think they're pretty into the my dad's dead part or my son's dead part of Life Aquatic. Yeah. Um...

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a movie in which he absolutely was given free reign to play with toys. I mean, just clay figurines from a childhood book. But some of the filmmaking tricks that he used in that movie are almost like one-to-one mapped onto this one, including Willem Dafoe as an exaggerated villainous rat. And so there was something about the... Sean, as the big picture host, you could probably talk more intelligently about some of the filmmaking tricks and techniques that he used in this, whether it was the scale models...

throughout or the stop motion that gets used which in a surprising way but this movie feels like he's taking those toys and putting them into the service of something of a larger more interesting more emotional story and i feel like that's an important distinction to make too as he pivoted because you can definitely find these moments in his career yeah i was gonna go through another thing the phases but i mean i don't know if you wanted to respond to that but like i think that he i'll just say it's a grand scale period piece yeah and so that's part of the reason why i think it's a

It works so well and it feels so momentous relative to something like Moonrise Kingdom or something like French Dispatch, which, you know, they're just inherently smaller stories. This is a big story. Yeah. Even though it's about a concierge. And technically dazzling, like unbelievable when you watch this movie, the level of skill and just precision and also decision making of how he wants to shoot it and what sort of shots and tricks he's going to deploy in the service of the story, not just a stunt.

I kind of think that there is the difference between, so I would put Wes Anderson's career goes Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. I think you can make the argument that those constitute a first phase of his career because this is indie roots. He hooks up with James L. Brooks. They make Bottle Rocket as a feature. Owen Wilson, you know, his relationship with the Wilson brothers is there and it's like they're making these kind of... You could talk about Luke right now and you're not. I'm saving Luke for later. Okay, all right. And then I think Tenenbaum's Life Aquatic and Darjeeling mark a second period of...

Interestingly, like a kind of almost, I would say, descending in order of collective love of those movies. Like I think Tenenbaums is acknowledged as like one of his two or three best films. Life Aquatic,

I really, really like a lot, but I think was actually the movie that people were like, this guy is annoying now, right when that came out. I think it's when some of those cliches I'm talking about started to settle in where it was like, oh, a complicated patriarch and his adopted son is a concept, which is a theme that this movie has too. He has these archetypal structures that he returns to over and over again, and that was the first time that you were like, oh, he only has so many pitches that

There was just also a lot of dudes in Brooklyn who went as Steve Zissou for Halloween and then never changed out of it. I mean, I did eventually change out of it, but yeah. I mean, that literally happened. I was one of those boys. Andy, did Wes Anderson show you the wonders of Tropicalia with that movie? I mean, aesthetically, there is no question that every choice he made was hugely influential. But I think that what you're talking about, there was a...

I mean, this is the benefit of a long career, which, you know, very few people get to have a career like he's had and continues to have. But you see him struggle in real time with stuff and try to respond in some ways to some of the criticism, but within the structure of his own muse. Yeah, sometimes he throws up a middle finger. It's like, I'm going even further into my diorama. Yes, but all of his movies are unquestionably his movies. He never, you know, tries a different style. But some of the kind of, like...

rough evolution of, okay, now my movies are going to be coming from an adult perspective on adulthood instead of from a childish perspective. And sometimes you'd feel him like push everything in the middle and be like, and now there's going to be a naked lady in this one scene. Or a guy's going to say the F word. Like that's, that'll show him. And it does feel like someone in a prep school uniform giving the finger. And then for me, the moment when it pivoted into more adulthood is, is when he made a kid's movie, honestly. Yeah. It freed something. And I do think the movies after that are a lot more interesting

in his bag. Like, it makes sense now this is an adult making these movies with slightly larger concerns. I will say, the one thing that I do miss about him, that this movie has a little bit of in M. Gustav, but not as much as I would like, is...

The angst of Rushmore and Darjeeling, where there are characters who are deeply unsatisfied with their lives and the way that things are going, and they are fighting against a kind of system to break that. And Gustav has a little bit of that. But he's so mannered, and manners matter to him so much that he can only go so far. And in fact, he meets an end because he's only willing to go so far. But that is the one thing as he is in this heavily dioramicized era where

that I'm like, is there any like grit left for you? You know, is there any like rage left? And that's something like when you have a lot of success and you get into your 40s and 50s, some of those things start to fall away. And it feels like that has fallen away from him. Sean, use I statements when you say that. Sorry. As I get into my 40s. A high T.

Like, I don't think his characters rage with a lot of like super masculine energy. Not actually atypical for this pod. Like we, we, we talk a lot about dudes screaming and Gustav is actually the, probably the closest to that he has as a protagonist to

Who does that? Like, I think it was interesting to read about his casting decision of Ralph Fiennes. He was clearly like basically wrote the part for him, but was like, you know, choose what part you want to play. But Gustav is for you. And he, you know, he gets this incredible actor who's obviously really well trained and has talked a lot about his and a lot of people have talked about his improvisatory skills and

But Wes Anderson, somebody who's like, you have to hit this mark. You have to be within these three lines that you can't even see that are behind you. And I need you to read the line more or less the way I exactly imagine. Entirely. Entirely. You can't even change a part of it. Within that.

somehow like fills up the frame. Like I think he's, this is the best performance in a Wes Anderson movie. This is one of my favorite performances of this decade, probably of the 2010s. That's an interesting conversation. That's a bold statement. I mean, I think that there are lots of amazing Wes Anderson movies. I think this is the one that successfully pushes the speed limit on what you can do within a film that he has written and directed.

I also think it is worth, Sean, and you were picking up on this too, the evolution of the male archetype in the Wes Anderson movies, which is basically, and I think this is influenced by his own childhood with a complicated relationship with his own father, obviously. What? A filmmaker? I know. Oh.

Thank God podcasters are immune. The idea he had of a man in the world, or at least a successful man in the world, is a bullshitting peacock with a broken heart. And you see that from Herman Bloom in Rushmore. You see that certainly in Royal Tenenbaum. But the Ralph Fiennes version of that

there is a different note to it. And I think maybe this is a conversation to be had. Is it the evolution of Wes Anderson, the filmmaker? Is it the setting and the context of this movie? Is it the casting? Or is it just where... Or is it a combination of all of that? Because to me, the scene that sticks out amidst all of the hilarity and all of the air to panache, even at the lowest, dirtiest, prison-smellingest moments, is that first...

almost passing reference to how Monsieur Gustave took every meal alone in his room. That tells you 70% of the character, you know, in a way that everything else he does is informed by that moment. When he's sitting alone in his little

What's he wearing? What do you call those things? Oh, the little socks? The spender socks. I feel like, Sean, you worked at GQ. You knew it. I'm wearing them right now, actually, Andy, and I'd like to show you them. They're more of an Opus Dei thing. They're not actually for fashion. Did you bring your whip with you for this podcast? I think it's not unfair to say, or unreasonable to say, that in...

you know, he's Ben Stiller or Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums. He's M. Gustav in this movie. I mean, M. Gustav is Wes. Yeah. He has gotten older. That idea of a...

a world becoming increasingly uncivilized is something that he is reflecting on and remarking upon. I personally think it's a little bit of a load of shit. I think he exists in a very rarefied experience of the world. You mean the character is a load of shit? Wes Anderson. Okay. Which is not a criticism of Wes Anderson because he has constructed this amazing life for himself and he has earned it. But...

He has a kind of longing that you are identifying for something that is gone that, like, I tend to feel is not always ever really there. So does it matter that the F. Murray Abraham's version of Zero at the end of the movie is like, they're like, is it, you know, did you keep the hotel because of Gustav? And he's like, eh, like, yeah, but...

Like, I think he longed for a world that never existed. Like, he's aware of that. It's a little bit of a self-reflexive criticism. And that's why he's not Zero to me. He's Gustav. Right. Like, Zero is the modern, practical person who's like, life has always been shit. Yeah. Totally. But he allows room for both. Yeah, he does. And we can talk about it when we get to the scene where he's talking about, you know, the pile of filthy carpets and all that. But I think, Sean, your point is an important one because...

So one can, one will. And in fact, I already did try to make sort of pretentious political allegories out of this movie. But I think the most important one, as it so often is, is who is the filmmaker in this and what is he saying? And this movie more than more explicitly, maybe than any other movie he made, asked the question, what is the value of the esthete in a broken world?

Like, what am I actually contributing when I care about pomp, circumstance, beautiful things, frippery, balalaika on the score, and everybody else wants to join the MCU? Sean, you want to speak to that? Yeah, I'm going to go see Deadpool and Wolverine again, I think. Yeah. I think I should see it three times. Speaking of a diorama. Sean, I saw a tweet that said the fight at the end was pure cinema. Would you like to respond on the record on the... Pure aisle cinema, I agree. Well put. Nicely done. We've talked a little bit about...

the films, like the proposition that he, that Wes Anderson presents to you, especially this last, most recent phase of his career where it's like every single thing is designed down to the stationary, right? Like there is not a single detail in these movies that is left unconsidered, which honestly I find

is the reason why I enjoy going back and watching these movies. You can watch this movie with the sound off if you want. Like not only is, I think some of the gestures of the acting conveys story without even needing to like hear the dialogue, which itself is pretty incredible. Um,

But I think that you can also just like appreciate it for the production design and all the set design stuff. And just like these small camera moves, I was talking with Jack before we started and he was like, this movie made me remember why I went to film school because I watched the behind the scenes of The Grip

like shoving these guys down the fake mountain. And it's just like, this is kind of movie magic at its most palpable. I think this is also a really important thing to say about this too, which is for all the criticism, maybe this is a straw man argument, but I kind of don't think it is. And people are like, oh, Wes Anderson is just, you know, he locks himself in his room with his dollhouses and he lives in his private little universe.

A movie is not a private universe. He has to go into the world and find trusted collaborators and designers and artists and locations and make it a reality through the incredible blood, sweat, and tears and collaboration of dozens, if not hundreds of people. The accomplishment of that alone is just astounding when you think about how precise every single thing is, where there's not a frame in this movie where you watch it and you're like, that could have gone a different way. Yeah.

You know, that could have been a different choice there. It feels it's a closed circuit in a way that feels very rare. He he raises a lot of interesting questions about how much you care and want to think about virtuosity while watching a movie. Yeah. Like a lot of the greatest filmmakers of all time. John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Steven Spielberg, Howard Hawks, Howard Hawks, whoever. But especially like visual masters.

are well known for creating this like epic feeling inside you when you when you see something beautiful that they've they've imagined but it is not meant to feel like you're watching a movie you have been enveloped by the images that they're creating Wes Anderson is the opposite Wes

Wes Anderson, his style draws attention to artifice very purposefully. So like in this movie in particular, if you look at the way that he moves the camera, he's always moving the camera to where he wants the action to go. So it's moving from left to right down a hallway and the character will appear in the hallway as the camera turns. Right.

That's very unusual, especially in a constructed environment like the ones that he works in. And it makes you feel like you're watching someone make a movie. Yeah. Which is a weird feeling to have. And this movie more than any of his other movies, I feel that. I feel this idea of like, it's like when you're opening a pop-up book and it is so different because you can't even read the words on the page. You can only experience the tactile thing that pops up in front of your face.

So it's disorienting in a way to watch a movie like this. It's doubly disorienting because I'm personally, when I watch this movie, so invested in Gustav because he's so funny and so interesting and so present but unknowable that it creates this distorted effect. Like Moonrise Kingdom, when I watch that, I don't feel this thing I'm describing. Do you feel distanced from the emotional inner life of the character? No.

I think I just know that I'm inside of a story. And if it has more of a fairy tale feel... That's fair. So the only... It's not a counter to be like, you should feel differently. It's more of like, I agree with you. And that is almost why when the true human moments hit in this movie, they hit so hard to me. Because they're like, he pulls the bottom out of this magic trick that he's had going. And you realize...

whatever these people are experiencing or what people have been experiencing for hundreds and hundreds of years. Which is like, I thought I sort of had created this reality for myself and then forces beyond my control came and like literally ran over them, you know? And that's, that's a pretty, I think universal human experience from, from the dawn of time. And yet he creates like this fantasy world where,

you know, so that you're almost not even thinking about it. And even as like the frontier closes and at first it's Ed Norton and he's like kind of nice and it's like, oh yeah. And then as it gets more and more real until there's almost this like distancing technique by shooting the final Gustav Agatha zero moment in black and white. You're the first of the official death squads to whom we've been formally introduced. Yeah. But like...

The actual narration of what did they, how did it end? And it's like, they shot him in the end, you know? Yeah, but it's such a tricky thing because I think he is pulling punches in an effort to remain unsaccharine. Yeah. Like in particular, I think of this, we're like at the end of the movie here with what we're talking about, but...

zero yada yada-ing Agatha and his infant child's death. But then spending all this time on Gustav being hauled off and beaten up by the SS. Yeah.

is a really interesting choice about a person who's like trying to show you everything and nothing at the same time. Absolutely. All these guys are. All the people in this movie are, I mean, why is the Jude Law Tom Wilkinson character there in the first place? But it's also saying something about storytelling, which is that everything is subjective and most lives, if you live long enough, have a relatively, you know, equivalent amount of joy and sadness.

and when you're telling someone the story you're telling someone a story with intent and which parts you tell and which parts you hide and sometimes the parts you hide are even more revealing yeah and the sadness that we can call mr mustafa as the f marie abraham version of zero is what you're meant to be left with you know the what what that he was trapped ever since that moment that his life in many ways ended even though his wealth began yeah um and i feel like it's worth noting so to go through it

The story of Grand Budapest Hotel is being read by a girl in a graveyard. Yes. She's reading a copy of a book called The Grand Budapest Hotel that was written by an author who is played first by Tom Wilkinson. In quote-unquote contemporary times, yeah. But was actually a young Jude Law who,

who wrote a book from his own perspective about a visit to a now decaying Soviet-era hotel in which he met Mr. Mustafa, who then, over dinner, told him this story more or less verbatim. Yes. Sure. No, it's easy. That was well recited. Yeah. Um...

Do you want to mention Stefan Zweig? So at this point, it's this film in some ways is an adaptation. Not explicitly, but there's an Austrian writer named Stefan Zweig who had a very prolific writing career and a very tragic end to his life in Brazil where he took his own life as...

as World War II was really exploding, you know, in 1942. He is, the film is dedicated to him. It's inspired by his writings. Specifically, I'm going to say this because I, with lack of emotion because I haven't read these books, but The Great Portrayal and especially Post Office Girl, which is set in a hotel and is about, I believe it's like about an Austrian girl who's living with an American aunt in a Swiss hotel. He does a lot of things with these framing devices, these kind of like descending steps

of introducing you to a story, a young boy meets an old man who tells him a story about when he was a young boy, et cetera, et cetera. Have you read any of his stuff? Just a little bit, but I think that from The World of Yesterday, which is a book that I think in many ways, it's more of a memoir, but in many ways,

influenced Wes Anderson as much as it influenced the movie. This is a book that he wrote near the end of his life where he talks about like his own life in segments, like chapter, literally like there were chapters in my life. And he lived a life that is totally impossible, even possible to imagine, you know, born to an intellectual Jewish family and then went to school and was published when he was 19 and then traveled so widely and crossed paths with almost every major figure of the early 20th century from, from

poets in England to, um, he, I think he wrote a personal letter to Mussolini at one point to, uh, to, to help save someone's life, travel to India, travel to Russia, travel to the United States. Um, and, and,

the type of life that I think, I think that we thought was possible when the internet was started in the blogosphere. That's right. But literally in the sense that he was like, but like writing, writing plays and essays and hobnobbing with intellectuals and artists in every country and noticing that he was born at a time when what he thought was of great, great promise and freedom. Yeah. They were coming out of an era of repression and into an era into a stable Austria where arts could be celebrated and there were more sexual freedoms and culture and that, and that

his Jewish family could be integrated into the mainstream of this and feel a part of it. And then to be absolutely sideswiped by World War I, because I think in one of his essays, he talks about how no one really liked Archduke Ferdinand. So it really wasn't a big story. I know. Kind of a Joel Embiid situation. Yeah. There it is. What's the timestamp on that first straight? How late is that correct when he mentions Embiid the first time? 30 minutes, not bad. Yeah.

Somewhere Wes Anderson is listening to this and he wrote down in his moleskin, Joel Embiid, who is this? My next film will be in Cameroon. Speaking of global citizens who have disappointed us on the world stage. And then sort of rebuilding it, going back to Austria to be like, I can be part of the peace because we've learned our lesson and we won't let this happen again. Certainly not these brutish Nazis. And then ending up in Brazil again.

again, kind of like utopian, like this is the world, this is the country of the future, the city of the future, only to commit suicide with his wife in 1942, basically being like, all I see is darkness. His quote was, I think it, like the letter before his suicide was, I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labor meant the purest joy and personal freedom, the

the highest good on earth. And on that note, I am no longer podcasting. That's Bill's take on the rewatchables, I think. I think what the other thing that is... The Stefan Zweig piece. Yeah. I think the thing that's interesting about that author, whose work I have not read, but what I've read about him is that he wrote these sort of like emotionally heavy romantic novellas.

But he's part of a generation of creative people from Austria, many of whom also fled before or during World War II and went to Hollywood. And that's Ernst Lubitsch, that's Billy Wilder, that's all of these masters of what we come to understand as American cinema with a European perspective, right?

are huge influences on the movie Grand Budapest Hotel. I mean, there is no Grand Budapest Hotel because he's inspired by Zweig, but this is not a very Zweigian movie. It's a very Ernst Lubitsch movie. It's a very, um, uh,

1930s Alfred Hitchcock film. So it's fascinating that he is thinking so much about it and this kind of work, but it is a zany, fast-talking, fast-moving... But so were those first movies. I mean, so was classic Hollywood. I think that's a really important point, that the vision of, not just the vision of Hollywood and of what movies are, but the vision of what America is and means was almost entirely built on...

on the backs and on the labor and on the ideas of people who suffered a catastrophic break in what their sense of what peace or war meant. And that's basically modernism anyway. Yeah. And I think there's an element of this where, you know, as why I quote, um,

But every shadow is ultimately also the daughter of light. And only he who has known light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only this one has truly lived. And I wonder if on some level, Wes Anderson is grappling with the fact that he doesn't, I mean, he doesn't really know those things. Many people who have grown up in like relative stability of the West in the last however many years don't know those things. And what does that say about the art? Or what does it say about the zaniness? Like, how do you leaven it with something deeper? Yeah.

I'll just do some stats here for Grand Budapest Hotel. As I said, budget of 25 mil made 174 worldwide. Did very well in Germany. Can you put that in Klubex? These are the kind of movies that we wish we had half a dozen of, eight of. It's a great model. Not all of them make 174, but seeing what he can get out of $25 million is pretty mind-blowing. I think in the grand scheme of things, he's coming out...

net positive with all of his movies financially, creatively. Obviously, he's adored by cinephiles, but his movies do well enough. He's a brand. And everybody wants to work with him for relative peanuts. It's very much like he reminds me of when I was growing up what Woody Allen was, where you would get these bonkers casts probably working for scale just because they wanted to be a part of it. He had a sense of a rep theater. There were a lot of people who appeared in a lot of Woody Allen movies. And he had producers who

who knew exactly how to make a Woody Allen movie work financially. And there's a guy who works... And increasingly around the world, too. And there's a guy who works for Wes, I think his name's Jeremy Dawson, who is just like apparently the magician here. Where it's like, he rents out the German hotel that everybody stays at. And it's like old school producing deal making. Of like, this is how we're going to make this work. So that's always kind of like the behind the scenes stuff of his movies is really interesting. Yeah.

All the stuff about like Asteroid City, people living in Spain and just being like, I never want this to end. This is so much fun. Yeah, it's also an interesting movie in that it came out fairly early in the year and had a kind of momentum in terms of like its box office was longer. Its international box office was very long. It's also a sign that they didn't... I mean, he's worked with... I mean, I guess he's made films with Searchlight and Focus and bopped around in that sense. But like...

They released it in March because this was not an Oscar movie. Yeah. Right. There was no in all of their internal thinking about this. I mean, they brought it to festivals. I think they premiered in Berlin.

They had a plan to recoup. They did not have a plan to stretch it for an entire year through awards season and make this kind of money, which was interesting. It's really cool. It was a total surprise to the degree that I feel like, John, you pay attention to this stuff all the time. There aren't that many surprises like that, are there, in terms of like... This was end of grant. You weren't doing big pick yet, right? No, I wasn't. I mean, it's one of the first things I said when we started talking. It's hard to explain...

just how this movie got this big. I think there are also some other contributing factors. I think for a generation of young moviegoers, this is like an introduction to Wes Anderson. I think there is a kind of millennial pink aesthetic that this movie has that honestly is influential. Yeah, the color palette is very inviting. It's very beautiful. It feels very of a time. It's also very much, you know, we're in

Term two of Obama, like emotionally, like these kinds of movies tended to have a little bit more success. I think there's something about him doing something that feels so much like him, but so outside of the expectations of what it is that he does. For whatever reason, resonated very, very hard. And maybe even some of those kids, like your kids, saw Fantastic Mr. Fox as nine-year-olds, and all of a sudden they're...

you know, 16. And they're like, I want to go to the movies. Do you get the sense, though, and this might be the last Woody Allen comparison we make, I'm not sure. We have a lot of open road ahead of us. Strike two. But I do get the sense that one thing that they have in common as filmmakers is like, well, I'm making the next one. Yes. He's already on to his next one. I don't think that he was, you know, in the edit bay or, you know, doing the final scoring with Alexandra being like, I've done it. No. I mean, Ed Mullen made Moonlight and said that

I think either at the end of Moonlight or right as they were doing press for Moonlight Kingdom, Wes was like, here's the script for Grand Budapest Hotel. Yeah, I saw the French Dispatch at Telluride in 22, 21, and...

He didn't even come because he was like, I'm doing Astrid City. He's on to the next one, which is cool. I don't know if I belabor this personally, but it was nominated for nine Oscars, including picture, screenplay, cinematography, and director. It won for Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score for your guy, Alex.

I just want to say this was the best actor this year. It's a 2000. Yeah, it's pretty shocking. It's the 87th Oscars. Eddie Redmayne won for Theory of Everything. One of the single worst wins in Oscar history. A movie that people still don't talk about to this day. Steve Carell was nominated for Foxcatcher. Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle in American Sniper. I think that's a good performance. Me too. Benedict Cumberbatch in Imitation Game. I didn't care for this film.

Michael Keaton and Birdman. I dare say that I think Ralph Fiennes could have found some daylight in that category. It's extremely disappointing. It's an interesting time to be doing this too because he's about to star in this movie Conclave about the selection of the next pope. That trailer is sick. And he's the star and there's some speculation that it's time for Ralph Fiennes. Didn't he win for Schindler's List? I don't believe he did. No. No.

I think he maybe got nominated. He did get nominated. No Roger Ebert for this one, so I will go with Our Guy Rick, Richard Brody from The New Yorker. Well, he's in the tank, but let's go. He loved this movie. I will say there's plenty of really interesting writing about why this movie sucks. David Thompson from The New Republic wrote an absolutely scathing,

Is that a fact? Yeah. By the way, Rafe did not win an Oscar. You guys are both right and I'm wrong. Yeah. Richard Brody said, the story of the lost grandeur of a hotel that is restored and perpetuated by way of a book is also the story of a tradition of personal nobility.

a severe and self-imposed code of conduct that proves, in the face of historically terrifying and catastrophic trouble, to be a rock of steadfast decency. That tradition, in turn, is preserved and perpetuated in art. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the closest thing to a credo, a discourse of principle that Anderson has yet offered.

Interesting. So it won Best Credo. It won Best Credo. I had one other read on it before we get into maybe categories and less high-minded stuff. But I didn't, in reading reviews of it and looking at what people have to say about the movie, there's not as much of a reading about it being a story about class

And it feels very much like a story about class to me, in part because it's obviously Tony Revolori's character is a refugee. And also Ralph Fiennes is in the service industry. He's not. He's a person of extraordinary taste and manners. But he's not a rich man. He's trying to get money. He's spending all this time with these...

women with great power? Well, I think it's... I think further down that path is actually the conversation about what Wes Anderson includes and what he kind of elides. And I think Zero as very much an immigrant, a refugee from what is...

essentially an other to the europe that he is now living in um you can definitely read um gustav as uh queer in some ways i think there's been a lot of writing about that uh as he says i sleep with all of my friends um maybe he's just friendly um

And then also something else that is, you know, relatively missing from the text, but is very much there in the subtext, is Judaism, because Stefan Zweig was Jewish. World War II, not great for Jews generally. And Kovacs, the Jeff Goldblum character, suffers also a

bad end mm-hmm so I think that all of those things to my reading of it and watching it a few times I actually think that the way he handles those things is not just in keeping with his personal sort of style but I think kind of beautiful because he's painting it all with the same dreamy brush but then the some of those dreams are actually nightmares if you watch the movie again and again but I think there's a conversation to be had yeah I mean it was very intentional everything you do yeah I think his representation also in the world where the people who are working like

working class jobs. Agatha, Gustav, Zero. The prison guards? They're dressed in these pastels and they have color and they have a vivaciousness to them. And then everybody who's like sort of rich and fascist is wearing black and they're shot from a distance and they're evil. It's a great call. He definitely brings you so close to those people

who are working real jobs. This is an interesting thing, though, about Wes Anderson to me because I am... I wasn't being critical, but just noting that, like, he now is just, like, in a herringbone tweed jacket somewhere smoking a pipe and reading an ancient novel. But... And God bless him. I love him. What if he's just, like...

He's watching Beekeeper. - Yeah, seriously. - Seriously. - He could be. - We can take multitudes, Sean. - I hope he's drinking Mountain Dew. - He is just like a dorky guy from Texas. - Yeah. - He is just like a regular guy who is also a mega genius at filmmaking. - Yeah. - And so there's this constant tension in all of his movies about class. And this one feels so elevated because it is about the people who literally are in service of the higher class. - But also there's an important point that the movie makes that there's a difference between class and wealth and taste.

when Gustav takes Boy with Apple, he says, everything else here is bullshit. Yeah. And there's like an Egon shield like right behind it. Yeah. We can get into that, but that's actually a fake Egon shield that is called, that they had designed. You see that? Look at the big brain on him! Do you guys do this research? Do you know what that fake painting was called? Unsheathed his sword. I know what the fake painting on the wall is called. We're going to get to that. Okay, we'll save it. But it's pretty good. The re-curatables. But yeah, that...

that the people who are the heroes of this movie are competent and creative and aesthetic and curious and interesting and the other people are not. The counter to that is how much time on set did Wes spend graphic designing and doodling the perfect SS logo? Sounds like a lot. But you could also make the point that all cults have a certain look and style to make people want to sign up. It's true. So,

All right, let's get into the categories. Today's most rewatchable scene is brought to you by Nissan. Find your path in the Nissan Pathfinder Rock Creek. All right, guys. A movie of chapters and also of lots of scenes that kind of bleed into one another and move from location to location. From aspect ratio to aspect ratio. From aspect ratio. I have the following scenes. Okay. Gustav and the Dowager Countess.

greeting her. I have this because if you're watching this movie first time or if you are following like some criticism of the film as being uptight, stuffy, Wes Anderson, herringbone bullshit, the moment... I didn't say bullshit. I know. The moment that Gustav says to fucking Lutz is like when you're like, oh, this is going to be actually like a profane movie where this guy has human reactions at the ends of these soliloquies. Yeah.

I had the same reaction but just two lines later when he says, "This diabolical varnish!" when he's looking at her nail polish, which is really funny.

You've nothing to fear. You're always anxious before you travel. I admit you appear to be suffering a more acute attack on this occasion, but truly and honestly, oh dear God, what have you done to your fingernails? I beg your pardon? This diabolical varnish, the colour is completely wrong. I really don't like it. It's not that I don't like it, I am physically repulsed. Perhaps this will soothe you.

Well, he breaks, too, because she's being very, very earnest. Yeah. I may not live again, and he's just disgusted. Sorry, did you... Yeah. That moment, that sequence, is among my favorites in the whole movie. And you're right. It shows you that Gustav...

is not just this effete concierge. He's actually like an East London dude. Yeah, there's a little bit of imbrugion in this one. Gustav shows Zero the ropes junior lobby boy in training. It's a great, great scene. You get so many little details of the hotel. I especially love the walk

Gustav does as he's coming in and people are bringing him things to approve. And he's like, no, yes, no, yes. This is so good. I also like the description of her exit as shaking like a shitting dog. You just like the swears. Yeah. I'm noticing that. You're a simple guy. I can only be me. This is obviously after the passing of Madame D, played amazingly by Tilda Swinton in Old Age Makeup. Gustav and Lutz

The train ride you meet Edward Norton's Henkel's characters. Little Albert. And this is where you get get your hand off my lobby boy. And I mentioned the beginning of the pie. The reading of the will by Kovacs. I put all of this Lutz stuff in one scene, even though it's three or four scenes. The reading of the will by Kovacs and meeting Dimitri, Marguerite, Letizia, Carolina. Yeah.

This is where the Van Hoytel gets given to Gustav tax-free. Van Hoytel the younger, I believe. Yeah, the young, yeah. Boy with Apple. And we first meet, we first meet Adrian Brody's character, Dimitri, with one of the all-time first lines. Really singes the eyebrows. Yeah, yeah. You want to take it, Chris? I think I'll skip renouncing it, and I don't, I recommend Craig not cut it, put it in. Who's Gustav H.? I'm afraid that's me, darling.

It's pretty funny in the context of the movie. Reminds me of a Woody Allen film. You know?

Sir, I agree. You're out. Get off the pod. Next scene I had is Gustav in jail serving mush and meeting Pinky and Ludwig's gang. He's become a dear friend. Yeah. I think the meeting between Zero and Gustav in particular when he is explaining his circumstances is another wonderful twist on the Gustav character where it's like,

he's pretty wily. He can make friends anywhere. Yeah, and he's at zero S and a swear on the Bible. He's like, I'll do that later. Also, that entire prison scene invented Paddington 2, for which I'm very grateful. Great call. Haven't seen that one. The not agreed. It's about a bear. The not agreed scene. Not agreed. Not agreed. The Kovacs scene. Yeah, yeah. With Dimitri, and then that leads to the great

chase sequence of Joplin following Kovacs through the trams into the Kunstmuseum. We also get Joplin killing Kovacs' cat. I'm an attorney, Dimitri. I'm obligated to proceed according to the rule of law. Not agreed. This stinks. Did you just throw my cat out the window? I don't think so, Joplin.

Launching him. Launching him. And what may be the best line in the movie, which is, did he just throw my cat out the window? And all the sisters are like, no, I don't know. No, no, no. Did he? This, for what it's worth, is basically lifted in the chase scene between Joplin and Kovacs is pretty much entirely lifted from Torn Curtain, the Albert Hitchcock movie. There's a great YouTube video on the movie YouTube

YouTube channel where they break down like this side by side. Yeah. I guess, would you consider this an homage or a Jack move? Depends on who you ask. He's asking you. Look at that dodge. Cinema Sheriff Sean Fetasy. There are a tremendous number of

Yeah. Paid to various movies, like really high-minded stuff, like Frank Borsage movies, and then also just like A Shot in the Dark with Peter Sellers. You know what I mean? Like there's this very, he has a fluid relationship with movie history, much like all of the filmmakers that I'm obsessed with. Yeah. And so I love that. And I love that he constantly is just like, over here, watch this movie. It's fitting that we're doing this shortly after Pulp Fiction. Yeah.

Just because those two movies both have sometimes full shots or full sequences that are taken from other films. I also think, Sean, you referenced it, but I do think Hitchcock is very intentional and important because of a person who had two careers, one before the war and one after the war. Yes, but his movies in the 30s are so...

feel very, very important to this film. In terms of like the creeping dread on the horizon kind of stuff? And also just, there are many of those movies that are set in hotels and they're set at wintertime and you know, there's a lot of curiosity about like, will the right man win or will the wrong man escape? And question of scale, right? Can we tell the story of contemporary humanity on a train? Right. Can we tell it in a locked room essentially? Yeah, I feel like The Lady Vanishes is probably the number one big influence on this movie. The Prison Break? Yeah.

quite a sequence. What an amazing piece of design, too. Like, there's a bunch of really cool stories about building camera rigs that go in reverse and then run the film backwards so that they can show them descending things or going up things. I just love that little image. Maybe this is cutting into great shot Gordo of just the ladder coming down into the frame, you know, when they're getting ready to prepare. This is very fantastic, Mr. Fox. Yeah. And as is the

of Cross Keys sequence, which is very fun just for the cameos from Bill Murray and Fisher Stevens. It's... The Bob Balaban erasure is not going to fly with me. I'm not trying to erase anybody. Okay, Warris? Yeah, Warris is in it. Then we get into the Alpine chase. Thank you. Which I think might be the Clubhouse favorite. Is it? Well,

We didn't pregame. I thought you were saying thank you. The cable cars exchange and then down the... Yeah, the funiculars, the monks, and then the skiing bobsledding. Well, it's not just that. As a winter sports enthusiast. It's a... Uh-huh.

That's why it's the greatest. Yeah. That leads into the Grand Budapest shootout. And then I'm going to call this a scene, which is the narrative re-nesting, which is like the multiple pullbacks. You learn about the fate of Gustav and Agatha. You learn that Gustav traded his fortune to this new sort of post-Soviet or Soviet bloc state, Russia.

to keep the Grand Budapest. Right. And he did it because this is where him and Agatha, he and Agatha were happy for a time. Then we see Jude Law writing. That's what you guys did at Sunset Gower, right? That's where you guys were happiest. Very similar, yeah. Speaking of decrepit. We see Jude Law writing. We see Tom Wilkinson writing. We see the teenager finishing the book.

I haven't been on as many rewatchables as you guys, but that is essentially the entire movie. You've listed like the eight set pieces, which I love. Yeah, it was hard for me to be like, this is the, we usually try to be like, here's the champions, here are the final four, five, six, but like, this is hard because so many of this was like,

You know, like there are little sequences where now all of a sudden you've moved. Yeah, I mean, I think of the movie in a series of like little sequences for this category. So like that first conversation between Zero and Gustav after Madame de takes off in the car is a conversation I love where he's like, he's like, who...

Who hired a lobby boy? And then Mr. Moser comes down and... Oh, the window opening and the cripple shoeshine boy. Yeah, yeah. Like that whole sequence, the explanation of the prison break by Harvey Keitel's character, which is like the return of Winston Wolfe. It's like,

four minutes in the middle of the movie that I just love where he like unfurls the map and you have a lovely line yeah it's just it's very funny it's very beautiful it's a great little Keitel performance it's like shirtless tattooed yeah and he's basically doing Mr. Mr. Pink's like or Mr. White's like dialogue yeah yeah it's great so it's a little hard because like I think that they're the Alpine Chase is like a great

example of what makes Wes Anderson very unique and special and his like filmmaking virtuosity. But I like the little smaller stuff where they laugh the most. Yeah, I think that the I think if I have to pick one, it's it's Lobby Boy training and that whole sequence of like introducing zero to the world. What about you? I mean, I think that truly this movie is kind of a closed loop like everything leads to everything else. It's very hard to take anything out because nothing there's no outliers. It all fits. Um,

I still pick the Alpine chase just because I think if you were to sort of surgically remove one portion of the movie, everything that we've been talking about for 40 minutes is in that section. From the filmmaking bravura and the very specific aesthetic choices of the miniatures

to the increasing satirical lunacy of asking the same question five times and him saying uh-huh until him getting mad leading to the confess leading to the scene in the confessional with matthew almerich which is hilarious and uh incensed and then i was reading about how they shot those separately and then ray fines had to do it again after he saw the intensity that our guy our uh

our number one French boy from the Bureau brought in that scene. Yeah, I would just carve it out. It just makes me laugh every time. All right, so we have a couple of different ones. I'll go with the Alpine chase just to make the decision. So the Alpine chase is the most rewatchable scene, but we have some other contenders in there. Today's most rewatchable scene was brought to you by Nissan Flex Your Ruggedness.

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Nothing says flex your ruggedness like three men discussing Grand Budapest Hotel. Seriously, two guys with glasses and one guy who should have his glasses on. What's each of the best? Fantasy, you got anything for me? Confirmation of Wes Anderson as a historical filmmaker, I think, is the number one thing. I think this is like... You had a big, fat hit. It was an Oscar darling that features the best performance of one of the best actors the last 50 years. And this is like...

I wonder if this is the first movie mentioned in his obituary. It's very possible. Oh, yeah. That's interesting. I wonder, that's a really good category. Is this his obit movie? What's your guy's obit podcast?

Cop went. You just knew. It's probably garbage crime. What about the time you got incredibly mad that I took Avengers Endgame in a draft and you started crying? Every draft where I acted like an asshole, that's probably, that's my legacy as the greatest person in the world. Sean Fantasy Hudson, father, thought leader, and whiny little crybaby. Yeah. On my pathway as host. Because you couldn't pick Thanos. I don't know.

I think we're going to keep talking about this in probably most of the categories, but Ralph Fiennes' performance. Yeah. To your point, Sean, about how you kind of don't always know what a director's apex mountain is or a...

you know, not just a career-changing film, but a reputation-reorienting film would be. Ralph Fiennes has been consistently brilliant in movies since his first movie, which was Schindler's List, and brilliant in a way that almost feels effortless, and also brilliant in a way that is rarely, he's rarely the star of the movie. He's always

almost always the best or one of the best things in it and he can do almost anything but you rarely see the conversation shift to considering him with each new Ralph Fiennes movie right and so then to see this in retrospect not just in terms of this performance but in terms of all the other wildly

incredible things that he's done in the years since. I think Hail Caesar was after this, wasn't it? Yeah, I was going to say that. It's so interesting that he would take a tiny part like that immediately after being at the center of a massive hit. There's a degree to which I think when he first starts out and he's like in The English Patient, you know, he's always been a little bit of a character actor. I mean, he plays in the remake of Manhunter that Ridley Scott, like he's in Red Dragon, right? Like, I mean, he's...

I mean, he's Voldemort. Yeah, he's Voldemort. Like, he's willing to be the bad guy. He's willing to be the seventh person on the call sheet, maybe. But he's also M in the James Bond movies, where he's, like, decent and honorable. He just has so many things in his toolbox that to see him just...

He just runs laps around this movie to such a degree, and it only works because of how funny it is, but it also only works because of how melancholy he is underneath the funny, and I just think it's only gotten better. It's interesting. This is right smack in the middle of a 10-year window for him that is amazing, though. If you look at from roughly...

If you want to say like in Bruges, and it's also right around when he starts doing Voldemort. And in that period of time, he's in The Hurt Locker. He's in three more Harry Potter movies. I forgot about that. He's Coriolanus in a Coriolanus adaptation that's very good. He's in Skyfall, of course. Grand Budapest Hotel. The next year, he's in A Bigger Splash, one of my favorite movies. And then in Hail Caesar. And, you know, since then, it's...

a little more wandering in the dark but he's also like also throughout that entire time does like a player year yes yes and one of the great shakespearean actors of his time and um but he's this is an extended heater for a 50 year old british guy you know it's a very unusual kind of stardom that you don't see as much these days i saw him do uh this thing that's on youtube it's a david hare play

that's just about like a, basically a stand in for David hair. It's a monologue about him getting, I think long COVID, uh,

And he's just like talking about it for 40 minutes. And then the BBC wouldn't run it for a variety of reasons. But like, it's just on YouTube. It's insane how good Ray finds. And it's just like by himself in a room full of books talking about having COVID. And it's nuts. It's so good. I had forgotten. He's also going to be in 28 years later, the 28 days later follow up. Yeah. Um, he's amazing. More with age, the best, uh,

I can't quite find the German phrase for this or like the fun way of describing how much every single person in this movie squeezes the most out of whatever screen time they have. I actually have multiple Dion Waiters awards later. Like I added a new one, but there's something about like, how good is Tom Wilkinson?

Is he on the screen for more than two and a half minutes? I might push back on that later. Really? Wow. Interesting take. Yeah. Interesting. I'm not saying he's not good, but when you're looking at a movie that is essentially flawless, like where could you tweak? Oh.

I start with the author. Okay. But to get back to what's aged the best, I also find the fact that Gustav is actually pretty unscrupulous and flip-flops a lot and will be like, I shall never cross this hotel again, the door of this hotel again. And he's like, actually, we need to go in right now. Or like, I'll never part with Boy With Apple. And then he's like, actually, let's sell it and spend it on oars of whiskey. He says, the reason being, I think this could be a tricky war. Yeah.

Not too much in the kitty? Genius. When they meet Henkels on the train and Gustav is like, and how's your mother? That's really good, man. That aged well. Yeah. Plus he's the best. Yeah. Did banging heiresses age well? Wait, as a professional strategy or just as a calling? Just throwing it out to the room.

Yeah, I think. I mean, what's the downside, Sean? Pitch us the counter to sleeping with rich old ladies. Yeah. What's the problem? It's not all fillets anymore. The cheaper cuts, man. Yeah, no, go ahead.

I have no comment. Okay. All right. What else is age of the best? Adrian Brody cursing. Sure. One of the best to do it. Really? Holy fuck! What's the meaning of this shit? Every other actor in this movie is affecting some sort of

Transcontinental accent of some kind and he's just like Adrian Brody in New York. No, I actually think the the best part about this movie is how many people are just like I'm just gonna do Owen Wilson if that's cool or I'm just gonna do Jason Schwartzman in 2014 being like shit.

No, I think that, again, these are the aesthetic choices that might get overlooked. But like, that was a decision, right? Because they looked at what was happening. And Ralph Fiennes was using this voice. And Tony Revolori was using his own voice from like Orange County. And then Saoirse Ronan has talked about it. She let me do the Irish accent. She would have done any accent. And they were like, well, why don't you just do your own? And she said that was the, this is the first movie she's had ever done her native accent in when she was playing a baker in Zubroka. I guess that is the thing that,

setting your film in a fictional country allows for. Yeah. Which is funny. If everybody does it, I think it works. If five people were trying to do like Eastern European. Well, as you guys have talked about many times on The Watch, you know, it didn't work out so well in Sokovia. You know, like that's not just because you have an imagined land with a lot of mythology. Yeah.

It doesn't mean it's going to work out well. You're kind of the Stefan Zweig of Sokovia, aren't you? I am stateless, sadly, because of what happened with my home country getting lifted up into the sky, a sentient robot. No, it didn't work well with the regime, the HBO show recently, where a European nation, Eastern European nation just spoke the Queen's English.

But I do think that works again. Everything is heightened. Everything is fictional. And the idea of borders being porous and constantly being redefined by forces that are outside of your own control makes sense. I mean, again, not to go back to Zweig, but that's why you guys brought me here, right? He talks multiple times in his writing about what it was like to go from war-torn or pre-war Austria and then be in Paris.

Everyone was in Paris for one reason, and that was because they liked art and drinking and sex. And so everyone had that in common, even if they didn't speak the same language. I see you, brother. That's how we feel about Glendale. Exactly. Do you think that this movie would have been better if Ultron had played Gustav?

Wow. Well, well, Spader as Gustav is an intriguing casting or just like a speculative Spader as a robot or Spader. No, I don't think Ultron would quite fit in this milieu.

Maybe you should dream a little bigger. Dream bigger. Cry of Ultron? What else is age the best? Would have made 500 million more dollars. Seriously, if Grand Budapest made a billion because it was welcome to the Grand Ultron Hotel. Or what if Zubrowka is taken over by Sokovia? What if it is in the same fictional era? It's not too late. Then we could get Quicksilver back, you know, and that's all I want. That's all I need. Which one? That Scarlet Witch. Uh,

Evan Peters or Aaron Taylor Johnson? Well, Cannon is Aaron Taylor Johnson in the MCU, right? Oh, Mr. Deadpool, you're talking about Cannon in the MCU. Okay. Senior citizen Tilda Swinton, age the best.

I thought she did a great job with that. Because she was aged? Yeah. Okay. Well, they've talked about, Wes Anderson talked about how they always try to do everything incredibly cheaply except for her old age makeup. They got her the best. Very best. Yeah, they got her like the dinosaur guy from Jurassic World. No, they got her the guy who did Steve Rogers in the end of Endgame. Sean, just wanted to put it in your terms. Thank you. Now I understand it. Appreciate that. The fact that this is Tony Revolori's first feature film at bat pretty much...

Pretty funny. Not bad. I think his not being good at acting really helps this movie. I don't mean that to sound rude. It is rude sounding. But the kind of amateur quality that he brings to it is appropriate for a person who is effectively an amateur throughout the film. Like Wes has talked about that. He's basically untrained. His ability to work with younger people, though, I think is... I saw... I can't remember which person from the cast was like... I think it was Ed Norton, but he was like...

younger people are basically like acting computers. Like they don't know the emotions that they're portraying yet maybe. And Wes is able to be like, just say it exactly like this and stand exactly there and say it like when he walks in. I think sincerely, there's a bell curve of who can work with Wes Anderson. And on one end is completely untrained young amateurs. And on the other end are the best actors in the world. And in the middle are people who are

are probably very good, but in order to get there, need to use their own method, their own process, need to improvise, need to find it, need to alt every other line. It takes a certain level of professionalism, as you guys were saying at the beginning, for Ralph Fiennes or Jeff Goldblum to be like, I find myself in this structure and I can bring it. That's such a good point that I'd never really thought about before. Because if you think about the best performances in his movies, which you were indicating with Fiennes,

The big stars of his movies are almost always not just very good actors, but actors who have ironclad screen personas. Like Luke Wilson. Except for Luke Wilson. He's the one exception. Like Andrew Wilson. No? But like, you know, Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton and Gene Hackman. And Willem Dafoe. And Jeff Goldblum and Adrian Brody. And actors who, you know, Francis McDormand in Moonrise Kingdom, Bruce Willis. Like, these are...

People who are, their iconography is as important as their acting skill. And with kids, it's the total opposite. It's a great observation. Thanks, Sean. Nice job. I'll ease up on the MCU stuff. A couple other quick ones for what's aged the best. I like everybody doing their own accent, personally. I like the idea of small, frequent meals for stamina.

Oh. That is a really important... That's a great get by you. I'm starting to get more into, like, maybe food should just be fuel. Like, I'm getting a little... Okay, Ben Solak. I think it's a little late in the summer, so I'm, like, dying a little bit. But, like, I haven't really been, like, loving...

Let's have a meal, you know? I have one potato chip at 9 a.m. every morning, and then I wait, and then I have a steak dinner at 7.45. You sound like every football podcaster I've ever listened to. But you actually have like four bites of macaroni and cheese on a waffle, and then you cry, and then you watch five movies. It's pretty much true, yeah. Are you saying this? Isn't Craig one of your wellness coaches? He is. I don't love you saying you're not loving having meals. No. What I mean is like I'm not thinking about meals as decadent

like culinary experiences I'm like let's power up macros let's get back yeah but yeah but yeah decade let's get to make a it's it's summer make a beautiful blt sandwich make some space for the mendels pastries I'll tell you what I know what I do you do know this yeah protein plate from sweet green get the salmon yep and then I make a taco it's great like the hype man look at my fucking guy obi-wan young obi-wan where's your soul where's your poetry you're in the zz uh

that's it. Oh, I mean, yeah, that's it pretty much. I just, I think the palette too is the other thing that the colors of this movie were very influential on a certain kind of like a graphic design, a certain kind of, um, uh,

menswear and womenswear design too and like there's a an aesthetic that emerged into the culture that aged very well the long lasting influence all guys love dressing like concierges now uh that's a really good segue though into Great Shot Gordo shout out to Robert Yeoman who's shot all of Wes Anderson's live action films I think so I believe so uh and they they continue to shoot on film I believe uh

My great shot, Gordo, kind of like the letterbox king for this one is the close-up of Saoirse Ronan with the carousel lights in the background. I'm just a basic guy, I guess. But did you have a different one? It's a little hard to top that one. I think you got it. I got a couple. Damn. By the way, I also want to say Robert Yeoman, incredible cinematographer, incredible career.

between Wes Anderson's like pointillist, obsessive masterpieces and the comedies of Paul Feig? Yeah, yeah. He shot Spy, right? Is that like one for them, one for... Like, I'm not saying those aren't...

cool hangs and he doesn't do good work on them but I feel like the experience might be slightly different I think he's a guy who is hired to bring a veneer of sophistication to films that are maybe lacking that description that's true you are the yeoman of this professional podcast I do think it's tough to pick one great shot when you have a movie that has

has so have this movie has so many great shots that there are as i googled multiple blog posts devoted to the many great shots of this movie um

I think that Carnival Lights is definitely one of them. I think Zero and Agatha in the truck with the pink Mendels boxes everywhere is one of them. But in terms of like impact of like punch in the gut gasp, the one where after you've learned that Gustav has been shot and it cuts to the very stagey, very theatrical frame, ghostly shot of the entire staff of the hotel in their finery and in their best. And that is the hammer drop on

the emotional impact. I also really like when they get back to F. Murray Abraham and Jude Law sitting at the table. Yeah. And then it pulls back and it's like you become aware that you're like almost watching a play because they get the spotlight just as the only light on them. And the hotel is dead. The hotel is a cemetery. I think there's just

There's probably north of a hundred shots of portraiture in the movie, too, which is interesting because it's about a movie about the pursuit of a portrait. And that's obviously the into-camera shot, something that he does very well. But there's a couple in this one that are in the elevator that are amazing. Oh, yeah. Where, like, each character is kind of, like, positioned at different heights. I honestly can't even imagine how they do this. Like, we do these pods on video now. Wait, we do? Each time, like...

Gahow and Jack are amazing at what they're doing. Like, can you do this to the left footage? And can you move your computer and by the way, your computer? And I'm like, I can't work like this. And you imagine being Ralph Fiennes and being like, you don't have a centimeter to move but you're Ralph Fiennes? Sean, you were referring earlier to, you were talking about one of the whip pans, like where the camera reaches the destination before the actor does. And I think you were talking about when Adrian Brody is running specifically. And I,

To be able to do that and to be as funny and charming and in character and make it seem delightful when he's yelling stop or whatever, but the camera's doing half the work, it's wild. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. As a B2B marketer, you know how noisy the ad space can be if your message isn't targeted to the right audience. It just disappears into the noise. I think the great thing about LinkedIn, it just feels like everybody's on there.

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This episode is brought to you by Vital Farms. Vital Farms, keeping it bull free. We always wanted our kids as they were growing up to have stuff that came from the right places. Vital Farms is perfect for this. Here's how good Vital Farms is. You can go to vitalfarms.com slash farm and you can get a 360 degree peek at the actual farm where your eggs came from. It's a certified B corporation. They are devoted to improving the lives of people, animals, and the planet through food,

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I'm going to go a little bit of a zag. The brutalism of the 1960s version of the Grand Budapest. Because I kind of also have like a hankering. It would be kind of rad to stay in a hotel where there's only like six other people.

In Soviet Russia? Yeah, 1960s. This sounds like the start of one of the movies that you guys see that I won't see. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Startup 2, starring Chris Ryan. There's like an old ghost in the bathtub. It's like Andrew Tate called you and invited you to his favorite hotel.

That's not what those movies are. Is that strike one? Would you be the shot caller of the Grand Budapest Hotel? Oh, if it was like a prison? Well, would you make it that kind of environment? No, I think I would be like a little bit somewhere between Nikolai Koster-Waldau and shot caller and Fiennes in Grand Budapest. I'm like right in the middle. That's my Venn diagram. I see. I would be more the guy who's getting hosed down in Arabian baths. I hear it's good for me. Did you guys have a different location?

Well, I think that the completely constructed Alpine cable cars are really cool, as is the funicular that runs up into the hotel, I think is very cool. I love a funicular. You guys do much funicular riding? I like a funicular. I took a funicular in Bergen, Norway. That was dope. Well, you... Oh, Chris took the funicular first and was kind of meh on the funicular. I enjoyed the funicular, but maybe he had lowered my expectations. Also, you know who...

That's because you took it one day and then the second day I was in line to get on the funicular and our beloved Tony Gilroy got off the funicular and was like, it's good. It's great. Cool.

Tony Gilroy likes his funicular. Have you used the Angels Flight? I've never done it. Constantly, yes. It's like one of those LA things. It's a big, big, big hit with the kids. Really? Yeah, you go to Grand Central Market, you hop on the Angels Flight, a local funicular, if you will. Well, that's why I'm asking. Yeah. But Angels Flight was inoperable for many years and they restored it. But to like Echo Park? Nope. It goes up to kind of where like...

MoCA is in the museums. Just the other side of downtown. Like Walt Disney Hall? Yeah. And then you go back down. Are they going to build a Dodgers this weekend? Well, if you look at the billboards in my neighborhood, they are against it. I have a couple. I have two other here. I mean, you mentioned the hotel. I just feel like it's worth noting that the hotel was a department store called the Görlitzer Warenhaus that they took over and built two different facades for, right? For the different eras. But also the...

I know Chris loves this place, the Zwinger Museum in Dresden, which is the double of the Kunz Museum for the big chase scene. Sierra spent a lot of time in Dresden. Beautiful. Yeah. I actually have spent a night in Dresden. One wonderful night with Madame de... The Cutty Pursuit of Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop. I hope... Shout out to these guys. I hope I don't butcher the name. Ose Schuples S. Roth Zauriel, which is the yodeling in the beginning.

I don't think he got that right. And they're like a Swiss folk group. I thought he got it right. Okay. I think, could we do the reverse of this award? Which would be like... Reverse music? No, no, no. Wes Anderson deserves praise for not putting a kink song in this movie. Or a Ramones song. I feel like the urge to break, to go super anachronistic... Yes. To go Tenenbaums. Probably would have been strong. And he didn't. And it's aesthetically perfect. Can you...

Can you call out something from the score as a needle drop? Or no, that's technically not accurate. Yeah, this is like a score. I think this was written for the film. The score is incredible. But there is also a lot of classical jam music in this as well. I think Desplat's Canto at Gablemeister's Peak during our, which we all agreed was the most rewatchable scene. No, I was the holdout. Really? Well, we'll fix that in post. Young Ultron over here.

Did you guys see the Sokovia stinger at the end of this movie this time around? Did you watch the Criterion Blu-ray edition? It's pretty sick. Red Hulk appeared. The Big Guna Burger Award for Best Use of Food and Drink. There's so much great food and drink. I want Pink Hulk to get its moment. Wes Anderson's Pink Hulk. Concierge Hulk. It's a side you cross. It's Monsieur Banner. Yeah. Hulk picks up last. He's like, I'm in Thailand. I can't be safe. Yeah.

Boy. Pick a Hoonaburger. I'll give you two. Two options. Or you can pick a third. Oh, it's easy. Mendel's cake. The Mendel's cake, the pastry that is being inspected by the prison guards. That he's like, it's too beautiful to destroy. Chop. That's my pick. That's the ones, that's when they make the cookies in the shape of hammers. Yeah. I also love the one that incredibly got away with that. That Ludwig and Pinky's gang split. And they're like still licking up the icing. Although it does eventually lead to

chopping to them. Mendel's is the best. Otherwise, I have the two ducks roasted with olives, rabbit, and salad even though later on, off order, they're eating lamb. And I don't know that I could have done that. Lamb, duck, and rabbit

Same meal? That's your sweet green protein plate, isn't it? Thank you, Craig. That reminds us of our... That's perfect for a hot day. Our evening at Saddle Peak Lodge. Oh, yeah. It was my bachelor dinner. Yeah. Have you been to Saddle Peak Lodge? I haven't. I haven't. We had... What did we dine on that evening? We had emu. Ostrich. And we have kangaroo.

We may have, yeah. Wow. Spice? Bison? Yeah, a lot of chew. Did any little bits of buckshot in the sirloins? No, no. They were...

They were naturally decomposing and they were discovered in Malibu. And did Zach hunt them himself? No. I think I would like to have a redo on my bachelor party. Me too. Was that really your bachelor party? I didn't have one. Because it was such a low-key nuptials. But you had that one night with Madame Duh in Dresden. I know you want this. Speaking of Chris's bachelor party, we should mention the name of the Mendel's pastry. It's called the

Courtesan au chocolat. Ah. The chocolate courtesan. Is that also her name? Yeah. I think it may have been. Wait, so those are your two picks? Those are my two nominees, yeah. I think you're missing two important ones. Hit me here.

the prison mush. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't really want to eat that. It's quite nutritious with some salt. Sure. And it saves their lives because the guy with the scar enjoyed it so much that he murders his cellmate who's going to... That's not dry snitching. He's got a rat on him. That's like wet snitching. Full snitching, yeah. I think the other one that I found compelling was the champagne that's better than the cat piss that they serve on the train. I love that. Good call. You have to bring your own wine to the train.

to take the train. Mallory Rubin Award for Did This Movie Need a Better Sex Scene. Better than Rafe getting hit from an old lady? That's actually like a really great point. I don't know how you get better than that. Butch's Girlfriend Award. Now, typically here, Bill will highlight

the contributions of an actress that he doesn't feel like lives up to the rest of the film. An actress, you say? You could talk me into...

the love story of this film being somewhat thinly developed, somewhat lightly developed. You know, it's just sort of like taken as a given that they fall in love deeply as teens and then survive until the point where Agatha obviously tragically passes. I will say that my nominee for this is probably going to be the Kovacs, Kovacs' sister subplot,

which is like, fine. Oh no, the Surge X's sister. Surge X's sister. Sorry, you're right. No disrespect. I just, I can skim through that as like a weak link. Yeah, but that gets you the big misdirect of whose head is in the laundry basket. because you're worried it's Agatha. Were you shocked? No, I wasn't. You didn't think it was Agatha? I didn't think that Wes Anderson was going to behead Agatha. I think that's a great point about the

you could see the romance as flimsy. I think that one of the more beautiful lines in the movie, though, is when he basically says, like, we could do whatever we wanted because there was no one looking for us, no one modeling, no one checking for us. We were both completely alone in the world. And that really reminds you that this relationship is essentially Moonrise Kingdom again. Like, it is an impossible, young people idealized moment. And it is just a moment in time, but one that consumes the rest of Zero's life.

I don't know that there's a person who's a weak link. I think in general, the Surge X plotline and the usage of Matthew Almeric is... It's also we get robbed of maybe one or two more Seydoux scenes. That crossed my mind as I was looking over the cast. Yeah, Seydoux's kind of like, oh, he took it. Oh, yeah, she snitches too. What's up with that? A lot of snitch jackets being caught in the Budapest Hotel. Well...

Clotilde, you know, she's trying to survive in this harried world. But she seemed very happy to see Gustave. I feel like, yeah, I don't know. She, Léa Seydoux is cinema's chief proponent of inflicting pain, which we also learned in Dune Part 2. Great point. And I am seated for all representations of that. Season tickets for getting punished by Léa Seydoux. Fond of her work. What's aged the worst? Working six and a half days from 5 a.m. to midnight

No, no, that's legal in Arkansas now. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed that bill. That was actually how we made Grantland, honestly. It felt that way. That was the blogosphere. Yeah, it did feel that way. I don't mean any disrespect. I'm just going to say it. I don't think hotel service is as good as it is depicted in this film. Well, I think the question is, was it that good 100 years ago? Who knows? Who can say? I mean, it's also, they're not air-conditioned, you know? Oh, that's in the mountains, so you're probably cool up there, but...

There's lots of really great advances and I love a hotel. What's your opinion on extemporaneous romantic poetry? Do you feel like that is an appealing characteristic? Because when Agatha suddenly busts out a couple... I think one of the funniest parts of this movie is the poetry is terrible. It's just terrible poetry every time. It's very good. Very good.

I would say what's aged the worst is the still lingering take that Wes Anderson is just a spectrum-y fancy boy playing dress-up all around the world.

I feel like that. You feel like that takes still out there? Oh, I feel like it was out there when this movie came out. Is that on Tim Wall's Twitter? It's been scrubbed already. It's been scrubbed already. Tim Wall said that? No. Wow, finally the Republicans have something they can use against him. It's true. The ammo they need. The left in disarray. Do you guys think that something that's aged the worst is just the profession of concierges? I'm glad you asked.

I was recently at a hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, a wonderful establishment. And I walked in to the lobby. And of course, typically in a nice hotel lobby, you've got to the left, you've got your concierge to the right, you've got your check-in, sometimes vice versa.

And it occurred to me when I walked into this hotel not three days ago that I have never once asked a concierge for anything in my life. I have never. And I think I walk me through this. Is this a class thing or not? Because I think I'm like too ashamed to need the help

Of someone who feels like they're sort of like... I just don't know. I legitimately don't know what they would do now that the internet doesn't do. I would say, and this is, I was going to accuse Sean of humble bragging for saying he was in a hotel recently. I'm going to come off the top rope and say, concierges in countries where you don't speak the language... Very helpful. Tremendously helpful. Very helpful. Particularly a place like... That was not an issue in Raleigh, North Carolina. No.

Yeah. You're in Houston. That's because you preach a whole platform of just like jobs. That's right. Normal thing. No, like in places like Tokyo where you can't like go on open table, the person at the concierge desk will pick up the phone and call the place for you. Yes.

And that's very, very helpful. Concierges and hotels will do that right now. I personally just have no relationship to that experience for whatever reason. Maybe my parents didn't use them or I don't know. It's also like sometimes I think that like if you're in New York and you try to get the concierge to get you into like Don Angie or something like that and then they're like, I can't. I'm like, if I was fucking Paul Meskel, could you, you know what I mean? Wait,

Are you saying you don't have the same clout as Paul Meskel? I don't think so. I'm going to suggest both have been on the watch. So maybe that's... I feel like maybe we democratize... But so have you. It really lowers the average. Here's my take.

We have democratized concierge too much. Have you ever used a concierge? No. Because wait, here's the thing. If you were at a fine hotel like the Grand Budapest or somewhere in, you know, somewhere in Paris, and you knew that this place was the best of everything, like the best service, the best, the best restaurant, the best champagne in the rooms, you would trust the concierge to actually know the city and give you access to the theater that you couldn't get into otherwise. Right.

Every best Western in Sheboygan has a concierge desk where they're going to hand you the pamphlet about the hot springs that are closed. You know what I mean? Like we have to find a new language here. That's the issue. Concierge is for the elite. Well, do you want a guy to Google for you? That's what I'm saying. It should go back. It

It shouldn't be Googling. You want somebody to basically be like, tell me what the 15 hottest restaurants in this area are. And know how to do things. You know what I do like? I'm glad we're talking about this. I like when I stay at a motel and I'm talking to the guy at reception and he breaks out a map and starts drawing in pencil. When's the last time you stayed at a motel? All the time. How dare you make me seem as though I am not a common man. He's describing the penultimate episode of Mad Men. He has not stayed in a motel. When Don gets robbed. Well, I very vividly remember being on the...

the one, the drive along the one in the late 2000s, early 2010s with my wife. And we stayed at a series of hotels all along California. And you'd wake up in the morning. You had never been to the, you'd never been to whatever Carmel by the sea. And you'd,

You go to the front desk and they just break out the map and then they draw you here. Go to this place. Here's Clint Eastwood's house. Here's how you parasail. The Sonny Bono Memorial Mayors. That feels over. I mean, you could do that on Yelp, obviously, quite easily. You could do that. You could look at the eater list for Carmel. You guys, you're not romantic. I feel like this movie shows us that concierges can do other things like CPR. That's right. You know, like break out of prison. I also think this movie is sort of colored by take. It's like all concierges are you guys all...

Grand Milf guys? Like, what's going on? Good question. Is that really what the sorority of crossed keys is about? It's about guys who love to have sex with old women. What's aged the worst? Fascism.

You know, there's a framing where you could say it's doing fine. Are we dropping this pot on election day? When is this coming out? What if Bill shelved this because he was just like too much Zweig talk? I heard Greenwald keeps talking about Woody Allen. Yeah. Scribe's Fever. I hate it. It's still around. It's still out there even for podcasters. Oh, that's aged well then, right? I take it that Scribe's Fever is like...

But it's aged the worst. Like, I wish we could have gotten rid of it. Like, we got rid of concierges, you know? That's what the author references. Yeah, he's like, it's basically I have a depressive writer's block. Do you know what's aged badly? Is the suggestion in the movie that modern medicine will cure all pandemic-type viruses quickly. Oh, yeah. You know? Good call. What is it that they're afflicted by? The Prussian grip. The Prussian grip. Yeah, and he's like, today's medicine would have knocked that out in a week. And I guess, yeah. But what if it's just athlete's foot?

Yeah, that would be fine. I don't think that would have taken her out. No, I think she's a strong, strong woman. Ruffalo Hannah Rubin at Partridge overacting award. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me lady. I come in here. I give these things to you. I treated you like a son. You fucking stabbed me in the heart. Fuck you. Fuck you.

I think this is a tough one. People aren't allowed to overact in a Wes Anderson movie. Well, Willem Dafoe overacts in every Wes Anderson movie. I love Willem Dafoe. But he doesn't even speak that much. It's so much mugging. I mean, I think he and Brody are really dining out. I fucking love Brody in this movie, but, you know. Dafoe is the closest, but he's being asked to do that. He is. He is. Was there a better title for this movie? No. No, fuck no. The Can You Dig It Award for the most memorable quote, I think, take your hands off my lobby boy, or...

You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed, that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant... Oh, fuck it. I think that would be my choice. I've got a couple more. Hit me. Well, we already said I go to bed with all my friends. We already said the one about the cat. Would you like to say it again? Did you just throw my cat out the window? I...

The dialogue of there's really no point in doing anything in life because it's all over in the blink of an eye and the next thing you know, rigor mortis sets in and then a moment later says she was dynamite in the sack, by the way. When you're young, it's all fillet steak, but as the years go by, you have to move on to the cheaper cuts, which is fine with me because I like those, more flavorful, or so they say. Can I give one? Yeah. I love when he goes, me thinks, me breathes, me lasts, me fears, me holy shit, you got him! Yeah.

And also the, uh, with Zero, when he asks if Zero knows what to do and be, have you ever been interrogated? And he says, I was arrested and tortured by the rebel militia after the desert uprising. Well, you know the drill then. Zip it. Zip it.

I do like when he approaches the madam's corpse and he's like, you're looking so well, darling. You really are. They've done a marvelous job. I don't know what sort of cream they've put on you down at the morgue, but I want some. I want some. Yeah. And then he's like, get me a glass of chilled water with no ice.

Isn't there a line where he says he's like a real straight guy and he says no one's ever said that about me before? Yeah. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Could Luke Wilson have been M. Gustav? Or M. Chuck even. Or M. Chuck. I have one for you. Do you want to go first? Do you have a hottest take? Um...

I think that you can put Owen Wilson in the lead role of every Wes Anderson movie, and it's actually better except for this movie. This is the only movie where if you... And I have felt this since Tenenbaums, where I'm like... So who would Owen Wilson have been in Moonrise? I guess he's kind of sort of Edward Norton in that part. But this is one where you can't have...

you can't have a repertory player from the wilson company okay that's a great great take what about you for a hot take uh are we doing the one about people are they actually good at their jobs oh that was the vincent chase award you can you can i'm sorry for skipping that i just assumed there was so much professionalism going on here i don't know about the writer

Are we sure the author is good? Oh, let's go back to the, so this is actually a great hot take. Cause I had, first of all, like I had no idea you would be, well, that is supposed to be Stefan. Why? Yeah. Essentially. Yes. I think, okay. This is also my, this I'll carve this out of my potential recasting conversation. I think Tom Wilkinson may rest in peace. Phenomenal actor. Good. And so many good movies of the last, uh, well, who are you decades of the century? He likes to buy bread. Uh,

I kind of think, A, that part could have been better with a different kind of crusty Englishman. John Hurt in that role, you know, Michael Gambon, Terrence Stamp, like just kind of a different authorial energy. Gambon, no stranger to Wes Anderson's film. Correct. So, but the second thing is, are we sure that he's a really good writer?

Because his whole thing is, I just stumble into stories, then go off on rest cures to South America. Well, I think that that's an interesting question, because it gets into whether or not he's using... He wasn't, which is the source of my ire. Oh, yeah, because he's equity or whatever. He was a scab, yeah. He, like, is using that as basically a distancing mechanism. Yeah.

And I wonder whether or not, of course, like in the same way that we talked about with like, why does the, why does zero kind of allied the Agatha stuff even, you know, and it makes him cry just to the mention of her name, but goes into so much detail about Mr. Gustav.

I think that his being like, you can just sit there and people will come up and tell you stories. It's like, well, he pursued that story. And I think that that story probably is supposed to color in a lot of who that person is. Because of his interest in it, you mean? Yeah, I think so. I also might be reacting to the fact that what we see... Why is he going around to like...

decaying hotels of the world if he doesn't share some of that same romanticism. You know what I think kind of affected my viewing of him and my understanding of the character, and I feel like Sean will be with me on this. In the opening, when it's Tom Wilkinson and he's addressing the camera, there's real J.D. Vance energy to the way he treats his grandson.

You know, in the sense that, you know, when when J.D. Vance got the call, he was like, stop fucking looking at Pokemon cards or whatever to his eight year old. Yeah. And this kid comes in with a pop gun and he just erupts on him. And I was like, you can dictate your memoirs in a second. Yeah. You can't hear now. It's very royal. Oh, that's like you feel like he could have been a better dad. And then later and then the kid comes by and he says, sorry, grandson, I think. And the kid says, sorry. And you said, sorry, but I don't know if it's true. We don't know. We were raised.

We turned out fine. You guys are very well adjusted. Look what we do for a living. Very well adjusted. My honest take is that Dimitri got a lot of things wrong. And I don't necessarily associate with his political ideology. I certainly don't. What about his sexual politics? I think he was right about Gustav being a con artist.

Huh. And so there's that line he has where he's like, this criminal has plagued my family for 20 years. He's a ruthless adventurer and a con artist who preys on mentally feeble, sick old ladies, and he probably fucks them too. It's quite a thing winning the loyalty of a woman like that for 19 consecutive seasons, Chris. I'm just saying...

I'm just saying, if a guy like Gustav showed up in my mom's life, I'd be suspicious. I'd be suspicious. You wouldn't be happy for her? If my mom was like, I love this weird hotel. Yeah. The concierge is the best. And he was like... I would just be like, what's up with Gustav? Like, what...

Why wouldn't you be happy for her? You know? You live on the other side of the country. I'm a boy with Apple. You know what I mean? There's like a certain inheritance I expected. But I think... But Chris, you are not... First of all, I mean this sincerely. You're my best friend. You are not Dimitri. You know what I mean? Dimitri only wants boy with Apple because he doesn't want someone else to have it. He's not the S-thief that you are. Sure. You know? You were... At least in the first...

first draft of history in this movie before things go out of control, there's a world where they give him Boy with Apple and then they move on. Sure. Right? Like, there's a version of the story where everyone gets what they want. And it's sad. Yeah, that's like... You know what? That's my take. The movie should have ended at the 17-minute mark. They get Boy with Apple. It's a phenomenal hot take. I...

You don't relate in any way to Dimitri. I don't. I'm just saying I think he might be right. And I also think that if a dude showed up in your mom's life like that, you'd be like, I'm a little sus. When I said that this movie is about class, part of what I mean is that I think one of the ideas of the movie is that it's a good thing for the have-nots to...

to aggressively pursue the haves to get more to balance. And fuss them. And fiscally. It's a salt burn situation. Yeah. And that there is a kind of justice in that pursuit. So by you identifying that Dimitri's point of view is the correct point of view. I'm not identifying with Dimitri's point of view. I think he might have a point that Gustav might have had a little bit of con artistry. Sean, I just feel like... What if he loved her? Sean, Chris's ideology is simple. Let me explain it to you. There are makers and there are takers. Ha ha ha.

And Chris just invariably feels like he's one of the former. Casting what ifs. Angela Lansbury from Adam D is one of the all-time what ifs. Totally. Oh, that was supposed to happen? Yes. She had to go do... Driving Miss Daisy on stage. There was a scheduling difficulty. Apparently, Anderson blocks out... Your wife loves Driving Miss Daisy. Can you imagine him being like, I fucked Angela Lansbury. Her favorite movie is Hillbilly Elegy. Sorry. There's also a...

You said Hillbilly Elegy at the same time you said I fucked Angela Lansbury? Can we separate the audio tracks for that moment? It's the remix. There was also a rumor going around that Johnny Depp had been up for Gustav, but Wes Anderson has shot that down. That feels like a Johnny Depp perpetuated rumor. The only other casting what if I will say is that Norton was shown the script, but

And then Wes Anderson was like, by the way, like basically choose your part or tell me what part you're interested in, except for Gustav, because that's where Ray finds. And Edward Norton was like, if he had picked anybody else but Ray finds, I would have been banging down his door to get to play Gustav. I had a semi hot take relevant to this question. Norton, we love. We love him. Big Ed, they call him.

Did it have to be him as Henkels? That could have been Owen Wilson. I went through the repertory of Wes movies, yes, and that could have been an Owen Wilson part. I don't know if it gets better or worse. Interestingly, the three actors that he works with frequently that I like a lot that could have played that part, I think are all disqualified because of their ethnic background and presentation. Yeah.

because Liev Schreiber has worked with him before, could have played that part. Jeffrey Wright could have played that part. Benicio Del Toro could have played that part. But none of them have the appropriately milky complexion of Edward Norton. So maybe that's why it had to be him. Well, I think Edward Norton has just appeared in every single Wes Anderson movie since Moonrise Kingdom. And so he is just committed to the Edward Norton project. Was there a better part for Edward Norton, I guess, is the question. Yeah, I mean, like, he's basically playing a variation on the camp...

the camp director from Moonrise here, like where it's like this kind of middle management. Officious. Officious guy. Not necessarily the worst, but not the best. Yeah. So that was it for casting what ifs for the Rick Dalton Award for the best fucking acting I've ever seen in my life. I gotta admit, I think it's Goldblum's reaction to the casting.

I will say just in general, Goldblum being like, we have a tontine here, and then there are 637 amendments, footnotes, and last wishes, all of which the legality of which we're going to have to ascertain. I was reading an interview with...

Wes Anderson and he was saying how, you know, some actors struggle to memorize dialogue and that it's very, especially when it's written just so and meant to be delivered just so. And he was like, every time I were with Jeff Goldblum, he's like, he has it like that and knows exactly what to do with it and is a perfect reader of dialogue. We were talking about Sam Jackson with Tarantino last week on the show and it's like,

Sometimes there is a man. I feel very similarly about everything he does in Life Aquatic. Jeff Goldblum is magnificent in Life Aquatic. He's so funny and just gets the character perfectly. He's great in this. If we're going to talk about a perfect moment in an also otherwise perfect performance, I feel like we would be remiss if we didn't mention the moment when...

Monsieur Gustave is talking to Henkels and then realizes he's about to be arrested and just instantly turns and runs. Yes. Which is both a classic Wes Anderson visual gag, but the timing is... I know. She's been murdered and you think I did it. Pause. And he's just fucking books. It's just exquisite. Super funny.

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He might not be the seventh man this season. Seventh man on the Sixers? Yeah, I think he might be the seventh right now. You guys are in trouble if that's your seventh man. And the Dion Waiters He-Check Award for doing the most with the least. Now, the reason why I broke this up is because I feel like, for me, Larry Pine is the best that guy would. Yeah, me too. Chris, look at us. Here's who I'm putting up for Sean. I also had it as the Sean Livingston Award, but then I changed my mind. He's the best seventh man. Okay. Ed Norton.

Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum. A little bit more than a Dion. Too big to be a that guy. I say Keitel. I love that performance. I love that part. I'm going Goldblum. I think it's Goldblum because I think the part is...

shockingly small, but casts an important shadow over the movie. And you were just talking about how specific and enlivening that everything that he chooses to do is. I think it's crucial. The best Keitel moment is when Gustav praises his artistic skills and he looks around at everybody for a second like, aren't you impressed with me? It's the best. And then the Dion Waiters award for Hitchek, I have Schwarzman.

Yeah. Owen Wilson, Bill Murray. I have Lucas Hedges. That's the answer. That's what I had to do. The gas pump attendant, yeah. That's really good. And I didn't realize, like, I'd forgotten that this wasn't Lucas Hedges' introduction to the West cinematic universe. Moonrise Kingdom. He was in Moonrise Kingdom, which suggests that Wes knew something great was in this boy and flew him to Germany for that scene. Yeah.

That is the flex. And the budget is still relatively reasonable. Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, or Doris Burke for the director's commentary. I got two here. These are weird because they're like self layups, self-value. She's a cheaper cut, Jim! But there's more flavor!

That's pretty good. Or, I see you, Agatha. You've put in time with the icing tube and the confection sugar all under the watchful eye of your coach, Mr. Mendel. And now you're here at the carousel. Young love, you and Zero, look what you've achieved, sir.

You just called Agatha, sir. I also don't know why I'm kind of making Doris way more aggro than she is. Yeah, she sounded angrier. Apologize to Doris Burke. Doris is easily my favorite bit on the show in years. I think it is amazing. And honestly, I don't mind putting this on front screen. You wondered aloud yesterday whether Doris is aware of this. I'm speaking to you, Doris Burke, right now. I hope you know that

that Chris is doing this out of love, but also sometimes when you're broadcasting a game, it gets a little weird. I need you to understand with love and respect that this makes me laugh very hard. I see you, producer Craig.

Half-ass internet research. The painting that replaces Boy with Apple in Madame D's house is called Two Lesbians Masturbating. Wow. Really the only alternate title for the movie I could come up with. Ralph Fiennes casually performed Gustav's life story for Wes Anderson as an act of improvisation from being a Dickensian street urchin through his young life in East London.

And like basically plotted out his biography, but they didn't really have like a place to put it. He told, uh, Wes Anderson told Matt Zoller sites, this and Matt Zoller sites, excellent book about this film. Um, and it just makes the, knowing that makes the performance all the more delightful knowing that there's all these layers to the, to the, the cake as it were, uh, Jeff Goldblum hung out for a majority of the shoot, even though he was done after like a week, uh,

That tracks, I think. Nice. Everyone in the crew lives in this Berlin hotel together, took dinner together at night with a chef that the production had hired. So those are the main ones. Did you pick up the one about how Keitel slapped Tony Revolori when he says, good luck, kid? Like 40 times. 42 times. That was the one time that Wes Anderson went full Fincher? Wow. Apex Mountain. Ensemble of Mustaches.

Has there ever been a greater collection of mustaches? I feel like there has to be. My cruising is in the conversation. Not as many mustaches as you think, though. Well, in the club. Yeah. In the background. Yeah. Glory? A lot of mustaches in Glory? That's a good one. The film Glory? Yeah. Didn't Matthew Broderick have a mustache? The first movie, the first two movies that came to mind. Cruising in Glory. Two greatest movies about men that I can remember. Why? Should we also throw in Annie Hall? Yeah, why not? Yeah.

Why not? Is this Apex Mountain for exquisite portrayals of beautiful boys on the cusp of manhood? No. That's Stand By Me. Yeah. That's cruising. Any other Apex Mountains? You're just looking right at me. I mean, on the serious note, it seems like we're suggesting this might be Wes Anderson Apex Mountain. I don't know if I agree with that, but it's on the cable car approaching the Apex. I think it's Ray Fiennes' Apex Mountain. I think it's... Well...

It could be. In the real technical terms, I suppose English patient or... No, no, this is better. Voldemort? It's better. It's not about what's better. Yeah, you're in definitional zone and we can't go down that rabbit hole right now. Have you ever said that on this podcast before? Yeah, you can't. But it's not about... Long time, first time. It isn't the best work, right? But it is the most juice, right? So if it's the most juice...

I don't know that this created the most opportunity for Ralph Fiennes. Yeah. I think that is probably the English patient. For Wes Anderson, I think he rubber-stamped another 10 movies with the success of this movie. That's a really good point. Because then, at any point going forward, they're like, maybe we've struck gold. I don't want to get too carried away. He's shown proof of concept here. Raise the ceiling. This could make sense. But I do wonder what dispatch...

Dispatch had like a just pure theatrical release, right? But coming out of streaming on Tubi at the same time, it came out of theaters. Yeah. Well, to that point, Asteroid City had a theatrical, but was on. They all were theatrically. Asteroid went to Peacock quickly. Yeah. But it was, but it was theatrical. Yeah. Okay. Um, any other Apex Mountains? Revolori for sure. Or was it Spider-Man? Spider-Man, I think. Spider-Man's bigger.

Right, because he's Flash, right? In the Spider-Man movies. Not the Flash, Chris, just so you know the difference. I'm just kidding. I don't think any of the other actors...

Right? No, and I wouldn't say fictional Eastern European cities. It's Sokovia. It's Sokovia. Sokovia. Wow. Obviously a much more important touchstone for the watch. Well, Sokovia flew. Yeah. And then you have the accords coming out of it. Right, in terms of geopolitical. Yeah, it's kind of important. Cruiser Hanks, I'm going to go Hanks because he has been in a Wes Anderson movie. Yeah.

Who would Cruise play in this film? Cruise as M. Gustav is just delicious. Cruise as Dimitri would have been really fucking funny. He could do that. He could do that. Henkels? Yeah. Would you waste Cruise just being like, popping his head up? 100% would. By the way, one interesting exercise for Wes Anderson movies that we won't do today is retroactively recasting movies as his ensemble has expanded. Oh, yeah. So Tom Hanks is now in the company, theoretically. So would he have played, what would he have brought? He could have played Royal Tenenbaum.

Right. Or Herman Bloom. I mean, he wasn't the right age at that time. But it's interesting to consider that each one of these movies has opened the doors to more people being in these movies. And Margot Robbie is now a part of that as well. And what if she were in the Saoirse Ronan part?

Or what if she was one of the old ladies? Good point. They had AD. Now Chris is, we had his attention. Now I'm interested. I was interested. Now you want attention. Racehorse Rock Band wrestler or fantasy team name? I think Society of Cross Keys. Oh, yeah.

It sounds like a Godspeed, you black emperor. No, dude, I went through this. So tell me what this is. Are these references to the movie or tracks on a Mogwai album? Concierge freed from shackles. Stack of filthy carpets and a starving goat. A tricky war. Gunter was slain in the catacombs. This has got to be a Mogwai EP. It's 100% awesome. Bracehorse, I like Boy with Apple. Oh, that's good.

Yeah, I don't have any others. Picking Nitz. It's hard to pick Nitz with a movie like this just because it's designed down to a frame of its life. I would note that the lamb is not in the original order, like we said. And I just wish there was more Agatha and Zero stuff. We haven't really talked about that relationship and I think it's indicative of maybe it not being the thing you think about when you think about... I think it's intentional. I think that the importance of romantic...

love between young people is not the romance that this movie is interested in. It's about people with art or an era or performance or a physical place or an idea. And I think that's intentionally put into the background, right? It's almost overlooked. It's related to my picking it, which is like, are we sure Boy with Apple is that big a deal?

Did you prefer two lesbians masturbating? Well, candidly. That is actually a great unanswerable question is what's more valuable today, two lesbians masturbating or boy with apple? You mean in terms of like happening in the real world? Yeah, like if both of those paintings were on the contemporary art market. Which are you clicking on faster? Two attachments arrive. What has better SEO? You're working six days a week and half day on Sunday. I know which one is working for you.

But with Apple, are we sure it's good? That's a good. It's also funny. This movie is so just excellent on almost any level that when you do like a cursory Internet search for like problems in the movie, they are entirely like it says this happened on August 7th, which was actually a Wednesday in 1938. I don't care.

sequel prequel prestige TV all black cast or untouchable I think it there is this is the rare case as I say with the host of the watch in which this would be a very interesting television series set in different years at the Grand Budapest Hotel but could you sustain the style no I'm gonna stop well Wes Anderson would have to do it that would be very exhausting for him

He's shown such an interest in revisiting his work and expanding their IP footprint. Well, he is willing to take chances on different formats in the short films that he did for Netflix last year. I mean, I could see a world where he was like, I'll do six 22-minute episodes called The Grand Budapest Hotel. And their little vignettes. 1918, 1928, 1938, 48, 58. But with old people having sex. Sure, exactly.

I want to sell Chris on it. Yeah. That's a very good take, Sean. Or he could also make Elder Fucking, which is a series about young, virile men fucking older ladies to get their money. Hey, hey, hey. If they get money... To get their love and their money. The money, if it happens, it happens. Okay. Chris, I'm just trying to open your mind. I want your mother to be happy. Okay? It's just... No way. Um...

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, Evil Laughing, Ramon Raymond, or Philip Raker Hall, or Bill Paxson from Aliens? Goddamn, Gustav! This is what I want. I was dealing with Super Butler!

a motherfucking set of front row aisle seats at Opera Toscana? You better keep your hands off those grand milfs and watch out for fascism or Dimitri's gonna send your ass away a long fucking time, big boy. Get him the fuck out of here.

That was right. Thank you. It's weird to do that from the hosting chair, I gotta admit. Yeah, but it was right. I feel like Henkel sounds like Jenkins. Oh, yeah. I think there's a corollary there. That was what I was thinking. Are you sure Byron Mayo doesn't want a little menage, you know, with Madame D? It would have been easy, yeah. Just one Oscar who gets it. Ready for Wes.

It's easier to say now because Wes Anderson has an Oscar for The Wonderful Life of Henry Sugar. Yes. He didn't have one at the time, so you would think that this would be a crowning achievement. But Ralph Fiennes is so fucking good in this movie that I'm going with Ralph Fiennes. I'm going with Ralph Fiennes. I think that's right because I think that regardless of what we were saying about whether this is Apex Mountain or where it stands in the West Pantheon, like, he continually and consistently makes movies like this. And Ralph Fiennes is so singular in this movie. I think it would be his. Probably.

Probably unanswerable questions. Do you think you would have been a lobby boy or a concierge? Well, you got to start somewhere. Yeah, I'll have to start somewhere. We learned that Gustav started as a lobby boy. Andy, is rudeness merely an expression of fear? Yes. I thought that was incredibly insightful. Yeah. Let me tell you, my drive here really encapsulated that. There was a Rivian.

That was behaving in an insane fashion and I but I you know I was empathetic because I was like this person is just clearly clearly just just Paralyzed lights on top of the car pull them over citizens arrest. Yeah, please like what the thing is it was Evie versus Evie So it was incredibly much. I know you care about some things in our society Not Chris any other answerable questions Saudi Chris? Drill baby

Yeah, why did the Grand Budapest Hotel get to persist in a Soviet society? Like, isn't that one of the first things that would go and be transformed into like a social services space? Are we sure it's still called the Grand Budapest Hotel? I think so. Well, I do think it's because I think he has given up however many millions of kubeks

to get Gary Kubiak to buy the hotel. So he's like, here's the trade-off. I keep this. I try to keep it

Up and running, but you guys get the fortune. There's also a tradition, I think, of like in Soviet eras, like they would keep one hotel for tourists or guests or whatever. It was probably, every room was probably bugged. Is that true? Yeah. I mean, I think that was accurate in the sense that I once traveled behind the Iron Curtain in 1983. No. Yes, I did.

As a six-year-old? Yes. You were taken to where? I was taken to Budapest, to Slovakia. You know what this means. Yeah. This is not Andy Greenwald. You're a sleeper agent? This is the no way out Russian agent. I don't need to answer it further. I was there. Any other unanswerable questions? This is very answerable, but Madam D was the secret owner of Grand Budapest Hotel. Yes. And she bequeathed it to Gustav.

In the event that she's murdered. I see. Right, because it's in the second world. Best double feature choice, I have Ingmar Bergman's The Silence or Hail Caesar, which got brought up earlier. Well, I mentioned The Lady Vanishes, which I think would be a good one.

I would just recommend everybody watch The Earrings of Madame De, the Max Alphols movie. That's Wes's number one movie, right, on the site and sound poll? It's a very, very big movie for Paul Thomas Anderson as well. And if you are interested in the way that cameras move in films, this is among the most influential movies ever made. Also, William Eubank, when he was making Land of Bad, frequently went back to the work of Alphols. He did. I would also recommend Grand Hotel from 1932. It would be a good one. I think...

Avengers Age of Ultron in terms of its like unflinching vision of what is possible. Yeah. It's sort of like the flip side, like a post-Soviet side. Be careful what you wish for with concierges. You think you're building these guys to be helpful. Yeah.

Yeah. We'd stick with Pepper Potts, you know? It's really true. It's really just a story about a butler who stops saying yes. Speaking of stories about butlers who struggle with saying yes, my double feature was Remains of the Day. Nice. Very good. Anthony Hopkins, but also a sense of like an institution trying to persist through global political changes. Not as many jokes.

In Remains of the Day. In Remains of the Day. Not a laugh right now. The blooper reel that they show at the end of the credits is funny. But Apatow was on set that day, so that's why we got great stuff. I can't remember if it was that or Howard's End. I can answer this question. This is why I'm here. But my dad liked one of those more than Heat, and that was a real schism for us. Let me tell you that it was... He came out in 96...

95. 95? 95 winner. He liked... Hold on. I know because I read those reviews, he liked both of them more. I mean, your dad gave four-star reviews to both of those films. He was a Merchant Ivory stan. The...

Wes Anderson just popped out there, you know? Like, my dad and I had a fight about this thing. But Remains of the Day was 93 and Howard's End was 92. The LAPD, motherfucker! We've talked about this story. This is that I first, that like, I never, I didn't meet Chris for many years after that, but I would come down to breakfast and my father would be reading the Philadelphia Inquirer and say, four stars from that Anglophile Desmond Ryan. Anglophile, yeah. Andy at Red Z want an award for what happened the next day. We pretty much know.

They go through it at the end of the film. Do we believe this narrator? Whoa. So what part don't you believe? Agatha's. Did an author even exist? Or was that book written by AI? You know what Sean's saying? It was Agatha all along. Oh my God. Coach Finstock, what piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie?

I mean, Boy with Apple, I think, is the stock answer. You just said that was a piece of shit painting. I was just picking some nits. I was sure it was good, but it was valuable. Okay. I'd like a split of the champagne that they enjoyed during their meal. That's nice. That seems nice. The whole table settings. Mendel's box. Mendel's box. How do I get that funicular transported to my residence? Rick Caruso could have done it. You don't live that high up. How did that boat work out for you?

I think I'll go. I was going to make a joke about Dimitri's red slippers, but I don't want to draw any more comparisons between myself and Dimitri. You're boring. It's an interesting hero's narrative. Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson. The cheaper cuts are the most flavorful. Love it. Who won the movie? I believe Wes Anderson wins the movie, even though Ralph Fiennes deserves the Oscar. The pursuit of art and aesthetic perfection.

above all else? Yeah. I think it's Wes and I think it's the totality of his vision on screen. You know, that's an easy thing to say. But there is like a real like, man, you saw something in your head and it is in its entirety on screen. So I think it's Wes. But I think, yeah. I do think art persevering in the face of... No, but I think the Wes thing too because just to circle it all the way back to the beginning, like...

The gut punch of he was shot, I think, is as perfect an encapsulation of why his style of storytelling matters. That there can be beauty, there can be aesthetic choices, there can be all this ridiculous satire, frippery jokes, all very high-minded, but it is in pursuit of something a little bit deeper. That he is not just set deck. All right, brother.

I think most people's opinions on movies are largely shaped by the circumstances in which they've seen them. And this movie came out in 2014 when I was in the middle of film school. And it just took over my entire class. Did it? Oh, my God. Cinematography class was basically just people recreating Wes Anderson shots. Because I think...

I think there's something about Wes Anderson's filmmaking style that actually feels achievable because it's so specific. Yeah. It's long dollies, symmetrical framing. It's like an equation you can solve. So that was a constant for two years. And it definitely wasn't the first Wes Anderson movie I had ever seen, but it's what really made me go back and watch all of his prior films. That's what I was going to ask you. In school, was he...

an iconic figure. Yes. He was like the guy he's not indie, but he, he had that. My friends dressed as, as Steve Zizou and for Halloween in college, he was everybody's like iconic indie darling guy that they wanted to, to, to be, uh, in film school. And I think this is his most satisfying movie to watch. I think the pace, the energy of the humor, the overt humor. Yeah. It's so funny. It's so funny. I think finds it's like one of my favorite performances of I've ever seen.

And yeah, I think a lot of people who get annoyed, who are annoyed with Wes Anderson's like schtick are less annoyed by this movie than any of the others. Yeah. Because I think the, his old, his like Wes Anderson-y pedantic style filmmaking is actually a part of the plot of this movie because it's like who Ralph Fiennes is. So I think you can actually write it off much more in this compared to other movies where it feels like

It doesn't need to be made that way, but it is. But in this movie, it feels like his style actually is a part of the plot of the movie. It's about... I mean, he's a very controlling filmmaker making a movie about people who have to keep themselves under control. Yes. Right? In Moonrise Kingdom, maybe, you would like to see a little bit more of like a rock and roll heart to that time period or something, or a little bit more of a let your hair down element to it. It's something that I...

I'm always a little bit frustrated by with Life Aquatic when I watch it because it's ostensibly about Jacques Cousteau but you never get the sense that you're watching something that Jacques Cousteau would have made or shot you know you have no feel for there's like one little moment where you're watching a little bit of his film at the beginning but it's a very good point that this is definitional to the character and definitional to the movie but I

But I think it's, in some of those other things, you can see the building blocks of what inspired him, whether it's like the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler leads to Royal Tenenbaums or liking Jacques Cousteau or, you know, his parents having New Yorkers around the house leads to the French dispatch. For whatever reason, picking up Stefan Zweig in the bookstore in Paris that he did touched him

And it feels like actively involved in the inspiration. Did we mention Hugo Guinness in this conversation? We did. Not once. We should have, yeah. He's responsible for a lot of this, not I don't know, for a lot of this film. He's the co-writer. I think they came up with the story together. Wes wound up. Did he write the screenplay? He wrote the screenplay, but he was co-nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay. It's also worth noting that when this is happening, Anderson spends most of his time in Paris now and living as an expat. I wonder whether or not that gives him...

a specific POV on like, I'm an outsider, but I am like romanticizing this thing, this place that I'm in. But yeah, Hugo Guinness, we didn't, we didn't dap up. Sorry, Hugo. I mean, when you have Dimitri right there, you have to keep our, keep the spotlight where it belongs. Thanks to producer Craig. Thanks to Jack and Gahow. We will be back next week with a film. Who knows which one? Who knows if Bill will be back? Who knows? Thanks guys.