‘The Insider’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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Did Don Draper really buy the world a Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the Prestige TV feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. You're listening to this on a Monday night or later. We are on tour. We're doing our cold weather tour.

We already did Chicago, The Fugitive. I hope that went well. I hope I was fantastic. Doing Washington, D.C., Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Creed, and then finishing off on Friday night in New York City doing Rounders. And if you're going to any of those shows, all the tickets are sold out. But please make sure you watch the movies before you go to the show because we are not showing the movie. We are only talking about movies.

the movie, and I swear we'll make it entertaining for you. So there you go, because we're on tour, we are not doing a new episode, uh, for the rewatchables this week, but we are doing an episode that has never appeared on this feed because in 1999, we did the rewatchables 1999 limited series for a luminary. It only ran on luminary and, uh,

After all these years, we were able to run them here at our discretion. So we've been saving them and doling them out. And this seems like the perfect week to run The Insider. 25th anniversary of that movie. Michael Mann, he did Ferrari, which is out right now. He has done a bunch of our favorite rewatchables movies, including the one that started the rewatchables, Heat. The whole reason we have the rewatchables is because Chris Ryan and I love Heat. So on this podcast, it's me and Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey

Deep diving into The Insider, which is a great movie. And there's a little wrinkle here. Chris Ryan is the host for this one. So hope you enjoy that. Hope you enjoy this podcast. Hope you get a chance to maybe go out and see us at one of these rewatchable shows. And thanks as always for supporting the feed. By the way, if you want to watch...

Any of these rewatchables podcasts that we've done, a lot of them are on YouTube. Go to youtube.com slash Bill Simmons and you can watch that. And we might be putting some stuff from the tour on there too. So stay tuned for that as well. All right, here it is. The Insider.

I'm Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessy. Mike, try Mr. Wallace. This is The Insider. What does this guy have to say that threatens these people? Well, it isn't cigarettes are bad for you. He's only the key witness in the biggest health reform issue in U.S. history. He met an insider who was ready to reveal what no one else could tell. I was told, don't talk. Al Pacino. The more truth he tells, the worse it gets. Russell Crowe.

I told the truth. It's not the point whether you tell the truth or not. The Insider, a Michael Mann film. Rated R. Starts Friday, November 5th. All right, guys. Chris Ryan, I'm back in the hosting seat where I belong. Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, we're doing... He finally did it. 1999's The Insider, Michael Mann's follow-up to Heat, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. And Al Pacino's...

Is that a wig? What's going on? How dare you? What's going on with his hair in this movie? His hair is blown dry to perfection. He looks like he just got off a motorcycle, but filmed every scene that way. Yeah, he's right off the set of a Whitesnake video, I think. How much would I have to pay you to wear Al Pacino's wardrobe from this movie?

I mean, it's about to be back in style. I think I will devolve into that. Solid colors, baggy khakis, you know, a duster. He's 20% away from being Phil Spector. That's good. He's really out of control. He's also 20% away from being a full-blown hack.

But this is like, right at the end. The last one. I will not hear any criticism. This is one of my favorite performances by him. Last grasp. Insomnia is the tail end. Yes. And then it flips. Exactly. I completely agree. This film was released on November 5th, 1999. Directed by Michael Mann. It was released by Disney, which is remarkable to think about now. In retrospect, the idea of this coming out from the mouse. It was budgeted at a...

a really efficient $68 million for a movie that constitutes mostly people talking on phones. And if you want to know where that $68 million was spent, I'll tell you, Michael Mann. Because he was like, it's important for this 10-minute sequence that I take Christopher Plummer to Israel. And shoot all the stuff you see from Mississippi to New York, the Keys, Louisville, the Middle East. They went there. They shot there. They brought Russell Crowe there.

At all the expenses that that would take, plus the enormous amount of research that Mann put into the... You're saying they could have done that in San Bernardino? I'm saying that were they to make this a Netflix show, I think a lot of this is happening at the lot across the hallway here. So budgeted at $68 million, and it made...

What is relatively paltry, even at the time, $29 million at the box office. That being said. It felt like a bomb in the moment. It did. And we can talk a little bit about that. Joe Roth was very articulate about the challenges of marketing the insider in a lot of ways. It kind of closes the door on a certain kind of movie being made, at least at Disney and then in the future, really Hollywood itself. Yeah. With few exceptions over the next decade or two. That's why we like 1999. Yeah.

Absolutely right. It's one of the last years. End of an era. For as much as box office audiences turned their back on this movie, the Academy embraced it, giving it seven nominations, including pretty much all the big heavy hitters. Best picture, best director, best actor, best adapted screenplay. It did not win any of them. In fact, it pretty much got swept by American Beauty in all those categories. Yeah. So Beauty won Best Picture. Men did as well. Won Best Director. Kevin Spacey won Best Actor. Who beat Plummer?

Plummer, I don't, was Plummer nominated? He was not nominated. I think he got the Globe, right? Or he was nominated for- I was saying, Plummer not getting nominated is a tough look for this movie because he's one of the standouts for me rewatching it. Yeah, he's still- I know we're going to get to him. Flossing his teeth from chewing all the scenery in this movie. God. He is something else. He won the LA Film Critics Circle Award and he was nominated for, he was not nominated for an Oscar or a Globe. Yeah. He's also like Gene Hackman where he's been the same age since like 1975. Yeah.

I have no idea how old he is. Oh, Christopher Plummer? Christopher Plummer. He doesn't look like he's aged a day from The Insider, despite it being 20 years ago. Are there pictures of him like a 24-year-old Christopher Plummer? Because I feel like there probably isn't. I mean, he was about 35 in The Sound of Music. He was the star of The Sound of Music. Right.

It's unbelievable. Um, so obviously directed by Michael Mann, one of me and Bill and Sean's favorite filmmakers. Now don't include Sean. I'm really honored to be here on a Michael Mann podcast with, with the two Mannonites. The Mannonologists? He's not included. Uh,

He was so mad when we did the Miami Vice rewatchable, said that he got excommunicated from the club. Well, I think that this is a... I'm excited to be on this one because I think this is truly his last great masterpiece. I think this is Mann's... Jesus Christ. One of his last genuinely iconic works of cinema. Written by Michael Mann and Eric Roth.

Based on a Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner, this is the true story of a tobacco industry whistleblower named Jeffrey Weigand, played by Crow. Vanity Fair is a magazine that existed until a couple years ago. Right, right. Come on. It's Weigand and his relationship with 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, played by Al Pacino, and their efforts to bring Weigand's testimony to American airwaves despite resistance from the tobacco industry.

and 60 Minutes is CBS corporate overlords. It was Mann's first movie since Heat. It is in many ways his most restrained film. It is stylistically, it's really interesting because you've got Last of the Mohicans. Last of the Mohicans is basically this moving landscape painting. It's this gorgeous romantic movie. Then you've got Heat, which in some ways is the urban version of Last of the Mohicans.

And then insider marks where man starts making all these really wild formal decisions. And most of insider is like shot from someone's collar. It's, it's like a handheld camera, Dante Spinati, who shot last night. He can shot. He, he also shoots the insider, but they're essentially trying to visualize what it's like for people to make decisions and what they're feeling, what they're thinking as they're going through these life changing decisions. Um,

It's his most restrained film in a lot of ways. It's also one of his least successful movies. Pacino. I want to talk a little bit about Pacino, which, you know, I think we talked about him a lot, but I specifically, I really want to talk about this 90s run for just a second because this caps it. This is the 90s for Al Pacino. Godfather 3, Dick Tracy, Glen Gary, Glen Ross, Frankie and Johnny, Send of a Woman, Carlito's Way, Heat, City Hall, Donnie Brasco, Devil's Advocate, The Insider, Any Given Sunday.

My favorite Pacino performance other than The Godfather. Is Any Given Sunday? Yeah. That's insane. That was one of the first rewatchable spots we did. I just love him in Any Given Sunday. I absolutely just love that performance. The Inches speech is all time for me. And that movie's terrible. And he's carrying it like LeBron carried the 2007 Cavs. It's unbelievable. Let's go back. So not Dog Day Afternoon.

I'm just saying my personal favorite. Not Panic in Eagle Park. Not Cruising, one of your all-time favorites. He's great in Cruising. Clear out for Cruising. Cruising's unbelievable. Not Sea of Love.

He's kind of creepy and nicotine-y in Sea of Love. He is pretty nicotine-y. It works for the movie, though. He's making out with Ellen Barker. It's just gross. Oh, yeah. That was like one of the first times I was like, is that what kissing is? Just bawling her face. I was just like, is that how you're supposed to kiss? How many women's faces have you sucked off because of Sea of Love? Actually, I'm sorry. I'm going to put heat above any given Sunday. What do we got? What do we got?

Give me all you got! I wanted to see, the reason why I listed these movies, we usually go through major movie stars, decades of the runs they go on. But he and Crow are really interesting because Pacino obviously has this 10-year run that's kind of a coronation for the career that Sean so eloquently outlined right there with Godfather and Serpico and all these other things. I know where you're going with the Crow thing, but you left out one key part.

He kind of was gone. Pacino. And C. Lovey comes back and it's like, oh yeah, Al Pacino, I love this guy, but he was basically doing plays and God knows what else for, I don't know, seven years? Well, that's what I'm saying. Since Scarface. In a lot of ways, he comes back, he makes up for lost time with all the films he does in the 90s. It's a big part of this, though. And to Sean's earlier point,

every movie is this dance with falling off the edge of believability of are you doing too much with this and you know in each one you can say oh god he was so incredible in this moment and so ridiculous in the next moment do you have a favorite film from this 90s run Sean mmm a favorite Pacino performance from this 90s run well that's he's gonna say devil's advocate which is also insane no no no no look but don't touch

Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow. Okay. I'm a fan.

fan of man! The thing is, the theory of Pacino is that he was broken by Scarface. That the performance that he gives in Scarface essentially knocks him off of his access and he loses sight of what is over the top and what is nuanced. Because the guy in The Godfather in The Godfather Part 2 is one of the most sophisticated American actors we've ever seen. He shows darkness with a very subtle look. He shows loud and impressive ways. Scarface is when he goes to the absolute absolute

edge of parody and still keeps you involved. And then, like you said, Bill, he kind of disappears. He takes like, with the exception of one movie, six years off. He was in Revolution in 85.

And that was it. See Love 89. He wasn't even like doing a cameo. Exactly. He's just gone. So he's off and he's doing theater and he's, I don't know, reassessing his self-worth. And then he comes back in the 90s and he takes on a lot of roles. He works a lot in the 90s. I think that The Insider is probably his best performance because it's the one that is the most finely calibrated between loud, crazy, and kind of subtle and stormy. And he has always been able to

dance with both of those emotions. I mean, you guys might say Heat. You might say Donnie Brasco. That's also an interesting performance. I agree with everything you're saying, except I think Scent of a Woman broke him that Scarface. Because if you watch See You Love, he's not doing that in See You Love. I actually think it's like kind of just older 70s Pacino in a movie. And then Scent of a Woman, he dials that one up.

And I don't think he could ever fully come back from that. But even in Dick Tracy and Godfather Part 3, he's pretty over the top. He's really doing like... Dick Tracy is like a parody movie though. Yeah, but I mean, it's asking him to be a cartoon. He's with just a bunch of schmucks. He's with George Hamilton and Sofia Coppola. I think he felt like, if I don't dial it up, this movie's dead. It felt intentional to me. After Scent of a Woman...

I don't think it was intentional anymore. And that's what, even in Heat, which we love, he has moments in Heat that he just wouldn't have done as an actor in the late 70s. There's no way. Even something as well written as Glenn Gary, which is one of my favorite performances from this run. He's big in that. He's really big in that. It's just the material is so specific and weird. And like, it's exact about the real estate business and all the language comes from the salesman. It's not like, you can't really even...

what he's talking about when he's doing his big runs in Glen Gary. So that's one of the reasons why that's my favorite. The diner scene in Heat, he's not parody Pacino yet. No, no, no. And I think if that scene comes along six years later...

There's a slam of the coffee table and he's doing three choices that maybe don't make sense. What do you guys think of Donnie Brasco? Because I think that that's actually a pretty subtle performance. There's something a little bit shticky about it because it's very accent heavy and he's playing like a real schnook. But...

I think that that's a pretty, there's not a lot of sentimental womanisms in it. I'm not a huge fan of the movie itself. I don't, I don't, I'm not a huge fan. I feel like they're both too mannered in it. It feels like two guys like running away from what makes them movie stars in a lot of ways. Can't have a British guy direct an American gangster picture. I have a confession to make and Sean's going to be mad. I don't like Johnny Depp.

I agree. Well, I'm not going to defend Johnny Depp in the year 2019. No, no. I'm saying I just have never, never at any point in my life was like, oh, cool. Johnny Depp has a new movie. I was always like, why isn't Val Kilmer getting in these roles? I was always like, Tim Kilmer. There was a time when Johnny Depp was really the most interesting actor. I get it. The Ed Wood time. He was brave. He was willing to do things that other actors are not willing to do.

Now, it's a joke. Did you know there's a Johnny Depp movie out this week called The Professor? You familiar with this? About a professor who learns he has cancer? You're not. He used to be the biggest movie star in the world and now he just releases movies no one's ever heard of. He was in that movie where it's like he's investigating Tupac's death, right? Yes, that's right. Did that ever come out? I don't know.

It goes fast, man. Look at Travolta. He's direct-to-video now. Speaking of going fast, let's talk about Russell Crowe's five-year run here. When he did this movie, it was... I guess I'm stepping on you now. No, the rocket's going up. But he's 33 and he's playing this guy who's supposed to look like he's 50 plus. And it was a really...

Kind of ambitious. I'm not positive he should have done it role at the point of career. Who's that? Al Pacino. You're talking 1970s through the first decade of the 2000s. He's still a relevant actor. I think Russell Crowe pretty much has the entire career in five years.

And from 97 to 02. I mean, he's obviously still around. He's still doing stuff. But LA Confidential, Mystery Alaska, The Insider, Gladiator, Proof of Life, Master and Commander, Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, Goodyear. Chris, we covered all this in our iconic Proof of Life podcast. I'm just talking about his... I nominated the Peabody Committee. He should get out of here and Helen Mirren should come by because she's such a fan of that podcast.

For those of you who are not aware, Proof of Life is a movie that was released in the year 2000. It stars Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. You've probably not heard the episode of The Rewatchables because no one on Earth has seen this film. Can I give you the moment when it ended for Pacino? I think Insomnia was the last...

Pacino and De Niro had this point, and I'm a little older than you guys, but anytime they released a movie, it had to be taken seriously of, should I go? It was an event. Yeah, it was like, these guys have a movie, I'm going. You didn't even think twice. And Insomnia was like that for me. But then the next three, it ended with Simone. Simone was his next movie. And then he did The Recruit and Gigli.

And then it just, and two for the money, 88 minutes. And it's just, it's just ending.

And then ends up with Righteous Kill with De Niro in 2008. Think how it was those two guys in a movie. Nobody cared. He does have good performances mixed in. Angels in America is pretty amazing. Danny Collins is fun. We both like that. Danny Collins is this decade though. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying over the last 15 years, he has done, there have been things where even Paterno, which I don't think is totally successful. I think what he's doing is really cool and interesting. My point was more like,

It was an event when he was in a movie right up until around now. And this was the first time I remember a Pacino movie that seemed like it was an Oscar contender, all that stuff, just not doing well.

And maybe that was because of the substance of it. I don't know. And this is... I think will be true for talking about Crow. This is the most important Pacino year maybe since The Insider because this is the year of the Irishman, the new Scorsese movie. And he's also in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the new Quentin Tarantino movie. Do you think he's going to have much of a role in that movie? We'll see. Yeah. I don't know. So your point... I mean, I interrupted you, but your point is Pacino's going this way and Crow's going this way. It is, but it's also like... It's an interesting statement about the state of the movie business because...

Pacino gets three decades to be Al Pacino. Russell Crowe gets five years. Now, part of that- Isn't that self-inflicted, though? I think part of that is this movie almost in a weird way, despite it being an incredible Crowe performance and very worthwhile of being nominated for Best Actor-

You can see this guy kind of like, do I want to be this chameleonic, shapeshifting character actor, or do I want to be Master and Commander Cinderella Man action leading man? This is the Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt conundrum, right? So he puts on all this weight, goes gray, plays 15 years older than he is in The Insider, and he's remarkable. And then it's a tale of the tape for him because in every movie he's pretty much...

fighting against the fact that he's aging, that he's gaining weight, that he's like, he's not really in the shape to do movies like Proof of Life after 1999, 2000. Yeah. Proof of Life is his, I think his best kind of movie star performance. In this movie, it's interesting how restrained he is and how he's really trying to play a character the whole time. And there's only one moment when it comes out when

when it's all falling apart at the end and Pacino's like put him on the phone with the hotel guy put him on the phone put him on the phone and then he's like tell him to get your fucking ass on the phone and the guy swears and Russell Crowe springs up and grabs the phone yeah it's very Russell Crowe like he's like

Like, he can kind of... He turns the switch on. I just think the guy was really talented. I think so, too, but I don't think of this as a Russell Crowe movie. And I know he was the one who was nominated for Best Actor, but revisiting it... It's a Pacino movie. It does not work without Pacino. Well, Pacino also gets the last hour of the movie, pretty much. It's called The Insider, but the crisis is much more oriented around Pacino's character, in part. And also, I think the way that it's aged...

because of the conversation about the news media and the power of the news media, it makes much more sense as the Lowell Bergman story than it does the Jeffrey Wigand story. It kind of is though, right? They just kind of marketed it as both. I think Bergman is... I think...

Mann was interested in Bergman and Weigand, but I think he connected with Bergman. And Bergman, he talked a lot about, he sees himself as an investigative reporter. He's like, when I make these movies, I do a lot of investigative reporting. I do a lot of talking to sources like Bergman does. I've known Bergman for a long time. He said that when he was making Heat, Bergman was doing the Weigand reporting and they were in touch. So you can tell he sees him as a fellow traveler in that regard. I wanted to talk a little bit about

You bring up the news media. The thing that really leaps out about this movie is the concept of what a scandal is and how that's changed over the years and whether or not even at the time they're making The Insider, that has the same impact as, say, All the President's Men, which is a movie that is obviously not, if not modeled after, they're hoping to capture that same kind of, that wave that people have when they saw All the President's Men. And, you know, this movie comes out in 99, about a year after Clinton's impeached.

Yeah. It's made by a generation of people who were raised on Watergate who went through a ran contra. But Bill, I was thinking like this might be a good thing for you to weigh in because you're like... Because I'm old. Well, because you have a little bit more of like a perspective on it. Do you remember the cigarette stuff being significant? Like, do you remember being like, wow. No, I remember learning a lot of it from this movie, actually. Yeah. So you don't remember the 60-minute segment or this controversy in the news? A little bit. I mean...

It's not like everybody didn't know cigarettes were bad for you. They say that in this movie. I mean, like in that little lunch table conversation, they're like, you know, it's not like everybody. So cigarettes are bad for you. Everybody knows that. Yeah. The cool part about this movie is the lengths that the cigarette companies were trying to go to really not have it out there that cigarettes are bad for you. But everybody knew cigarettes are bad for me. I remember when I started smoking at bars and freaking the year after college, I

after like three drinks it wasn't like I was like this is great there's gonna be no ramifications at all like there was a danger to it cause you knew it was bad and you knew people were dying of lung cancer left and right so I think it was you know there's certain movies JFK who I think all of us love for different reasons that became the assassination movie but we know like half of that movie is full of shit

This movie really does capture this specific moment with the cigarette industry that played out with the lawsuits and everything. So I'm glad it exists. Do you remember 60 Minutes being a major thing for you ever? Were you ever like, it's Sunday night, it's time to watch 60 Minutes? Oh, beyond that. Yeah. Yeah, it was the biggest show in the world for 20 years. I just remember something being preempted by football. No, I mean, I obviously watched 60 Minutes. Especially with football, it was somewhere else saying, coming up on 60 Minutes.

The cigarette industry. It was just baked into my Sunday night viewing, I think. The football game ends and you just go right into 60 Minutes. That was for years. You're also talking like an incredible amount of people. Unbelievable. The number one show now versus the number one show then. It's like you're talking 30 million people per episode. That is the state in the movie. He says 30 million people. I think it's hard sometimes to, if you're a modern viewer, to understand that. There's a lot of hubris depicted by Don Hewitt, Mike Wallace, Lerner.

all the guys and all the, everybody's working on 60 Minutes. They have like their chest puffed out because they're like, we're the gold standard. We're a big deal. And if we do this story, it's going to be a really big deal to the American people and we take that responsibly. And you can kind of see like, oh, this seems like they're being conceited. But like, that was significant. If it was on 60 Minutes, it was essentially a table setter for the

American conversation for at least a week. Yes and no, though. I mean, you basically underlined, I think, the crisis of Bergman's character at the end of the movie because Bill, who was there watching football in 1996, I can't remember, 97, whenever this was actually taking place,

kind of doesn't really remember this as a significant news controversy or segment on the show. And I probably wouldn't either because when you watch 60 Minutes, there's just four segments in every episode and you just go on and on and on and on. There was just always controversies. So this was going on at the same time as Lewinsky and there's seven things going on. It's like, oh yeah, cigarettes are bad for you. But crucially not a million things. You know what I mean? We live in a world now where it's like you regularly see the tweet where it's like,

This has happened, and this has happened, and this has happened, and it's only Tuesday afternoon. And it's kind of become baked into our daily experience of hashtag this league. Looking at our phones, looking at the paper or whatever, and you're just like, oh, it seems like the world's falling apart. Well, you also didn't have, you know, this is obviously 20 years for social media, but you didn't have...

what we have now where you have all these social justice warriors on the internet going nuts because

First of all, what the cigarette companies are doing in general, but then a story getting squashed in the outrage society. Like, people would have lost their fucking minds if it was like CBS buried this story because they were afraid of the cigarette companies. Can you imagine that? But it would be pretty amazing to see Mike Wallace be on TV and say, like, I can't tell you... CBS is afraid of this story, so I can't even say who this guy worked for. Which goes back to one of the reasons we want to do this year is like...

This movie in the context of 1999 makes so much sense. And it's a completely different movie. They even talk about in the writing of it about how it's very old school pre-internet. There's only a couple cell phone scenes. There's a lot of like reading the newspaper. It's all dialogue. Dueling faxes. Yeah. It was like that thing. You wrote a piece. When did you write that piece for us? A couple months ago. A couple months ago. Like it's...

That's one of the reasons I love the 1999 movies. I really feel like they're contained to the specific way we lived before things changed. Very tactile. A couple of years later, you could see a world in which the transcript from that interview and maybe even Wigan's identity is revealed on the smoking gun. But we're not quite at that place yet with the internet. There would have been a different way that a controversy like this would have been not just analyzed but processed. Things could have come to the fore in different ways. At the time...

It's basically the last moment, really, when broadcast news media was the dominant news media because cable news media is now the dominant news media. Well, we're doing Blair Witch later this season or at least 10 minutes on it. And I think that's a similar thing that just four years later, that movie doesn't happen. Couldn't have worked. Couldn't have happened. This movie, I feel like we would have had just way more intelligence by the mid-2000s just about what happened with this scandal. Yeah. And I think the opposition research would have been much more persuasive

pervasive because that's what tends to happen with almost every story now is like a story will drop and then there's like five counter stories about like the biases or the biographies of the people who are pushing that story that happened with like the Steele dossier that's happened like a lot with any Trump reporting and tragically hasn't happened probably like we haven't gotten the things that have happened over the last couple of years that you're like

The Flint story should be the only, the Flint water story should just be the only thing we think about. Yeah. And yet we're so distracted by everything else that there isn't like a centrality to the stories. Like that's one thing that I thought was kind of, I was very nostalgic about was that while I really do obviously appreciate, even for self-interested reasons, the fact that a lot of people who traditionally didn't have access to a platform now do and including myself, um,

There was something kind of like organizing about there being a local paper and the Times and the Post and the CBS Evening News and CBS 60 Minutes. And if those stories made it to those levels, they really, really, really garnered a lot of attention. It was conquerable too. Yeah. For a consumer. Yeah.

You could get everything you needed. I remember finishing the Times in the early 2000s and being like, oh, I finished it. It's done. I finished reading it today. And now you can't finish reading anything. You can't finish consuming anything. And so it makes it more difficult for something to emerge as seriously significant. The New York Post was great with that. You'd just be done.

Just like plowing through this. Oh, arts and entertainment. You could read the New York Post on a cell phone. Yeah. And just kind of go through. Sean, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this idea, which is this parallel kind of in the movie and then in real life. In the movie, we're seeing the early days of maybe not a news organization, but maybe a more traditional media company. Steve Tisch, I believe, is the owner of CBS at the moment. And then he's going to sell it to Westinghouse, which will eventually become...

hundreds of other conglomerates and different other Viacom corporations. And we've seen this happen over and over again to pretty much every significant media company. And then inside the film itself, so that's happening inside the film. And on the outside, you see this sort of being one of the last vestiges of, we're going to spend a ton of money on some top-line talent because we believe in the movie. And when Joe Roth talked to the Times right before

the insider came out, he said, uh, in regards to selling the movie to the public, he said, it's like walking up a hill with a refrigerator on your back. The fact of the matter is we're really proud. We did this movie. People say it's the best movie they've seen this year. They say, why don't we make more movies like this? And he would get his answer because it didn't make any money. Nobody wants to go see it. Yeah. Um, I mean, there's myriad reasons for that though. This

This is not... You can make a movie like this and make it differently than the way that Michael Mann made it. Sure. This is a very meditative...

but it's like a little masturbatory in a way. Like the style that man has that is beautiful when it's a movie about thieves or war, I think is maybe not as easily understood when it's about a guy sitting alone in a hotel room imagining his children. You know, like it's just, there's, he,

He's taking it a little bit far. I thought about this even just listening to the music in the movie. You know, man's so famous for using like Tangerine Dream and these really evocative, synthy, beautiful sounds. And this has almost like an opera score. It's the woman from Dead Can Dance, yeah. Oh, okay. And it's just all this kind of vocalizing. And it's meant to counteract some of the sort of like intense speechifying that happens in the movie.

It's pretty abstract. Yeah, the differences between this and, say, Spotlight are pretty much in those things that you're talking about. And Spotlight is a movie that was a hit. You know, it was a true blue hit because it was closer to the spirit of...

the conclusions of All the President's Men, if not the style. You know, All the President's Men is like a little slower, a little darker, a little harder to understand. This movie is very similar to that. Spotlight is just like, let's get the bad guys with our reporting. And I think that's just more satisfying for people. The Insider is much more ambivalent. And especially with the way the movie ends with Bergman quitting his post, it leaves us at a little bit of cross-purposes intellectually. Like what

were we supposed to take away from this? That this industry is actually broken even though they did something great? That's just not ultimately satisfying. That's why I love the last, like that final scene where Bergman's in the airport and all the people who are in the terminal with him are looking at 60 Minutes but they're not necessarily like cheering or they're just kind of like, huh, okay. And then they go back around their day and he's there and he's like, none of these people know what I went through to get that up on a stupid television screen at JFK. Yeah. Yeah. Any other bigger thoughts on The Insider before we get into the awards?

No, most of my stuff can be covered when we do the awards. But I hadn't seen this movie in a long time. And it was way better than I thought it was going to be. And I was kind of mad at myself that I haven't jumped in on it more often. Because I think the thing I like the most about it... I'll save it for what's aged the best. Okay. This episode is supported by State Farm.

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Most rewatchable scene, Lowell and Jeffrey in the car feeling each other out while it's raining and Bergman being like, you think the Knicks are going to make the semifinals? Yeah, I didn't like the semifinals. The man needed our sports consulting services. Gotta say conference finals for that. The Blazers are in the semifinals. Semifinals. They made the final four.

I love the Tylenol story. I love when he's talking about the CEO of Tylenol and why again is like the guy that when somebody put poison in a bottle of Tylenol, the CEO of Tylenol pulled every bottle of Tylenol off the shelves and invented the safety cap. And he's like, that's who I want to be working for. Not because he was a businessman, because he was a man of science. I love that scene. It's something Michael Mann has been really good at over the course of his career is putting two good actors together.

and have a little, the chess match feeling out scene is a Michael Mann staple. Yeah. Prosky and Khan and Thief. That's the best one. And these guys, and there's small talk, but there's a lot more going on. He's just, that's what he loves. The way that Weigand feels out, or sorry, the way Bergman feels Weigand out from the hotel room in Louisville to this car conversation. And you can tell he's just trying to like bring him to the point that he already wants to be at, which is like, you know, you want to talk to me.

I just have to create a world in which talking to me is okay. Yeah. It's a unique formulation. You have to be seductive and a bully. And in that moment that you talked about earlier, when he gets to the hotel room and he's like, you manipulated me. And he's just saying, I just led you to where you wanted to go. This is something you always wanted to do. It's a fascinating thing. I mean, it does raise some complicated questions about what a journalist's responsibility is. It's like, is it

right for him to lead him to the ruin of his family's life. Every time, though, he lets Jeffrey make the decision for himself. He does. Another great scene, the exposition scene where they're all eating lunch and talking about the legal defense that Brown and Williamson will put up. So like the 60 minute staff is essentially sitting around a table. And it's essentially the entire movie so far has been these sort of, you know, impressionistic scenes. And they're very this is the one time where they take a step back and they're like, here's what's going on.

This guy has a confidentiality agreement. We want him to get him to break it. Mike Wallace thinks we can do it this way. These two lawyers are like, you're never going to be able to do it because they're just going to sue you into oblivion. And he's like, that line where he's like, if Ford or Toyota and they have like a truck that blows up 12 times, like they pull the truck off the road. These guys, they're just...

they never ever quit. They never lost. They bat a thousand. Yeah. I love that scene. That is just one big exposition dump. But I kind of like it. But it's fun. Yeah. It's really well written. They're all eating. There's people walking in front of the camera. Eric Roth, who is the co-writer of this movie, is famed for his ability to clarify the problem of a movie inside of one scene. It's like one of the things in his reputation. He wrote Forrest Gump. He wrote A Star is Born. What's the problem with Forrest? How does he distill down Forrest Gump?

That's the relationship with his mom. It's like the unresolved nature of his connectivity to his family at home. I was just going to set up for you to make an inappropriate joke. Come on. It's the scene where he furiously masturbates, which Bill impersonated once part-time on a podcast. Listen, the guy, you know, took a shot. Took a shot. Shoot your shot, Forrest. Shoot your shot. I like that scene a lot. I do think that it is...

Just very cleverly, like, getting the audience to understand what the movie's about. Yeah. Yeah, which, by the way, is really hard. And there's a lot of people in this, and there's a lot of lawyers, and there's a lot of agendas, and just a lot of characters, and a lot of, all of a sudden, Gina Kershaw's in it. It's just...

Bruce McGill. Yeah, there's just a ton of characters and people. It's a good example of where Joey Pants might, the Joey Pants award might actually break the movie itself because you're like, you can't have the Pepsi girl in this. This is something man's been really good at though, having a combination of mostly faces I recognize so I can immediately identify them, but then like two or three where I don't have a history with that he uses to his advantage. Absolutely. The entire Mississippi court sequence.

Yeah. So including Wigan kind of staring into the, into the Gulf. The Gulf is, that part's great. And then the entire Bruce McGill wings house. You know what? Michael Mann must've saw the Gulf and you know how he feels about bodies of water. He's like, hold on a second. Hold on a second.

I know this isn't in the script, but wide shot. I'm thinking wide shot. That's the thing. Crows staring that way. Wide shot. Hey, can we get the sun right? You know, Joe Roth is like, you know, Michael, this is a two and a half hour film about a guy trying to make a decision about whether to break a confidentiality agreement. You think maybe we could just lose like five minutes of golf? Yeah. Michael Mann's like, no. Get the fuck out of here.

He repeats it later on with Pacino when he's on vacation on the beach and he's just staring out into the ocean thinking about whether or not he should pick up his cell phone. So good. Nobody likes to watch out of water like Michael Mann. Um,

And then the other two, these are kind of basically one half of a scene each, but Bergman discovering the CBS Westinghouse sale and confronting Hewitt and Wallace and Wallace being like, I'm with Don on this one. It's just a shocking moment. Not covered in Mike Wallace's hair, that documentary. That was excellent. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you definitely could have played that up as...

a low moment for Mike Wallace. I love the sequence where Wallace visits Pacino at 5.30 in the morning. In the hotel room? Yeah. Yeah, he's like, no, I love, I was just awake in my pajamas. But just everything that, and this documentary that Bill's talking about, which is not out yet and is out later this summer. It's great. It's great.

It's called Mike Wallace's here. It's all archival footage of Wallace from throughout his entire career. And I think it actually informs this scene a lot because there was a lot about Wallace that I didn't know about. And I don't know if this is a time to talk about Mike Wallace. Sure, absolutely. But I didn't really realize that he was kind of a, like,

sticky broadcaster before he was a newsman. And he has this fierce and legendary reputation as somebody who got, he went toe to toe with some of the biggest international figures in the world. Yeah. Thieves in suits, he says in the movie. And, you know, he also was like a showman. You know, he was a guy who was trying to be famous. He was trying to be on TV in the 1950s. And you can see where Plummer's character is kind of like reckoning with what his legacy is.

And he's kind of saying, like, I fought really hard to be a credible person. And if you kill CBS and CBS News, I'm going to lose that. I'm going to be partially responsible for that. And I don't want that. Obviously, he comes around at the end. But that is like an example of somebody explaining their life and career again in a way that is like subtle. Yeah. Interesting. It moves the story forward. Well, on the flip side of that, the other rewatchable scene I have is when Don Hewitt and Bergman have it out at the end. You fucked us.

No, you fucked you. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't alert stuff! Unleashed. I love that moment. They took the collar off him in that scene. Also, fun extra concept, little extra thing because of what happened to Don Hewitt. Yeah. He's a villain in this movie and then it's like, oh, guess what? I was saving that for once. Really a villain. I mean, it's prescient though. He comes off very poorly. And Philip Baker Hall, great performance as kind of the arch-villain of the movie. I don't think Philip Baker Hall maybe knew

who he was playing at the time. But yeah. I have one more rewatchable scene that I just think is really well done. And I like scenes like this just in general. When he goes to play golf and the guys in the suit. You know that we were going to talk about that. The guys in the suit just hitting. Really nice swing, by the way, in that other guy. I completely agree. Staring him down after each swing. And it's just creepy. And I think movies like this have to have that one scene where

The main character realizes he's either being followed. I'm in too deep. His life has changed. His life's in danger. That's the Redford hero footstep scene in all the president's movies. And then he's finally in the car and the guy's just staring him down and finally just grabs the five iron and comes out of his car. I love that three minutes. Do you think that guy was cast for his swing? Because that is a smooth swing he's got. I think it's a combo. I think they probably, it's a face swing combo. I don't think that was one of those I learned how to swing in three weeks. How did it?

I don't think Crow golfed, though. He doesn't look like he golfs to me. Yeah, that seemed... Well, it doesn't help that he's wearing loafers. On the scale of 1 to 10 of Matt Damon and Bagger Vance is a 1.

And Costner and Tinkoff is a 10. Like, Crows? Crows is like a 4. 4, I agree. The other guy, though, that guy was like a 9.5. Cranking it. Really nice. Crushing it. Down Broadway. What did you guys think the most rewatchable scene was? I like the one that I nominated. The Wallace confronts Lowell Bergman at 5 in the morning. In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations. Like what?

Corporate responsibility? Are we talking celebrity here? I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're near the end of your life in the beginning. Actually, you know what? I take it back. It has to be the Gulf and Bruce McGill. Yeah. Bruce McGill snapping. What does it mean? You don't get to instruct anything around here.

This is not North Carolina, not South Carolina, nor Kentucky. This is the sovereign state of Mississippi's proceeding. Wipe that smirk off your face! That is like the emotional turning point of the movie, too. That's when you think the good guys are going to start to win. It's also just such a flex for Mann because he's like, I know I could have just made this entire movie about this courtroom. We could have just made a courtroom drama that would have stood out.

stood up to a Grisham movie. But is Pacino in that scene enough? He's not. No, he just, he's in the car. I feel like Pacino has to be in the scene. I like when Pacino finally, when he gets unleashed. But with the Pacino in same scenes with Christopher Palmer are my favorite scenes in this movie. So I would pick...

Probably the one when, what does he say in that scene when he gets mad? This news division has been vilified in the New York Times, in print, on television, for caving to corporate interests. The New York Times ran a blow-by-blow of what we talked about behind closed doors. You fucked us. No, you fucked you. Don't invert stuff.

Big tobacco tried to smear Wygan. You bought it. And it's funny because, all right, I guess we can do it in What's Aged the Best. I'll wait. Well, I was going to say What's Aged the Best. So let's give it to the Pacino Unleashed as most rewatchable scene. The What's Aged the Best. I have Pacino's performance. Yeah, for me, this is what I was going to say earlier. Obviously an incredible actor and really good at how he can kind of scale it back or whatever. But yeah.

He has this quality that I don't... I can't think of any other actor who does this because he does it in heat too when he's trying to get something out of the other person. And the way he's like super comfortable and playing off the guy and it seems completely natural like he's not acting at all and...

He's having a conversation, but there's this whole ulterior motive the whole time and you can see it. And he's measuring the guy and he clearly wants to get to some destination, but he's playing the long game. I've never seen another actor do that. And he does that really well in this movie. Like the way he kind of plays off Crow the whole time, even in the fucking first scene of the Ayatollah.

or whoever that guy was, the terrorist. And he's got a bag over his head. He's doing that scene. We can't even see his face. I know. But he's just, nobody was ever better at that. He's amazing. The way he processes information on screen without being too showy about it, it,

You think every actor does that? He does it a lot in Godfather 2. Maybe they don't. Yeah. Godfather 2 is when he first like, but then over the course of his career, I feel like Sea of Love, that's basically the whole movie. He's trying to figure out if this lady that he's falling for is actually like killing her ex-boyfriend. Yeah, the idea of watching and listening and thinking in character is that kind of high level. I don't know who else like does that. Denzel thing is very good at that too.

Think of the actors who are the best screen partners. The people who, when you're watching them have a conversation, the person isn't necessarily dominating. They are receiving and giving. It's actually, I feel like Hawk talked about this a little bit when he was on your show about Denzel. There are certain people who kind of come to play and Pacino knows when to go big and he knows when to pull back. And I think there's probably a little bit of being good in the theater too about this because you need to gesture. You need to make it clear that you're doing something without talking.

I don't know. You can't underestimate putting Crow and Pacino in the room together. Like, that's just... Especially at that time, they're both so talented as screen actors that you're just going to get something good every time they're together. The Crow thing bums me out. This performance, Proof of Life, Gladiator, Beautiful Mind. I love Master and Commander. LA Confidential. Did you see Boy Erased? What year was that? Last year. He was really good in it. It was a reminder of like, oh, sometimes...

Oh, I did see Boy Erased. You can be the most charismatic person in the world. He's playing like a schlubby pastor father, but he's really, really good in the movie. So we have Pacino's performance. I had the cinematography and the look and feel of the movie, like just the visual style. And then... The gulf. I had the gulf. This is interesting. And the gulf. Yeah. Just watching the waves. Wide shot of the gulf. And then maybe at a first for the rewatchables, I would say I have a nominee that...

for what's aged the best, which is also aged the worst, which is the inner workings of 60 Minutes and CBS News and the corporate culture there. Obviously, if you like watching how shit gets put together in movies, it's fascinating. It's fascinating to watch the internal politics and the wrangling and the pushing and pulling and edit it so that it looks like this and get me this and somebody dial this footage up. And then on the flip side, knowing what we know now, this was a pretty morally...

corrupt place to work. But we gotta save that though. Do we have other What's Aged the Best though? That's what I had. The three, the Pacino, the cinematography and the inner workings. I would add for What's Aged the Best and this is purely a result of time passing. Plummer now is Mike Wallace. I don't have the Mike Wallace history as much because Mike Wallace isn't in my life every day. Like if you're, if somebody did this movie right now and Christopher Plummer's playing like

I don't know, Tony Kornheiser. Yeah. I wouldn't be able to like separate Tony Kornheiser from Christopher Plummer. But Mike Wallace hasn't been on TV in 15 years. So now when I'm watching this, it's just Christopher Plummer's interpretation of Mike Wallace, which is so much more fun to watch. I completely agree. And the thing that is cool about that performance is, and this was recognized at the time,

He is capturing what Wallace does on screen. I was thinking about this having just seen the documentary. Yeah. There's a thing that Wallace does where he holds, when he's asking a question, he holds his fingers together and kind of emphasizes and points. And Plummer is doing that. He's getting the posture and the execution, but he's not doing a Mike Wallace impression. No. He doesn't have all this prosthetics on. He doesn't have his hair dyed that like jet matte black that

that Wallace always had. He is just doing Christopher Plummer interpreting like Wallace. And so it just works really well. And then he becomes like Wallace. The little smile. Yeah. Where like that super charismatic, confident, but I'm also at any point I could start yelling at you kind of vibe. I thought he was just incredible. That moment when they're talking about how they would try to get him on screen and Wallace is like, you know, this would be like if an airline...

If somebody was a whistleblower on an airline, you would bring that out because it was about a public health issue. And they're like, well, it doesn't matter because of this, this, and the other thing. And he just sits back and takes a sip out of a CBS sports mug. And I was like, fuck yeah. That's such a great little bit. Nice touch. Nice little detail. Well, so best supporting actor. We're going to do 99. This is like a catastrophe. Tell me. Cruz and Magnolia I'm good with.

Jude Law and Talented Mr. Ripley I'm actually good at good with I thought he was incredible in the movie Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense that's a rough one I mean he's good that's also a movie that doesn't work if Haley Joel Osment's not good Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile

Brutal. That's a rough one. Brutal. And then the winner was Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules. Now... That was just one of those, like, fucking weird... I just feel like Plummer is better in this movie than basically everyone in that category except Jude Law. And Mr. Ripley, Jude Law's... Yeah. I don't know who else could have played that part. And he's so charismatic in that. I don't know. But Plummer at least is in the top five. It would be kind of fun to do a pod that's just the 1999 Oscars, but we just re-nominate and re-reward it.

Maybe at the end of this series. I mean, I would probably go with Cruise too, but the thing that happens here with Michael Caine, where he wins for Cider House after being passed over many times over the years. Yeah, it was the Susan Lucci thing. But Christopher Plummer got that later on in his career for Beginners. Like, is Beginners Christopher Plummer's absolute best performance? No, but they gave it to him because it's like, this guy was in The Sound of Music.

This guy was in The Insider. He was in a lot of great films. There's another Oscar catastrophe. Sean Penn got nominated for Sweet and Lowdown. Pacino, not nominated at all. I know. I know. That's outrageous. Do you think it was like after a set of women? I think people were tired of him. That's outrageous. Okay, so what's aged? That's what's aged the best. Can I give you one more Christopher Plummer stat? Sure. Can you guess what year he was born? He's got to be 90 years old. Chris, want to guess a year? 1942. 1942? What are you saying?

I would say if he's 90, it's 29 or 30. 1929. Yeah. He turns 90 in December. How is, like, I honestly can't even conceive. In this movie, he's almost 70, but he was just in that, what was the movie where the John, the Getty movie? Oh, he was, He replaced Spacey.

So he was 88 when he did that? And he was really good in that movie? I was going to say, he's also awesome in that movie. Oh my God. I just hope I can even like speak at 88. There was a lot of talk when he won for beginner. I mean, he was like 83 when he won for beginners, you know? Yeah. That was part of the reason why I think people are like, wow. I mean, I'm good with it. You know, he's literally one of the greatest actors of the 20th century and then also won his Oscar in the 21st century. Right.

What's aged the best? Let's skip to Plummer. What's aged the worst? Like I said, the inner workings of 60 Minutes. It never suggests anything untoward, although you could reread the interactions with Gina Gershon's lawyer as sort of

indicative of the chauvinistic behavior that happened there. Weirdly, we've wound up talking about CBS News a couple of times this year because of broadcast news and Susan Zirinsky and everything. But yeah, anything else age the worst for you guys in this movie? I have a couple. Okay. By the way, Christopher Plummer never nominated for an Oscar before 2010. For The Last Station? Yeah. The ending, the tail end of the ending really bothers me. I wish somebody had talked Michael Mann out of it. The ending

The slow motion Pacino leaving the going on the street and it slows down like all of a sudden we're making a movie in 1981. Yeah, it's just bad. It's it's fine if you don't know any better in the 70s. But this is like, hey, cool. Let's try this slow motion thing. It's just kind of tacky. The movie is so well crafted.

I just didn't understand it. You almost like half expect like the Doogie Howser music to start playing. It's just hacky. It's bad. Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with Bill. I'm not a big fan of the score, as I mentioned. I think that... The score could have been better. He... Man, in an attempt to be singular, sometimes ages himself. And I think his movies...

are beautiful, but they are... You can feel him straining for individuality at times. Is this your... Is this a subtle dig at Linkin Park, Jay-Z being used in Miami Vice? It's the same thing. It's an attempt to capture something popular and also abstract. And, like, it just often doesn't work for me at all. It's one of the only things in his movies that I... And I'm not, like, I'm not into those Tangerine Dream soundtracks. Like, I don't actually understand. I know what he's doing where it's, like, something beautiful and, like, um...

like a sunshine compared to darkness. But that stuff just never works for me. I have another what's aged the worst. Wings Houser is like prominently in this movie for 12 minutes. That means you don't talk! It was just a weird casting. At that point in his career, he was...

You know, he was like Jonesy on 90210 when Dylan McCain needed to get his money back. And it's like now he's in this Michael Mann movie. It's pretty amazing. Once you're Jonesy in 90210, I can't have you in The Insider. But I think Michael Mann probably saw like Tough Guys Don't Dance and was just like that guy. Let's get him in The Insider. I mean, there's a lot of people who feel that way about Bruce McGill. Bruce McGill is always going to be Animal House. And in this movie, he is like moral certitude and lawyerly power. Well, in Bruce McGill's defense...

He's unleashing one of the great that guy runs anyone's ever had in the 90s. Where's he at? God, his IMDb is so fucking long. He works. Bruce McGill works. He's my cousin Vinny, cliffhanger, a perfect world, time cop, courage under fire, Rosewood. Eh, not that good. I overrated him. Can I give you the titles of the five movies that precede The Insider for Wings Houser? Mm-hmm.

I'm sure they're terrible. Are they mostly Skinamax movies? Tales from the Hood, Guns and Lipstick, Broken Bars, Original Gangsters, and Life Among the Cannibals. Yeah. That's where he was at. He was fucking Jonesy in 1994. It was like a last gasp. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. Somebody called in sick, I think. On the flip side, though,

I should have had this for What's Aged the Best. Lindsey Krauss, one of my favorite random actresses. House of Cards, yeah. She's The Verdict. Yeah. Slapshot. She's kind of in the mix, but you never know what her name is. I guess we could have done her for The Joey Pants, but...

She's just playing a normal character in this one. And it's also funny that Pacino has a normal marriage in this movie, which might be the only time ever. That's a good point. Bergman's wife is a celebrated documentarian. Yeah. That's who she's playing. Yeah. Yeah, the Al Pacino marriage slash relationship. It's not. It's usually complicated. Sorry if the chicken got overcooked. Maybe.

I was going to say maybe the Kate Corleone's abortion might have been the nadir. Yeah. But see love, maybe not knowing if his girlfriend was trying to kill him. Having to screw Xander or whoever she's screwing to get closure with him. Remind me, where do you guys stand on speaking of Pacino paramours, Diane Venora in general?

So I was shocked to see her in this movie. I'd forgotten. And she's got the long hair compared to Heath with the short hair. But that same kind of sad, I shouldn't be with this guy look, which maybe Michael Mann just wanted to run that back. She's just doing a sequel to the Heath character. She's doing Heath with long hair. Yeah. She's like a really good Shakespearean actress. Yeah. And that's sort of one of the things with Michael Mann movies and with like law. I was more aware of this when I lived in New York, but you would see an episode of Law & Order. There'd be some...

of a gap folding t-shirts and be like, I don't know how that guy died. And then like you'd be walking down the street and he'd be starring in Richard III and Shakespeare in the Park. It would just be kind of, okay, everybody's got to work. She never really did anything that big again though. I mean, that's kind of why I asked. I can't really think of another significant Diane Vignola performance, but at the time she'd been in Romeo and Juliet. She was, I think, Juliet's mother. And obviously Heat. Yeah.

Yeah. And there was the feeling like, oh, Diane Venora, she's like a... It's Venora season. Venora season. Yeah, by 2004, she was in Law & Order Special Victims Unit. Yeah. Michael Mann saw something special. Let's talk a little bit about the 1999 award for the most 1999 moment in this movie. Okay. I have Pacino and Crow faxing back and forth.

Yeah, the faxing was where I was going mentally. Just the sheer amount of business Pacino conducts from payphones. Yeah. Where he's like, meet me in this diner. You know, like just a lot of like coordinating, getting his messages. He has a cell phone, but he still uses payphones. Also, the New York Times in the lobby, nobody would do that now. I just... Like, I'll be on my cell phone in the lobby. Every once in a while, I think about the fact that when I was in Ireland for six months in 98, in the beginning of 99, actually.

I, the only way I communicated with my parents was to call from a pay phone in a dorm building in Cork, Ireland. And I was in another country and there was no incoming phone number. So I would just like pick it up and I have like my AT&T card and I would dial and say, Hey, I'm, I'm fine to talk to you next week. And that's just like so wild to imagine that like at, I think I was 19. That was like how my parents were like our 19 year old son. We can't call him.

And that was 20 years ago. I remember going to Italy in 04 with Jimmy and Adam and Sal and all those guys. And we just had no connection to the outside world. And we went downtown in Rome one day and Sal and I were at the...

There was this place that had an internet thing and we were like so starved for sports information. Anything, paying this thing, like trying to get on ESPN.com even for an hour. You could really be cut off. I think that's impossible now. I don't know, unless you were on like a safari in Africa or something, I don't know how you'd be cut off like that.

Yeah, I mean... Any payphone stories for you? No, I mean, my age specifically, I think I got my first cell phone in 1999 and I was still in high school. And that was like a turning point. And then within five years, everyone had a cell phone. Yeah. I mean, payphones started to vanish in New York around, what, 2005? Something like that. Something like that, yeah. And it definitely marks, it really marks the time. I mean, the thing that I was thinking of that hasn't aged that well is just this sort of general concern about

corporate influence on the news media. It's like that argument is like over and done with. It's not a good thing. It's just like no one is concerned about that now because every major news outlet has a corporate parent. Yeah, ESPN went through this with the frontline thing when they killed the NFL. That was like their version of this. This was obviously a million thousand times more important, but...

Even there was probably more outrage for that than there was for this because we had more, 15 years later, way more places to get outrage. The other thing that's pretty funny is that now we would have thumb drives and leaked emails and a bunch of other stuff. This, like, Lowell Bergman just gets the SEC filing and it's like, turns out you're going to make $3 million from this sale. Yeah. Yeah.

Any other 1999 things specifically? 1999 awards? I think just 60 Minutes mattering like it did. This is kind of the last decade that it was that important. Okay. Once we get to 2000s, then you got more channels and just more things going on. Like Vice News. Honestly, I think we hit on this a little bit already, but just the acceptance of cigarettes in our lives. I think now if you meet a young person who smokes cigarettes, they're

they're kind of regarded as an alien. Like, it's just, it's increasingly uncommon. And then I try to hire them. Yeah. Is that an LA thing, though? It might be. I mean, that's only my experience at this moment. But even in New York, I was very rarely going out to have a smoke with my younger friends. It was always with my older friends. He says, with his eyebrows arched, staring at me. Well, it's just because, you know, they were like...

you know, the David Shoemakers of the world. You could have a cigarette with somebody like that. Couldn't have a cigarette with the editorial assistant working at the magazine who was 21 because that person was like on a paleo diet, you know, crushing the gym four nights a week. And now you'd get like a ginger shot. Yeah, exactly. So that's just very 99. Want to go get a turmeric shot with me? I'd rather have a ginger in. The only other 99 thing. Craig's like, now you're speaking my language. This is my generation. Do a lot of your friends smoke cigarettes? No. Oh.

It's just not a thing. Yeah. Good for them. All of Craig's friends are non-smoking virgins. Yeah.

Tough beat for my friends. For your friends. That's right. Not me. Yeah. The only other 99 thing I would mention is the offhanded reference to Ken Starr. Oh, yeah. That was really good. Ken Starr's firm. That was good. Clinton gets mentioned at some point in this movie, right? I think so. President Clinton. Yeah, I think so. Casting what ifs, there's not that many. Just Val Kilmer was up for Wygand, which is a pretty significant what if for this podcast, but...

It speaks to your sort of like, you know, Kilmer kind of leaving a lot on the table in this decade. Did Russell Crowe market correct Val Kilmer? I think it's fair. I think Val Kilmer market corrected himself. But I think Russell Crowe showed what Val Kilmer's career could have been. Yeah. Yeah. Kilmer has had so many opportunities to just be like, great, I got myself a new lane. I'm going to stick with it. I got to say my biggest... From Top Gun and Willow and being like, I can be a movie star, but not. And then Heat.

Or it's like, you could just be like the cool third guy in every tough guy movie. But then he was still Batman and the Saint. Yeah. My biggest casting what if is what if somebody had never said, hey, we should get Wings Houser.

I think Wings Houser is good in this movie. He is. He doesn't deserve it, is what you're saying. It would be like if the situation from Jersey Shore was one of the lawyers. Jesus Christ. That's overstating. Here's my half-assed internet research. This was originally called Man of the People. I like the insider better. I actually, I still don't think they, I think the right title really could have helped this movie. I think Cigarette Smoking Something Should Have Been...

The title's not sinister enough. Do you think if it was called Tonight on 60 Minutes? Was that an original title? No, I'm just throwing them. I'm coming up with some alts. I'm trying to come up with a punny title. You know, it's like Cigarette Burns, something like that. You'd want to come up with something like that. Or like Burned. Right. It just needed to have an element of danger to it. Yeah. That the insiders could be anything. That sounds like it could be... Hazardous to your health. Nice.

Yeah. The true story, colon, the true story. Like Jason Reitman's Thank You For Not Smoking.

Really good title. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And told me what the movie was about. The Insider, I don't know what it's about. Or Thank You for Smoking. What if it was called The Whistleblower? That would have been good. That would have been fine. Or Whistleblower. That was like a civil action. But then Aaron Brockovich was just Aaron Brockovich. So it was originally called Man of the People. Roth and Mann wrote the first draft of the screenplay at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica. At the bar of the Broadway Deli. Never been there. But I think it would be pretty awesome if you walked in one day and...

Two guys were writing The Insider at the bar. Is there a reason why we didn't do this podcast from the Broadway Deli? That's fucking weird. I can see one person writing a screenplay, but two people next to each other writing a screenplay? Jamming it out. Couldn't have been at a bar. It must have been at a table. This is like Chris and I talking NBA coverage here at The Ringer. Just jamming it out of the deli. What if we did this? Smoking at each other.

Russell Crowe was not able to talk to Jeffrey Weigand about his experiences because Weigand was still bound by the confidentiality agreement that he had signed with Brandon Williamson. He was able to break it for court, but not for Russell Crowe. Mike Wallace detested this movie.

Michael Mann was living in the same Central Park West building as Don Hewitt during filming. And Hewitt had been criticizing the movie and Page Six throughout the production. One day they met in the elevator and Mann introduced himself. Hewitt took a second and then, according to Mann, threw his arm around him and said, that fucking little Bergman. That was Don Hewitt. Bergman is currently the chair of the investigative reporting department.

in the Graduate School of Journalism. Then Don Hewitt hit on Michael Mann's wife. Yeah. At UC Berkeley and is a producer on Frontline. And Pete Hamill, famous New York Daily News journalist, famous New York gadfly, plays the New York Times writer who Lowell Bergman leaks the story to. That's right. Pete Hamill, my grandmother's favorite columnist, longtime reader of the Daily News. Grew up loving Pete Hamill. So that's it. That's the internet research. Let's go to... I had one more. Oh, do you? I thought there was a...

There was something where Jeffrey Wagon didn't want any cigarettes in the movie. Yes, that's true. Because I actually looked this up. That's true. It's always hard for me to believe when Pacino's not smoking in a movie. They're smoking in the Middle East, though. Right, but I just think Pacino should smoke in every movie because I think he's, as soon as they say, all right, that's a cut, Pacino's just got like the Marlboro Reds out. And this character felt like he should have smoked, and I think it would have been an interesting wrinkle. But somebody in this movie should have smoked. Smoking's banned in offices by 99, though.

I guess, but it's like you want people thinking about cigarettes during the movie. I actually think it was a mistake not to have more kind of cigarettes and smoke and just it's kind of hanging over everything. Yeah. I don't know. Well, what do you guys think about that general concern about portraying smoking in movies as being influential and encouraging people to use cigarettes? I mean, I definitely think it's a factor.

For sure. You don't think so? No, 100%. Smoking looks cool as shit. I've been in conversations about who is the coolest smoker of all time in a movie. Was it Wings Houser? No, who's the one who used to smoke like this? Make you work? No, there's a guy. I got to go find him. I have a whole email thread about this with my friends from like seven years ago. Sounds like good content. The ones who can pull off...

who had this say, but then they go here like this and do it that way, which is really hard to do and just is awkward. Instead of going with your two fingers like that, they would go like that. Oh, Don Johnson in Miami Vice. Also, that is also De Niro in Goodfellas. Does that a lot. Another good one. Do you think that's a direction that comes directly from man? If we do a pod breakout for this, I want a lot of Don Johnson having a fucking cigarette with a white jacket on.

Yeah, I think it's really hard because we've also seen movies or TV shows where somebody's clearly not a smoker and they're trying to smoke and it's super awkward. Yeah. Like Cruise. I don't know if Cruise has ever smoked a cigarette in a movie. I don't think so. But if he ever did, I guarantee it would be terrible. Because he should be smoking an American made and I don't think he does. Oh, yeah. By the way, I watched Eyes Wide Shut the last hour of it recently. Oh, my God.

I don't know what's going to happen when we do that one. Especially if it's this hot in the studio when we do it. It's going to be so weird when we do this. I'm just going to be wearing a giant mask and no clothes. So it should be exciting. Cruz goes to the corner to see if the...

The dead girl from the party's there and she's just dead naked on a thing and Cruz starts leaning over like he's going to kiss her. I was like, what is going on? How are we going to do a podcast about this movie? This movie's insane. Too late. You've already committed us. That movie's insane. Imagine the Twitter breakouts for that one. We might have to like drink during that podcast. That'd be fun.

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Dion Waiters Award. Oh, wow. I personally think this is a one nominee award. Wow. Boy, you got rights and lefts, ups and downs and middles. So what? This is not North Carolina. This is not South Carolina, nor Kentucky. This is the sovereign state of Mississippi's proceeding. Now you wipe that smirk off your face.

That's like his only line in the movie. It's Bruce McGill. That was very good. He's also the winner of the Saul Rubinick award. Yes. It's a double winner. And he might also win the Joey Pants. I think you can make the argument that he wins the Triple Crown. He dials it up in that. He goes, Waiters Rubinick Pants. Can we talk runners up? Wipe your smirk off your face is one of the all-time dial it up.

Do you think Michael Mann was like huddling with the assistant director? Like, should we tell Bruce to do one more take? No, he was like, don't cut. Great. Good job, Bruce. For somebody who's into all of these subtle artistic choices. He loves a ham. Mann loves a ham. He loves a ham. He loves somebody just going for it. In Ali, there's people just going for it left and right. Public enemies, they're going for it. Collateral, the whole Tom Cruise performance, he's going for it. He just loves that. Do you think he showed Bruce...

she's got a great ass and you've got your head all the way up it before the courtroom scene. He's like, look, you do what you want, but this is what I was thinking. I think he showed him that and he was like, consider that a one. I want you at a seven. I want to know what it says in the script. Does it say McGill's character blows his top? Right. And is it based on the actual deposition? Or was this an invention? Because there are things in this movie that are invented. Sure. We don't know necessarily exactly what they are, but I'd be curious to know

how that actually played out. Right. Anybody else for Deanne Waiters? Runner-up Deanne Waiters? There's some runner-ups. Michael Gambon. Oh, yeah. Which one was that? That's just like how Michael Gambon always is. He's the Brown and Williamson CEO Thomas Sandifer. Yeah. I would also throw in the amazing golfer henchman guy. Sure. Incredible. Sure. What about Stephen Tobolowsky as CBS News president coward?

Eric Cluster. Yeah, he was good. He was good. That was a good Joey Pants one too. So I'm going to go McGill for Dion Waiters. Unintentional comedy. I had just the golf driving range. It was just really funny to me. Just those two guys golfing in suits. I found Russell Crowe's swing. Maybe in the 90s that was more common for guys to come after work and go hit some balls. But now you just go to the driving range and everybody looks like Jason Day. So it's sort of weird to imagine some guy in a suit. There's nobody there. Yeah.

I have Gina Gershon as a high-powered corporate lawyer. I just kept expecting her to try to seduce somebody. She just didn't have the gravitas for me as an actress. This is somebody who's made a certain set of choices over her career. If you're not buying me as the corporate lawyer, I'm just not buying it. I liked it as counterintuitive casting.

It certainly was counterintuitive. I enjoyed it. I think that could have been a really good... I am too, but not as a hard-hitting corporate lawyer. Gershon's performance in Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the top five TV comedy performances ever. Wow. That's my take. Okay. Any other unintentional comedy moments for you?

besides Wygan and golfing and wifers. I'm throwing in the scene when he's in the hotel room and he's staring in the wall. Oh, and it melts? And he's seeing his kids playing in the beach. I both liked it and also thought, I was like, wow, I wonder if anyone tried to talk man out of this. This is so corny. There's no such thing. There's no such thing as talking man out of it. That's why we get the good stuff and that's why we get the bad stuff. I think if you look closely at the movie, it's a little hard to take the emotional stakes as seriously because everybody in this movie is so rich.

Like, Lowell Bergman, as a longtime producer of 60 Minutes, is so rich. And he's like in his beach house, like arguing about the sanctity of the news. And fucking Don Hewitt, who's a multi-multi-millionaire. Mike Wallace, who's one of the most famous broadcasters in American history. The guys at Brown and Williams. And Jeffrey Weigand, who literally admitted he took them, but he took the money and worked at huge corporations. Like, this is not quite the...

Like, from the ground up struggle, you know? It is just a lot of rich people fighting over industry. And it's interesting, but...

I think that Michael Mann is like crusading, but he's crusading for like a pretty white collar endeavor. Thanks for your, thanks for your input. Just saying, you know, you shame the movie. Yeah. I like, I was like, I'm on a, they made me go on vacation. I'll be in the Hamptons beach house. That's on the water. I think he's in the keys, right? Or the keys, or Jamaica. I don't even know where he is. Who the fuck knows? Whatever 60 minutes can buy you. Um,

Okay, unintentional comedy. Unanswerable questions. My big one was, how would this have played in the internet era? I mean, I think we've seen that in the last couple of years, especially how these stories get

manipulated how people lose interest in them in about six hours. How the thing that you think is the most important thing you've ever seen gets dwarfed by something the next day. Our brains, our sort of senses are kind of dull at this point, I think. Given the way that everything in the news media and social media gets immediately stratified and kind of bifurcated, do you think that there would have been like a strong contingent of people who were like, cigarettes rule. And then there would have been like a whole group. No, it would have been people like being like, no, duh.

No, duh. Everybody knows this. Christian Slater, really good smoker. Yeah. Oh, and Heather's especially. Yeah. Just, I'm going to keep pumping the rest of the pot. Did he smoke and pump up the volume too? I think so. Yeah. Oh yeah. But I agree with you. I wonder if there would have been, what would be the, what would be the take on Jeffrey Wigand?

Yeah, somebody would be like, I honor agreements as an American. Yeah, like contracts are important. Picking nits, you could say the same. I mean, I think we've really picked a lot of nits already. But did you guys have any specific ones you wanted to hit that we haven't already? Should I talk about class again? Democratic Socialist Podcasting with Sean Fennessey.

For me, a nitpick is just the wife was out on him pretty fast. This is a great corner for you. I love when you're like the marriage counselor. Stand by her man. Yeah. It seemed okay in the beginning. Or maybe it wasn't okay. Was it broadcast news that you were like mad that Holly Hunter wouldn't go to the dinner with him or something like that? Yeah, yeah. You also didn't believe that she actually had a boyfriend at the end of the movie.

No, I think she died single. She's still alive. She's the president of CBS News. Susan Zawinski. That's the real life character. The character in that movie never settled down. Jesus Christ. I'm just saying. Died alone. Had a lot of cats though. Like seven cats. Died alone. Why is this a bad thing? I don't think she found love. Sorry. Too crazy.

Go ahead. What do you think about Diane, about Wygan's wife and not sticking by her? Comes home, it's like I lost my- There's a bullet in the mailbox because this guy wants to- No, I'm going back earlier. Comes back, I lost my job. I got laid off out of nowhere. She's not on his side. She turns on him like really quickly. It's like, what's going on here? Yeah.

Isn't your reaction like, oh, that sucks. Man, you put a lot of time in that company. She's just me like, what are we going to do? I do think maybe it was a bad marriage to start. We get the impression that Jeffrey Weigand has some social struggles and some anger issues. It's alluded to. Yeah.

His communication is poor. Jeffrey Wagang. Good hang, bad hang. Tough hang with Jeffrey Wagang. What is it? Great hang, tough hang? It would just be Jeffrey Wagang being like, I can't talk about that. It's my confidentiality agreement. Want to go hit some golf balls? Wagang, you think Knicks are going to make the semifinals this year? It's my confidentiality agreement. I can't disclose that. We got to take that out and put that in the dip picks too. Yeah. Semifinals. Come on, Michael Mann. What else outside the zone?

I don't know. You think the Knicks are going to make it to the semifinals? Just get one guy on the set who's followed sports for five minutes. Not ideal. Nobody's ever said semifinals with the NBA. 99 Knicks. Yeah, conference finals. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they were in the NBA finals that year. We would say third round or conference finals. How dare you?

That is true. That might have been the last great Knicks moment was this movie. It is. Ah, the Knicks. You think the Knicks are going to get Zion? I like RJ Barrett. I like Jarrett Culver. I had coffee with Marcus Camby half an hour ago. That was a foul on John Starks.

There should be a James Dolan biopic starring Al Pacino. Who says no? Because then he would just play the blues the entire time. Donnie Walsh in a wheelchair trying to impress LeBron James! What are we doing?

The heat's making us all, I think, a little loopy. The heat has drawn you back to heat. They knew overacting award goes to the three of us for that run of Chino talking about the Knicks. Best quote. Weigand, fuck it, let's go to court. Fuck it, let's go to court. Dr. Weigand would like to leave now. Can I ask a quick question? Has there ever been a bad line of dialogue that started, fuck it, let's?

If you start a line of dialogue with fuck it, let's do something, you are guaranteed to get my attention. Like fuck it, let's be legends? Fuck it, let's play some cards? Yeah. Just watched that last week. Rounders?

It's so disappointing, though. They get to Atlantic City. Worm goes with a hooker. Matt Damon goes to play with all his friends from the Chesterfield. And then they leave pretty quickly. It's like, what? You wanted to get more time with the hooker? Can they get one run? No, one run? You guys at some table just bilking the tourists for like a half hour, maybe? I don't know.

Should we just re-record the Rounders re-watchables? Right now, as Al Pacino, talking about the Knicks? No, but I am ready to do Heat again. When we have the 100th re-watchables, I just want to do Heat again. I have a lot more thoughts on Heat. More best quotes, Mike Wallace. Mike? Try Mr. Wallace.

We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same profession. Yeah, that was great. Bergman, I want you to tell him in these words, get on the fucking phone! Yeah. I can't say that. No, you can't. Tell him to get on the fucking phone!

He told me to tell you to get on the fucking phone. Love that. We should have made you wear the Pacino wig from the movie. But a Phil Spector wig from the store. Then there's the whole Berman thing where he's like, and he's only the key witness in the biggest health reform issue. Maybe the biggest, most expensive corporate malfeasance case in US history. Are we going to air it? Of course not.

Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. Loved it. And then, Hewitt, you fucked us. Bergman, no, you fucked you. Don't invert stuff. I got another one. You fucked you is the quote for me. I love when he's on the phone with the FBI guy. Oh, yeah. And he's like, you better take a good look because I'm getting two things. Pissed off and curious. Yeah.

When I get a chance, I'll give it a look. You better take a good look because I'm getting two things. Pissed off and curious. Now, look, but don't touch. His cadence is incredible. My goal in life is to never have a conversation with either of you that ends with one of you yelling at me, no, you fucked you. You fucked you, Bill. I'll be like, what? Are we going to air it? Of course not. I like almost everything Plummer says, but I also like when he...

At the end of the movie, right after he says, you fucked you, Plummer's like, you fucked up, Don. Yeah. Very calmly. And then he's like, you know, these things have 15-minute shelf life. And he says, fame has a 15-minute half-life. Infamy lasts a little longer. That's like a really good line of dialogue. And then knowing what we know, it's also...

a dart. There's some really well-written lines. It's a great script. I was reading the Insider quote page. The top one on IMDb was Mike Wallace says, who are these people? And Lois says, ordinary people under extraordinary pressure. Mike, what the hell did you expect? Grace and consistency? There's a lot of just really well-written, scripted whatever's. I enjoyed it. I really, really enjoyed re-watching this. Loved Philip Baker Hall being like, you're an anarchist! Yeah!

By the way, we didn't talk about the Phil Baker Hall 90s run. How about just his 99? Magnolia and this? You go from 89 to 99 because then you can get Midnight Run in there. Yeah. And that like 11-year run. I'm going to stab you with a fucking pencil, Sidney. Have a cream soda. And Boogie Nights, Seinfeld. It's incredible. Part 8. Part 8? Sidney? Wait, one more line. Yeah, sure. I like.

I just, I can't get Pacino's voice out of my head now. He's like, I fought for you and I still fight for you. It's great. Apex Mountain. Yeah. Pacino, Crow, Plummer. Bruce McGill, definitely.

Is it Pacino's Apex Mountain? No, God no. Not for anybody. I don't think it's Crow's either. I think Crow's is gladiator. The golfing henchman guy, definitely. Yeah, that guy, Kepko? That guy was amazing. It's either this weekend when he wins the PGA or that day. Or when he golfed in a suit. God, so good. Really nice swing. Striping it. It's great. Kept his weight back. Yeah, fading it just a little bit. And really kind of exploded through wearing a suit. It's hard to do. I guess, is this Christopher Plummer's Apex Mountain?

Eh, Sound of Music. Yeah, I think it's probably going to be Sound of Music. Nobody's Apex Mountain. This is the longest Joey Pants nominee field. The biggest field we've ever had. Is this man's Apex Mountain just in terms of his ability to do... Because getting this movie made is kind of an amazing achievement. I think it's indicative of where he was after Heat. He takes like three, four years after Heat. Heat is. And does this. That's in the

truest constitutional originalist reading of Apex Mountain. But he'd allowed him to do that though. In heat, he had De Niro and Pacino at a point when that still mattered and got like the best possible movie out of them. We've talked about every single person in Joe. And he's getting two rewatchable podcasts out of the same movie. That's true. Apex Mountain. I don't know what it is. We had so many Joey Pants guys, Philip Baker Hall, Gina Gershon, Stephen Tobolowsky, Rip Thorne. Torn. Torn. Sorry. Rip Torn. My bad. I mispronounced that.

Rip-torn, kind of wasted in this movie. Why couldn't he have been Wings Houser? They never filmed him head on. I think he had stuff that was cut. He must have. He must have, right? He was big then because Larry Sanders had just ended and there was like rip-torn momentum. Halle Eisenberg, the Pepsi girl from the Pepsi commercials, plays Wigan's daughter. Colm Fior, Debbie Mazar, Lindsey Krauss, Michael Gambon, and Esther Serrano as the FBI guy. For me, the winner because we already did Bruce Wiggle unless we're just going to give this to Bruce McGill again. I like the idea of McGill winning the Triple Crown. The Triple Crown is fun.

I do think Lindsey Krauss, a lot of people don't know what her name is. And meanwhile, she's like this really, really accomplished, beloved actress. Go find House of Games. House of Games is amazing. Yeah. So one of those two I would go with. Could this work as a 10-episode Netflix show in 2019? Yeah, it would be amazing. I would watch that.

Yeah, definitely. Okay. Would it work if it was filmed in the same way? More smoking. Like all this, like the gulf. It was like an episode of just looking at the gulf. To make it truly 99 feeling, we replaced Dead Can Dance with...

with Rage Against the Machine on the soundtrack. Good. Good idea. Yes? Yes. Or a sequel where he, Jeffrey Wigand, starts dating the broadcast news lady. Nice. What if it's just... They met on like an investigative piece. Yeah, Jeff and Sue. Jeff and Sue. It's more of a Benny and June style movie. She gets mad about the golf thing. She's high energy. I actually think that's a good match. That's great. I would watch a Twitch stream that was just Lil Bergman and Jeffrey Wigand watching Knicks games. Yeah.

Watching the semifinals together. You think they'll make the semifinals? What do you think about Faraday and Weigand on the Golf Channel? Oh, yeah. Together teaming up. Jeffrey Weigand, you golf in Lofar, sir. How hard was that? And you didn't break your confidentiality agreement, sir. You're wearing a tie. Was he wearing a tie or just he had this shirt? When I think of the great performances on a Sunday, sir, I think of Brooks Koepka, Aaron Hills, and you.

At the Louisville Men's Driving Range! This is the same accent as Bono.

That doesn't sound anything like Faraday. This is Bono as David Faraday. It feels like it's also retroactively shaking your confidence in Bono. Like you're now wondering whether or not Bono isn't Bono. It's not. Can I tell you a Bono story? Sure. I saw this movie about Luciano Pavarotti. Yeah. And Bono is interviewed in the movie and he's talking about how Pavarotti is one of his truest friends. We talked about how he tricked him into participating in the Pavarotti and Friends charity concert. And he described him as...

I can't do the Bono voice. Maybe you could just repeat this, but he called him a world-class emotional arm wrestler. He's a world-class emotional arm wrestler, sir. And David Faraday? And he said he'd break your arm if he could. That's great. Yeah, it was good stuff. Jesus. Love Bono. Bono. What a blowhard. Nobody's more of an artist than Francesco Molinari with a six iron on his hand. He's a painter. A renaissance painter.

It's a little hot in this room. Yeah, let's get out of here. Who won the movie? Oh, unquestionably for me, Pacino. Pacino. I thought he was so good in this movie. Completely agree. What a year for him. This and Any Given Sunday in the same year? That's iconic. I love this performance. Yeah. For Charlie Ward, for David Faraday, for Jeffrey Weigand.

And for Luminary Media. For Luminary Media, I'm Chris Ryan. For Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessy, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to Rewatchables 1999. We have more coming. I think we have like four or five more in this run and then a bunch more coming. Yeah, and if you don't subscribe, you fucked you! All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing as always. Thanks to Chris and Sean. And we will see you

Next week with a brand spanking new rewatchables. See you in a week.