Transcript of Messi Takes England Out of the World Cup, Plus Preparing for Christopher Nolan’s 'The Odyssey' With Ian Wright, Anthony Dabbundo, and Sean Fennessey

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The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by PayPal and is hosted today by Chris Ryan. What's up? I am filling in for Bill while he is away, and today on the podcast we are talking the two things that matter most in the world to me, the World Cup and the Odyssey. For the World Cup, I talked to Ian Wright, former Arsenal legend, current UK media pundit for Stick to Football and our own podcast Crossways over here at the Ringer Podcast Network. Ian is a legend of the English game and was nice enough to join me to talk about England's loss to Argentina in that incredibly thrilling semifinal. We talked a little bit about Spain and France and the final that's coming up on Sunday between Spain and Argentina, but I talked more in depth about the final with Anthony DiBundo, who joined me after Ian. And then I wrap things up with a long chat with Sean Fennessy about The Odyssey. There's no spoilers in that. It's mostly a Christopher Nolan conversation. But since that is sort of the movie event of the year, I thought what better, what better time to talk about it and who better to talk about it with than the co-host of The Big Picture.

Um, you can also listen to me on The Watch on Mondays and Thursdays., and I'm going to be doing one more podcast with Adam Friedland on The Beautiful Pod on Friday. We're gonna be talking about the tournament as a whole and previewing Sunday's action. Bill will be back on Sunday. I think Anthony DiBundo and I are gonna join him after the World Cup final. So we'll be coming to you probably live after that match. I hope everybody has a great weekend, enjoys the Odyssey, enjoys the World Cup final. Let's get into the show.

This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by PayPal. You know, a clutch move when you see one. A no-look pass, a buzzer beater, a big steal. Well, imagine if your wallet could pull off moves like that. That, my friends, is PayPal. Right now you can find offers from hundreds of brands like Sony, Allbirds, and Viator, and save offers before you check out. Earn unlimited rewards. Plus you can add those rewards on top of credit card points. Now that is clutch. Download the PayPal app today. Save those offers. Start scoring rewards. Terms and exclusions apply. See paypal.com/rewardsterms. Credit card points subject to issuers' terms and conditions.

All right guys, this is a really huge honor for me. I'm joined by, uh, Ian Wright, my friend Ian Wright, one of the greatest strikers to ever play English football, capped over 30 times for England, an Arsenal legend, and now a pundit. You can see him and hear him on Stick Football with Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane, Jill Scott. You can hear him with Steph Houghton on Crossways here at Ringer Spotify. He's also one of the best dudes out there. And Ian, thank you so much for taking time on what must be a heartbreaking late afternoon for you in New York. Yeah, I guess I'll start here. Tuchel tries to turn Atlanta into Azteca, right? And, and he he brings on Kansa, he brings on Iraelee, he brings on Byrne, he takes off Gordon, Rice, Reece James. Rice and Reece James looked a little banged up.

Mm-hmm.

And then was it the right strategy but the wrong time, or how did you feel about this decision of his to defend that lead, that one-goal lead?

It was, when you consider that Tukul, somebody, Chris, that we brought in for his bravery, and we've given him a lot of plaudits on the fact that he's left a lot of people at home that people wanted to see in this squad that maybe now in this game, in a game where you looked at us and we looked like we were struggling, we were defending deep, we couldn't get out, we didn't have no ball players to get us out and maybe get to the wings where we could have hurt Argentina. I think to see us, once we scored the goal, to only have 12% possession after that until I think Latino, Lautaro Martinez scored, says that it was a kind of a negative play from my point of view, from what I saw. And I think that, you know, Chris, you have to go back to, I'll go back to our final in the Euros at Wembley against Italy. You know, we were in the game, you know, Luke Shaw, you know, then we start defending. You know, the same with, you know, even the Spain final. In the game, you know, we're doing well.

Spain would come, then we start defending. And it's happened again today. I thought we started the game very well today, Chris. We kind of went on man-to-man. We really denied Messi space. We had Anderson in and around him. Jude was in and around him. And I think that it was a very brave thing to do, and I quite liked it because it was working. But Chris, you know, I was still disappointed that we weren't getting out and getting to the width, which Argentina are very narrow with the way they play. They want to play it through the middle. And this is why it was such a— unbelievable move from Messi at the end to completely, like, destroy us. Because they're normally very narrow, trying to play through the middle with the one-twos.

It's just crosses.

And I thought that there's spaces on the flanks. And that's how we scored. Jude made the run, we got out the flank, the ball came in, and bam, that was it. But when you consider that in a semifinal we only had 7 touches in the opposing box, it says that that's not enough. And 12% after you score a goal, Possession is nowhere near enough to win a semifinal. But from their point of view, even though I was saying they started with their— I knew what they were going to do with Jude and with the guys. They're going to try and intimidate Chris. They're going to do their stuff, which you expect them to do. But when they started playing, especially when they went a goal down, Chris, this is a team that's— they're scary. It's a scary team to play. Yeah. Because they can play football. And they're very dogged, my friend.

Very dogged.

My old colleague Zach Cram, he threw this stat up on Twitter, on X. Here are Argentina's winners in the knockout rounds. Cape Verde, 111th minute. Egypt, 92nd minute. Switzerland, 112th minute. England, 92nd minute. You're not going to beat Argentina 1-0.

No. And that's the thing, Chris. And this is why when you mentioned about Tuchel and the guys he brought on, it seemed like he's bringing guys on to shore up a game with a team that you're giving the impetus to come at you, and they've got arguably the greatest player that's ever lived, who then realized, "Listen, I'm not getting anything through the middle of this team, so let me just ease myself out to the right-hand side." And, you know, we didn't— Like, whether it was Nico, Riley, whoever it was on that side, Jude coming across, whoever it was, no one got tight. So you can actually make people say, okay, Messi's marked. Even though they might give it to Messi when he's tight, he's not going to have the time what we gave him to then get those crosses. Because you look at it, Mac Allister should have scored a couple. Should have scored a couple. And in the end, it was still, it was Lautaro Martínez who did score. But we can't, you can't just leave Messi on that side. Just because you brought 5 players on, and not have a game plan that, okay, Messi is now not going through the middle.

He's stopped trying to play his one-twos into the middle, play around people and get into the box that way. He's come out to the right-hand side to put crosses in. And they should have scored with 2 more. And I'm very surprised that we didn't see that. And again, I'm very surprised that we went so defensive so quickly. And then you look at somebody as well, Chris, like a— Maybe a Kobbie Mainoo. You need— I'm not going to say who we should be taking off in this. I'm just spitballing.

Yeah, no, I know. I was going to ask you this.

Yeah, I was going to say, you need somebody who's comfortable on the ball, whether that's Kobbie, whoever it's going to be.

That's it.

And then maybe the way Harry was playing. You look at Harry. Harry wasn't really giving us anything in the game. And I say it with all due respect. He's our greatest goalscorer. He's our greatest goalscorer in our history. But in the game and the last game, We didn't get a lot from him. So if we can play a different strategy, maybe we could have hit the ball long, got people around someone like Ivan Toney, you know, with Rashford next to him with the pace, Chris. And then at least we're giving the defenders some breathing space to get their breath back and go again. But it just kept coming back. And I thought that his strategy to bring on the defensive guys in the 5-4-1 Obviously it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work against Argentina, 1-0 down, World Cup, World Champions who are trying to, trying to win another one. It's not gonna work, man.

The Messi thing has been one of the magical storylines of this entire tournament. And watching him out there, you're just watching this supercomputer that can't get knocked over. And I, I felt like at some point in this match he was like, I'm not gonna score. So what I'm gonna do is have either the assist or the hockey assist for what's gonna ha— like, he knew that they were dedicated to the idea, this guy is not gonna beat us. And he was like, I'm still gonna beat you. It's just not gonna be with a goal.

Chris, this is just the game intelligence for the greatest player. For me, I'm probably, you know, he's, he looks like he's getting to 2 World Cups. He could have 2 World Cups on the spin, probably in respect of achievement. That will go down as the greatest achievement by any player. For him to have 2 out of all the so-called GOATs. But for him to be so magnanimous in the way he plays with this team— and you could see, you could see it, Chris. Even if someone fouls him and they stand around him too long, people just come from everywhere from the Argentinian team. Don't you dare stand next to him like that. Don't you dare disrespect him. The protection he's got. But the respect he has for that team as well, where he can say, right, I am going to step out. I'm not gonna go involved, get involved in there. I'm gonna step out to this right-hand side. They'll continually get the ball to Messi. And this is where we made a massive mistake. We should have seen it. It's game intelligence from his point of view. I'm gonna stay out here. And if someone comes with me, okay, then I might have to take them on.

But if they don't, then I'll just keep crossing into that area. And let's face it. You're talking about Messi at 39, my friend. Still getting the ball, especially for the winning goal. Getting on the outside of our players at 39, crossing with his weaker foot, pinpoint, Lautaro Martinez scores. You know, just somebody that knows, is great enough to know that I can cause my problems out here and is magnanimous enough to give somebody else the credit in respects of winning the game for them. So, you know what I mean? I just, I'm disappointed with the manner in which we lost.

Yeah.

You know, I'm not saying that we had the most difficult run to the semi-final. We didn't. But I think that when you look at our history and we get to these latter stages, I think the World Cup in Qatar when we lost to France, Harry missed that penalty and we lost. We had a— we played a much better game than this. I didn't mind going out like that because we went for it. He missed the penalty. France went through and they beat us. But for us to go out like we did today, Hanging on was a hard one to take.

Yeah. I mean, so Tuchel after the game, pretty characteristic for him. He's, he's pretty defensive. Uh, he's proud of the guys, but said this was not, it's not a structure problem. It was not a structure problem. We played maybe our best game. No regrets. Obviously he's seeing things from a different angle and from a different perspective. And only he can answer why Saka wasn't out there, and only he can answer why Eze wasn't out there.

And Chris.

Yeah, go ahead. I mean—

Chris, sorry to interrupt you. Sorry, no, keep going, Chris.

I'll ask.

No, no, I mean, look—

No, you know what, Chris? When you listen to that, when you watch the game, and again, it's like a— it's something that's happened with us before. You know, the way we kind of go into our shell when we're winning, when we should be actually going to try and beat Argentina. And for him to say— He's got no regrets. He was happy the way they played. It weren't a structure problem. It was a structure problem, if you ask me, because we couldn't get out. So if the structure was to bring on the big guys and just defend and then kick it out and let them come back in, if that was the structural game he was playing, then it still didn't work. But if the structure was to get on the ball and play out with nobody up front, I don't know. That don't make sense. You know what I mean? It doesn't make sense that that worked because there's not an England fan that's out there, Chris, that can say they were comfortable with the way we played once we scored. Not one. You won't find one. You know what I mean? What we trying to do?

We're gonna try and do a Mexico City with 10 men, which was an unbelievable feat, but we're talking about Mexico.

Yeah.

With all due respect, it's not Argentina, the world champions. And we were able to keep them off us. But at the same time, we're talking about Argentina and the semi-final of the World Cup. We're 5 minutes away. I know there's the extra time, you know, but we're like 5 minutes away from 90 minutes and then the extra time on top from getting to a World Cup final. And we were hanging on for dear life from the time we scored until the time they scored. And then once they scored, like Roy said it, Gary said it, because Gary Neville's been in games with England where he said, this is what happens with us. When I played, when he managed, we dropped back. We dropped back. And Tuchel's meant to be the manager that's brave. We saw him, like I said at the start of this, he's made a brave decision by leaving some very, very talented players back home that may have been able to get on the ball and help us out. He had players on the bench with pace. He had a striker up front in Ivan Toney that could have been up top, you know, to occupy a Romero and Otamendi at the end there.

Give them that physical challenge, get the ball up there, maybe we could get some fouls, get the pace of Marcus Rashford up there to maybe get the balls that could— the second balls, then we could play further up in the pitch. So it's very difficult to digest him saying that it wasn't a structural problem and he has no regrets, because if that's the case, then I don't know what we're looking forward to, because if I'm gonna be totally honest, Chris, if you look at, like I mentioned, the France in 2022, and if you look back at that game, how I went out, I was happy. And you look at this one, we've regressed. We've regressed a bit.

You know, it's interesting. We're getting to the end of this tournament and we have probably the best team is in the final and the best player is in the final. And there are two different ways to have a winning kind of setup for your, for your football in international football. I think what Argentina does that's so remarkable, and maybe this is just the way it looks on television, I'm sure a lot goes into is the— Scaloni's got these guys where it's like, it's all in service of Messi. He's got his bodyguards, he's got his runners, he's got his guys who have to get onto the end of the ball. Everything is in service of a star player. And then with Spain, as Thierry Henry has said, those guys are playing like that, from 8 years old on, you know, they're coming out of club systems that produce that kind of one-touch football, pass-and-move football. Then you kind of have England that's a little bit in between, right? Like, Tuchel tried to set these guys up. I think many people have noted that there were similarities between the way he set them up and maybe the way Arteta plays Arsenal.

It was about control, it was about athleticism, it was about physicality. Yeah, he left some really, really creative players behind. Adam Wharton, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer.

Gibbs White.

Gibbs White. Did this team almost need to be built more around Jude? You know, I mean, Jude, obviously he and Tuchel have this kind of contentious relationship, but in some ways when I watched it, it was like Jude was a little bit absent in the first part of the game. I mean, tried to come on. I think, I think his head went a little bit at certain times. Like he got into it with Messi.

That's frustration.

A meme forever. But if you're looking for a way forward, is it we have to build something that is entirely about Jude here?

Well, listen, Chris, you're saying it there yourself, and the answer is there for everyone to see. Listen, we see it with Messi. If you've got a player with that capability, and I'm not saying that Jude Bellingham is Messi by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm saying Jude Bellingham has something He's got some star quality. He's got the ability to have moments in games depending on how he is serviced. You know, if we can get the ball wide, because it was Jude that made the run forward for the ball to go forward, for the ball to come across into Morgan, or just to cross it into Andy Gordon, to Scott, it was Jude. Absolutely, we should be looking to say, listen, this is the main guy and we want the main guy up there. We want to get him the ball as often as we can. We want to get the ball into him as often as we can. And we should start— we should start maybe playing through Jude. Playing towards Jude. Everything should be, you know, like how Messi is playing. Everything's service Jude, so as he can then service everybody else. Because we've seen in the games, and we're not saying that they've been unbelievable games and unbelievable opposition, But we've seen in those games that he's capable against anybody of grabbing a game by the scruff of his neck and running with it, just like Messi did today.

Just grabbing the game and just through his raw ability and just greatness, just be able to win a game for your country. And I think that we now have to start thinking about that because you're looking at Harry, I think, you know, I think that Harry would, Again, coming deep, you know what I mean? He's coming into an area where, you know, we're getting balls in the box and we're, you know, he's not in there.

Yeah.

We know that he's capable of dropping deep and then hitting people who are long, but we didn't have the people long. So if that's the case, if you haven't got the wingers for when Harry drops deep, and then Jude may be filling into Harry's space, and if Harry's dropping deep and he hasn't got Gordon, he hasn't got Rashford to hit, which we didn't have in the end, then you may as well take Harry off. Take Harry off. You keep Jude on. You put Ivan Toney up top. You bring Marcus on. And then you start to get the ball into a situation where, OK, let's get it up top there. Let's go and play up there. And then we'll go from there. That would have been a better— for me, a better ploy. Can we get maybe Kobbie Mainoo on? Maybe you could have maybe taken Anderson off, even though he's had a great World Cup for me, behind Jude. You know, maybe you could have taken him off, got Kobbie on, who can play. If we could have got the ball down and played, we could then get the ball out to Jude, get the ball into Tony, get the ball in and around Rashford to sprint.

We could have got out of our half at least. We couldn't get out of our half. So at some stage now, especially with the players that you've mentioned there, with Trent, you know, with Morgan Gibbs-White, with Cole Palmer, with Foden, real ball players, you've got to start thinking about these guys, maybe some of the guys, He can serve his dude.

Yeah.

Obviously Harry's still got a part to play. Don't get me wrong. He'll still have a part to play, but not the part he's playing at the moment. And especially if you're going to take the wingers off and Harry's dropping deep, he hasn't got no one to hit them. Right.

Yeah.

I mean, it's tough because I could see different little clusters of different clubs being, uh, basically like modeled or emulated by the England national team. So like the way that Kane was playing is probably not altogether different than the way he plays at Bayern, where he's able to sort of like trade on and off with all these runners and, and kind of, they, they obviously like the German, German style football is so fast and everybody's, it's like up and down basketball. You know, and then there's a degree to which there was some very Arsenal-esque, like, we're going to keep it, we're going to keep it in control, we're going to outmuscle you. They were going to have, you know, midfielders who are pushing into the box. I don't, I don't know what the answer is, obviously, but I know that 2 years ago Real Madrid looked like one of the best teams in the world with Jude Bellingham playing essentially as like off the striker, but being like the primary goal scorer. And I don't think it's a bad model for them to emulate going forward.

And we've got the players for it, Chris. We've got the players that could probably service that.

When you were watching the beginning of this match, and you see how hot it's getting, how, how early it is, you know, and, and, you know, the ref is getting surrounded. Argentina's obviously trying to find the line and they were walking right up to it and they're saying, what's a yellow? What's a yellow? And there was one point I think the announcer said, I think every Argentinian player has been warned now. What's that like out there when it's one of those games where it's like, we're gonna find out how hot it can get out here.

Well, that's when you're hoping that the referee, who knows, because we all know what kind of game Argentina would have wanted. They would have tried to intimidate right from the start. You know, people are talking about this is one of Messi's favorite referees. He uses him in the MLS and he's wins. I don't know. But the thing is, is that you know that they're going to do— you saw what they'd done to Jude first, the first opportunity. You know, you saw what they'd done to Anderson. He saw everything that they were doing. I think Simeone was only playing simply to try and rile somebody up, you know, because I couldn't understand why Simeone was playing. Technically, I didn't think he was good enough to be playing in this team the way this team were playing. And I think we saw that in the first half and why he got taken off in the end.

As Pickford was targeting him with long kicks. They were just running right at Simeone.

Yeah, absolutely. But at the same time, you know, again, They do that probably to test you. Like you're saying there, Chris, and you're right, they're seeing how far can we go. Because if we could keep doing this, and I still haven't been booked yet, still haven't been booked yet, then, you know what I mean, they're gonna upset people. I think that kind of like, kind of put, kind of got Jude off his game for a bit. You know, kind of disappeared in the game for a little bit. And I think that you could see people talking to him, people in his face and that, and he was answering, you know what I mean? And we weren't getting the ball to him as often as we could. And anytime he did get the ball, the ball. He made sure— you watched them, there's 2 or 3 of them coming to try and tackle him and tackle him really hard. So, you know, it was always going to be a tough game like that from Argentina's point of view. And they played well, they played brilliantly. But what I will give them, the credit I will give them, and it's a team and a country that I've got a lot of love for, but at the same time, they are excellent footballers and they know their job.

Their job is to make sure that we do everything to get Messi the ball and surround and protect him in every way we can. That's what you've seen with this Argentina side, because after a while they realized, we actually don't need to wind these lot up, man. I think that, you know what I mean, they're not creating enough. I think we had like 7 touches in the box in the game or something like that. It was crazy. I think Argentina had 27, 28 or something. So after a while, Argentina didn't need their shit house, whatever it was. They didn't need to do it. They just needed to play. And once they went a goal down, we started to see what the world champions are about.

Yeah. Maybe that's more of an indictment than anything, is that they were like, oh, we don't even need to mess with your—

don't need our nastiness.

Yeah.

Didn't need our shit house.

Oh, man. I mean, I guess it's very early, but do you think the same shit house works on Lamine Yamal and Olmo. And can they catch that ball? Can they catch up to those guys?

You know, the thing is, is that I think that Argentina, depending on how the game is flowing and how he's playing, that's just naturally in their DNA for that side of them to come out. I think that because there's obviously the history of England.

Yeah, but they would play that way against Peru. You know what I mean?

Yeah, exactly. It's just the kind of thing that is always going to be very frictionous and, you know, against England. I think that against Spain, Spain are going to have a lot of the ball and are very comfortable with the ball. You know, it's going to be a totally different game. But if there's any opportunity where they can, I think someone like Lamine Yamal will probably get some. Absolutely will get some because they will target whoever your best player is. And try and get you off your game without a shadow of a doubt. And you can watch that. I could say for definite right now that Lamine Yamal will get some form of rough treatment.

Sure.

It just happens. Even though Messi's his idol and Messi's got a lot of respect and love for him as well, he's a danger to Argentina. And they'll make sure that they'll try and— they'll quite try and stump that out.

Was it strange? I wonder if you've ever had this experience before because this is the first time Messi's ever played England. Have you ever found yourself on the side of cheering against Messi before?

No. Yeah. No. It's really strange. It's the same as— it's the same thing what happened with Maradona. I don't remember too many times cheering against him. But today, even seeing Messi, when Messi was getting angry some of the times, it's the first time I was angry with Messi. I was thinking, what are you doing? I got angry with Messi some of the times. Yeah, yeah. I think that what we learned today is how great he is, and he probably is the greatest ever in respects of what he may go on to achieve. You know, I'll always have a soft spot for Maradona simply because I watched him do some amazing things, Chris. But like, in watching Messi for the whole of his career, you know, like I did probably with— like, I watched the most of Maradona's, but watching Messi, and the levels that he's continued to reach at 39, he's still doing it. It's special. It's something special. We're watching a real genius of the game and probably the greatest we'll ever see. I don't think anyone's gonna eclipse what Messi's doing right now, especially if they go on to win this. You know, and I don't know what to say.

You know, unfortunately we couldn't deal with him today. I thought we dealt with him in the first half, but It's going to take a lot to try and curtail someone like Messi when you've got the, um, the backup that he's got in Argentina because they're all, they're all excellent players.

Um, how has this tournament been for you? You've been in New York for, for the entirety of it pretty much. You've been broadcasting and podcasting out there, and I don't know if you got into many matches at East Rutherford or has it been mostly studio stuff for you?

No, no, no. I haven't got into— I went to a couple of the warm-up games at the start of the tournament. I went to France and Iraq. But that was— it rained out for a couple of hours, and I had to leave. But I've been to a couple of Yankees games. OK. I went to see— yeah, I went to see the New York Liberty basketball, the women, WNBA. I've been having a good time doing that kind of stuff, really. But I didn't get to see any— I didn't get to see any football matches. I was meant to go to the World Cup final. If England got there, it would have been the final that we would have went to because ITV were just doing it from the studio that we've got here in Brooklyn. And if England got to the final, then we would have went to the stadium. But it's been brilliant, man. Brooklyn's been great. I mean, I've had a great time around here.

It's been like— this tournament definitely has some black eyes. There has been some— some real shames of, of whether it's refereeing, whether it's everything that has happened with the Iran team, or whether it's, you know, like, but as a sporting event and as a moment for people to kind of come together and enjoy sports together, it's been pretty heartwarming. You know, like I was in Philadelphia over the weekend and my friends have a bar there and they were like, It's unbelievable, man. Like, we would just, on a random Wednesday night, have 50 Brazilians take over the bar. Honestly.

Yeah. Only football does that, Chris. Chris, you know, football and the World Cup. This is why when people are talking about, oh, they need to bring the World Cup every 2 years or every 3 years, no. It's such a celebration of football around the world. And obviously, everything that was happening at the start with America, the visas, the tickets, the money, everything was going on, you know, all the negativity and the discourse that was going on around it. You know that once the game starts, once the games start, it's gonna be unbelievable. Once the fans come, once the fans start to mix. Obviously, once we get down to the nitty-gritty, like with semifinals, it gets really deep in respects of like the fans and the rivalry becomes really intense. But in the main, you know what I mean? It's just brilliant being in and around Brooklyn with all the fans, 'cause we're right close to the Adidas fan park right there and everybody's coming there. And it's just been— It's just been a joy. Yeah. Because everybody's just celebrating football and everybody's had their moment. I think that obviously Cape Verde, what Cape Verde done, you know, people talking about the expansion and, oh, it's diluted it, diluted it.

No. What Cape Verde showed in their little time in the limelight was you can have a go at the world's best and you can nearly beat them if you're given the chance. And that is all the World Cup can give you that. The World Cup gave us that because I think that if we're going to talk about the beautiful moments in the World Cup on the football pitch, then it would be probably Cape Verde's time in this World Cup, which was magnificent and a joy. And it was a credit. They were a credit to the game and this World Cup.

Yeah. You could really tell when that match ended the way the Argentinian players reacted to the Cape Verde players, which was almost just like 'Whoa, thank you.' Yeah.

You know, like—

Yeah. 'What do you like done?' Yeah. You know what I'd love, Chris? Can I just say something? No, no, just quickly. In respect to— I wish that we could have played with the same bravery that Kate Verdi played with. If I'm gonna be totally honest as an England fan. Because they pushed the World Cup champions to their limit. It needed everything. It needed all of Messi. Even though, yeah, Messi came to the game, came to the fore today as well. But against Cape Verde, they were breaking and still trying to score. Again, we could take something from them. You have to be brave. You have to be braver. And they were brave. And that's, again, World Cup gave them that opportunity. And I love that.

And there's plenty of matches that happened over the course of the knockouts where teams tried to play defensive shells and play for extra time or play for pens or what have you. But we're going to remember Cape Verde. And if that's what it's about, I was watching that on my phone. My wife was like, is this important? And I was like, it would be the greatest upset in the history of sports.

Because it was easily because Cape Verde going to beat the world champions after drawing with Spain. Again, playing against Spain and giving Spain, the kind of game where you're thinking, oh my gosh, they're holding Spain out. You saw what Spain done to France, who are the favorites. They held them out, and then they nearly beat the world champions. We done that game, and it was easily the best game of the World Cup.

Yeah, I was going to ask you if you have a memory you think you're going to take, and if it's Cape Verde, or do you think it's going to be Azteca, or what your favorite moment from this would be. But it sounds like it's Cape Verde.

No, no, no. Obviously, because England— England done it in the end and they beat them with the 10 men. It was a real, like, tin hats kind of like performance from us, you know, dig out, get the boots on and dig in. But Cape Verde's game against Argentina for me is the best game in this World Cup for me so far.

All right, man, I'm going to let you go. I just want to get your pick for Sunday.

You know something, I'm probably going to go with Argentina. Simply because I just feel that they just can't be beat.

Sometimes you have to throw your hands up.

If you're 3-0 up. Yeah. Honestly, they just look like they can't be beat. They're never beaten. And if there is gonna be a team that can do it because they can hold onto the ball and maybe create something, then it might be Spain. But I can't look further than Argentina, Chris.

Ian, thank you so much for giving me your time tonight, man. No worries, man. I appreciate it. Great seeing you. Hope to see you again soon over in England. Enjoy some time off after this World Cup.

Thank you very much, Chris. Thanks. Thanks for having me on, man. I love you.

All right, brother.

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All right. Anthony DeBundo is here. Ringer Gambling Show. Very often the Ringer's Philly special. Just watched, uh, England versus Argentina. I obviously just talked to Ian about that, but Anthony and I are going to talk a little bit. About the World Cup final. Anthony, I want to let you get your takes off though about, about that England match, which felt like England thought the match was going to last 70 minutes and not 90 minutes and paid for it. What did you think, man?

I mean, England were, were doing what they wanted to do in the first hour. They were winning a lot of the duels. They were controlling parts of the game. It descended into chaos for a good amount of it. Sure. But once you go up one goal, England in the first match of this tournament had a situation where they took a 3-2 lead and Tuchel said, we are not going to bunker. We are not going to go out playing the old way of England. We're going to go out playing our way. And then he fell right back into it.

I thought that when he brought on Rashford and Toney at the end, it was such an interesting, you know, like last ditch gambit to, to win the match. But showed the kind of attacking creativity and, you know, okay, let's try a different option up front with Kane and Tony and use a battering ram kind of. And it was sort of absent from earlier in the match. I think they were so excited to get that goal. It was such a physical game out there that they just, they just slammed on the brakes. And, and like I've said to Ian, it was just like, it felt like he tried to recapture the Azteca magic, but That's not Mexico out there, man. That's the reigning world champions and Messi with Leo Messi.

Yeah.

And if you're gonna, if you're gonna mob Messi, he's not gonna look to score. He's gonna look to find the open man or the man who can get it to the open man. And they had so many chances in that second half. Anthony, what did you think of Spain and France? Because I, on one hand, wanna do a little bit of back, a little bit of back patting because I picked Spain to win the tournament, but I was like, not like that. I didn't, I didn't think that they were gonna decisively walk over the tournament favorites in France, the team that everybody had assumed was like a cut above the competition. And Spain made them, made them look pretty pedestrian and pretty ordinary and ended Deschamps' reign in France. Where, where are you at with this Spain team? Is this a, Is this actually been the favorites all along for you, or what do you, what do you think about what you're seeing?

So the one thing I'll say specifically about this game is that I thought an underdiscussed topic going in was just how much France had to play in extreme heat the entire tournament. They played all their games outdoors, almost all of them in the Northeast, and the last 3 were New Jersey, Philly, Boston, all 90+ degree days. Spain, meanwhile, got to enjoy the air conditioning and indoors. Their, their hottest game was in Los Angeles, so they didn't have to do all of the extreme heat. And I do think that definitely made France look a little leggier. But ultimately it comes down to the same thing that Spain's been doing to beat France the last 3 years. It's like when teams keep the ball and are daring to possess the ball against France, Deschamps has never ever coordinated a press. Never ever coordinated a counter-press. The sum of the talent has never actually lived up to what they actually are when you watch them play. Like, this team is way more talented than Spain if you go down the list. But I think it's kind of a mark on Deschamps because he won the World Cup in 2018 and then said, okay, this is how we do it, we're going to change basically nothing in how our strategy is.

And the last 4 international tournaments, you could make the case France was the most talented at all 4 of them, and they didn't win any of them, in large part because when they went up against Spain a couple of times or against Argentina in the first, you know, hour of that World Cup final, the team that had better structure, better pressing, better team play kind of just walked them.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what I felt. And look, I went back and forth with a lot of people on this. I always had Spain as my favorite. I never cared that France was running up big scores on vastly inferior teams because of this one matchup, this one thing. That Spain had proven and France hadn't proven they could beat. So I was happy to ride with Spain. I was happy that, you know, our friends at FanDuel made them an underdog, and it was a great day.

You know, it's interesting. I, I think management in this World Cup specifically, but in international football in general, is such a complicated thing. These guys don't get a ton of time. They're under— to work with their players, they're under an incredible amount of scrutiny for every single decision that they make. And in a lot of times, A lot of those cases, context is kind of removed, you know, like even some of Tuchel's decisions today, while strategically I didn't agree with what he did when he did it, you know, he had limited options in terms of guys had injuries, guys maybe were on a yellow card. He loses Kwanzaa after in the Mexico match. He— there's all sorts of mitigating factors for why he had to do what he did. And I don't know what was wrong with Bukayo Saka. We'll find out like in a couple of hours. Like, was he not able to play for for today or what. But when you look at what Deschamps has done over the last few years, I think, you know, Jonathan Wilson wrote about this in The Guardian. Everybody has always regarded him as somebody who's holding France back.

And in this Spain match, you know, Mbappé comes out afterwards and is like, we just, we got it wrong. Like, he put 2 guys in center midfield instead of 3, and we were outnumbered. He played Tchouaméni instead of Kone, or, you know, he could have played Kone and Tchouaméni and Rabiot. I mean, Whatever the, the sort of hindsight that you want to apply to this, Deschamps just kind of got taken out by De La Fuente. And I think you could probably, you know, I, I don't think Scaloni has like a system that you can really perceive, but he certainly has like that Argentina team playing in a very coordinated fashion and among, they share a spirit, you know? And so there's this ineffable thing with, with international management. It's not like Arteta with Arsenal or, You know, Guardiola with Manchester City, where you could be like, oh, obviously he's having them do this, and then they do that, and then they do this. It's a lot of it is vibes. A lot of it is, is keeping those guys in a bubble and, and making sure the noise is turned down in the locker room and trying to get everybody rowing in the same direction and all those clichés.

But then you, you wind up coming into these high, high leverage matches and one decision or two decisions can really can really send things the wrong way.

And to the credit, like Spain probably plays the most like a club team, if that— you can make that a compliment because club teams get to drill together. They have patterns. I mean, the second goal that they scored against France was a textbook definition of here's— we're going to pass and we're going to move. We're going to create these triangles. We're going to progress the ball steadily throughout the pitch. We're going to go backwards to go sideways, to go forwards, to go backwards, to go forwards. We're going to play that one big through ball that breaks the lines. We're going to get the second ball, then a little give and go. We're in behind. Pedro Porro scores 2-0, and I was out of my seat like, holy shit, what a goal, right? And it was nice because you didn't want them to win with just the one when the— you know, it was obviously a penalty, but a little bit cheap in the way that Lamine drew it to start the match. So that kind of combination stuff, you rarely saw that from France in this tournament. As much as they were dominating people, as much as they were playing at an elite level, you never saw that.

But also, it's hard to be critical of Deschamps because it has worked to such a large extent. I mean, when they're beating everybody so badly, it's like, who do you drop? Do you take out Doué? Do you take out Dembélé from your team? Do you drop Olisée? I mean, he— all three of those guys, and Barkhala, they've all been great players. Uh, so it's very hard when you don't really have quote-unquote tactics to then invent some on the fly and change it and then play a midfield three. Because they played a midfield three and gotten outplayed, we would've come on and said, oh, you put the handbrake on.

Why did he change it?

Let him cook.

Yeah, it was working so well.

Yeah. I mean, I, I don't think them losing Saliba really hurt.

Hurt.

I think, uh, you know, he is widely regarded as, if not the best, one of the best center backs in the world. And you know, it's funny, it's like the, the, the vibes in a team and in a camp will be so good until the very last second when they When the season or the run ends and then everybody's like, the manager was wrong. Yeah. I want to see, I cannot wait to see the post-match quotes about Tuchel. It was the same thing where Pochettino was the savior of US soccer until he wasn't. And Deschamps was this sort of, um, you know, wizard of French football and, and finally had learned from his mistakes until he hadn't.

Right. And with Tuchel, at least we could see it unfolding in real time, and you're like, this is not gonna work. Like, the one issue Argentina's had in this tournament is they're actually not good at winning the ball anymore without, without hacking people and, and committing murder ball. If you just give them the ball, they're pretty good. Like, Lionel Messi went out to the right wing and he was just standing all alone out there. And they even made a point— Stu Holden made the point on the broadcast where he's like, you know, Messi's not really involved, he's waiting for his moment. And he's just jogging in and jogging in. He gets the ball, draws 2 defenders, plays one simple pass, 1-1. And you're like, wait a minute, why are we just letting them have the ball? We should at least make them fight to have the ball. And whereas with, you know, France, it's like, we're— we can't get the ball off Spain. That's a big problem.

Yeah.

And it feels like with France, they never had that answer. With England, it feels like they at least knew what the answer was and it was kind of working, and then they stopped doing it. In the name of like this defensive strategy when the, the whole complaint about England pre-tournament was, are their center backs and defense good enough to hold up? Then they said, we're gonna, we're gonna double down on our defense.

Yeah.

It makes sense when you have 10 men in the Azteca. It doesn't make sense when you have 11 men against Argentina.

Yeah. And it was, it was strange. It was a strange match. Like it must have felt a little bit like Azteca to them cuz that seemed like a almost 70% Argentina. Yeah. That seemed like they were in the Bombonera. In Buenos Aires or something like that. That was wild. Maybe that was just the Fox broadcast because they kept cutting to a wall of Argentina fans and, and there was not a lot of England fans. It would be Mick Jagger and David Beckham, but they were not showing like a huge amount of England, England support. I wonder whether that— I don't really know how, how that's going to translate to East Rutherford and whether like Argentina fans are going to take over New Jersey and, and flood that match. World Cup finals tend to be very, very corporate and very filled out with people who have had that ticket for however long. And I don't know if they can get that kind of support in East Rutherford, but let's talk a little bit about Sunday to the extent that we're able to, since we only just found out who the contestants are gonna be a couple minutes ago.

This is obviously a, like a styles make fights thing where if, if it's a kicking contest and And the refs let Argentina play the way they did today in England up until, you know, somehow both center backs are on yellows and multiple players are, are in massive melees and then like they, they, they escape. If they let them kick Spain, you know, I can see this being tight. And then even if Spain is in control of the match, I am now done doubting Argentina, you know, like Yeah, you know, I, I feel like, call it a refereeing FIFA conspiracy to give Messi another World Cup on a back-to-back year. Call it pixie dust that's been sprinkled on this, on this side. I don't know. But they find a way to win. They find a way to come back. They're never dead. They seem to play their best football in the last 20 minutes of the match in an extra time. It's, it's it seems like it should be Spain in a cakewalk, but I don't— I feel weird saying that.

The thing though is even Spain, when they cakewalk people, is not like, oh wow, 3, 4 goals. Look at Spain. You know, like Spain wants to control the game to a level that they are not taking a ton of risk and like not creating a ton of chances. I mean, Lamine Yamal still only has 1 goal contribution in this tournament. It's kind of a question every time Pedro Porro chips in, Fabián Ruiz chips in against Belgium, Mikel Merino comes off the bench. I mean, they're getting more goals from their midfielders and their defenders than they are from their actual attackers at this tournament. So you're like, okay, Spain can keep the ball and can make life really difficult for Argentina to get the ball off them like England did today for large stretches. But they can definitely do that. I have more faith if Spain is playing with a lead that Spain is not going to do what England did today, and they're going to keep keeping the ball.

Yeah.

And they're not going to drop off, and they're going to continue to try to play their brand. Their brand is so established and so effective that it can work. Argentina is a funny team because they've been so bad with leads too, like in this tournament and overall. They play so bad going back to the last World Cup, the Copa. Like, they are bad with a lead. So I feel like this is always setting up for either Argentina's defending a lead and struggling or Spain is barely holding onto their lead. It's like either way, it's almost guaranteed to be compelling in the last 20 minutes.

Yeah. I mean, with Argentina, like all the, all the sort of observations I would have, and I bet any metrics I could look at, like every match they end, they end, I'm like, all these guys are dead. All these guys seem to be crying and praying and sweating. They're all, they are all in their thirties, you know, like they all have just been running for 110 minutes and yet they show up at the next match and start the clock at zero. And like, they're, they're just incredible. They do not seem to be like carrying the previous match into the new one. Spain has given up 1 goal in the knockouts, 1 goal to Belgium, otherwise have been an absolute fortress. And the fortress is built on possession. Like you said, there was an amazing clip of Thierry Henry on the Fox broadcast after the France match where he broke down that, I think, a passage of play that you were describing earlier. And he's like, these guys have been playing like this since they were 8, and they've been playing together since they were 8. One of the things you always look for when a World Cup comes around, when a Euros comes around, is you're like, what is the footballing identity of this country?

You know, like, what do these guys want to do? How do they want to play? Argentina is going to, is going to be physical. They're going to be aggressive and then they are going to wait for their moment and then they're going to turn it on. And they have the best player of all time to do that with. Spain is going to play largely like I would identify it with Barcelona style possession football, pass and move, one-touch stuff. And it really is like, I've had like all of these semifinals and now this finals. I'm like, you could tell me so many different variations. I'm going to go Spain because It's been Spain for me since before the tournament, but it's gonna be a fascinating match if they pull out a yellow because Paredes bricks a guy in the first minute, then, you know, we're gonna know what's happening.

It'll, it'll be, it'll be Lamine Yamal in some way, shape, or form. Like he's getting hacked down. Yes. Within the first 10 minutes of the game.

Yeah. Tagliafico is just gonna like absolutely clothesline him. Um, but yeah, I just, I think you're, I think it has to be Spain. In my head, but in my, in my experience over these last 2 weeks, it's just like, I just— you cannot kill Argentina.

Well, there's a little 2024 Chiefsian vibes to what the Argentines are doing. It's like late wins, close comebacks, one-score victories kind of thing, like the whole bit. And, and they keep pulling it off. They keep pulling it off. You're like, they can't keep getting away with this. Yeah. And then sometimes Sometimes you get like an Eagles, you know, shout out Eagles, Eagles victory. But sometimes, you know, you get a 49ers have a third down and 3 to win the Super Bowl, they don't convert, and now the Chiefs somehow win the game. And you're like, well, they did it again. So I will not count out Argentina, certainly. However, I, I do think Spain should, is, and will be the favorite going into Sunday. We still haven't seen, you know, like the best of La Menina Mal yet. I keep saying this every game and then we don't see the best of Lamine Yamal and then it doesn't matter. But Argentina's wide defenders looked really bad today. I thought they got lucky a little bit, uh, in a couple of different sequences where they got away with it.

It seemed like they had a note where it was like Pickford was like going long to Spence and guys going down that right wing and trying to get into one-on-ones with the fullbacks and draw fouls and get—

Gordon.

Throw-ins. Yeah. And it was just, it was obviously a point of emphasis for them and it was working for a little while, but then the game got too chaotic.

Uh, you, you mentioned Barcelona.

Yeah.

And I think that's, that's actually a good point. Like, you know, so Jamal, Olmo, Kubarsi, so many of the top players at Spain also play club together. Pedri hasn't been starting, but like, he's in the mix. They all play club together. And with the, with like the identity, De La Fuente kind of came out of nowhere when they hired him. It was like, who's this guy? And it's like, oh, he's actually been the Spanish U19, U21, and U23 managing these guys for a while.

And they've won their entire careers. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, at the same international level.

So the symbiotic nature of it all is very simple. Yes. In a way where you don't get a lot of time to train together, but these guys actually kind of do cuz they play the same style, the same brand, the same coach. For a lot of the youth guys that have come up through the team, they, the semifinals felt like the right 4 teams.

And if you look at it in a certain way, the final feels like the right last 2 teams. Because we've got the reigning world champions who have also, I believe, won back-to-back Copa Americas, right?

Yep.

And then you've got the reigning European champions and I believe holders of the Nations League, Spain.

They lost to Portugal, but oh, right.

Yeah.

But yeah, these two teams actually did play because they have a tournament. They have a game every year. I don't think anybody ever watches it, but the finalísima or whatever it is, where the winner of the Euros plays the winner of the Copa. I think Argentina won. But I also don't think anybody watched the game.

So, uh, did that take place in, we're not gonna count that Dubai or something like that, or probably. Okay.

Yeah, probably.

Um, all right. Well, you and I are both edging Spain. Um, I think we're gonna be on Bill's show on Sunday after the World Cup final. Uh, I think Bill's interest might be diminished now that, that, uh, England's not in it, but I'm sure like seeing Messi go for a at this age go for a back-to-back World Cup, his second World Cup, would be— it would be pretty— it's must-see TV.

And I think like the world's one of the biggest accomplishments in sports history if it— they pull it off.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I was trying to like think of comps for this, and is it like— I mean, for Messi it was like 2019 Masters or something for, for Tiger. But it's like, that's— it almost feels like that's so much bigger than that.

Yes. Way bigger. Yeah. You've seen the photo, right?

Yeah.

Of Messi. I've seen LeMéniyamal as a baby. It's insane.

It's going to be like the photo. And I've said this, that like this could go down if you, if LeMéniyamal has the career that we think he's going to have, it could go down as like the hardest and craziest sports photo in history, like off the field.

It's so hard to believe it's not AI, but it's not.

I thought it was AI for like a month.. And then somebody was like, brought it up to me and said, oh, this is a real photo. I was like, no, it's AI. They're like, no, no, no, it's a real photo. And I like searched it, read like 4 articles and was like, okay, actually this is a real photo. This was last a couple years ago. And I'm like, holy, you know, cuz they obviously both won the Euro and the Copa on the same day 2 years ago. And this was Lamine Yamal's big breakout. He had just turned 17. Now he's, you know, at the old age of 19, gonna try to lead Spain to a World Cup alongside his teammate Kvaratskhelia, who's also 19. Yeah, if they pull this off, you know, if, if Jamal, after getting baptized by Messi, has like a big game in the World Cup final and then they, they like topple the champions— no matter what happens, it's an incredible, incredible story.

We'll be here on Sunday with Bill to break it all down. Debundo, thanks so much for joining me, man.

Thanks for having me, and sorry again, CR.

That's okay.

Football's coming home in a couple years.

Yeah, it's coming home in like a couple weeks when we start the Premier League.

Okay.

Sean Fennessy is here. The Big Picture Podcast, the Projections newsletter, my close personal friend and a guy who has seen The Odyssey twice.

I have.

I've seen The Odyssey once. This is coming out probably Thursday night. People will start being able to see The Odyssey en masse this evening, I guess, if they haven't, uh, already made plans. They probably should because it sounds like this is going to be a very popular film that's hard to get into if you want to see it in the IMAX 70mm. Nolan wants you to see it in.

That we both saw it in.

Yes. And, uh, I thought maybe we could, you know, we're going to talk a little bit around the movie because I think part of the, part of the joy of it and the thrill of it is, is going in and not knowing exactly what's going to happen next, even if you're broadly familiar with the Odyssey, which I know most of Bill's listeners are like classics.

Yeah. I mean, deeply literate and obviously they've looked at all the translations ahead of time.

As am I. Yeah. Um, but I want people to be like, holy shit. The way we were like, holy shit.

Are you podcasting for different listeners right now? Or are you just doing what you do? Have you given this thought? Cause you just, you mentioned Bill's listeners.

Well, they are Bill's listeners.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I think that, I think that there's a good Venn diagram crossover. I don't get a lot of people who are like, and who's your boss? Like, you know, who do you work for?

Good point.

Uh, but The Odyssey, I wanted to ask you first about the format, actually, since we just made a little bit of a, of a, aside about it, you know, this is something that Chuck brought up on Bill's pod when he went on over the weekend. And I thought it was an interesting conversation to have with you about whether or not moviegoing will increasingly become an eventized, as Chuck's word, sort of a luxury experience. But this idea that to save movies or to keep the theatrical experience propped up, we're going to need to continue to iterate technology and also iterate on the moviegoing experience. IMAX in '70, especially the way we saw it at Universal CityWalk out here in Los Angeles, but I think broadly speaking for a lot of the IMAX experiences, is a very specific kind of like moviegoing experience. Are you a fan of it?

Um, broadly, yes, just because I like the idea of a filmmaker dictating how you see a movie. And so in the case of somebody like Nolan or last year with Paul Thomas Anderson or Brady Corbet with The Brutalist, there were, there've been movies in the last 3 or 4 years. That have been really driven by the filmmaker dictating how you see a movie. It's, is it on film? What format is being used? Is a dead format being revived in some way? I just think it's good for directors and producers to be driving the technology as opposed to the corporation driving the technology, which kind of intersects with like, I think a lot of the discomfort around stuff like AI right now. So I do think that it's cool. I think Nolan is capable of scale in a way that basically no other director alive is, so it's effective. But I did listen to what Chuck had to say, and I thought there was something interesting in that. And Bill has been talking about this for a long time, about like how, how, how much of a premium would you pay to say, get a film earlier than everybody else?

In this case, they were talking about, you know, will there be a limited number of opportunities to see a movie and will it be more like going to a concert? When I sat down to watch this movie the second time, I was sitting between, um, Mallory and her husband Adam and Amanda Dobbins, um, from The Big Picture. And we were talking about the seating in CityWalk. CityWalk has jammed a lot of seats into their IMAX 70 room.

And so it's like going to Barclays or something.

Yeah. It's steep and there's not a lot of legroom. And the fellow sitting in front of me was leaning back a little bit. He was trying to get the full picture of The Odyssey. Wasn't the most comfortable viewing experience. I was very happy to be there. The movie is really special. But I thought to myself, would I pay $50 to sit in a room like this with one-third the number of seats?

Yes.

Because now what you have is you have these really cool IMAX rooms in like Regal and, uh, in AMC theaters where there's a lot fewer seats and much more comfortable chairs and they all recline and they all have your cup holder and it's a bit more like watching at home. I do think this is an underreported component of why movies are back a little bit. And so that theater in particular, which is one of only like 40 in, in the country that you can see the movie in its format.

Yeah.

And is one of the great screens in America, if not the world. And it is Christopher Nolan's home court. This is his favorite movie theater to go see movies. It's still not the best place to sit and watch a movie.

It's one of those funny things. It's like filmmakers have their, like their personal favorites. They have their sentimental favorites. And it's like in the same way that Tarantino has a movie theater here, uh, the New Beverly, which was, used to be a gum on the floor kind of grindhouse exploitation type movie theater and still has that architecture. It's, it's narrow. The bathrooms are small. It's an amazing movie theater, but people fall in love with the places that are special to them. Obviously CityWalk technologically is on another level. And when you're in it, you're immersed in it. I've seen, I saw obviously The Odyssey and I saw One Battle there. And both times it took me a little while to get like oriented, you know, and I think that both first acts of these movies, I was like struggling maybe to keep up, to hear, to sort of orient myself. And there's a lot of it depends on where you sit. Like there is like a huge chunk of IMAX seats that are just like, get ready to be like nauseous basically. 'Cause you are looking up at Teyonah Taylor or Matt Damon or whoever you're looking at.

And it's gonna be hard to get the frame in inside of your like eyeline.

And that's pretty different, I think, from just going to your regular run-of-the-mill movie theater where most people don't want to sit in the front row, but you can get away with it. Sure. You can understand the movie. I think in a—

that's how I saw Malcolm X. Tough beat.

Did you saw Malcolm X in the first row?

Yeah, I was the last, I was the last row.

Wow.

Were you late because it wasn't as big of a deal to you?

Okay.

That's right.

Um, just checking.

I was at the St. Patrick's Day parade in Philly. No, I just got, I got in there and then the whole time I was like looking up.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's not, it's not an ideal way to watch a movie. It's, you'll find, I think in, in cities around the country, if you're trying to get tickets to go see the movie, there are still usually tickets in the first 3 rows in these theaters because They're not super comfortable. I also watched one battle in the third row and it was, it was a tough sit from that vantage point. I would try to get a good seat and that just seems like a strange thing to have to worry about to, you know, because we have this pre-reserved seating, we have this sense of like everybody has their favorite place to sit and the movie's being eventized in a way where seeing it in the right format in the right room matters so much, or at least is being marketed to you as mattering so much. That it's like, am I missing out? Should I not go if I can't get the kind of seat I want?

That's the thing I was kind of curious about is, you know, will people be like, well, I'll go see The Odyssey in mid-August when all of this has died down and I can go see it in, in IMAX 70.

I think most people who are not movie freaks are already living that way. You know, they're just like, I have a very busy life and I'm taking care of my kids or I'm busy at work and I go to 3 movies a year. This, if you're a 3 movie a year person, this is probably one of the movies.

For sure.

I had a conversation last night with my dad who doesn't go to the movies very often. And he was like, The Odyssey, tell me everything. How was it? And again, there's usually about one movie a year that we have that conversation.

What was it last year?

Last year it was, um, uh, Bologna. I don't know what it was last year.

John the End of Bologna. We gotta talk about it.

It was probably One Battle, but because he knows how much I care about PK. Um, and it was Leo and, you know, it felt like more of an event, but that movie, you know, is not nearly as big as The Odyssey. The Odyssey is cultural waterfall. This very rarely happens where something comes in and it's just like, this is the only thing that's happening right now. I think for the next 7 days, this is the only thing in pop culture that feels like it's going to be happening.

Yeah.

That's the thing is like today's pod is, is Odyssey and World Cup because it feels like that's the two things. And it was like, you know, I, there's Summer League, there's like little things peppering like the, you know, ether, but like, this is, these are two really big monocultural events that are happening. And it does feel like this is one that just has broken through to like, to the people who watch 1, 2, 3 movies in theaters a year. I also think that for those people, perhaps they're like, not really part of the online discourse about like, what is the exact right format I should be going to see The Odyssey in? And are happy to go see it on like a good screen at their AMC or whatever. And I think honestly, the movie will play that way. I mean, you and I have been. Watching movies for all of our lives, and we've watched them on bad TVs, phones, various, like, VHSs that weren't good. You know, like, I was rewatching Barry Lyndon recently, and I was, you know, it was on a, on a really good disc. And so I was like, damn, this is the first time I've seen this movie.

Yeah.

Because I've probably watched, like, crappy VHS or crappy DVD masters of it. Um, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Nolan. Um, You have like a kind of mixed relationship with him in that I think you were a little bit skeptical of him earlier and now have kind of like come to the, if not the conclusion that he is like, in fact, obviously very talented filmmaker, but is also now kind of the biggest game in town for sure.

No question.

Would you, do you think it's fair to say that he's the definitive filmmaker of this century?

Yes. And I don't even think it's controversial anymore.

I don't think it's controversial either. I was looking for a more exciting way of describing it beyond that, but because this is just like, he is, uh, he ushers in and in some ways legitimizes superhero movies in '08 with Batman Begins. Then he makes the Dark Knight trilogy, prints money. Everybody is sort of on board in it also, along with, I think, Iron Man, but I think more, I would say the Dark Knight trilogy introduces this idea that, you know, you can be like a very serious actor who comes to these things and and between Bale and Ledger and Hardy and everybody who participated in that, you know, make really good work while still working in this world. He does 3 wildly ambitious original genre films, Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet. He does 2 award-magnet historical epics, and he's shown us a bunch of stuff on screen, a black hole, a city folding in on itself. The sacking of Troy, I guess a spoiler for Odyssey, the evacuation of Dunkirk, assassins moving backwards through time and space, and Bane. That feel like indelible moments in film history?

Would you say Bane's appearance is an indelible moment in film history?

They expect to find one of us in the wreckage, brother, is an indelible moment. It's like Laurence T. Lawrence blowing out the match.

The CR just popped out in the BS Podcast there.

Oh, fucking CR, come on. And, uh, And, you know, our, our buddies over at the Blank Check Podcast like to talk about this idea that a filmmaker at some point in his career, like he's been building up equity with, with Hollywood. He makes a movie, it's successful, and then he has a blank check to do his dream project next. Wildly, The Odyssey kind of is his dream project because Oppenheimer was such a runaway success, maybe against some odds. I wouldn't say all odds. You're going to detonate a nuclear weapon. I think people are going to probably check it out. But this is his blank check movie. Uh, uh, The Odyssey is.

Yeah. And I mean, he's had 5 blank check movies.

Yeah.

He's done this over and over again. Inception was a blank check movie. He made the, the Batman films, I think in part to give himself the equity inside the industry to take on more challenging original ideas and has proven over and over and over again that people want these ideas. His movies don't lose money. He doesn't have a movie that most people consider to be bad.

I think they've actually been like sort of increasingly going up in box office, although the Batman movies kind of go, and then Tenet came out during COVID but I don't know. What do you think it says about our filmgoing moment and our moviemaking moment that he has kind of emerged as this figurehead of, of what remains of Hollywood?

I think he is, it's all related to what you were asking about with formats because He is an event filmmaker. He's a grand stage director, and we're at a time of fractured attentions and a lot of alternatives to movies, and there are fewer tickets sold to movies now than there were 10 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. And so in order to get people interested in going out to the movies, you need to do something special. And it seems like every time he steps up to the plate, his intention is to do something special. I'm, I'm mixed on some of his most beloved movies. And there are some of his movies that are not as popular that I think are among his best, but it's not only worth paying attention to, like he demands deep attention.

Oh my God.

He demands scholarship. Yeah. And I think that his, his super fans find that rewarding and his casual fans are at least willing to have a conversation about what they just watched. And that says a lot. I think that you can't underestimate how willing and quickly we are, how willing we're quickly able to pivot away from what we've just done right now.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like the minute a movie is over, people take out their phones and they're like, oh, who do I have to text? They stop thinking about the movie.

Yes.

And his movies just insist that you just sit there for a minute, think about what you just saw, respect the scale. I really have liked the last few movies and I've been trying to think about why. The, the, that, you know, Dunkirk to some extent, but really Tenet, Oppenheimer, and this film have resonated so deeply with me. And I think it's because he changed editors and Jennifer Lame is his editor now. And with Jennifer Lame, he's changed his filmmaking style. It's not a subtle change. He's using images from all different parts of the timeline of the movie earlier and later in the film. And he's using this kind of recall style. That I think is, I don't know if it's, um, it's not revolutionary. It's something you can find in experimental filmmaking in the 1960s. It's something that you can find in European cinema in the '70s, but it is a very sophisticated idea of filmmaking that he's putting in blockbusters. And I really, really like how he's doing it. And he's doing it again in The Odyssey in a really audacious way. And like, this is something also that great filmmakers do is that like they keep stacking on top of their style.

Over time.

Yes.

So you get more and more out of every movie, and then you think about how they're all connected to each other over time and whether he's improving or not improving. And he is right now in that sweet spot.

So one of the things that I didn't really think about was that Dunkirk is his 10th film. And it's like, since Dunkirk, I think he has sort of moved into this, you know, I know that the introduction of Jennifer Lame happens on, I think on Tenet. On Tenet.

Yeah.

Tenet certainly introduces this cutting style that is essentially I don't even know how to describe it because one of the things that I don't think he gets enough credit for is how unconventional his movies are. Um, even in The Odyssey, one of the things that struck me is how little breathing room there is. Like, there isn't a lot of, like, guy goes over to a window and stares out and says, well, the Spartans may come one day.

He doesn't hold a shot for more than 15 seconds.

And some of that is form and function, right? Because the IMAX camera, the magazine doesn't run that long. So he doesn't get these long takes that maybe, you know, we're accustomed to. And maybe our TV watching brain especially is accustomed to like watching people in interiors and a very conventional kind of like master one-on-one or cut cutting style. And you're right, like, Jennifer Lame and Christopher Nolan are cutting back and forth across like 5 minutes later, 6 years later. And in Tenet, like, scenes seem to be already in media res when we're joining them, you know, like, which is not that different than like how Michael Bay cuts.

Mm-hmm.

But it is given this almost avant-garde polish to the way Nolan does it.

And the material is just much more serious.

Yeah.

You know, it's not like boom, boom, explosion onto the next thing.

Like, I thought you don't think Revenge of the Fallen is serious.

It is to me.

Yeah.

Um, I, and I take it seriously, but, uh, it's just, if you're making Oppenheimer, yeah, you're, and even if you're using a frenetic cutting style, it doesn't change the fact that it's a story about one of the most consequential people of the 20th century. And so using tools that are best understood as like action movie making tools for Homer, right? It, it, it, it, it, this is a new thing. Um, it is, it is an evolution, I think, of filmmaking style in a way that I find really exciting. And then I think it's not that it's being overlooked. I think people have cited that something has changed a little bit in recent years. Um, but for something like The Odyssey, you know, you talk about how it's kind of compressed. Because there's just so much incident in the story.

Sure.

You just kind of have to go from place to place. But what makes it exciting is not just that feeling of like, oh, the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the sirens. These are things that if you know even just a little bit about the Odyssey, you know this stuff is coming in the movie. It's what he puts in between all that stuff. It's all the spackle. It's all the, you know, all the, the binding of the story, which is all the stuff that is unexpected. It's going into the past. It's shifting the perspective of how the story is being told.

Flashes of the future, which is also the past, but it, you know, but it doesn't have the kind of what I think people maybe rejected a little bit about Dunkirk, which is the discombobulation of time and how, like, it was— people maybe felt manipulated, like, by certain elements of the, the way that he plays with the timelines in Dunkirk. Although it's, you know, certainly, like, I think it's pretty legible once you've seen the film to go back and be like, ah, yes, that's him flying over, but it's, you know, that day. Um, I think it really works with The Odyssey. We're sort of obviously, like, obviously staying away from getting too into the weeds with Odyssey, but like, this is almost an inversion of what happens with Oppenheimer. I understood why Oppenheimer was made the way it was because that is essentially with the ex— ex—

ex—

with the exception of the explosion, the test, the Trinity test, is gonna be this like super dry, um, procedural, kind of dense, uh, you know, story about a guy who has an idea, who's running across the globe to try and chase this idea. And then is drafted into service of his, you know, nation to do so. And it almost suits it because you're like, okay, let's prop all this up. Let's prop all this up and make it a legal thriller and make it a military, you know, like TikTok. The Odyssey, you would think, is like, well, this is, this is the story, right? This is the greatest action story ever told. This is the most amazing adventure ever told. This is what all the stories are based on. All you have to do is get out of the way. But he actually is like, no, because of all the context around it, because it's like classical, because it's confusing, because people aren't going to know Spartans versus the Trojans versus the Greeks and everything. They're going to have to like get pushed into this like whitewater rapids of this story. And I think it actually really works in Odyssey, but it is like, you know, you're watching it, you're like, ah, this movie's going to make a billion dollars probably and be the biggest film of the year probably.

And it's kind of weird. It's a weird movie.

It's very weird.

I mean, uh, there, there's other choices that he makes. He, it is an adaptation. I mean, there are things that are left out. There are things that are changed.

Yeah.

Um, there's a lot of time spent in the, in the story of The Odyssey kind of pointing out what a sort of arrogant figure that, that Odysseus is and, and, and sort of like what a flawed character he is and You know, rereading it and over the last few months, like I've come away feeling like he's kind of the original flawed protagonist and the original Draper. Yeah. Honestly, he is like, he's a, he's a bad TV character. Um, and, but Nolan cast Matt Damon who's kind of fundamentally decent and just one of the easiest people to root for in all of movies. And he's played shitheels. He memorably played a shitheel. In Interstellar, but you're just kind of with Matt Damon. It's part of what makes him a good star is you're rooting for him. And so like even that kind of complicates the character of the movie where it feels like a more traditional adventure hero story, but he's doing all this avant-garde work around it. So you're like, you feel safe even when he's taking chances.

Yeah.

And the same is true of Oppenheimer. Like the first 20 minutes of Oppenheimer, I remember seeing it with you and Andy. And in the first 20 minutes, I was like, oh, this is something different. This— and special. Like, this is very special because he's just dispensing with the most boring part of the movie where you have to, like, show him as a child and show a critical incident that informed why this man became a scientist. Like, he just speed ran the first 25 years of Oppenheimer's life with this dramatic score and this flash cutting style that he was doing. And he was just like, That stuff's boring. I'm going to make it as exciting as I can, and then we're going to go to the next thing. Yeah. And the same thing is happening in The Odyssey. You know, you do get this kind of extended prologue where you're, you know, back on, um, back in Homer's palace or in, in, in Odysseus's palace in Ithaca. And then after that, it's just like, you're off to the races and we're going through all these crazy incidents. So yeah, it's like, it's a gutsy adaptation. If you don't think about it too hard, it's, it's just an exciting action movie.

We get back to the Tenet thesis of like, just don't think about it, feel it. You can watch his movies and be like, oh, I didn't actually hear much of the dialogue, or like only picked up every other line or something like that, which I think people with extensive live music experience will probably have that experience in The Odyssey, just like they do with every one of his movies. Uh, but you can also just sort of marvel at what he's doing. You can just look at the landscapes and you can look at the, the sequences and the set pieces, and you can also just get the feeling from, like, when you see Bernthal or when you see Lupita Nyong'o, like, you're like, I know what's happening. Like, broadly speaking, I know what's happening.

Who do you think are the, the, his forebears? Because you asked that really provocative question about like, who's the director of the century? So it's like probably the previous 25 years is probably Steven Spielberg, right?

Yeah, I was actually like kind of looking at this because there's the argument that we could have about like who has had the most significant contribution to filmmaking in the 21st century. And, you know, you get into PTA. I, funnily enough, you know, Dunkirk was Nolan's 10th movie. One Battle is PTA's 10th movie. I think PTA has a little bit of a harder time putting his movies together. You know, One Battle obviously had DiCaprio and Warner Brothers behind it, and that was his most expensive film. It, it doesn't seem like he's going to make something even bigger next, but who knows?

I'm not sure.

Uh, Scorsese's had a remarkable 21st century. But I think he almost exists in the same way that Spielberg does to me of this sort of like, you've already been minted, you know, and like, we're just so happy you're, you're grinding these out. But, you know, between Shutter Island, uh, Aviator, Shutter Island, Departed, Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon, that's his 21st century.

And, and, and critically acclaimed almost all the way down the line, but doesn't command audiences the way that Nolan does. I mean, that's really the thing that Nolan does. Maybe you could say Denis Villeneuve is coming up behind him a little bit. That is.

That would be the, the sort of most obvious contender in this, in this arena.

And it's interesting to watch those guys do things that feel more like Cecil B. DeMille or John Ford than like Martin Scorsese or even like Steven Spielberg. You know, Steven Spielberg in his prime was a tremendously personal filmmaker, you know, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That's a deeply personal movie.

Yeah.

I do think that Christopher Nolan sees a lot of himself in the protagonist that he portrays. There's a reading of The Odyssey that it is straight up about Christopher Nolan.

For sure. I think it's a reading of The Odyssey that people are going to see when they get to the end of it that is like, oh, this is about the world right now.

Very much so. 100%. Um, and we can, we can talk about that after people have seen it. But, um, I, I, I'm kind of fascinated by those two directors, Villeneuve as well, deciding to take on a Bond movie of really spending a lot of time thinking about not just how the audience will react, but what will get the audience interested. And I don't think that Scorsese and Spielberg and some of those guys who came to, came to fame in the '70s, you know, Coppola is among that cohort. You know, a lot of that generation is, is, is, is dying off, honestly. But those are the guys who are still making those films. They're thinking about themselves, I think, first.

Yeah, I wonder whether or not that Spielberg era where it's Jurassic Schindler's Saving Private Ryan and AI is probably the sweet spot. Spot of what is something that's going to bring everybody here, but also will give me an opportunity to express myself about my own personal, like, kind of passion points.

And for Spielberg, that's— he's roughly in his early 50s, which is the time that Christopher Nolan is right now.

Yeah, it's that we should do like a larger thing about like how old these guys are, how much juice they have, what they decide to do once they're like, no one's going to take this away from me. So what do I want? But I still want to be relevant.

Yeah, it's weird. Like, I, obviously I've, I've, I've gotten a lot of shit, perhaps rightfully so, for my Inception takes over the years. But one of the things I always felt watching it, I was like, this is a little bit of an immature movie. Like, it's a movie made by, like, a filmmaker who has incredible skill, but, like, maybe hasn't fully, like, baked their stuff. And one of the reasons why I've gotten so interested in what he's doing lately is I feel like he is in total command. Like, he is the, the absolute maestro of movies right now. And the thing that you should— we should probably just say about The Odyssey too is like, I can't remember the last time a movie like this was even attempted. Like, it's 7 countries on multiple continents in multiple climates with hundreds of extras and background actors.

I mean, every single actor is in, and this has just been like, this is the craziest thing I've ever done and will ever do. And, you know, Daemon's done basically a 5-month press tour at this point. You know, this trailer came out late last year.

Mm-hmm.

They have more or less been on the road promoting this on and off since then. And Damon's stories about making this movie and about like Nolan walking up to him with an IMAX camera with, uh, Hoyt van Hoytema and being like, okay, you're going to walk over there and turn and you're going to look. And he's like, I look and the fleet is there. Like he's got 4 boats going across and he's like, there was no signal that that was going to happen. He's just like in control of like. The entire game.

It's pretty remarkable. Um, I, I, I, you, you have to doff your cap to him just demanding that this, this be what the movies are like. That, that is what is really special to me about it is like we're in a time where it's been a very cool movie year and there's been a lot of talk about that on Bill's show, on, on our shows about how, you know, movies have juice this year. I don't know if they're like back, back, back the way that they were in 1997. But they have juice. And the only way that that continues is if you have powerful people demanding this kind of thing. Yeah. Like, you have to say, I want to do the biggest thing you're willing to attempt. And I know that most studios, when I talk to the people who work at studios, they're like, we do want a filmmaker. We want a visionary. We want a person who we can use to sell and market the movie and who also is capable of going to the heavens with anything they try to make.

Yeah, I do think Kubrick is, is basically the closest comparison point we have where it's somebody who is working at the forefront of camera technology and is so obsessed with how the movie is being made and the way at which it's going to be seen. He perhaps, perhaps not even perhaps, he was certainly a more, I think, complicated and intellectually stimulating and probably unknowable filmmaker than Nolan is. But that, that's the comparison point. Like Spielberg had it, has people kind of in his pocket at a couple of points in his career, but almost sometimes like feels like, I feel like we're doing the Book of Basketball pyramid right now. Well, I'm just trying to find, like, I'm trying to like appreciate the moment we're in because I don't think it's going to last forever for a variety of reasons. And, and so this guy going on this run, doing a superhero trilogy and then being like, I'm going to do Like, I'm going to bring original genre movies back. I'm going to do, I'm going to orchestrate massive historical, world historical important moments. And then I'm going to do like the Odyssey. It feels Kubrickian.

Yeah. Well, you know, Kubrick, one of the great sadnesses of his career, and for those of us who love his movies, was he never got to make Napoleon, right? And this is kind of Nolan's Napoleon. It is like the most epic scale story that he could possibly tell given the circumstances in the industry at the time. And that movie falling apart, there's an amazing book that is just entirely about the failed production that features the screenplay and all the storyboards and everything that he prepared to do that. The reason he made Barry Lyndon is because he wanted to make a film of that era in the aftermath of Napoleon falling apart. There are some differences between Kubrick and Nolan though. Like Kubrick to me is much more psychologically probing and daring about what it means to be human. Um, like his representation of violence and sex is way beyond, I think, anything Nolan has ever done.

No, I mean, that was, it was sort of funny. I was rewatching. Segments of Nolan's movies last night, and I— it's, it's remarkable how little blood is in Dunkirk, you know, it's for all the shooting in Tenet, very little viscera. Like, he—

it's why I say Cecil B. DeMille and John Ford, because he's more of a classicist in that way. He's like, he's a very old school thinker and filmmaker. And, you know, he has his uniform whenever you see him. He's always sipping tea. He has like— he has personified himself in a very smart way.

He casts actors who kind of dress like him and look like him.

He does. And I'm, you know, you could also say Hitchcock is probably a clear kind of inspiration in terms of like, what does it mean to be a Christopher Nolan movie? Like a Stanley Kubrick movie means a lot of different kinds of things. One of the great things when you watch his, um, like highlight reels of his movies is like they all look different. All the protagonists are kind of different. There's a kind of an intensity and a mania, but they all are different in a specific way. They're all in different milieus. Um, Nolan, Nolan is working for the masses, like, and not in a bad way. Um, Kubrick was successful commercially. But not like Nolan. I mean, Nolan engineered Oppenheimer to a billion dollars. That's the craziest fucking thing that's happened in the movies in years.

I'm trying to think of, like, you know, Nolan is obviously a huge fan of Michael Mann. Dark Knight is hugely influenced by Heat. And Mann has this period where he's doing Last of the Mohicans is a very successful romantic epic, uh, set in colonial times. Um, then you have You know, Heat, you have, uh, the procedural courtroom and journalist thriller of Insider. You have this sort of like boundary pushing technologically or camera, you know, cinematography-wise Collateral. And you have Ali all kind of in this mix. But those films were not making, those were not like the central movies of the year that they were released.

Mm-hmm.

You know, largely, you know, they were very well regarded and, and had obvious, uh, converts, like me among them, but like, they're not like, stop everything else, we have to talk about The Odyssey for a month.

I feel like also, um, movie culture has mostly been behind man, where, you know, Heat was a popular movie upon its release, but it was not identified as what would become one of the most influential films of the 1990s. It just, it just was not. And I think the good works that you and Bill Simmons have been doing have contributed to that. But, um, there's just been a slow and steady movement toward it's overwhelming power. This is something that like Chuck joked about with Bill on Sunday as well. The idea of it being overrated now after being underrated for so many years. I don't think there's no like waiting to talk about Nolan's influence. You know, there's no like, we don't have to wait around to think about the depth and reach of Interstellar. Like Interstellar was a massive hit upon release. People who were 11 years old who saw it when it came out, it became one of their most favorite and influential movies.

Still like the most. Significant, like, thing I noticed about modern movie culture is that, like, it's not all about us. No. And going— when we, we had a chance to go to this movie theater in London, the Prince Charles, where we got to host the screening of, of, uh, Phantom Thread. But I believe, like, after Phantom Thread, they were doing a midnight screening of Interstellar. This is a couple years ago, but I think this is still the case. And the line was down the block and it was all young people. And part of it was like, we're going to bring like drinks in and like We're going to have like a great night watching Interstellar, take a gummy and like whatever. But I think that has become like what we think of Jurassic Park.

I think, yeah, I think it's Jurassic Park. I think it's E.T. I think it's those movies that when we were kids that—

like Tate Frazier thinks Interstellar is like one of the best movies ever made. And he's, you know, he's right.

Like, for Tate, for him, that's what all that matters. You know what I mean? Like, and that, that, that's something that like, I guess Kubrick did have that, you know, I guess he did have, well, I saw Clockwork Orange and it changed my taste forever. And I thought about movies differently forever. Um, but it's interesting to have now 3 generations of Nolan fans. I mean, that's really what we're, we're at.

I wonder if we'll ever start to see, or if we've already started to see and I just haven't picked up on it, like, people making movies in his style because they're very hard to imitate. They're very difficult to finance if you're not him. So it's, it's, I wonder when there will be something that we'll see. I suppose you could try to mimic the Jennifer Lane Nolan cutting style.

I wouldn't try it.

I would also imagine you would get noted to death by the studio if you're like, hey, it's my second movie, but I've decided to cut it the way Christopher Nolan cut Oppenheimer.

It could, I mean, it can be done. It's just, it needs to be the right material and the right skill set. Um, Jennifer Lame, you know, she's an Oscar winner because of her work on a Nolan film. Hoyte van Hoytema is an Oscar winner because of his work on a Nolan film. Ludwig Göransson, we haven't mentioned him. He's now the composer of the last few films that he's made. His work on The Odyssey is incredible. And those people are best in class and they're all working with the director who's at the absolute forefront of the industry and the form. So you could try to imitate it, I guess. It's not, you're not going to have $250 million. You're not going to have his vision and you're not going to have all these people who know how to execute.

Yeah.

So it's challenging. I think it's really more like feel, like what feeling does a Kubrick movie give you or What feeling does a Kubrick movie or a Nolan movie give you? And then what do you do with that? And how does that inform and, and influence people 20 years from now?

I think that the differences is that you can still watch Kubrick movies and it makes you question things about existence. And when you watch Nolan movies, I think you think about the Nolan movie you just watched.

Yeah.

I, like, I feel like it's a little bit, I, it, this is no knock against Nolan, but like, I was watching, we, we did an event where we presented Tenet up in Toronto last week. And, um, so I watched Tenet, like, in pieces a few times, and I started to just realize, like, all I was thinking about was Tenet and trying to solve Tenet and trying to figure out what he meant to do here with Tenet and not time. That's kind of weird. What if we could go backwards? What would we do? And what if the past was trying to kill us? And what does that mean? Uh, it was a very, like, when you take your head out of the, like, the visor, you're like, oh, okay. Like, there's a whole world around here.

I agree with you. I do think that The Odyssey is Is a movie that does this really well. I think it's the one of it's one of his only movies that I immediately was like, well, what is this really about? Um, and not how does it fit together because I already knew the story. And so that's one of the advantages of this movie is because you are likely to know the story or at least parts of the story. And because the conclusion, which is thrilling, is so classical.

Mm-hmm.

You don't have to worry about like how it all fits together or whether it makes sense or not. You have to think about why he wanted to make it and what it means to him and then maybe even furthermore what it means to the world right now. And there is a lot in there.

For sure. And I think Oppenheimer had that, and I think Dunkirk was more of like a love letter to a dream of collective responsibility. And I, I think honestly has probably been, that is echoed in The Odyssey, the idea of like what we have and what we could lose and all these things.

The recurring motif in conversation during The Odyssey is it's civilization.

Yeah.

How do we get back to civilization? How do we rebuild? How do we become human to each other again? Yeah.

And what do you do if you break the golden rule?

Kind of. Exactly.

Um, I wanted to ask you a little bit about, you know, we, we grew up reading William Goldman and he was so amazing writing about movie stars and what they can do for movies and what movies can do for movie stars. And, you know, tragically, I think Heath Ledger would've been the greatest example of somebody whose work with Nolan then set his career on a completely different trajectory.

Think about just him appearing in other Nolan movies.

Yeah.

I mean, you can, you can fantasy cast him into almost every movie he's made since.

He probably would have been Odysseus.

No question.

Yeah.

Uh, or could have been Odysseus.

Absolutely.

I, I did, you know, this cast is incredible. Several people stand out in it, but it does feel like he's kind of got almost a closed circuit now. And I don't know that like when I see somebody in a Nolan movie, their, their career changes necessarily. Um, I suppose, I suppose Pattinson in Tenet, like, I started looking at him a little bit differently after that film. But what do you think about what happens to actors when they go through Nolan school?

Well, there's this great story in our, um, buddy Zach Baron's profile of sort of the making of The Odyssey in GQ. Where he talks to Pattinson and, and Zack had, had written a piece about Pattinson before and they clearly have a comfort with each other. And Pattinson was like, he recounted getting the phone call from Nolan about making the movie. And Pattinson was like, wow, you're making The Odyssey. That sounds awesome. I can't wait to read the script. And Nolan said to him, you're the only person that asked to read the script. Everybody agreed right away. And, you know, it says something funny about Pattinson. Who seems like a bit of an oddball in a very charming way.

Yeah.

And it says something, I think, about what Nolan means to actors, that it's not just that they know the material is going to be good and they want to work with him, but that being in a Christopher Nolan movie is the biggest thing you can do. It's the biggest thing you can do. And, you know, Matt Damon's already appeared in his films and Hathaway's already appeared in his films. And you've got this long— Himesh Patel plays a big part in this movie. He was in Tenet.

Yeah.

There's a series of actors.

He's got a little bit of a company going, a rep.

Absolutely.

Um, and you've got all these actors who want to step up, but then you have a couple of new people who are very big. You know, you've got Charlize Theron, you've got Tom Holland, you've got people who haven't worked with him before who are— you'd be stupid to turn down the part in the movie, even though like Charlize Theron's part is not that big. No, it's pivotal, but it's not that big, even though she's one of the 5 biggest female stars, certainly over the age of 30 in Hollywood right now.

That's sort of the funny thing about the way his movies are, are working these days is that Obviously, Cillian Murphy and Downey are huge parts of Oppenheimer, but so is Benny Safdie, but only for part of it. And so is Matt Damon, but only for part of it. And so is Josh Hartnett, but only for part of it. You, you don't get the usual, like, I started here and I ended here with Nolan. You usually, I, you're like, I'm here.

You know?

Yeah.

There's usually one handsome white guy. Sometimes it's John David Washington, but it's mostly one handsome white guy and then everybody else around them. Are just much more famous than the actor you would expect to find in that part. Sure. Um, there are some exceptions, like I love John Leguizamo in this movie.

Yeah.

I thought it was such an inspired choice to cast him in this part, but that's, that's not common. You know, like Tom Hardy is playing the third lead of this section.

He's almost the Michael Caine part of this movie, right?

Leguizamo.

Yeah.

It's a very good call.

Just like the kind of like, I am, I am the veteran steady, whatever I need to do here, you, I'm off book. You're not going to have to worry about me.

Exactly.

Point the camera at me. It works.

And have gravitas, you know, and, and, and I, and I fit in even though you wouldn't think John Leguizamo immediately for The Odyssey, as soon as he's on screen, you're like, oh yes, you were in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. You, you know exactly how to do this. A modern telling of an ancient tale.

Qualified actor, you know, like whatever stage it is, like you can do this. Yeah. I, I think obviously this question is leading to Tom Holland because, um, he will probably be the performance people debate the most, I imagine. Um, I thought he was quite good in it.

Uh, it's the least effective part of the movie for me.

Yeah.

Telemachus is the character he's playing and it is a, it's a tough role because you're just like basically like asking people what to do for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Um, but it'll be fascinating to see if this puts him on Matt Damon from age 30 to 55 trajectory, or if he's like, you know, they don't, there's not enough Christopher Nolans to make movies the way I want to make them.

So much of this conversation is about the choices that people are making and that Nolan keeps making interesting choices for himself. He keeps pushing himself to do bigger things and more interesting material, even if it's the oldest material in the world. And in that same Zack Barron story, there's a lot of conversation with Tom Holland about how his eyes were opened to what a movie career could be by working on a Chris Nolan movie and that he demanded that the production of the new Spider-Man movie not only be pushed back, but work differently because of how he watched Nolan work. And now the big thing is just, will Tom Holland make better choices? I love the idea of him hanging out with Robert Pattinson. Robert Pattinson makes the drama and, and good time. Robert Pattinson's fearless for an actor as, as handsome with the origins in Twilight.

He seems like a guy's like, this is a fucking lark. Like, I, I want to just do interesting stuff.

Like, he wants to have a good time. He wants to be—

now crucially, he's playing Batman and is like, that'll pay for everything for the rest of my life.

But Tom Holland already has that. He has Spider-Man and it sounds like he wants to keep being Spider-Man. So if he does. What are you doing with your, your coin when you're not Spider-Man?

Right.

And that's what makes great stars now, because you do have to have this kind of linchpin thing. And The Odyssey doesn't come around very often. In fact, it almost never comes around. In fact, you know, this has really never been adapted before. Parts of The Odyssey have been adapted, but it's crazy to think. I mean, Nolan described it as a stunning gap in movie history. That this story has never at scale been fully adapted.

And he was just like, I just don't think people could do it.

I think that's what it was. I think this is now is the only time that it could have happened. But as far as the actors go, yeah, I mean, I hope Tom Holland makes good films.

I'm not, I think we just need Tom Holland to be engaged with the, with the idea of making good movies because Hollywood essentially functions when Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Matt Damon and Tom Cruise. Are like, I want to work with the best filmmakers and I want to give them what they need. And I'll, I'll put my name up there to do it. And we don't have a ton of new movie stars, you know, I mean, there's a lot of people, people like a lot, but one of the things I really like about Zendaya and I hope Tom Holland follows suit is that she's like, I may be mad wildly famous and, and vaguely unknowable, but just absolutely adored and have like a complete 100% approval rating. But I'm going to do Euphoria season 3, and I'm going to do the drama, and it's going to be— it's going to push up against the kind of edges of what people expect from me.

They serve each other. Taking on audacious, memorable stuff makes filmmakers more successful and makes actors more interesting. So, you know, we can bang the drum all day. Who's listening at this point? You think Zendaya's listening to this episode?

Uh, I hope not.

What's she doing right now?

Zendaya?

Is she in the bathroom listening to the episode? You think she's doing the dishes?

Well, she's probably at various odysseys.

Do you think she has her AirPods in during Wimbledon matches while listening to you?

She's like, when are they going to talk about NBA Summer League?

CR is hosting the Bill Simmons podcast? What the fuck?

I was hoping for a deep dive on LeBron villain. Um, last couple of questions. One is that, you know, you're going to do a pod about this with Amanda. We're going to pod about it on The Big Picture. I'm sure that won't be the last two pods you do about The Odyssey.

Yep.

You did, you know, an extensive amount of potting about like One Battle. Like there are movies that come along every once in a while that feel like you can't talk about them enough. Does this as a text feel like one of those?

I, that's a great question. I've been turning that over in my mind, just thinking about what we're going to do on the show for the next few months. Um, it didn't intoxicate me in the same way that One Battle did, but One Battle was very personal for me, not just as somebody who Um, I was obsessed with PTA's movies for so long, but what's in the movie hit at a very specific time in my life. And that's specific to me. And I'm just only talking about what, what kind of touches me, what moves me. I think The Odyssey is a more universal film, will be seen by way more people, will have a bigger box office. I don't know, having seen it a second time where it improved as a movie for me. But I don't know if it has that same, like, you gotta go again feeling.

Some of it, but I think I, I can't wait to go again because almost all Nolan movies, when I first get out, I'm like, okay, now I can breathe.

Maybe a better way to put it is like, you'll go twice, but will you go 3 times?

Sure.

Right.

And, and most films that become mega, mega successes, you know, your Barbies, that means it's like, it's a party and people are going 2, 3, 4 times, right? Um, Marvel movies were like that 2, 3, 4 times. You got to see it 2, 3, 4 times.

Apparently Obsession was like that.

Apparently it was. Um, The Odyssey isn't a party. It's quite a serious movie.

It's exhausting.

Quite an intense film. And at the end of it, you're like, ooh, I went through the wringer on that. So I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, it's an awards contender for sure. Um, it's fascinating to think about him. Pulling the Coppola and going back to back where he goes and does one massive movie, wins every award, and then comes back 2 years later and then does the exact same thing. That's in play. It's not, it's not impossible to imagine a world where the collective Hollywood and international filmmaking world says like, well, you're just the guy right now.

Yeah.

You know, you're at the absolute top of the mountain and you decided not to come down after Oppenheimer. In fact, you, you somehow built more mountain on top of the mountain. And, and so I, I could see that being like a 9-month runway of discussion.

Well, it's going to be interesting too, because they, you know, the Oscars have, I mean, they, they expanded to 10 films because of Dark Knight, right? And since then there has usually been, you get your token kind of blockbuster that gets nominated, but then the really like the conversation is between these 3 or usually 2 films that everybody has kind of decided it's between these 2. And I'm not really like as well versed on like what the Oscar films might be, but you know, it's going to be weird if it's like The Odyssey versus Fjord, you know?

I mean, it will be, you know, you've also got to consider it'll also be Project Hail Mary and Dune Part 3, and there will be big movies that will be sitting alongside of it. And I think that actually helps The Odyssey.

Oh, for sure.

You know, because Dune Part 3 is probably going to rock, but from what I've heard, it's not as epic as Part 2. And Project Hail Mary, which is a very good movie, but feels small compared to The Odyssey.

For sure.

Like, it's a two-hander.

Yeah.

So the, the, the, its titanic nature and its, its cosmic significance, you know, it's all about the gods and fate and power and choice. Huge ideas. I think it's going to stand up pretty well. Now, whether, does Chris Nolan want to do the Oscar campaign in the same way for another 6 months and take him away from working on another project? I don't, I don't know. Well, that's yet to be seen.

Um, well, thanks for doing this with me.

So is this a permanent thing?

I don't think so.

No. Yeah.

I think that we've gotten some like already activated Bill vacation texts that are like, hey, like let's do this in the coming weeks. So I think he's, he's back. He's coming back.

Are you, what is this making you think about for your long-term future?

Um, well, it's pretty fun to have like any topic beyond on the board, right?

Wow.

But it is, right?

So does that, will this, will this augur the CR show?

No, I could never, I could never.

I think the streets want it.

Yeah, but like, I, I, like the CR show is all the shows, right?

That is the business model of the ringer.

Beautiful. That's Adam's show. And I just stand there in awe.

Yeah, I am, I'm so fascinated by Bill's decision to do this. And he, he, he told us a few weeks ago that this was something he had been thinking about. And Bill is a student of late night television. He really understands its history and he's very influenced by it. And some people install guest hosts with confidence and some do it with anxiety.

You know, speaking of Odysseus, the ultimate act of hubris on the re:Apex is to say like, I've, I've I'm flying so high that I could start putting a little sunlight on the baby birds. Yeah.

Who do, who would you from the Ringer universe most want to see in the guest hosting chair?

Here? Yeah.

Tony Buns.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Buns. It's time. I do want, honestly, like one of the most sincere and genuine sports lovers I've ever come across and a delightful human being. Like loves sports the way, like a 1987 Sports Illustrated writer who's just like, I like the World Cup and tennis. Yeah.

Well-rounded.

Yeah.

A well-rounded, loves baseball. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I do really, really, really want one Cousin Sal episode.

Without him?

Yeah. Yeah. Just to see what kind of mayhem he can cause.

I think that would be, may cause a schism in their relationship if that happened.

Okay. But he's the, he's the one true Troy.

Like Sal would be the one who planned for weeks to just do stuff that drove Bill insane.

That's what I want.

You know, have all his Holy Cross roommates on to like talk about it.

Blue boy?

Wow.

That would be our first blue boy.

My big dream, you know, I did have a couple of, of celeb guests asks out that got politely—

You want to reveal that now?

Sure.

I asked Jalen Brown to come on this podcast. Um, not personally, but we made entreaties.

Okay.

And he just has not, you know, he has, wasn't available.

Schedule. Um, and what would you guys have discussed?

Um, wellness, I think. And, uh, Philadelphia restaurants. I would recommend some spots.

You might have some spots to encourage me to see.

And then we asked Bernthal, but Bernthal was not able to make the schedule work.

When is it going to happen?

I don't know.

Menelaus, come, come through, man.

Is he ducking you?

No, I think, I think it'll, I think it'll happen eventually. But like, you know, I, I do think that the, the guest thing is titillating, you know, when you're just like, I just call anybody. Anybody, right?

Well, apparently not anybody. Jalen Brown not available. You're here.

I see you fucking all the time.

Do you think deep down Bernthal's mad?

No. Did you think he was mad? Like, there's an Esquire video. They ask him, like, have you heard the Rewatchables? Have you heard the Wing Jenkins thing? And he's like, love those guys. Do you think he was— I don't want to get into a thing here, but what do you think? I think, I think he probably likes the pod.

Okay.

Okay.

I don't know what context he's heard it in. Does somebody send him that and he's like, huh, okay, that's pretty funny.

What's his favorite episode? Jaws 2?

Yeah, probably. He liked it when I said trim strike. Um, all right, we'll get out of here. I gotta let you go. Um, thanks to Sean Fennessey. You can hear him talking more about The Odyssey on tomorrow's episode of The Big Picture. I'm gonna go on Monday's episode.

We'll talk, um, Let's rank those Nolan movies. Where does The Odyssey fit in? That's what I want to do.

Yeah. It's hard to say right now, but I think top 5 for me.

Well, let's not spoil that podcast, please, Chris.

I'm just giving you a broad idea. Uh, thanks for coming, man.

Thanks, buddy.

All right. Thank you so much to Ian Wright. Thank you so much to Anthony DeBundo. And of course, thank you so much to Sean Fennessy. You can listen to Ian on Stick to Football and Crossways. You can listen to Anthony DeBundo on The Ringer Gambling Show. And you can of course listen to Sean Fantasy on The Big Picture. I've been Chris Ryan. I still am Chris Ryan. Uh, I will be back here on Sunday night with Bill and with DeBundo to talk about the World Cup final. Uh, and thanks to Gahal and Chris and everybody who made the show today. Talk to you guys soon. Have a great weekend.

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