Your Favorite Movie: The Big Chill, with Dad

When I was a young kid, my family and three other families (my families-not-related, because they were more than just friends) would take an annual trip to the Poconos together. For the kids, it was a weekend filled with sledding and goofing off. For the eight parents, it was a time to kick back and relax for once. One year, as a lark, my parents brought a poster for a movie, with the faces of the eight main characters cut out and replaced with the faces of the adults on this vacation. Seeing the poster was my informal introduction to The Big Chill.

But it took me until Your Favorite Movie to actually watch the damn thing. As it turns out, for my Dad, the poster wasn't just a funny joke; it was a poster for his favorite movie of all time. So I talked to him about it.

Since the movie is about a bunch of people hanging out together, it wouldn't've made sense for the discussion to be a one-on-one affair, so we brought some other folks along. Pam is in there, thankfully, as she often is. My Mom is there too, ready to argue about where exactly my parents first saw this movie. And finally, my Aunt Mimi, a.k.a. Mariellen McG*****, another family-not-related, stuck around to provide some good insights.

We didn't really talk too much about the movie itself, which is a good thing—if you want to learn more about The Big Chill, you could just, uh, go watch the movie? No, this discussion is exactly what I want from Your Favorite Movie. I want to use movies as a springboard to talk about personal shit. Even if that personal shit just ends up being a few Boomers talking about the good ol' days.

We got nostalgic on the front deck at our temporary Wildwood vacation house, and the conversation is below, lightly edited for clarity purposes (but without needed permissions, as New Jersey is a one-party consent state). Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe: Dad, are you ready to talk to your son about polyamory?

Dad: About who?

[laughter]

Joe: About having sex with people who are not your husband or wife.

Dad: ...Yes.

[laughter]

Joe: I guess The Big Chill has always been considered a quote unquote "adult movie" for me. Because the adults in my life, when we would go on vacation, talked about it. We had that poster. [Editor's note: The poster is explained in the introduction, just in case you are the type of person who does not read introductions.] So I did not watch it until I was thirty years old.

Dad: That's a good thing.

Joe: When I was watching it a couple weeks ago, I appreciated the fact that I waited until I was thirty. It was definitely a "thirty-year-old's" movie.

Dad: The issues that are dealt with in the movie are adult issues.

Joe: Did you watch the movie when it first came out?

Dad: Yes, we watched it... well, I didn't go to the movie theater to see it. I saw it on VCR.

Joe: In the '80s.

Mom: I thought we saw it at the Crest? [Editor's note: The Crest is an old, since-demolished movie theater in Northeast Philly. Check out a very short history HERE.]

Dad: No, I don't think we did.

Mom: I saw it with someone else then.

[laughter]

Dad: Your other boyfriend.

Mariellen: I think we saw it at the movies.

Dad: It was a big movie at the time.

Joe: A lot of star power.

Mariellen: It had an ensemble cast.

Joe: I guess what I'm most interested in is: You liked it then, you like it now. But you're significantly older now than you were then. Did your appreciation, or the shape of your appreciation, change in that time? Because, as a thirty-year-old, I thought it was a movie applicable to me. As an almost sixty-year-old, do you feel differently about the movie?

Dad: No, because it hit home when we watched it for the first time. And even though we were a little bit younger, they were still issues that we appreciated, and that we were dealing with. As you're growing up, and getting older. That's what it is—facing the reality of growing older.

Mariellen: I think I appreciate it more now, as an older person, with more experience.

Joe: Now that you're past the point where the characters in the story are. Now that you've faced those challenges already, of growing. You're not currently growing up. So The Big Chill to you now is more a nostalgia exercise... I dunno, tell me if I'm right or wrong. When you watch it now, it's like, "This is how it was."

Dad: This is what we went through, yeah. It's a realistic version of the issues. That's why I always liked it. It was realistic. Not every movie is realistic.

Mariellen: Life is messy, and I don't think until you've lived it for a while, do you know how messy it can be.

Joe: The characters in the movie are kind of realizing that for the first time. "Our good friend who killed himself kind of threw a wrench in our understanding of life." I guess.

Dad: And at the time, we were just on the cusp of seeing that. It hit home, that this is the way life is.

Joe: Another thing that interested me in that same vein was, I felt like the people in the movie were nostalgic themselves, for a previous time. When they themselves were younger. They were watching their college football team, and reliving their college days. They were listening to older music, ya know, the '60s.

Mariellen: Everyone has their glory days, and they were looking back at theirs.

Joe: It's cool that there's two levels of nostalgia at that point. You're nostalgic about the time portrayed in the movie, and the movie is nostalgic for a previous time.

Dad: Did you enjoy the movie?

Joe: Absolutely.

Dad: It's a great movie.

Joe: I think the thing I appreciated—and I guess this would be a good time to have you run through what happened in The Big Chill, which might be easier than some other movies—but I appreciated the whole sentiment of: a bunch of friends, stuck in a house, for whatever reason, and bouncing ideas off each other. Just spending time with each other, showing their love and their annoyance with each other. It definitely reminded me of times with my friends and family. Maybe even tonight, when we're all packed onto the deck, bouncing stories off each other.

Mariellen: I think a lot of it had to do with, they were together at a point in time, and they've all gone their own separate ways, and they bring that back—

Dad: They still have that connection.

Mariellen: Even though, ya know, one's a TV star, [etc]. I think that, the older you get, that happens. The friends that you were really close with when you're younger, you don't see them as often as you would like to now. You do different things in your life. But you come back together, and you still have that connection that you made when you were younger.

Joe: From the stories you were telling earlier, it seems like all you guys have been friends for a while. What's the distinction between, ya know, being friends with someone while you're young, and staying friends by the time you turn 60, versus being friends by the time you turn 30, and then losing touch. What makes the difference?

Dad: I don't know, that's tough. Because I have friends like that—like Kevin O'*****, the best man at my wedding. At the time—great friends, and that's why he was my best man. Ya know? And we've lost touch, and we don't hang out anymore. And... do I even want to hang out with him? Not really.

Joe: Mom, you might be helpful in this. What's the difference? What makes Aunt Mimi here still your friend, and other people who you don't hang out with not your friend anymore?

Mom: I guess because those people changed, right?

Joe: I don't know, I'm not near 60 yet. [laughter] "My friends right now will be my friends forever!"

Mom: Different values, and... they just change.

Mariellen: I think life events drive you closer to people, and drive wedges between you too. And I think your mom and I, we've just always been there for each other in the hard times. There are other people you come in contact with, you think they're your friends, and then you don't find out until bad things happen. I think sometimes, when those things happen, that's when you find out who your true friends are. Those are the friendships you hold onto. As you get older, you start to value that everyone hits a rough spot, things go wrong, tragedies happen... at least in my experience, I can say that I learned who my true friends were. And I value those friendships, and I work harder to maintain them over the years. Whereas the people who show their true colors—

Mom: Right, if they're not there for you—

Dad: Like, "we had great times together, but..."

Mariellen: —There's only so much time. Life gets in the way, so you become a little pickier about where you spend that resource of time, and the relationships you're going to work to maintain. You do it with the people that have your back, you have their back, and the ones that—at least for me, I would say—I learned how my friends were, and I learned who to let go of.

Joe: It scares me, personally, having friends, and knowing that maybe in twenty years, I might not be friends with those people.

Pam: We're on the very early part of learning that. We have a baby now. Some of our friends don't. We're starting to hang out with people less and less.

Mom: And that'll happen.

Pam: Like you said, life events, like having children.

Joe: It's scary to me, after watching The Big Chill, knowing that maybe those people wouldn't have reconnected if their friend hadn't kill himself. It was a really awful tragedy that brought them back together. And, ya know, not saying that people need a friend to commit suicide in order to strengthen their bonds, but... this group of friends might've needed a tragedy to...

Dad: To pull them back together, yeah.

Joe: I also thought it was interesting that... the moment that the characters were in, in the movie, that kind of "stasis" between college and starting a family, that you might've related to at the time, it's interesting that now, your son—me being the representative of the endpoint of that time in your life... Like, that stasis was over for you when you had a son, and now I am interviewing you about that time.

Mariellen: And now you're in that time.

Joe: Exactly. Me and Pam were kind of talking about that, how we are not our "best selves" right now.

Pam: Jesus. Willow, don't read this in ten years!

[laughter]

Joe: But we're just putting in our time now. And then our children will grow older—

Dad: You're at the hard part! It's not that it's not your best time. It's just... different. It's a challenge.

Joe: I think our "best selves" are down the road. And I think that, by the end of the movie, those characters also felt that way. Like, "we're going to get through this."

Pam: They were more accepting of that fact.

Joe: And so at the same time... there were a lot of details of the movie that I could not relate to.

[laughter]

Joe: I guess the whole Glenn Close and Kevin Kline thing, allowing Kevin Kline to... impregnate the friend?

Mariellen: I think that alleviated her guilt, having cheated on [her husband].

Mom: She cheated on him with the guy that passed.

Dad: You see, in the '60s...

[laughter]

Dad: They were in college in the '60s—we were a little later than that—

Mom: Much later.

Dad: But in the '60s, sex was a lot freer. Uncle Pat, and that generation—

Mom: [to Pam] Your dad's friends.

Pam: Apparently?!

Dad: And now, we didn't experience that.

Joe: I would hope that if you did, you wouldn't tell those stories in front of me, on recorded audio.

[laughter]

Dad: No, it was not, at all.

Mom: Well, we had one friend who might've...

Mariellen: Oh god.

Joe: ...is it someone I know?

Mariellen: Let's not go there.

Joe: [laughter] Yes, let's please not go there.

Dad: Sex... it's evolved. Nowadays, you have to be more careful. Back then, it was a little more carefree.

Joe: I mean, I don't think it was a matter of "consent" in the movie. Everyone in the situation consented to it. It was just, ya know, the fact that these eight people spent the whole weekend together... and they both showed up in their long john pajamas, and started having intercourse. Something I cannot relate to.

Mom: It was weird.

Dad: Yeah, but it fit the plot. They were good friends, and they would do anything for each other. Literally, anything.

Mariellen: ...that's when you find out who your friends are.

[laughter]

Joe: The ending kind of reminded me of The Breakfast Club, where like, everyone's hooking up... except the nerd! Jeff Goldblum.

Dad: Right! [laughter]

Joe: Are you aware of what the title means? Has it been explained to you what the director said? Or do you have your own interpretation?

Dad: My own interpretation always was that "the big chill" means, like, "chill out," like don't worry about things. That they learned that weekend to relax.

Mom: I always thought it was the death of the friend was the "chill."

Joe: According to the... producer, I guess? "The big chill" was the term for the "cooling process that takes place for every generation," when they move on from the idealistic younger days of, "we're going to change the world," to older, "I only have enough resources to care about myself." Which, to me... that's such a Boomer thing to say.

Dad: Well... at a certain age, when you're in college, you think you're going to change the world. Right?

Joe: True.

Dad: And it reaches a point when... you don't. There's not much you can do. You do what you can, you take care of yourself, you take care of your family, and that's all you can do, man.

Joe: You get numb to what you could possible affect in the world. Which sucks!

Dad: It does!

Joe: I don't like it. I don't like thinking about it. I didn't like learning that that was the reason why it was called "The Big Chill." It made me depressed.

Dad: It sucks, but it is the truth.

Joe: Do you guys feel like you have no effect on the world right now?

Dad: Yes. Absolutely. Especially the state of the world now. You're getting so excited about things, like, "We gotta do this!" and "We can't let this happen!" And it's... like you said [earlier], your vote for Elizabeth Warren—yes, free college tuition for everyone is a good thing. But is it possible? From my vantage point, I think, there's no way that's ever going to happen. Just based on the way that things happen. The way that politics work. The way... you say, okay, they want to try to make the billionaires pay for it. It's never going to happen!

Mom: ...politics...?

Joe: No, I like this [conversation].

Dad: It's not going to happen.

Mom: Alright!

Joe: We talked about it earlier, but... I don't want to ever go through a "big chill." I don't want to ever stop being idealistic.

Dad: That's a good goal.

Pam: But don't you think that's a normal psychological thing that everyone goes through though? Do you think... I mean, you can try to not, but it might be something that's out of your control.

Joe: That's a good question. It might be inevitable. Maybe! As the world beats me down...

Mariellen: There are people out there who are still trying to effect change—

Dad: Bernie Sanders! How old is he?

Mariellen: Not everybody has the stamina to keep going.

Joe: I'm lucky in this regard, in that I also get paid to try to affect the world in positive ways. Not that I ever feel... I rarely feel successful with it. But, at least I have the opportunity to try. Or, an excuse to tell me myself that I'm avoid the "big chill," by going into "heated" areas.

Dad: But then also, you take pleasure, or satisfaction, out of other things. Like, my family. I feel like a rich man. I know I'm rich, because I know what I have.

Joe: That we're in a position to spend excess money on a vacation house for a week, and drink beers, and talk about a movie we like—

Mariellen: And not only that, but just that you have such a solid family. And I think that you, being in the position you're in, realize that that's not something that everybody has.

Joe: Truth.

Mariellen: We're very lucky to have that opportunity. I count my blessings all the time.

Dad: Sure, we don't have a lot of things. We don't have a shore house. We don't have a fancy car. But we have a lot more—

Mariellen: We have the things that matter.

Dad: And that's what's really important. And those guys in the movie, a lot of them were—

Joe: That was another interesting thing, actually! A lot of them were financially successful. And they were slow to come to the realization that you're saying now, that there should be more than that. That some of them found success financially, or career-wise, and they're coming to this house, and they feel unfulfilled. They're coming to the realization, in hanging out with their old friends, ya know, "Oh my god, I am unfulfilled currently."

Dad: Right.

Joe: I know you guys had a The Big Chill poster, and you put your faces on the characters. Was that a—I know it was a funny thing, which I now appreciate, having watched the movie—but, when you made that collage, was it a one-to-one comparison? Did the faces that went on characters, were they the equivalent to each friend?

Mom: I don't think so. It was only by appearance. Who looked like what.

Joe: So Rick was Jeff Goldblum.

[laughter]

Dad: [pointing to Mom] She was Glenn Close, and I was Kevin Kline.

Joe: In appearance only? [laughter]

Dad: But we had the most stable... and that was it.

Mom: I can't think of who everyone else was

Dad: But really... William Hurt, Nick, he was dealing with drugs and all that.

Mom: Who was that, Harry?

Dad: Sure, in appearance. But he always reminded me of [off-the-record name], because I knew that [he] was still doing drugs. He was... he didn't have his act together.

Joe: And you're thinking this now, or you were thinking of this when you watched the movie?

Dad: No, back then even, I realized at that point.

Mom: We just did that for the Mountains.

Joe: I was just curious.

Mom: It was just like, whoever had blonde hair, whatever. You know what I mean?

Dad: It just fit that there were eight of them and eight of us.

Joe: So when the eight of you hung out—say, when the kids went to bed—was there a similar dynamic? Like, the eight of you are all in a house together for the weekend. I'm not asking if similar plotlines played out, I'm asking, like, did you come to certain realizations about your own selves and the character of your friends? Being so close.

Dad: No, not really. It didn't fit.

Mom: Everyone was more just having fun. It wasn't that serious.

Joe: And I guess, when we started going to the Poconos, you were older than the characters in the movie. Was there times when you were thirty, hanging out with your friends, like, "We're getting older!" Did you feel that when you thirty? Like, "This might change. We're going to be in different places in ten years."

Dad: No.

Mom: Nope, not at all.

Dad: It didn't really connect at that point.

Joe: Well, you already had a kid at that point, when you were thirty.

Dad: We had all of our kids when we turned thirty.

Joe: [laughter] Okay, so when you were twenty?

Mom: No, we never thought of that.

Joe: So that's a thing with my generation I guess.

Mom: It must be.

Joe: Premature nostalgia?

Dad: I'll tell you—and you haven't asked me this question yet, why is this my favorite movie?

Joe: We're circling to it!

Dad: Okay.

Joe: If you got a spiel, go for it. Please.

Dad: No, it was just entertaining. The music—

Mom: The music was a big part of it.

Dad: The music was very entertaining. And that pulled me in. And the storyline—very entertaining. And that's why I watch movies. Some people might analyze things. I like comedies better than other genres. I don't like... even action movies, I'm not a big action movie guy. I don't watch superhero movies. I just like comedies, and entertainment. For me.

Joe: Movies as a form of escapism.

Dad: Escapism, yeah.

Joe: Which is so interesting to me, because I watched the movie and was like... I wasn't escaping. I felt a strong connection to it. It was the opposite of escapism.

Mariellen: It wasn't a light movie.

Joe: There were some light moments, like the "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" sequence, and they're all dancing around.

Pam: What did they advertise that movie as when it came out? As a comedy?

Dad: No, not a comedy...

Mariellen: More like a "friend" movie.

Pam: Like, a "heart-warming" thing?

Joe: I definitely appreciated the direction of the movie. Which is not something I typically appreciate, but I did in this movie. When they had the camera steady, going through everybody sitting at the kitchen table, every hour, different people sitting at the table.

Mom: With the sneakers?

Joe: Yeah. And there was a camera shot where it just panned across the table where all the cigarettes and beers were. You could tell it was a lively scene, that everyone appreciated each other's company, and you could tell that just by the camera movement.

Dad: I agree. I just think it was a great movie, beginning to end.

Joe: I agree with you. Roger Ebert did not agree. He said that there was "no payoff, it didn't lead anywhere." Which I didn't agree with. I thought the whole point was that these people were connected with each other—

Mariellen: Maybe Roger Ebert didn't have a lot of old friends!

[laughter]

Mariellen: It didn't identify with him.

Dad: He's right, in a way, in that it didn't have a "climax."

Joe: Doesn't that make it more true to life though, that there was no climax? When we leave this shore house, or maybe even after we leave this deck right now after talking about this movie, there's not going to be a climactic scene where people are yelling at each other?

Dad: Life goes on! But you gotta listen to music. You have to have fun. You have to try to make it light. Ya know? ...Another thing.

Joe: Please.

Dad: I was hearing about this movie, and I wanted to see it, and that's why I don't think we saw it in the movie theater.

Mom: I swore we did.

Dad: I swear we saw it on the VCR.

Mom: No, that wouldn't be right.

Dad: I remember even, there was a comic strip, it was called Cathy—

Joe and Pam: [at the same time] ACK!

Dad: But she was talking about The Big Chill. It was like, I gotta see this movie.

Joe: I don't know that there's going to be another movie I talk about with friends or family where the person whom I'm talking with was convinced to see it by Cathy...

[laughter]

Dad: You're probably right. But I like to think I'm unique, and I have a different sense of looking at things. I'm not usually into the "popular" things. I'd never heard "Old Town Road" until you played it. And we were talking about all the other number one songs... I don't listen to number one songs. I listen to different songs. I've always tried to be different.

Joe: The Big Chill is the alternative movie for the hip Boomer crowd?

Dad: Yeah!

Pam: Was it nominated for Best Picture though?

Joe: It was.

Mom: Did it win for anything? I can't remember.

Joe: Hold up, I wrote down all the nominations. It didn't win for anything.

Dad: Nothing?

Joe: Nope. [reading] It was nominated for Best Picture, and it lost to Terms of Endearment. It was nominated for Best Supporting Actress—Glenn Close—but lost to Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously...? And it was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but lost to Tender Mercies.

Dad: Tender Mercies?!

Joe: I have never seen any of those other movies.

Pam: And Glenn Close has still never won an Oscar.

Joe: Good! I didn't think she was that great in The Big Chill. I mean, I thought she was... fine. But there were definitely better actors and actresses.

Dad: I thought so too.

Joe: I thought Nick did a good job—

Dad: Yup, William Hurt.

Joe: I thought the chick that hooked up with Tom—mustached Tom—

Dad: Berenger.

Joe: I thought she did good.

Pam: Jeff Goldblum was playing Jeff Goldblum.

Joe: Right, he did his shtick.

Dad: But, that was the first time he did that shtick. It really was. And then Tom Berenger went on to play in Platoon.

[Editor's note: I'm cutting this unnecessarily Platoon conversation.]

Joe: We'll end with this: Do you feel like nostalgia can be toxic? Do you feel like it's ever a bad thing to remember the old days? To quote Tony Soprano: "'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation."

Dad: No.

Mom: I would say no.

Pam: I think you can get stuck in it, and not be able to move past it.

Joe: I feel like a lot of what I write about is about the old days. I always get worried, that I might get stuck.

Pam: I think I told you that when we first started dating, that you're the most nostalgic 21-year-old I ever met. Like, driving down the shore, "We gotta listen to this song when we drive over the bridge, because it's what I do every time." I was like, "okay..."

Mom: Did you play Bruce when you went over the bridge this time?

Joe: Always. For the past twelve years.

Pam: The first time we drove down the shore, and did that, I thought that was a little weird.

[laughter]

Joe: So Pam, do you think nostalgia is toxic? Because that's what we're doing right now.

Pam: I just said, I think it can be, but a healthy level of it can be fine.

Joe: The characters in The Big Chill were fighting about it a lot, about what happened in the old days.

Pam: But I think that's because they were all brought together under strenuous circumstances. If you're a person who's living in the past, then yes, I think that's toxic.

Dad: That's what William Hurt says, freaking out: "We were friends for a short period of time in our lives!" You can't hold that as "the best time." Things move on. You move on.

Joe: But was he right?

Dad: He was right to point it out, but... no. It's okay to look back and enjoy it, and feel pleasure in the things that you did...

Joe: I guess there's a line you can cross. When you're appreciating the old days versus living in the old days.

Mariellen: Did you see the thing on Facebook? It was about: "Someday, your kids are going to go through your photo albums, and they're going to ask you who these people are. And you're going to answer your kids, 'Those are the people I had the best years of my life with.'"

Mom: I saw that!

Mariellen: I think when you get older, you do look back on your youth as the best time of your life. Because you had fun!

Mom: No worries.

Mariellen: Less responsibility.

Dad: I don't look at it like that. I really don't. Yes, we had great times. But, I had the best time of my life today, with Willow, on the beach. I did!

Mom: Well you can still look back.

Dad: I know, I look back on it, and it was great. I had a great time with [Kevin O'*****]. We used to have fun at Breen's. But was it the "best" times? No, not really.

Mom: But you thought that it was back then—the best times.

Joe: I think it's a healthy way of looking at it. You're still creating good memories.

Dad: Absolutely.

Joe: I have to remind myself of that occasionally.

Dad: We had great times when we used to go up the Mountains when you guys were little. We had a great time this year when we went up the mountains. It was even better, if you ask me!

Mariellen: I think there are a lot of people in the world whose lives maybe don't turn out the way they think they're going to, or the way they planned for—

Mom: And they're looking back and saying "those were the days," yeah.

Joe: That would play into the theory that nostalgia is toxic. If you are too focused on the past, then what does that say about your present?

Mariellen: I also think that, with time, you remember the good more than the bad. Memories get a little whitewashed.

Dad: You only remember the fun things. You don't remember the boring times. So... no. I don't think nostalgia is toxic. But it's not the most important thing.

Joe: It's nice being nostalgic about this movie, looking back?

Dad: Yeah, it was a great movie! If I would've watched it tonight, I would still say, "That was the best movie."

Your Favorite Movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, with Bob W.

Looks like Your Favorite Movie is back on the menu, boys!!!!

I can't think of too many other people that I'd slog through hours and hours of Lord of the Rings for, but my brother-in-law Bob W***** is definitely one of them. Plus, maybe I owed him one—he's still mad at me for making him sit on my lap when we first hung out. If he was dating my sister, then he had to prove that he really wanted to be part of this family, right?

Well, he sat on my lap, and now he really is part of the family. And so, on family vacation in Wildwood, we sat down over a few Coca-Colas and discussed his favorite movie of all time. Unfortunately for me, this was the second film in an eleven-hour, three-part fantasy saga that I had never wanted to see in the first place. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers features epic battles, a long character list, and—Bob makes this clear throughout the interview, don't worry—absolutely NO GREEN SCREEN.

[Editor's note: there is some green screen.]

The following "precious" interview is transcribed with Bob's reluctant permission, and edited slightly for clarity and due to the fact that I'm growing a little bored with just letting people talk about plot points. Let's get personal with this shit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe: So, it is after midnight. We are in Wildwood, New Jersey. This is definitely the drunkest I've ever been for a Your Favorite Movie interview. I feel like Merry and Pippin.

Bob: Yeah, they're always smoking and drinking.

Joe: With a big ol' fucking barrel of...

Bob: Pipe weed.

Joe: Pipe weed. Who are you, and who am I? Are you Merry, or are you Pippin? Who's who?

Bob: I wouldn't say that you're Pippin. But I am Merry, because Pippin's kind of like a wild card, crazy, and I wouldn't say that's you.

Joe: Pippin is Charlie from Lost, right?

Bob: No, Merry is Charlie from Lost. And I think Merry's the smarter one. He makes some bad decisions, but he's actually smart. He makes some decent decisions.

Joe: The two of them were actually a lot smarter in Two Towers than they were in Fellowship of the Rings.

Bob: For sure. They also had a mission in Two Towers, and that was to get the Ents to help with the war. So they really couldn't screw up.

Joe: They were wrapped up in a shitty plot in Two Towers—

Bob: No, that was a great plot!

Joe: —but at least it was better than being a plot device in Fellowship of the Rings.

Bob: Dude, the plot in Two Towers—

Joe: With the Ents?

Bob: Yeah.

Joe: What, riding around on a tree for two hours?!

Bob: Did you see the end of the movie?

Joe: Yeah, I saw the end.

Bob: They destroyed Isengard! It was a big deal!

Joe: That was a big deal, but there was a lot of... mindless lead-up to it.

Bob: But they destroyed the place where Saruman was creating armies. Which is a big help for the good guys, ya know?

Joe: Good, so Merry and Pippin rode around on a fucking tree, and the tree destroyed it.

Bob: No.

Joe: [laughter]

Bob: Because if you remember, Pippin said, toward the end of the movie, "I think we should go past Isengard"—

Joe: He was saying that on purpose?

Bob: Yes, and he lead the Ents, because he knew the trees were cut down, and it would piss him off, and he would call the other Ents.

Joe: I don't know.

Bob: That was part of the plot!

Joe: I feel like, just by happenstance, they tumbled into that plot.

Bob: No, he did it on purpose!

Joe: So, clearly, there's a lot of tiny little moving parts in these movies.

Bob: A ton.

Joe: It's one of the longest trilogies in movie history. So there is a lot that we could talk about.

Bob: It's just a lot of characters.

Joe: If we want to talk about, like, what happens in these movies, there's a lot to talk about. I don't know if that's necessarily what I want to talk about. We can talk about it as much as you want to—

Bob: I feel like, for us to have a full discussion, you'd have to watch the third one too. The third one, that was going to be my "favorite movie," but I didn't want to be cliché and say the third one.

Joe: [laughter] Okay, so you're reasoning for choosing Two Towers as your favorite movie of all time... may be a little weak.

Bob: Well, no, I liked the ending battle scene. It's one of my favorite scenes of all time.

Joe: The defending of Helm's Deep?

Bob: I love that battle.

Joe: It's definitely... I could see that being the original "big battle," and having watched something like Game of Thrones, I could see the influence that Lord of the Rings had on it.

Bob: This came out in 2002, so you're talking seventeen years ago.

Joe: And not only that, but the Battle of Helm's Deep happened, in literature, many decades ago. I didn't write down when.

Bob: I think it came out in the '50s.

Joe: It was definitely a while ago. It was definitely the "original" fantasy... like, it created a lot of fantasy tropes. I haven't read the books.

Bob: I'm reading them now.

Joe: Okay, so how do you feel about the books?

Bob: The books are... different. There's a ton more detail, and it's hard for the movies to capture that. Just like Harry Potter. It's hard to capture everything.

Joe: I guess it's unusual to watch the movies that are based on the books first, before you read the books.

Bob: I was young when [the movies] came out. I was eleven when the first one came out, and my sister was obsessed with it. I'd watch them with her. She was the one that got me into the movies.

Joe: It was a family activity.

Bob: And my brothers too. We all love them. And it has to be your thing. I thought you'd like them more, because you like Game of Thrones. Same concept. Except Game of Thrones is a lot bloodier, more nudity, a lot more fucked up shit.

Joe: Ya know, I always held Game of Thrones at arm's length, because... maybe that isn't my thing? There were definitely moments in Game of Thrones when I was, like, enthralled by what happened. And it's really interesting to think about Game of Thrones versus Lord of the Rings. The way I kind of see it is... Game of Thrones is the Beatles, and Lord of the Rings is Elvis. Elvis created this idea of rock 'n' roll, as we know it now. But then to listen to Elvis right now... it's too primitive for me.

Bob: Can I say one thing about the movies though?

Joe: Sure.

Bob: When the movies came out, they were... there was nothing ever created like them [before]. Like, the Battle of Helm's deep, when the ten thousand Orcs are coming, they actually dressed up hundreds and hundreds of people in actual Orc costumes, and painted them all, and made it look good. And the one thing I like about Lord of the Rings is, there's not a lot of green screen. It's shot in New Zealand, with real things.

Joe: Fair.

Bob: Movies now, it's all green screens, and you can tell. Lord of the Rings was real, and you can tell, that there wasn't any bullshit made-up shots. Everything was in nature, in New Zealand, actual shots, the actors were doing their own stunts. There wasn't a lot of green screens and computer, which is what I like. I don't like a lot of modern movies. There's too much computer shit. I think it ruins the movie.

Joe: It's interesting you say that. I talked to Dwyer a couple weeks ago, about The Dark Knight, and that was one of his reasons for liking that movie. It's interesting to understand what people consider "integrity" in movies. You consider the Lord of the Rings trilogy to have integrity because they used a bunch of extras and filmed real battle scenes.

Bob: They paid attention to detail, and I think it showed in the movie.

Joe: But then, so, how would you react to the character of Gollum, that there was this actor, and he wore a motion-capture suit, and clearly he didn't dress up like Gollum.

Bob: He's the exception to the rule.

Joe: Do you hate—

Bob: I hated Gollum.

Joe: Do you hate him as a character, or do you hate him because he was not real?

Bob: He's also a piece of shit.

Joe: As a character, but do you feel like the movie lacked integrity because they had to [use motion-capture]?

Bob: No, that was the one character that they had to make look like a hobbit that was really run down. He looked like a hobbit that was on heroin for a hundred years.

Joe: That's fair, and I personally thought they did a good job portraying that character. But it's... I am going to press you a little bit, because to say that this was a "very real movie" and then to have a very fake character, it's kind of at odds with each other.

Bob: He's also not in... they break it down into Sam, Frodo, and Gollum, and then there's Merry, Pippin, and Treebeard, and then you have Aragorn, and Legolas and Gimli. They break it down.

Joe: You like that aspect of it?

Bob: I love that aspect. Actually, my least favorite scenes are with Gollum, Sam, and Frodo. I'm not a big fan of those scenes. They're kind of boring.

Joe: But you like the fact that these stories were separated.

Bob: I love the Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli ones, because I feel like there's always action happening.

Joe: But that's interesting, because I kind of... I don't want to say that I thought the opposite, but it kind of bothered me that there were times where it would be, like, a big action scene, at Helm's Deep, lots of sword fighting... and then you would have to cut to two fucking hobbits on a fucking tree.

Bob: Most of Helm's Deep... not a lot of it was split up.

Joe: It was intercut with slower moments from other storylines, and... that's the way it is.

Bob: They had to break it up a little bit. I feel like Helm's Deep is the best battle scene—swords and shields and stuff—in any movie ever created. And TV shows. Just the way they do it—they're coming up, they're banging their things on the ground, and the dude—you know what I'm talking about?—the one dude screws up, and he shoots one Orc, and it starts the whole war. And then Aragorn is on the actual wall, he's leading the elves that came to help—

Joe: [yawns] Right. Yeah. Look—

Bob: The king pisses me off because he didn't do shit the whole fucking time.

Joe: Um, correct.

Bob: Until they ride out. And then Gandalf comes in and saves the day.

Joe: What was that actor's name? Bernard Hill. The king. I thought it was interesting in the context of this week—I will be talking to my mom about Titanic soon, and Bernard Hill was the captain of the Titanic. [Editor's note: We never got around to talking about Titanic that week, but it's in the works. Patience, all you Your Favorite Movie fans!]

Bob: The captain goes down with the ship.

Joe: And that's exactly what the king did! He was in the cave, like, I'm gonna go down with my men.

Bob: He basically turned around said, "we're screwed," and Aragorn was like, "What do you mean? Your people died for you! We should ride! Ride for glory!" And then they ride the fuck out. And Gimli's blowing that horn [makes horn sound].

Joe: So this is redemption for Bernard Hill. Bernard Hill was a pussy in Titanic, he just let the water take him. He should've went out and punched the iceberg.

Bob: I like those... I guess you could call them "valor" scenes, where they step up. Aragorn, he fell off the cliff, right? And his horse found him, he sees the army, and he comes back, and he opens up the doors like a fucking boss. That's my favorite scene, he's just such a boss at that point. Love him. Aragorn was my favorite. I would name my kid "Aragorn" if Jenn would let me.

Joe: Will she let you?

Bob: No.

Joe: [laughter]

Bob: Maybe my next dog.

Joe: Right.

Bob: He did all his own stunts, all his own sword work, his own horse riding, all that. Orlando Bloom did all his own stuff. That movie took so long to film that all of the major actors in that film got matching tattoos. It took a decade to film.. You need to watch the third one. The third one is great. It's about four and half hours long, if you watch the extended ones. I think the problem is, you watched the extended ones...

Joe: Okay, so make a case for the extended scenes. Why? Why should anyone watch them?

Bob: I just always watch them, I just love them. I don't know. I don't really have a case. I just think that they add a lot of things that the books have, that people who don't read the books don't really notice.

Joe: Like, alright, so at the beginning of Two Towers, one of the extended scenes is Sam and Frodo talking about the strengths and weaknesses of Elvish rope versus regular rope.

Bob: It's just a little moment.

Joe: I just want someone to admit that it's not necessary.

Bob: ...that was not necessary. But you have to remember, when the movie came out, a lot of people didn't have those extended scenes. If you're a big Lord of the Rings fan, you buy the extended scenes to compare them to the book. Like in the first one, Lady Galadriel, in the extended scenes gave them all gifts, but in the non-extended scene, you only see the gift she gave Frodo. Did you watch the first one too?

Joe: Most of it.

Bob: The ending was the best though.

Joe: Wikipedia painted the scene just fine for me.

Bob: Aragorn turns around and he's fucking beating people the fuck up.

Joe: And Sean Bean dies, right?

Bob: Sean Bean dies in every role he ever has. But he died a hero, I hope you know that.

Joe: Sure.

Bob: He died trying to save the others. He took three arrows, and he was still fighting.

Joe: Good for him.

Bob: You have to watch it. The ending of that is great.

Joe: I don't know if I'll ever watch another minute of Lord of the Rings.

Bob: [laughter] I don't get it, why you don't like it. I just don't understand it.

Joe: Maybe it's the whole fantasy genre, it's never really connected with me.

Bob: I never knew that.

Joe: But okay, let's go back to the point with Game of Thrones. Because, I do want to press this comparison—

Bob: I feel like there is no comparison. It's different.

Joe: Game of Thrones definitely takes the tropes that Lord of the Rings created, and twists them, and turns them on their heads. Like, when you're watching Lord of the Rings, the main characters have what's called "plot armor," in that, you know the main characters, and you know they're not going to die at fucking Helm's Deep. Whereas, Game of Thrones—at least at the beginning—it was like, anyone could die at any moment.

Bob: Sean Bean died, he was a main character.

Joe: Exactly. He was the top-billed actor—

Bob: No, I'm talking about in Lord of the Rings, he was a main character.

Joe: But it wasn't... Sean Bean dying in Game of Thrones would be comparable to Frodo dying in Lord of the Rings. It's completely different.

Bob: You're talking twelve hours of a movie versus a hundred hours of a TV show.

Joe: Okay, but we're talking about things based on books. So it's not fair to say "it's just TV versus movies"—

Bob: But it is. Movies have to cram storylines and plots and character personality traits into a two-hour window.

Joe: That's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm not saying Game of Thrones is better or worse because it's longer or episodic. I'm saying that it was different, in that it wasn't a typical fantasy drama. Whereas Lord of the Rings was. It created the fantasy drama. It created a lot of tropes. Like listening to Elvis and thinking that that's primitive, I watched Lord of the Rings and think that's primitive. Because I've seen the inversion of those tropes already in Game of Thrones. So when I watch the original tropes, it's like, "this is a little boring."

Bob: I guess fantasy just isn't your thing.

Joe: Maybe.

Bob: I'm usually not a fantasy guy either. My sister really got me into Lord of the Rings when I was young.

Joe: Allie or Janine?

Bob: Allie. I also think I fall in love with characters in movies. I love Aragorn.

Joe: He was your favorite movie in Lord of the Rings?

Bob: Oh, by far. He's just a boss. A beast. I guess I just... I'm drawn to strong male characters.

Joe: Yeah, I kinda figured that would be a big reason you like this movie, because it's a quote unquote "badass" movie.

Bob: He's a just a badass.

Joe: So what do you think about Gimli?

Bob: Gimli, when I was younger, was my favorite character. He's comedic relief, kind of. But he didn't take no shit. Ya know what I love about Lord of the Rings? Legolas and Gimli start off hating each other, but you see their friendship grow throughout the movie. I think that's great.

Joe: There was some humor in the battle scenes, when they're comparing kills.

Bob: "That counts as one!" At the end, in the third one, they're fighting right outside of Mordor, and Gimli's like, "I never thought I would die side-by-side with an elf," Legolas is like, "How about side-by-side with a friend?"

Joe: Very nice.

Bob: That's a culmination—they started out hating each other, in the first one. The elves and the dwarves, throughout history, hated each other. And they came together and became really good friends.

Joe: I definitely appreciated Gimli in those action sequences more than Aragorn.

Bob: Aragorn was more the serious guy.

Joe: So what does that say about you as a person that, when you were younger you liked Gimli more, and now that you're older, you like Aragorn more?

Bob: I love Legolas too.

Joe: But, c'mon. Self-reflect. What does that say about you as a person?

Bob: I think I'm just drawn to stronger male characters. Like I was drawn to Tony Soprano. I idolized him for years, because he's a strong male character.

Joe: That's a little different, because he's the anti-hero. He's a sadistic, murdering freak.

Bob: You still root for him in the show because you don't want the show to end.

Joe: Sure.

Bob: Same thing with Walter White. I rooted for Walter White because I didn't want the show to end.

Joe: Right, but they're either anti-heroes or just straight up villains. Whereas Aragorn is not.

Bob: Well what do you think it says about me?

Joe: I dunno, do you want my armchair psychology?

Bob: I don't know what that means.

Joe: Like, I have a bachelor's in psychology but I don't know anything, someone like me would say, like... you idealize a stronger—

Bob: You're not gonna hurt my feelings.

Joe: Maybe burying emotions, Aragorn being straight, no humor, point the sword, whereas Gimli is enjoying throwing the ax.

Bob: I think that's the type of person I am. I don't really show—at any point in life—a ton of emotion. I just don't. I like—not me personally—but I like more of a strong, silent type.

Joe: I mean... you're quoting Tony Soprano right now.

Bob: I am, but—

Joe: [laughter]

Bob: I was going to say Gary Cooper, but I didn't! [laughter] But I like the more—you get your shit done, you don't need praise for it.

Joe: I don't think that that's necessarily uncommon that, ya know, the childhood whimsy of Gimli is buried beneath the adult responsibilities of Aragorn.

Bob: Well, I grew up liking Gimli because he was this sort of big guy, this thick guy, with a big beard, and a big battle ax. That's why I liked him. When I got older, I was like, well, Aragorn's the leader. Without him, there is no Gimli, period. Even when Sean Bean died, [he and Aragorn] were kind of at odds, but he brought them together. What does it say about me as a person? I don't know. Maybe I'm weak, and I need more strong idols to follow in my life, I don't know. Whatever.

Joe: Do you feel like you lack strong role models in your life?

Bob: I feel like I lack strong role models in my life, since I was young, because my dad left when I was a kid. So even when I was a kid, like if I had male teachers, I would grasp onto them. I used to do projects about male role models that were my friends' dads that I thought I was cool with. My dad left, and I feel like I always wanted some strong male role model who was just never there. Maybe that's why I like Aragorn, because he was the fucking man. I really think that that's part of it. Not to say "woe is me," that's not what I'm saying.

Joe: No, I didn't say that at all, shit.

Bob: That's part of it.

Joe: I think that's a pretty deep insight, man. I think that's an insight farther than you thought you were capable of.

Bob: I hope my dad doesn't read this. [laughter]

Joe: In terms of Two Towers itself, what would say is the main theme, or the—?

Bob: Well, the main theme of the movie is a combination of the two towers, Saruman and Isengard, and Mordor.

Joe: That would be the plot. Okay, say you are the film's producer, and you are creating this film, and you want an audience to get something from this movie, other than just eating their popcorn and saying "Wow." You picked Two Towers—

Bob: The battle scene is fucking epic.

Joe: Sure. But, like... do you think there's a theme? Or are you saying that this movie doesn't have one?

Bob: When you look at the prologue of the book, it says, "Yes, this is written as three books, but it's actually six individual books that are meant to be one." They're meant to be told as one story.

Joe: But pretend that Two Towers is its own separate entity.

Bob: The theme of this one is probably something like David versus Goliath. The people at Helm's Deep won with five hundred, six hundred people, they beat an army of ten thousand. Regardless of Gandalf coming to help at the end, and before the elves came, they had three hundred. At the end, they were still going to fight for what they thought was right. They thought that these Orcs are going to take over the world, and ruin the entire world, and cover the world in blackness. If we die, we're going to go out fighting for what we believe in. If we die, then we die. And Aragorn says that to Legolas, when Legolas was talking in Elvish, he was like [Editor's note: And here, Bob actually speaks in Elvish, and boy oh boy do I wish I knew how to transcribe this, because it's a hoot]. He's like, "They're all going to die!" and Aragorn's like, "Then I will die as one of them!" And he believed it.

Joe: I think you hit the nail on the head. I actually copied down a couple quotes that kind of wrap into that, the idea of fighting for what you believe in. The King of Rohan kind of questions it, when he's in despair, like, "What can men do against such reckless hate?" The answer was definitely, ya know, keep fighting... Sam, the Brave, he drops a couple good themes in this movie, one of theme pertains to the theme we're talking about now, "There's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." He was telling that to Frodo, right? I mean, the whole movie seemed like a fight to me, a fight between good and evil.

Bob: David versus Goliath. Mordor, and the connection of the two towers... you're talking about a guy who built a ten-thousand-man army, and inside Mordor there's one hundred thousand. This was a just a small battle in the war, that they won. They talk about it at the end.

Joe: "We won the battle for Helm's Deep, but we have to win the war of Middle East."

Bob: Middle Earth.

Joe: Middle Earth.

Bob: And it's... you should watch the third one.

Joe: If I can find the standard version, not the extended version.

Bob: I think I have the standard version.

Joe: I thought another good theme of this was, when Sam and Frodo were talking toward the end, and they're kind of joking around a little bit, about, "Are people going to be talking about our story?" I thought that was kind of cool. It kind of put Lord of the Rings in a different light for me, because I had trouble getting a lot out of these movies. But to hear one of the main characters say, "Look, it can be just a cool story." That there's really nothing wrong with that. It kind of forced my hand, forced me to agree with that. Like, yeah, fuck it, maybe Lord of the Rings is just a cool little story and...

Bob: Can I give a spoiler for the third one?

Joe: I already read the Wikipedia article for it.

Bob: They get back to the Shire, and the four hobbits are riding horses with their Elvish gear on, and all the other hobbits are looking at them like, "you pieces of shit." The others didn't know that they had just saved the whole fucking world. They didn't care to tell anybody. And that's one of the reasons why Frodo has a hard time adjusting back into regular life, because he just did these major things and saved the world. Sam went out and got married, had kids. And then Frodo couldn't stand to live in the Shire, he felt like there was no meaning to life. He left with Gandalf, and the elves, and—now it's the Age of Men—and they go to the Grey Havens, and then that's it. They're gone forever.

Joe: It's interesting. What would be a real-world comparison to that? Like, somebody coming back—

Bob: If you were in WWII, and assassinated Hitler, and then came back... what's there left to accomplish in life? You just defeated the biggest asshole in the entire world. What brings you joy now? Frodo had just destroyed Sauron, who would've destroyed the whole world, and then he comes back. What gives him joy?

[Editor's note: I'm cutting about five minutes of Return of the King recapping from this section. I never want to hear about these damn movies again.]

Bob: I feel like there's a lot of deep shit in this movie.

Joe: But it's gets deeper in the books, is what you're saying.

Bob: I haven't read all of them yet. I'm a quarter through the first one, and the movie would've been over already. There's so much shit. They go into hobbit families, and stories—

Joe: The appendices?

Bob: Yeah, that the movies didn't need to have. But I really think it comes down to good versus evil. Are you willing to fight for what you believe in? Which I feel like you, personally, do that now. What you do. With what you believe in, with politics, which I personally admire. You have strong beliefs, and you fight for them.

Joe: I don't know if I necessarily fight for them. I'll drunkenly talking about them during a fucking movie interview.

Bob: You fight for them more than anyone I've ever met. And I admire that about you. You genuinely care about people, which has changed my mind about a lot of things recently.

Joe: I appreciate that. Sometimes I definitely feel like the King of Rohan. Just, the despair, of not being able to do it.

Bob: What did you think about the whole part where the King Théoden is being overtaken by Sauron, he's like, poisoning—what's the guy's name?

Joe: Wormtail.

Bob: Yeah, Wormtail.

Joe: No, Wormtongue! Wormtail is Harry Potter.

Bob: Grima Wormtongue.

Joe: Wormtongue, do you know what that actor's from? He's the fucking Doc from Deadwood!

Bob: Yes he is!

Joe: Crazy, I didn't recognize him without the mustache.

Bob: And he's in the Halloween movies.

Joe: Is he really?

Bob: The new ones.

Joe: He got nominated for an Oscar for One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Supporting Actor. Which I guess is a bad segue into Oscars for this movie. Did it win any Oscars? I don't think it did.

Bob: The third one—

Joe: We're talking about Two Towers specifically. Return of the King won everything.

[Editor's note: More long plot descriptions here, FUCK.]

Joe: Definitely, in the past thirty minutes, during these spouts of you going over the plot, and what happens, I'm picturing those scenes from Parks and Rec, you ever see that episode? When Andy is—the cable goes out during Leslie's debate, and he acts out the entirety of Roadhouse. [Editor's note: Couldn't find the Roadhouse scenes, but here's where he does Rambo.]

Bob: I can almost probably reenact the Lord of the Ring movies. I've seen them all literally thirty times. I love them. You know what? When I watch them—let's say I go home and watch them on Saturday night—I try to look in the background and look for details, so I can be an expert on it. I'm never going to be, but...

Joe: I hope this isn't a repeat of a question earlier, but... in terms of liking these movies, these movies being your favorite... what does that say about you as a person?

Bob: That I like a good underdog story? I like good defeating evil. One of the reasons I disliked Game of Thrones for a while, but I still watched it... I hate that evil won every season. I almost stopped watching it! I hated that the bad guys won almost every season. Ned Stark dying, the Red Wedding, the Viper getting his head blown up. I hate it! It's depressing to watch.

Joe: So you just have this classical ideal of "The good should always win."

Bob: Good should always win. And sadly, with the world that we live in, it generally doesn't. Sometimes, when I can get away, and watch Lord of the Rings, I can know that the good guys are gonna win. And that makes me feel good. Usually, the bad guys win. I work for a corporate company where the bad guys always fucking win. And people like me get screwed. It's nice to be like... maybe I have a chance, and the good guy will win. When we live in a world where we have a president that thinks that global warming doesn't exist... when I can get out of that and watch Lord of the Rings, and know that the good guys are gonna win... it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like, maybe something crazy will happen, and people will realize that global warming is a huge problem, and we can finally fix it.

Joe: Honestly, man, you convinced me. I don't necessarily think a movie has to be "good prevailing over evil" for it to be a profound, effecting movie. But, I can definitely understand the need for a "good prevailing over evil" movie.

Bob: It's just nice to watch a movie that I know has a good fucking ending, ya know? Not like a horror movie, where they're pretty much all terrible endings.

Joe: Yeah man, a movie in which the people who rode around on a big fucking tree find a stash of pipe weed and smoke that shit.

Bob: Did you see the part where they drinking that shit and they're getting taller? That was pointless.

Joe: Me and Pam looked at each other and and said, "This has to be a fucking extended scene."

Bob: That's just a homage to the books. So the people who like the books—like, Allie, who got me on the extended scenes, because they just add extra scenes from the book that you wouldn't care about, but people who like the books would actually enjoy.

Joe: I don't know, man. I don't know if you've convinced me about the extended scenes. But—

Bob: I like that they show the old type of city where Théoden was—Edoras, that city. He lives in the citadel—

Joe: God, I'm going to have to do so much spellchecking when I'm transcribing this.

Bob: Sorry man.

Joe: [laughter] No, say what you gotta say.

Bob: They actually show the citadel, where the king lives, at the top point of the city. I like that they even throw that in there. Their attention to detail was good. They had a lot of extras, they didn't care about the money. They really wanted to make it seem like, the least amount of green screens as possible. The Hobbit movies, they were all green screen. I hate them. I couldn't get into it, and you could tell, and it sucks.

Joe: So would a well-made movie with well-made green screens be okay?

Bob: No, I don't like green screens. At all.

Joe: Really.

Bob: The Lord of the Rings made a billion each movie, without—Gollum aside... And then you even see the progression of Gollum. He sees Frodo as his master, but then when he's taking Faramir, when they see the elephants... and they take him, and Sméagol's, like, fishing, and Faramir's about to shoot him... you know what I'm talking about?

Joe: ...Sure.

Bob: And then Frodo's like, "Don't, don't, don't!" And then Sméagol thinks Frodo betrayed him, and at the end of the movie, he's like, "She will handle him." And Shelob is a big spider that he leads them to, that tries to kill them.

Joe: Right... and Shelob was a person in a big spider outfit...?

Bob: I think that might've been green screen. I dunno.

Joe: [laughter]

Bob: But the big battle scenes, though, dude, I just like that they made a thousand of the Orcs real. Most movies, the whole thing would be a green screen, man.

Joe: Certain things you can't do without a green screen.

Bob: Obviously. But I think that they truly tried to do as much as possible. You can go to New Zealand—which I want to do—and take the Lord of the Rings tour. I would love to do that. And they rode their own horses!

Joe: I dunno, I thought I saw that a lot of the horse work was... not green screen, and not CGI, but maybe motion-captured. [Editor's note: Yup.]

Bob: Well some of the battle scenes where they're dying, they're not going to kill the horses. People would be all over them.

Joe: Right. So what, are the battle scenes worse because of that?

Bob: No, but... I feel like you're just being nit-picky.

Joe: No! I'm just trying to get to the root of it. What makes a movie "good"? Is it realism? Because...

Bob: A lot of the background, they're riding through this great scenery—that's all real! A lot of movies, it would just be some asshole on a fucking treadmill, with a fucking green screen behind him!

Joe: Just the whole idea of this bothering you, and others, interests me.

Bob: Dude, all my boys are all into the Marvel and shit. I can't get into it, because the whole movie is just one big green screen. It sucks. It's awful. I can't watch it.

Joe: Okay, so, I get it. That's something I heard before, with The Dark Knight. But. Why though?

Bob: Why does it bother me personally?

Joe: Yeah.

Bob: Because it just doesn't look realistic.

Joe: You can tell the difference?

Bob: Yes, absolutely. This might sound absolutely stupid, but I'm going to say it anyway. Me and Jenn went to see Man of Steel, the Superman movie, with Henry Cavill, Russell Crowe. And he's fighting Jor-El or whatever—Jor-El is Superman's dad—whoever the fucking guy Superman was fighting. From Boardwalk Empire, the weird dude...?

Joe: Steve Buscemi.

Bob: No. Another guy.

Joe: Chef Jeff?

Bob: Maybe, I don't know. Whatever. [Editor's note: Michael Shannon played General Zod, and was in Boardwalk Empire, so that's probably it.] So they're having these battles. Skyscrapers are falling down, cities crumble. And in my head I'm thinking... they don't really go into what it would take to clean this shit up. Rebuild the city. You'd never be able to do it, it'd be trillions and trillions of dollars. That's why this shouldn't happen. The Dark Knight's not like that. Sure, some little shit gets messed up. In Lord of the Rings, they're knocking down trees and forests and, like, old forts that you don't even have to rebuild.

Joe: [laughter] You're talking about the monetary value of the large concrete wall?

Bob: You watch the Marvel movies, the entirety of New York City is crumbling to the ground, and in the end, everybody's happy. How about all the assholes that died when the Empire States Building fell over?! Or how much is it gonna cost to rebuild all the—? I dunno, maybe it's weird that that's how I look at it.

Joe: I mean, it's a fair point, and some niche superhero stories do address those concerns.

Bob: It's unrealistic for two superheroes to fight, and literally knock down entire cities, and they're fighting, and there's nobody in the city?! There's no asshole pedestrians in a pizza shop, and they're getting a pizza, and the building crumbles on top of them?!

Joe: You don't think Saruman had a pizza guy that got drowned out when the Ents knocked out the dam?

Bob: No, because they were all bad guys in Isengard.

Joe: That's actually a conversation that happens in Clerks. They're talking about, like, what about the contractors who worked on the new Death Star? Do we think they were evil too, or were they just taking a contracting job, building a big sphere?

Bob: But everyone who lives in Isengard is an Orc.

Joe: You don't think Isengard has a plumber?!

Bob: There's no plumber. They shit in the fucking woods!

Joe: You don't think they have a janitor who's sweeping up the Orc shit?

Bob: No, he's a wizard! He can do whatever he wants. He throws shit over the railing! And then the Orcs eat it.

Joe: You don't think Helm's Deep had janitors?

Bob: No, because the fort was abandoned before they got there. I'm sure they have outhouses. And they shit until it overflows, and then they just deal with it.

Joe: You don't think they're gonna hire some sub-contractors to rebuild that concrete wall?

Bob: All of Helm's Deep wasn't ruined.

Joe: They exploded the whole side of the wall! You don't think some dude is going to have to rebuild that?

Bob: They're gonna have to. But not at this point, because they have bigger things to worry about.

Joe: Maybe New York City had bigger things to worry about than a building crumbling.

Bob: In modern times, it takes about three years for a union contract to pass.

Joe: [laughter] Who knows what contract negotiations were like in Middle Earth.

Bob: You know what it was back then? Slavery.

Joe: And that doesn't bother you?

Bob: No, because it was Middle Earth, it was five thousand years ago.

Joe: That's the most capitalist thing you've ever said, man. Like, "Aw, the CEOs who own the buildings that got knocked down by Superman. Poor them! Pity them!" But the slaves that have to rebuild the Helm's Deep walls? "Screw them, they're slaves, so what!" It seems like you're nit-picking—

Bob: You're nit-picking!

Joe: No, you're nit-picking, like... "These are things I think about," but then ignoring other things that you should be thinking about.

Bob: Because it's one little wall compared to three skyscrapers! With electronics, and running plumbing, and elevators, and computers! You're talking about a brick wall! I could rebuild that wall in a week! ...Just give me a group of people to help me. [laughter]

Joe: ...I don't know how to continue this conversation.

Bob: [laughter] I'm just saying. I don't know how to explain my opinions to you. I just don't like green screens. I just don't. That's why, honestly, me and Jenn don't go to the movies anymore. It's annoying, seeing movies that are all computers.

Joe: Let me zoom out here, and ask you: What do you think the purpose of movies is?

Bob: Kinda like what you say about the Phillies. It's just something to take your mind off the fact that we're going to die. You go to the movies for two hours, and you forget about life, you forget about your problems, you forget about your mortgage, your kids, your bills, and just go to the theater, and enjoy the movie. Whether you enjoy it or not, you're going for an experience.

Joe: So why would you let something like a green screen trip you up there?

Bob: When I go to the movies, I just enjoy the more realistic aspect of it.

Joe: But if movies are an escape from reality, then why would you need that escape to be more realistic?

Bob: I'd just enjoy it more.

Joe: But movies are an escape though.

Bob: To some people.

Joe: You said you want to go to the movies and forget about things.

Bob: I hate going to the movies.

Joe: [laughter] What?!

Bob: Me and Jenn have been to the movie theater maybe once in the past three years. I literally hate going. I'm not even kidding, ask her! I never go to the movies, ever. You know what we watch on repeat? The Office. Because it's funny.

Your Favorite Movie: There Will Be Blood, with Drew A.

Welcome back, dear reader, to another edition of Your Favorite Movie, where we politely ask a friend to name their favorite movie, and then shake them by the lapels until their reasoning falls out, all while capturing the whole thing on tape.

This week, our good friend Drew A******* came to our house, drank some beers, and then yelled (quite literally) about his favorite movie for over an hour. If you know Drew, then the yelling shouldn't surprise you; the passion is part of his twisted charm, and it's one of the reasons we consider him such a great pal to hang around with (and, true, I may have provoked him a little). Credit where credit is due—he knows his movies. Back when we used to gather at Maeve's apartment every Thursday to watch a different film, Drew would typically be there, spouting random movie trivia, a habit that earned him the nickname "IMDrewB.com." So, like, of course we're gonna talk to him for Your Favorite Movie (indeed, he remains the only person so far to reach out to me to request an interview as soon as possible).

Pam and I discussed with Dranders the 2007 flick There Will Be Blood, an Oscar-nominated drama about oil drilling at the turn of the 20th century. We mulled over its merits on the backyard deck, and you can find the results of the mayhem transcribed below, edited lightly for clarity and brevity. So save yourself the trouble—there's no need for Drew to come to your house and yell about There Will Be Blood and wake your baby, now that you can just read about it below. Enjoy.

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Drew: Well, I'd like to start with a little cheers. Thanks for having me.

Joe and Pam: Cheers!

Joe: With some whisky! We're gonna make a Daniel Plainview out of Drew A******* tonight!

Drew: [drinking the whisky] Ugh!

Joe: I do want you to turn into Daniel Plainview, because I picture this interview as something that you've always wanted. Something that you've worked toward. Obtaining vast stores of knowledge of your movie trivia—this is the peak, and this will eventually—figuratively—turn into you shooting your gun in the house.

Drew: This is not going to live up to that, but I'll do my best.

Joe: H.W. has already been put to bed tonight.

Drew: You never find out what "H.W." stands for.

Joe: What do we think it stands for?

Drew: Herbert Walker. George Herbert Walker Plainview.

Joe: I... I have no reason to deny that. And we were just talking about spoilers in movies, so: Spoiler Alert! All you people who haven't seen There Will Be Blood in the past twelve years. Okay, Drew, give us a 90-second spiel of what this movie's about.

Drew: Okay, so Daniel Plainview is an oil tycoon in the early 20th century. He started out mining for silver in the late 1800s and happened to strike oil, and just got into the business that early in the game. Flash forward about twenty years. Basically what he does is go to these little bumpkin towns that might have oil, and tries to buy up all the land. So he basically has to convince these country hicks to sell their land so he can drill for oil. He gets a tip about some land in California that is cheap to buy and has oil, and the only one who is standing in his way is an evangelical preacher named Eli Sunday. Basically, the film goes through him trying to buy land to drill for oil, but this preacher that doesn't trust him is constantly standing in his way. So they start to butt heads. It's both a character study and has a legitimate plot about him trying to buy up all this land, and having someone standing in his way. So that's it in a nutshell.

Joe: What's the genre of this movie, would you say?

Drew: ...A drama? [laughter]

Joe: Honestly, at certain points I thought it was a horror movie.

Drew: Right! I remember when it first came out, a lot of the reviews would describe it as... they used "horror," almost "darkly comic." I heard "dark comedy" a lot, and rewatching it the other day, there are a lot of moments that are kind of goofy. Daniel Plainview has really weird delivery of lines, like when he's getting baptized, like, "Do you take the blood of Christ?" [Daniel Plainview impression] "Yes I dooooo." And when he's throwing the bowling pins toward the end, it's like, it's goofy looking, the way they shoot it! And I think it's on purpose. I think it's supposed to be a little bit funny.

Joe: Are they lightening the mood I guess?

Drew: Maybe, yeah, and I had heard it described as "horrifying," and the music is definitely very ominous.

Joe: I definitely want to talk about Jonny Greenwood's score.

Drew: But yeah, I'd say on surface levels, it's a drama, there are a lot of elements of horror, but I'd even say dark comedy, if anything.

Joe: That's probably a good way of looking at it. It might make it a more enjoyable of a movie.

Drew: You didn't find it enjoyable? [laughter]

Joe: Nah, I found it enjoyable, but just allowing yourself to laugh at those little moments, in between those horrific moments.

Drew: Yeah.

Joe: Okay, so let's cut it off here at the beginning, because I know you came here armed to the teeth with some trivia about The Dark Knight—

Drew: The Dark Knight?!

Pam: There Will Be Blood.

Joe: [laughter] I'm continuing my—

Drew: They weren't even the same year!

Joe: I did like There Will Be Blood better than The Dark Knight.

Drew: Good! I wanted to know, was this the first time you had ever seen it?

Joe: I saw it maybe a year after—whenever it was free on On Demand. I maybe was young enough that I didn't really appreciate it like I did when we watched it with a critical eye this past week.

Pam: It was my first time watching it.

Joe: Okay, so let's do a Letterman-style Top Ten, Drew's There Will Be Blood Trivia.

Drew: Top ten?! I have to give ten pieces of trivia about the film?

Joe: Just give us your best. I know you were planning on interspersing these little nuggets of information throughout our interview. I know you have some for us! You definitely have some prepared. Just give it to us.

Drew: I mean, you want trivia... oh! So one thing that was interesting is, that year, 2007, the other big Oscar contender was No Country for Old Men. Both of these movies were shooting in the same town at the same time. They were shooting in Marfa, Texas in the exact same two months. The scene where the oil derrick catches on fire. They actually set it on fire, and it caused so much smoke blowing toward the set of No Country for Old Men that they had to delay shooting for like three days.

Joe: You can't see the smoke in the [No Country for Old Men] scenes, can you?

Drew: I guess not. But these movies literally were filmed in the same place—

Joe: Just by coincidence?

Drew: Yeah, and they ended up being the two main Oscar contenders that year. But yeah, to the point where they literally affected each other. Both in Marfa, Texas, despite taking place mostly in California. I thought that was interesting.

Joe: And No Country for Old Men eventually came out on top.

Drew: Yes, it did. I love No Country, but I think There Will Be Blood is...

Joe: I mean... clearly you like There Will Be Blood better.

Drew: I like No Country for Old Men. I've watched that several times since it came out. I think that it's a little more accessible. And I think why I love this movie so much is that it was a very challenging movie. When I first saw it, I was in high school, and it was in theaters. Like, I didn't fully understand it, but I wasn't turned off by that. For some reason, I wanted to watch it ten more times, like, "I need to learn what the fuck this movie's really about." I think that's why this movie stands out to me so much. It's because it took a lot of effort to understand what the fuck is really happening.

Joe: Your first "big boy" movie?

Drew: Seriously! I mean, you know—I love movies. I've always loved movies. For my entire life I've loved movies. When I was like thirteen, I loved everything. I wouldn't've known a good movie if it bit me in the ass. I could watch a movie like Braveheart—a Best Picture winner—and be like, "That was great!" And then the next day, watch Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and be like, "That was great!"

Joe: I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Drew: I was treating movies like entertainment, like, "Oh, if it entertains me, it's good, whatever." And I think that, seriously, I saw There Will Be Blood, and it was the first time I walked out of there, as a 17-year-old, like, "This is hard. This isn't entertainment; this is a piece of art." And I think that's why this movie stands out as my "favorite."

Pam: Like, starting your journey.

Drew: I just started watching movies in a different way.

Joe: "The birth of IMDrewB"

Drew: And I started watching the Oscars because of that. Like, "Oh, this movies has Oscar nominations, oh wow!" I had never really thought about cinematography, and editing, and symbolism, and all this stuff. I watched There Will Be Blood, and I could tell there was so much going on, and it went over my head, but I was like, "I'm gonna get this, damn it!" From then on, every movie I was looking for things. This sort of piloted that attitude of watching movies.

Joe: It definitely is an artful movie. There is a lot of shit. Seventeen-year-old Drew was correct.

Pam: Yeah, even just the conversations, the shots of the set, the scenery and stuff, it's all just shot in such in artful way.

Drew: In addition to winning Best Leading Actor—obviously, Daniel Day Lewis swept all that shit—it also won Best Cinematography. It got a bunch of noms, but it also took that home. So I think that's something I really like in this film. Because it's not trying too hard. You watch a lot of movies that have these sweeping camera shots, and they sort of overdo it. This is just a very well-framed movie, you have characters positioned in a good way that illuminates their faces, and you can hear what they're saying very well.

Joe: There's a couple scenes where I was impressed—where I, as a neophyte, was impressed—the directing of—

Drew: Such as?!

Joe: Well, like you were saying, the oil rig scene. The music added to it. Just watching him run across, and all the people running toward the scene of the action.

Pam: And when he got baptized too, it was so—it was kind of weird.

Drew: So you see that cross in the background, and that light shining through it. They literally had no electricity in there, they just cut out a big cross, and the sunlight is pouring through. So you have this big illuminated cross [made] out of just a window, really. That falls under cinematography, lighting, basically, the creation of an image. That was a very striking image to me. But Paul Thomas Anderson... his movies after that were similar to this. He did The Master five years later. And then—

Joe: We saw Phantom Thread.

Drew: I'd say Phantom Thread and The Master are directed in a very similar style to this.

Joe: [to Pam] Would you say that for Phantom Thread?

Pam: I think so, yeah. I've never seen The Master, but—

Drew: And his earlier films were very different. His first two films—well not his first two—but two of his big, early films, Boogie Nights, about the porn industry—

Joe: Oh shit, okay.

Pam: We watched it about two years ago.

Drew: —and Magnolia. So Boogie Nights and Magnolia both have this big ensemble cast, and their definitely dark comedies. They're very funny. Huge A-list cast. And those two are very similar. And after that he did Punch Drunk Love, which kind of stands on its own.

Pam: Adam Sandler?

Drew: And then he did this, and his next two films are similar to that. I don't... he just kind of outdid himself. This was the first time people were like, "Oh my god, Paul Thomas Anderson, this guy knows what the fuck he's doing."

Pam: So he didn't win Best Director for this.

Drew: He was nominated, he did not win. You know he's married to Maya Rudolph? I don't know how they met, but they are married. Happily.

Joe: I feel like there was a connection, like she did something...

Drew: Well, she was in Inherent Vice, which he directed.

Joe: Is she in the new... Thom Yorke, lead of Radiohead, connects to this... but that's Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist... the lead vocalist Thom Yorke just released a new album. All of his solo shit sucks ass. But, there was a 20-minute video connected to that album, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. [Editor's note: translation, now that I'm not drunk on whisky—I was trying to remember if Maya Rudolph had anything to do with ANIMA. She does not. Let's move on.]

Drew: He's done a ton of music videos. If you look at his IMDB page, it includes music videos and short films. He did a HAIM [pronounced "hame"] music video recently.

Joe: [correcting] "HAIM" [pronounced "hime"]

Drew: HAIM. Sorry, I'm pronouncing it wrong? [laughter]

Joe: He directed the one where they're all dancing in the warehouse! That's like my favorite music video ever.

Drew: It's so simple, but it's very effective.

Joe: It's so great.

Drew: He did a lot of Amy Mann music videos back in the day. Throughout the '90s he was doing features. A lot of people start with music videos and move to features, but he would kind of flip-flop. I think he just likes doing music videos, honestly. They're short, you can shoot them in a day.

Joe: And he's never won an Oscar for Best Director.

Drew: I don't think he's won an Oscar for anything. He's been nominated, he's never won. The thing about him is, if you listen to interviews, he doesn't really disclose a lot about his style. He's kind of a savant. People think that he might just... that he can't communicate. Not that he's dumb, but... he described the relationship between Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday as "Tom and Jerry." Like, [obnoxious voice] "Yeah, it's kinda like Tom and Jerry, a cat and mouse thing!" I think he's just a savant, like he got hit in the head and knows how to direct movies.

[laughter]

Drew: Seriously, he's never articulated anything particularly profound about these really artful films. He's like, [obnoxious voice] "Naaahhh, it's your classic whodunit."

Joe: Speaking of Eli, do we feel like he was the "villain" in this movie?

Drew: Oh yeah.

Pam: Daniel Plainview was also a villain.

Drew: He's the anti-hero.

Pam: He's the Tony Soprano.

Drew: Eli's the antagonist. He's the one who's trying to bring down our main character. And I don't think he has a lot of redeeming qualities, to be honest.

Joe: It definitely felt like a vindictive success when he renounced his own religion that he had been shoving down everyone's throats.

Drew: Oh my god, isn't that amazing? And obviously, spoiler alert with this thing, but, he makes him renounce god... and then murders him. [laughter] It's literally the lowest he'll ever be, he makes this preacher say, "Yup, I'm a fraud, and there is no god," and then was like, "Okay, yeah, I think I'm gonna kill you, yup, now's the time."

Pam: I mean, if he didn't kill him, then I think they would be pretty even. Because when they were in the church and Eli made him say, "I abandoned my child!" That was also horrible.

Drew: But he wouldn't have gotten the Bandy tract otherwise! That was the big thing.

Joe: I don't know if I've ever talked with you about this, Drew. Are you, or have you ever been religious, in any way?

Drew: Yes. I'm not—I don't really practice now. I was raised Catholic.

Joe: I don't really think any of our [mutual] friends practice.

Drew: I think at the time, in high school, I was considerably more religious than I am now. And it's not like I identify with Eli Sunday, like he was a "good person" or anything like. But even... the take I had was that if he was truly a prophet, he would've been burned at the stake before denouncing god for money. So I walked out of there like, "Oh yeah, that guy is clearly a fraud." There have been people in the Church in the 1800s who would literally get crucified, and tortured for hours on end, and die, before saying anything like "I am a false prophet, god is a superstition, give me five thousand dollars." My take at the time was, this guy is full of shit, clearly was.

Joe: And I guess the movie made that clear. It wasn't ambivalent in any way. They built him as a villain pretty well.

Drew: And Daniel does some fucked up things, but again, the whole anti-hero thing is something we're very accustomed to nowadays. At the time, there was Tony Soprano, and that's pretty much it. The only other person you'd be like, "he's a piece of shit, but we love him."

Joe: So let's assume Eli is right, and there is a heaven, and there is a hell. Who's more likely to go to hell? If you had to compare the two, Eli vs. Daniel.

Drew: Daniel murdered two people, so I guess... I guess Daniel?

Pam: And he did abandon his son on the train.

Drew: Because he became handicapped! That's what's really fucked up about it. His son became handicapped... and they had a relatively good relationship. They went camping, he was his business partner. And as soon as this kid is, like, annoying, and won't go to sleep, he literally puts him on a train and says, "I don't want to deal with you anymore."

Pam: Up until that moment, it was like, "He's a really good dad to this kid."

Drew: He kind of was! And he adopted him! It's not his kid! Isn't that a great moment, when there's H.W. as an adult, and he's talking to [Daniel], who's like, "You're not my son," "Don't say that, it hurts me." "No, really, you're not my son." [laughter] It was that other guy in the beginning who got killed in the accident, it was his baby. And that was another thing I noticed, there's these great religious allusions. There's this really subtle moment in the beginning, before H.W.'s real father—

Joe: This is trivia point #2!

Drew: No, it's not trivia. It's just something they do! After they strike oil, H.W.'s biological father takes oil, and smears it on H.W.'s forehead, as if it's ash. It's supposed to be a religious allusion; instead of baptizing this baby in water, I'm baptizing him in oil. And those are the big... I know you talk a lot about "themes" in these interviews. Religion and capitalism.

Joe: Is it religion versus capitalism?

Drew: Yes! 100%. It's not about religion versus capitalism, but how those two things interact with each other. It's at a time when... Daniel Plainview wants control over these country bumpkins, to become wealthy. He promises them: "Oh, we're going to prosper, you're gonna make money yourself, the town will be great." And then Eli, on the other hand, controls them through faith. It poses that question: What really is going to save you in the end? What's going to give you peace of mind? Is it having money in your bank account? Or is it knowing that your soul is clean?

Joe: And I think they give the answer of... neither?

Drew: Yeah, are both of those parties doing it for their own self-interest? Clearly. But that's sort of the question that it poses. Which do you choose? What really matters? Is it money or is it religion? I think the film... in the end, Daniel wins, saying that money makes the world go 'round.

Joe: But, he's definitely a miserable fuck by the end. Even disregarding the murder...

Drew: He's unhappy.

Pam: And he pushes away the only person in his life who was family.

Drew: The whole reason he's doing this... he wants money, so he can be happy. And that is through getting away from people. There's a moment where he's like, "I don't like people, and I want enough money that I don't have to deal with them."

Joe: He can see enough on the surface of people to know that they're shitty.

Drew: That's the whole reason why he's doing this, because he thinks wealth will give him the freedom to get away from people. The only people he would really trust are family. He liked H.W. for a very long time. Those were the only people he could consider trustworthy.

Joe: I mean, he turned when H.W. outed himself as a "competitor" for his money. It had nothing to do with a personal grudge. It was just "you're going to take a slice of my money away."

Pam: And when he found out that that other guy was not actually his brother. Actually, do you think that he knew the whole time that he wasn't his brother?

Drew: No, I think the guy fooled him for a while.

Pam: And he killed him, when he found out he wasn't really a brother.

Drew: That's the only time when he felt like, maybe he could trust someone. But, he had a son that wasn't really his son. He had a brother that wasn't really his brother. Even Eli, through marriage, was related to him. Eli's sister married H.W. He even says, "Daniel! We're family, through marriage!" So, I dunno, is there something ironic about that, the fact that family is the one thing that could've really redeemed him, and it was all... a lie? I dunno.

Pam: [burps]

Drew: Pam burped. Write that down.

Pam: [laughter] He chose money over family.

Joe: So Pam scoffed when she saw my notes that said, "Is this an anti-capitalist movie?"—

Pam: Oh, I only scoffed because you asked me this same question for It's a Wonderful Life.

Joe: For sure, and me and Dwyer definitely talked about it.

Pam: I said, "Do you think every movie is an anti-capitalist movie?!"

Drew: [laughter] The Dark Knight had a lot of modern themes.

Joe: Well, Bruce Wayne wasn't properly taxed.

[laughter]

Drew: Sorry, what was the question?

Joe: That's the question. Despite Pam's not wanting me to ask the question, do you feel like one of the purposes of this movie is that, P.T.A. was saying that capitalism is not good, that it leads to death and destruction, and, um, a loss of self-identity?

Drew: I don't think it necessarily leads to that, but maybe it doesn't guarantee happiness. The whole point was he wanted wealth to be happy—he really did—he thought wealth could give him the freedom to be alone and do what he wants. But, by the end, when he has a huge mansion, and he's living alone, doing nothing all day, fucking miserable, with nobody. So he's clearly in a horrible state once he gets to that point. But he has that same attitude toward religion, it's also fraught with... sure, it could make you self-realize and give you peace of mind on your deathbed. But not necessarily. Eli himself, once the fucking market starts crashing, he's like, "Oh! These mysteries that God presents! I don't know what to do!" So clearly it wasn't about faith, it was about money. I think he does a good job balancing... I don't think he necessarily favors capitalism or religion. I think he says that there's flaws with both.

Joe: Despite the... again, despite the murder—

Pam: Murders.

Drew: Multiple murders.

Joe: Yeah, I guess so. Do you personally relate to Daniel Plainview in any way?

Drew: Like, in the way he drinks too much, or...

[laughter]

Joe: In literally any way. Sure, if you relate to him that way.

Drew: Um... not really. I think he's more human than he appears. He's a very extreme character, but his big thing is ambition.

Joe: You feel like you don't have any ambition?

Drew: No, but I feel like... honestly, I don't really identify with him that much. If anything, for most people, the characters you relate to our these little hick country bumpkins, that are posed with that question—

Joe: That you know are getting fucked.

Drew: Yeah, who do we point to for salvation?

Pam: That's usually the majority of people.

Drew: So no, I don't particularly relate to Daniel Plainview, in that he goes to very extreme lengths to achieve what he wants.

Joe: You don't feel like there's any truth in Halloween costumes?

[laughter]

Drew: Um... that Halloween costume crushed it, first of all.

Pam: Now I finally get your Halloween costume!

Drew: If you notice in the photos, I'm doing this [makes face and points with finger], and this is [Daniel Plainview impression] "DRAINAGE!" This is—when he's talking with H.W.—this [the finger pointing down] is sign language for "drill." When he's talking to Eli, like, "DRAINAGE!" he's point like that, "You sniveling ass!" and flicks it in his face.

Joe: I feel like I've heard you do the "milkshake monologue" before.

Drew: See, now you're trying to prompt me to do the milkshake monologue. It's not going to work!

[laughter]

Pam: Do you know that monologue?

Drew: ...see, you keep trying to get me to say it! Oh, subtle, Pam!

[laughter]

Pam: I didn't even know that's something you did before!

Drew: The next phase is reverse psychology, "No, he's not going to say it, he's too scared!"

Joe: "He's a fucking pussy if he doesn't talk about milkshakes right now!

Drew: Honestly, interestingly enough, it does explain drainage very well.

[Editor's note: Drew then goes on to describe the entire final scene line for line, basically. I'm not going to transcribe all this. Who cares about spoilers, I just don't feel like doing it.]

Drew: Which, by the way, that pipeline is a hundred miles long. Like, Philly to New York is 90 miles. He made a pipe one hundred miles to the Pacific Ocean.

Joe: I guess those scenes where him and Henry are staking it out... they went one hundred miles?

Drew: Yeah! That's the last shot, of them looking at the Pacific Ocean, because they were in the middle of the state, and that's when they—again, every time you watch a movie, you notice something new. I feel like I had seen everything I needed to see with this movie, but rewatching it yesterday, I loved the way they shot that scene, like, that profile from the side, and that constantly moving camera, and the whole "stake in the ground, keep moving, stake in the ground, keep moving." And they see the Pacific Ocean, and then [later] he stakes in the table, like, "Yeah, guys, we did it! Fuck yeah!" That scene was so good! I had totally breezed past that.

Joe: Daniel Day Lewis definitely did a very good job—

Drew: He apparently had two years to prepare for the role.

Joe: So... let's dig into that.

Drew: Yeah.

Joe: Let's ask this: did he deserve the Oscar for this movie?

Drew: Are you kidding?! Of course he did!

Joe: I'm just asking the question!

Drew: Oh my god. It's one of the greatest performances. I don't think it's overhyped. I think, twelve years later, watching that... oh my god. That's the thing I love about Daniel Day Lewis, is that he's that transformative. There are some people out there—okay, I'll say it, Leonardo DiCaprio. He's a very good actor, but I can tell he's acting. I'll walk out of a DiCaprio movie and be like, "Wow, that was a great performance by Leonardo DiCaprio." I'll walk out of a Daniel Day Lewis movie, and I'm like, "Wow, I just watched a 19th century oil prospector!" I'm not watching an actor, I'm watching the character, ya know? He transforms in a way that no other actor can... well, a few, maybe—Meryl Streep.

Joe: I—

Drew: But yeah, are you kidding me?! Like, no, it was not overhyped—

Joe: I'm agreeing with you!

Drew: It's one of the greatest performances in, probably, my lifetime.

Joe: It was a leading question! Because I'm leading up to this: Do you feel like method acting is necessary?

Pam: Oh god.

Drew: Not always, no. I think it can pay off, but it can also—

Joe: I mean, it paid off with three Oscars for Daniel Day Lewis. But my point is that I think method acting is stupid.

Drew: I think that most people don't do it to the extent that he does it. Some people will spend, oh, a couple months preparing for a role, whereas Daniel Day Lewis will not do a movie for five years, and then once he's set on it, spend two years preparing. Daniel Day Lewis learned how to be a miner. He went to a mine, he learned how to mine for silver—

Joe: That's stupid! For what?

Drew: For art!

Joe: For art?

Drew: He's not doing it all the time. It's not like he does it for... he doesn't take this lightly. He says he's retired now. He'll spend five years—

Joe: Right, I get it.

Drew: —if I'm going to do this, I'm going to devote my entire life to it. He's not doing it for Oscars, he's doing it because it's his path.

Joe: To me, that's like, taking your job home with you.

Drew: People do that. People take their job home with them.

Joe: I don't agree with it. I don't agree that you should do that.

Pam: But I think acting is a passion.

Drew: I think in his case, it's paid off. There are many actors that say it's not always necessary. Like, Helen Mirren is very vocal about, like, when they yell "cut," you can just fucking chill. But he is a person that thinks it works for him—

Joe: Like, fucking Jared Leto sending his... he sent his jizz to the other cast members—

Drew: What, for Suicide Squad?! Shut the fuck up. Are you kidding me?!

Joe: He did all kinds of crazy shit, and Will Smith was like, "I'm not going to be in this anymore."

Drew: Heath Ledger did a lot of method acting. Allegedly, he developed insomnia and overdosed on pills. So it can have some very negative consequences. [Editor's note: This interview took place prior to The Dark Knight interview being published, where we touched on Heath Ledger's method acting a little bit.]  I think in Daniel Day Lewis' case, it pays off, because he has very remarkable performances, and in his personal life, he seems fine. I don't think it's always necessary—

Joe: But imagine being his wife and having to be married to Daniel Plainview for two years.

Drew: ...I know.

Pam: Well, when you're married to Daniel Day Lewis, that's what you put up with.

Drew: In My Left Foot, he had cerebral palsy, and he was in a wheelchair—

Joe: And he stayed in the wheelchair. That's stupid!

Drew: When he was on set, he made them carry him over cables and stuff.

Joe: That's fucked up.

Drew: "Let's feed him with a spoon" or whatever.

Joe: I hate it.

Pam: [annoyed] Well it helps develop character, and it helps you feel that pain, and what it feels like to be that person.

Drew: What you're asking is like, "You're not a true actor unless you're a method actor."

Joe: No, what I'm actually saying is the opposite. If you're a method actor, you're a worse actor.

Drew: Stop! No!

Pam: Joe wants to angry about something in every single one of these movie interviews. He has to fight with the person he's interviewing.

Joe: Well then let me do it! Let me do it!

Drew: Daniel Day Lewis is probably the most extreme method actor of our day, where he takes two years to do it. A lot of people go through those lengths to get into that character, and they'll do it for like a month. They're getting paid a lot of money, and the studio expects results, they expect them to take it seriously, and they spent a certain amount of time getting into character.

Joe: A certain amount.

Drew: If they're getting paid ten million dollars to do this movie, they're going to fucking take it seriously. You're not going to phone it in.

Joe: If you are a professional actor, you should be able to turn it on and off at will.

Drew: And many can!

Joe: So you're admitting that Daniel Day Lewis cannot!

Drew: That is not what I'm saying.

Pam: [groans]

Drew: Method acting is not a requirement. Some people, like Daniel Day Lewis, he clearly has a system down, and it's working for him. I think most actors that are of A-list caliber spend at least a month or two really getting into it. They do a lot of research. Even if they're not living in that character all day. Like, "Oh, I'm playing a baker? I'm going to work at a bakery for a month." They do that shit. Even when they go home to their wives, they're not saying, "Call me a baker when we have sex." That's not happening! But they're still devoting an extreme amount of time to learn this craft. Daniel Day Lewis might take it to the nth degree. He's the most extreme case in method acting alive today. There is no else who does what he does. And I think it pays off in his case. And for some people, it probably fucks them up a lot! I don't think you have to do it to have a good performance, but for some people it works.

Joe: I don't think you should have to do it, is my point. I equate it to, like, if Chase Utley had to sleep with a bat in his bed or something.

Drew: You've never heard of [baseball players] taping bats to their hands?

Joe: No, I haven't.

Drew: Or when Nick Cannon was in Drumline, he taped the drumsticks to his hands to drum better!

Joe: It would be like if [our firefighting friend] Dave K*** had to turn the temperature of his house up to 110 degrees.

[laughter]

Pam: To be the devil's advocate, I feel like one of the best movies that you [Joe] enjoyed in the last five years was Whiplash. And it was pretty method! Miles Teller's character.

Drew: He had to learn that shit! He had to go home and learn the fucking drums.

Joe: Let me be clear, I'm not saying that There Will Be Blood was a worse movie because of Daniel Day Lewis's method acting.

Drew: What, method acting as an institution is bullshit?

Joe: Right, we're talking about a movie, and I'm delving into a very specific, niche part of the movie that I disagree with.

Drew: In his case, it paid off.

Joe: I mean, it clearly did! He won the Oscar for Best Actor! But you should say, "In his case, it's required."

Drew: That's up to Daniel Day Lewis. That's not up to me.

Joe: He has never won an Oscar when he didn't do method acting.

Drew: [laughter]

Joe: My point is... fuck Daniel Day Lewis.

Pam: What?!

Joe: I'm joking!

Drew: Well, he's retired.

Joe: Phantom Thread blew dick.

Pam: Do you think he's actually retired?

Drew: No, I think he's just going to take a ten-year break.

Pam: How old is he?

Drew: He's like 60.

Joe: So I guess we'll talk about someone else who was in the movie in an opposite scenario. Jonny Greenwood.

Pam: Who wrote the score.

Drew: Yes.

Pam: For the readers.

Joe: He is the guitarist in Radiohead. I guess he's not quite the opposite of Daniel Day Lewis in this idea that I have. But, the music was very, very good. When I was talking about it being a "horror movie" earlier, I thought the music was the reason I thought that.

Pam: It constantly felt ominous.

Drew: Between those dissonant tones that crescendo, like [makes the noise]. Or... is it polyrhythms? The term for when it's like [emulates the rhythm], and they line up eventually.

Joe: And it's interesting, because I feel like, the more prominent Jonny Greenwood becomes in the movie world—he's done more movie scores—

Drew: He did Phantom Thread. What other movie scores has he done? Off the top of my head—

Pam: Wasn't Phantom Thread classical, almost? The score?

Drew: I mean, it probably more mid-20th century.

Pam: But it was very different from There Will Be Blood.

Joe: But the point I was leading up to was... the more respect he gets in the movie world, the less respect he gets, from me, in Radiohead. Radiohead used to be a rock band! And now I feel like he and Thom Yorke are putting all these movie score influences into their music.

Drew: Didn't they have a song, earlier...

Joe: ["Exit Music (for a Film)"]

Drew: I mean I can't really attest to some of their newest stuff.

Joe: Okay, but that song was a rock song. Whereas, if you listen to, a couple years ago, A Moon Shaped Pool—by Radiohead, their most recent album—it seems like a movie score. And it sucks ass! It's horrible!

Pam: And you can blame that on the fact that they're writing movie scores.

Drew: When you write a score for a movie, it works. When you write a movie score for just, like, an album, it's gonna sound like shit. It's the wrong medium.

Joe: And I'm not saying that Radiohead wrote a score for anything. I'm saying that the influences—the things that are important to Jonny Greenwood are now bleeding into his rock band's sound.

Drew: Another... Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch from Nine Inch Nails, they're another group. They do a lot of movie scores now—

Joe: They did the Facebook one.

Drew: Right, The Social Network. All of David Fincher's stuff. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The first season of House of Cards, when Fincher was working on that. And I agree with you—I can't really attest to those albums—that film scores bleeding into their albums probably diminishes their integrity as rock stars. Not "rock stars," but—

Joe: That classic "rock" sound.

Drew: I think that their film scores, coming from that rock background, are very different than most of the film scores you see now. And that's why they're so great!

Joe: That is a good thing. I definitely agree with you there. I'm singing the praises of Jonny Greenwood right now.

Drew: Actually, There Will Be Blood['s score] was ineligible for the Oscars that year, because a lot of it was written before the movie came out.

Joe: Trivia #3!

Pam: We were talking about that.

Joe: He wrote a score for another movie that he borrowed from.

Drew: What was the movie?

Joe: "Body" something. I'll footnote it here. [Editor's note: Bodysong, both Jonny Greenwood's debut solo album, and a soundtrack to the documentary of the same name.]

Drew: Invasion of Body Snatchers?!

Joe: Sure. [sarcastic] The Bodyguard?

[Editor's note: I'm cutting Drew's very long take on The Bodyguard, as well as Drew's extremely loud yelling about A Star Is Born.]

Joe: I will probably listen to a film score right after I listen to a podcast.

[laughter]

Joe: Okay, so we started to squeeze some There Will Be Blood trivia out of you. Can we squeeze some more out of this stone? What are some of your other... I'll be surprised if you don't have any more trivia.

Drew: Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano. I don't know if you know this, but that role was recast while they were film.

Joe: I know everything about this movie. You're explaining this to the people who are reading right now.

Pam: ...and me?

Drew: You know about the recasting process??

Joe: I have a whole fucking sheet of notes here.

Drew: Okay! Alright, so, to Pam. So whereas Daniel Day Lewis had about two years to prepare for this role, Paul Dano had four days to prepare. He was original cast as Paul Sunday, the brother in that early scene, where he tips Daniel off about the land, and then you never see him again. They had another actor playing Eli Sunday, an actor named Kel O'Neill—who's not from Kenan & Kel, different Kel.

Pam: Damn!

Joe: It was implied by some salacious sources that he couldn't handle Daniel Day Lewis, and that's why he dropped out.

Drew: Is that why? I hadn't heard that.

Joe: Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson both deny it, but...

Drew: I assumed it was like a Back to the Future scenario, where, after a few days of shooting, they realize that this guy kind of sucks. They had started filming, and Paul Dano was available, because he was already in the movie, and on the set, and they were like... originally Paul Sunday and Eli Sunday were just brothers. On the fly, they rewrote it that they were identical twins. And I totally bought that. But when the film came out, probably 50% of the people that saw this movie thought that they were the same guy, and that he had Multiple Personality Disorder.

Joe: I was saying that to Pam.

Drew: Did you think that?

Joe: I did originally, in like '09, then I was reading about how they were different people, and I told Pam [prior to the movie, to warn her]. Do you think you would've—?

Pam: I don't know. I probably would've not thought that they were brothers. I probably would've been really confused.

Drew: People had all these elaborate theories about him having multiple personalities. I was like, why the hell would Paul Sunday tip off Daniel Plainview about drilling and then two days later, Daniel distrusts him like a motherfucker? It doesn't make any sense, how could they be the same person?! People were like, "notice how they are never on screen at the same time, they must be the same guy!" I know, just because I'm a twin, that I totally just accepted it, like, "Yeah, they're twins."

Joe: That's the personal details that we are now requiring in Your Favorite Movie. We wanted an actual twin to interview about a twin movie.

Drew: To this day, on YouTube, searching for There Will Be Blood, 50% of the videos are like, "Paul Sunday and Eli Sunday are the same person." And I'm like, "Shut the fuck up! This isn't Fight Club!"

Joe: So when someone is walking down the Parkway, and sees Drew's twin brother working on the top of the double decker tourist bus, and yells, "Yo Drew!" and he says "I'm not Drew!"...their response will be "Drew must have Multiple Personality Disorder."

Pam: They are never together!

[laughter]

Drew: I don't even know what he's doing right now.

Joe: Exactly, how do we know you're not the same person?!

Drew: Even when we were living in Philly together, my family would be like, "How's your brother doing?" and I'd be like, "I don't fucking know."

Joe: Okay, so... last chance. Without any feedback from us, just drop some more trivia that you need to get out.

Drew: Did you know that the actor who plays the real estate agent—his name is Al Rose, the character, he looks at the maps, and says, "Oh, this land belongs to..." I forget the actor's name, but he was in Billy Madison. He was the moderator of the academic decathlon. "I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul."

Joe: Interesting!

Drew: He's fatter, with a beard.

Joe: I did not know that. You got me with that trivia point! I thought I knew everything.

Drew: Yeah!

Joe: Alright, here is some trivia that I'm going to ask you about. We're going to test IMDrewB's trivia knowledge about this movie.

Drew: Okay.

Joe: Three questions. One. When H.W. and Mary are getting married, what is the chapter and verse of the bible reading?

Drew: Oh god! I don't know!

Joe: John 4:14-15.

[laughter]

Pam: So this is just nitpicky trivia—

Joe: [cutting her off] What is the name of the Boom Operator?

Drew: ...The Boom Operator of There Will Be Blood?

Joe: Yes.

Drew: I don't know.

Joe: David M. Roberts.

Drew: Great.

Joe: What is the third distinct word spoken in the movie?

Drew: Distinct? I'm serious, so at the beginning of the movie, when he's prospecting, he says "No"...

Joe: He says so a bunch of times, so that's the first word. What's the third word?

Drew: "And."

Joe: You got it! Holy shit!

Drew: "Ladies and gentlemen."

Joe: Good for you man! You got one out of three!

Drew: Yeah... great.

Joe: You like this movie 33% of the amount I expected you to like it.

Drew: I have a question for you. Why do you think this movie is called "There Will Be Blood"?

Joe: Interesting.

Drew: I don't think there's a concrete answer, but there's a few theories, and I want to know what you think.

Joe: When I watched this movie, I felt a lot of the religious moments in it. Not that I was hardcore religious growing up, but I was definitely a little more religious than my peers. So, just, thinking about it from a personal aspect, and really looking at those scenes with a critical eye. I suppose they mentioned the blood of Christ, or the lamb, or whatever the fuck, in those scenes. I thought it was a reference to Daniel Day Lewis' probably-Oscar-winning scene, ya know, "I abandoned my child!" Eli's implication that the figurative blood was shed in that act. That he was "asking penance" for.

Drew: In that scene, right after he finally gets baptized in the water, the song that's playing is "There Is Power in the Blood." [singing] "There is power, there is power in the blood!" What does that mean? Oooh.

Joe: So is that why you think it's called "There Will Be Blood"?

Drew: I'll give you a lot credit. There are three reasons why I thought it might be called "There Will Be Blood," but that was not one of them, the religious aspect. I really didn't consider it that way.

Joe: I was just making it up.

Drew: So I think the most on-the-surface... at the very end of the film—this movie isn't very violent—he finally kills Eli, and the first thing we see is a huge pool of blood. There's a little bit of blood during the various accidents—

Joe: What about when he kills Henry?

Drew: There's not a lot of blood. He shoots him at the top of the head, it's not very graphic. The first time you really see a lot of blood is at the very end—they promised that there will be blood. When I saw it in theaters, everyone gasped. Because the movie's really not that violent, and when you hear him beat his skull open with a bowling pin, people were like, "Oh my god!" Because you don't expect it in a movie like that. So everyone goes [gasping sound], and then some guy muttered "there will be blood."

[laughter]

Joe: So, in other words, Daniel Day Lewis didn't need to turn to the cameras and say the words "There will be blood!"

[laughter]

Drew: [Another theory is], what we touched on earlier, with themes of family. Blood of the family, that's a big thing. But that would be in a sort of ironic sense, I think. Family is the one thing that would save him, but his son is not really his son, he has a brother that's really an impostor, he has a brother-in-law who he murders. Anytime he comes close to the one thing that really makes him a human being, he destroys it.

Joe: But so it's his hope that there will be someone who he can share that with. "There will be blood" never comes to fruition. It's not, "There is blood," it's "There will be blood." And there never is!

Drew: So I like that take on it. I don't know if it's true. Another one, and this dates the film a little bit. So... "blood" referring to oil. It's referred to as the sort of blood of the lamb, this seepage, this liquid seeping out of the ground. The oil is the blood, is how... I think that was the biggest theory when this movie came out. When it came out, 2007, we were at the height of the Bush presidency. This is not what the movie is about at all, but when it was advertised, I think people thought this was going to be a metaphor, or like a scathing indictment, of the oil industry, or the Bush presidency. I think they thought this was going to be a metaphor for how oil corrupts mankind.

Pam: It kind of was!

Drew: They really thought, "Oh, this is going to prove that Bush did 9/11!"

[laughter]

Joe: Bush is drinking Sadam's milkshake!

Drew: Dead serious. This movie did okay, it wasn't a box office smash. But I think the reason this movie was paid any attention at all, aside from Daniel Day Lewis being a draw, what that people thought it was going to be a scathing indictment of the oil industry. At the time, in 2007, we were fighting a war over oil. It was a huge hot-button issue. Like, yeah, "This is 1917 oil industry, but it's clearly a metaphor for the War in Iraq." And it's not at all!

Joe: Is it documented that people were disappointed by There Will Be Blood because it wasn't? Like, the Rotten Tomatoes User Score was bad?

Drew: Interestingly, if you look back on reviews when it first came out, almost every review tried to connect it to that in at least one sentence.

Joe: And for what it's worth, I read a lot of ten-year retrospectives, from 2017 I guess, and none of them mentioned oil in that way.

Drew: People wanted "blood" to mean physical oil. And that's not what the movie is about! The movie is about wealth, it's about capitalism. It was an interesting interpretation at the time that does not hold up at all.

Joe: Okay, what haven't we talked about yet?

Drew: ...Was there a song that featured the line "Brother from another mother"?

Joe: [laughter] Great question! Because you had that feeling too, when Henry said it?

Drew: When I saw it in theaters, more than one person laughed. I just thought of that again, like, is that a song? A hip hop song from the '80s or something? Why don't I know that?

Pam: I think it's just something people say.

Drew: I assumed it was a song or something. [Editor's note: I did some cursory research, and while there are certainly songs that use this phrase in title and lyrics, there didn't appear to be any that actually brought the phrase into the general cultural lexicon.]

Joe: [Most people have] more comedic timing than Henry had.

Drew: He was in The Mummy.

Joe: The original one? Not the newer one with Tom Cruise, part of the Extended Cinematic Dark Universe?

Drew: Oh god, no!

Joe: Kevin J. O'Connor. Like our good friend, our Back to the Future friend, but one letter off.

Drew: Anyway, he was the comic relief in The Mummy.

Joe: Anyway again, no I don't think it was a song. I think it was just a grade school rhyme.

Pam: Seems like something hippies say.

Joe: I definitely chuckled when he said that. Pam might not have, because she was sleeping.

Pam: No I was not! I did not sleep at all.

[Editor's note: cutting out some long plot rehashing again, jesus fucking christ Drew.]

Joe: So to that point, I think the movie did a good job of gradually ramping up the violence. It wasn't a movie where guns were a'blazin' from the very beginning. That was the first time a gun was shown the whole movie, when he pulled a gun out on his supposed brother. The only reason I noticed that was, for the first two hours, I was thinking, oh shit, we're going to have a "Your Favorite Movie" movie that didn't have a gun in it.

Drew: They've all had guns?

Joe: We're nine for nine right now. but, I thought they did a good job of, gradually amping it up, where you got to the last scene, and you did not expect Daniel to have murder in him—

Drew: He already murdered someone though!

Joe: Yeah, but it was done in a way that he was almost doing it reluctantly. The side of his head. It wasn't a brutal. So if you want to look at it in a cynical way, he killed [Henry] for the plot, but he killed Eli because that was his character.

Drew: [Daniel Plainview impression] "I'm finished."

[laughter]

Drew: And a lot of people have qualms about the butler coming down, like "Who is this butler? What's his motivation? Why doesn't he care that much?"

Joe: Here's some trivia for you! Apparently, I dunno, [while the movie was filming,] some fucking tabloid took a picture of the butler, and put it in their magazine, and said, "Look how much Daniel Day Lewis changes himself for his roles!"

Drew: The Onion?

Joe: Whoever published it legitimately thought it was Daniel Day Lewis. And it was really the old butler.

Drew: There's this channel on Facebook called "Script-to-Screen." [Editor's note: Looks like it might be this YouTube channel called "Screenplayed."] What they do is play scenes from movies, and have what's in the script scrolling beneath it. The point is that, a lot of times, the dialogue that's in the script is very different from the final cut. Because they change it day of, "we're gonna cut this, we're gonna change that." Nine times out of ten, the scene is very different from the published script. In this, they did that scene at the end [Daniel Day Lewis voice... again...] "DRAINAGE!" It's pretty much the same, but the one big thing is that the way he kills Eli is different. In the final cut, he beats him to death with a bowling pin. In the original script, he stabs him in the face with another inanimate object, a stein or something?

Joe: A tumbler.

Drew: A tumbler! Yeah! It's a different inanimate object.

Joe: Trivia number five!

Drew: How did you know... did you look that up?

Joe: Oh yeah. I did my fucking research for this, man! I'm interviewing somebody about the movie, I'm gonna know the fucking movie.

Drew: I don't know why they changed it.

Pam: It also might say something about capitalism—

Drew: Tell me Pam, how does—

Pam: He has a bowling alley in his house!

Drew: I was gonna say, how do bowling pins represent capitalism, Pam?

Joe: [sarcasm] The bowling pins are billionaires, and the ball is socialism.

Drew: Good work Pam.

Pam: I cracked the case. [laughter]

Joe: Alright, let's start to wrap it up here. I don't know if we're gotten yet a clear answer yet as to why this is your favorite movie. One can guess by now, based on this discussion, why. But why don't you just state it outright?

Drew: So, when you asked to name my favorite movie for this... Nate touched on it, when it's difficult to pinpoint when you're someone who's seen a lot of movies.

Joe: So this was a "gun to your head" moment, like, "I need to answer this question because I'm going to be interviewed about it."

Drew: Gun to my head, I will say I have a top three. I really don't have a number one. For someone who has seen as many movies as I have, that's as good as it's going to get. What do you think my top three are?

Joe: Okay, first, I'm not interested as to why you didn't choose the other two... but I am interested in what the other two are. So name them.

Drew: What do you think they are?

Joe: Uh... Grease and Grease 2.

Drew: [laughter]

Pam: Someone had said Silence of the Lambs...

Drew: That's in my top ten.

Joe: Room and The Room.

Drew: I would say both of those are in my top ten.

Joe: [laughter] Get out of here.

Drew: So The Room—

Joe: I am not interested!

Drew: Okay, so my top three. There Will Be Blood. Drive. And Whiplash. And I think that I get a lot of—

Pam: What's Drive?

Drew: What's Drive?! Alright, I'll come back next week and we'll talk about it. Ryan Gosling. 2011.

Joe: I thought you meant Baby Driver.

Drew: Stop. There would be no Baby Driver without Drive, first of all.

Joe: Please note that I shrugged in response to that.

Drew: Anyway, those three are the only three times I walked out of a movie theater truly exhilarated. There are movies that make me feel things, feel emotions, they're intense. But the only times I walked out in a daze, like, "I can't stop thinking about what I just saw" for weeks and weeks.

Joe: Thanks for not picking Whiplash, because I felt the same way, and I feel like this whole interview would've been me and you just jerking each other off in front of Pam.

Drew: But that was the last time it happened, in 2014, after Whiplash. In the past five years, I've sat in a movie theater upwards of 200 times—

[laughter]

Drew: I'm not even joking!

Joe: I'm laughing because I know it's true!

Drew: So those were the only movies I walked out of the theater saying, "What did I just see?" All three of them, I discovered on my own. And I sort of... people expect your favorite movie to be a "classic," like an older film, because that proves they "stand the test of time." Your favorite is supposed to be Citizen Kane, or something like that. That's what it's supposed to be the movie you say is the best. And [for me]... all three of those movies have come out in the past twelve years. And I think, all I can say is... I saw them when they were new, I saw them when they were hyped, I think—

Joe: I think might speak to your journey as a cinephile.

Drew: It's still a substantial amount of time to be able to tell whether they hold up or not. All three of them hold up extremely well. There Will Be Blood stands out just because it was the first of those three. It's different for everybody. I'll admit—at times, it's slow. Many people would say it's boring. I will admit, it's a slow burn.

Joe: There were moments when I thought our stream was buffering, because the actors just froze. And that was the point, and it was great, and I enjoyed it, but—

Drew: It sounds pretentious saying "This is art, because it's so slow and boring." But, it just had an effect on me, where, like, I walked out of there thinking "What the fuck did I just watch?" And there was just a mission to watch movies the sort of way I watched There Will Be Blood. And to this day, only two other movies have had that same effect on me. It's different for everybody. I know Sara B****** fucking hates Whiplash.

Joe: When me and her talk about Whiplash this winter, I will get her full opinion on it.

Drew: But those are legitimately my top three. There Will Be Blood just stands out because it was the first of those three. Just treating movies as an art form. And honestly, I never watched a movie the same way again after There Will Be Blood. I looked for different things. I was like, "Oh, this person standing next to this person can actually symbolize something?" That sounds pretentious. But the movie is so complex and so multi-layered that, I just... it was just a big turning point. Like, people walk into an art museum and see their favorite artist, or walking into a concert and seeing your favorite band. It was a turning point. Something flipped when I saw it.

Joe: You gave a very interesting answer because, up until this moment, I saw that, for these interviews, the reasons were split between: "Because I am appreciative of movies in general, and this did it very well." Versus: "Because I watched it at XYZ time, and it affected me in these ways, and I want to talk about that." What interests me about your answer is that it's both, and its causation—you appreciate it as a well-made movie, which it is, and the fact that it was a good movie affected you in a personal way.

Drew: That's absolutely right, yeah.

Joe: So when you first saw the movie, it wasn't at that time that you thought it was your favorite movie, right? Was there a moment when you realized that this is a top tier movie?

Drew: I mean, the movie came out in 2007. We met, and our current group of friends got together, in 2008. I remember, in 2008, within a year of this movie coming out, talking up this film. I think that I knew... Again, I could never say my number one, but from the get-go, I knew it was going to stand out. Maybe naming it as my number one, if you want an example of "cinema," of something "artful," then start with this.

Joe: What do you feel like this says about you, that you are putting it out to the world—all three and half people who are still reading this right now—and you are claiming this is your favorite movie. What does that say about you as a person?

Drew: I don't want to come off like a pretentious asshole—

Joe: Too late!

Drew: —this artsy, highbrow drama is my favorite film. It is a legitimate piece of art, and I think it encourages people to look back and think, what was your turning point in your life? With whatever is your think. Like with music, what was that one album that was a pivotal moment in the way you look at music? That's a serious question, Joe. Do you know? Do you know?!

Joe: So this is your Sgt. Pepper I guess.

Drew: ...Sure. I think if there's anything you can take from that, it's that I would encourage people to look back, to find what does hold up in the art that they choose to enjoy. That's a really... sordid answer. I think it's a movie that, as the years have gone on, it's aged extremely well. I look back on it like, "I wasn't wrong! This isn't a piece of crap!" You know I love the Oscars, everyone knows I love the Oscars. They are very political. There are plenty of movies where you can watch them one time, and no one ever fucking talks about them again after award season.

Joe: We've been talking about Crash for twelve years now.

Drew: Shut the fuck up. But yeah, twelve years later, There Will Be Blood still holds up. Daniel Day Lewis is still the best. He's retired now.

Joe: Did you ever consider that he might be playing a retired person in his next film?

Pam: He's doing the ultimate method acting.

Drew: Oh fuck you, goddamn it.