Transcript of Is The Odyssey The Last Movie of Its Kind? | Hour 1

Summer is pretty much my favorite time to be a sports fan. The biggest soccer tournament of the summer just wrapped up, baseball's on every night, racing never takes a weekend off, and my calendar basically revolves around first pitches, green flags, and whatever game everybody's texting about. I realized I'm the MVP of my group. I'm always the friend that says, "Hey, I've got it. I've got a place, I've got some ice cold Miller Lite, I got the TV, I got a big comfy blue leather couch, come on over." That's the behavior of a Miller Time MVP. I almost never watch the big ones alone. I'd much rather be with my friends. And if I am alone, we're texting, we're sipping on our Miller Lites, toasting the day, toasting the big games. For me, Miller Lite is just a part of a big game routine. It's brewed for taste with simple ingredients, clean, refreshing, and easy to drink, especially in the Miami heat. It's a true American pilsner and the original light beer since 1975. An all-American summer starts with an all-American beer, Miller Lite. Go to MillerLite.com/Dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer.

It's Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

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Want to get this out there now, beat the rush. I think the Brewers, for all the talk about the Dodgers making it unfair and the sport needing a salary cap, I think the Brewers are going to beat the Dodgers, and I believe the Brewers are better than everybody else in the sport, and we will find out together whether I end up being right on that or not. They ransacked the Marlins the same way that the Guardians did And I'd like to talk a little bit more about whether or not the Marlins are going to be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline. But we will do that tomorrow because some of the things happening today that are more interesting is it seems that there is a real movement here. Heather Dinich is saying the possibility of the SEC breaking away from the NCAA, it's very real. Stan Verrett is saying it's all moving in one direction. Eventually, the four big conferences will break away, form their own league, hire their own commissioner. Make their own rules, at least for football. The NCAA is on borrowed time already. And I find interesting specifically about what is happening at the University of Miami, Zaz, because some of the, the most painful, boring, terrible reporting I've had to do in my career was many, many years ago when all of the University of Miami football power was as strong as it's ever been.

They were deciding where they were going to play, in which conference they chose. Choose the ACC because it was a basketball school and they wanted to be stronger at basketball. But I believe Miami is, as a brand, even though it has not been relevant for 20 years before the last few, Miami as a brand I believe is in the Notre Dame category of being at football bigger than its conference.

And it's an unusual thing to say because it wasn't that long ago that FSU was great, not just under Bobby Bowden. It, it was pretty recently that FSU had an undefeated team that might have won the title if not for their quarterback getting hurt. So the University of Miami finds itself in a position right now during these weird times where I believe they have real power. I believe the next athletic director they have is going to work for Mario Cristobal. That has not been the case for 20 years. The football coach hasn't actually had the clout in this market to be something that's bigger than the athletic program, that, that the coach can make the athletic director sort of his administrative assistant, his CEO on business, because what you have is a football brand is the thing that matters most, matters matters more than the basketball brands, certainly matters more than the ACC in football. Might not matter more than the ACC in basketball because the ACC has the same sort of history, brand history, that Miami does at football. But I don't see the point of Miami not trying to use whatever this power is to get into this game where we're an SEC team.

Like, we've got the power to be an SEC team, to feel like what is at the top of that conference. And I just find interesting what's happening right now where they don't really have an athletic director and they kind of need to get into the game of getting Mario Cristobal the power so that he is running the program and the department the way that Nick Saban ran the department at Alabama.

I think I may have forgot that they don't have an athletic director. Like, how are we still doing this? What's the holdup here?

It's curious. They're moving— what the holdup is that they got caught on the Jormark thing. Like Michael Yormark was going to be the next AD and the toxic reaction to that undid that. And so they started back from square one, but they don't feel the need to hurry, which doesn't really, to me at least, doesn't really align with what Joe Achavria told Joe Rose that he's looking for out of the position. You just highlighted it yourself, Dan. Like, college football is literally reshaping itself right now with these breakaway talks. It is a fluid conversation. Joe Echevarria said he wanted someone that is forward-thinking, aggressive, with the foresight to know and shape where college football is going in the future. So it's a very curious time to not have an AD. Miami feels like it can run that athletic department without an AD because, look, Dan Radakovich brought in a great reputation, did bring credibility, but by the end of it, he was a man that was retiring and they felt like they could— that the athletic department was kind of moving on without him anyways. But it also operates as if you weren't just about to make the worst hire, the worst received hire in the history of South Florida sports.

I don't really understand the lack of urgency considering everything that you've said that you wanted from the athletic director is to make deals. Well, camp starts in a couple of weeks. There's not a lot of time for this person to be the game changer that you said you wanted out of the position immediately. It just doesn't fit what Joe Echevarria said he wanted from the position. And as someone that is worried about these SEC talks, worried about how Miami fits in. I actually think the Big Ten is probably a better fit. I'm not totally thrilled by not having the ass kicker that Joe Echevarria described in place.

Zaslow, you are somebody who throughout the college football season for ESPN travels all over the country covering college football. We are at a place where the tectonic plates are shifting like this is all going to look very different very soon. You cannot have this amount of business and greed around America's second most popular sport and, and as few rules as we have and as few understandings about the future that we have.

Because if I tell you right now, what is the practical impact to anybody listening to this of the SEC breaking away from everything in college football and saying, bleep it, we're going to be our own conference? None of these other games matter the way that our games matter on Saturday.

I'd like to chew on the SEC thing a little bit. Do it. Leave. See how much you like that. See how much you like that. In fact, go ahead, cut your losses now, because the narrative surrounding your conference— the air gets let out every passing season because now everyone else can pay for players, and we're seeing that play out. Your precious little Alabama crown jewel is not what it was. So go ahead and leave. Take your ball and go home. See if anybody wants to watch your champion, your league, because to not compare it to the rest of the nation Good luck with that. I don't think it's appealing, and I don't think it works in your best interest, and I don't think your threat has the juice that it would have had 5 years ago. Go ahead and leave. I'm with that attitude. Pick up your ball, go home, see how much you like that.

Jazz, what are the practical effects though in terms of the viewership experience and how the customer feels about any of it?

Because I would say that over my history covering college football, One of the things that makes it most different regionally everywhere is the value for tradition. Baseball has moved away from the value of tradition without it hurting at all. If you need tomorrow's fan in the next generation, what gen— what does that have to pay attention to history or tradition? What difference does it make if we splinter all of this? And do you agree with my assessment that the University of Miami, if it is great at football, is bigger than the ACC?

Yeah, I think, Mike, I think you're overstating what it would mean for the SEC if they were to break away. Like, what you're saying as far as their prowess as far as the games go, that makes sense because the SEC is not the big bad SEC, at least the last few years, when it comes to how good the teams are. But that wouldn't matter if they break away because you're still talking about the numbers are the numbers. Like, when you talk—

people are still going to watch the game, but go ahead, crown your fake-ass champion. Like, it does let the air out of the whole thing. Part of the SEC reputation is that they're these ass kickers that would trounce all the other conferences, right? When they're just beating themselves up and don't have any, any proof that they can kick the ass of the other conference.

But they don't seem to care about that.

Oh, it allows them to shape their narrative. But again, it's a phony narrative. It's not the case anymore. The Big Ten is winning national championships. An independent is in that conversation regularly in Notre Dame. Miami has come back onto the scene. So go ahead and leave. Like, it's not— what does that look like? To me, it's kind of wack.

I don't think that's actually a reality.

We'll have the rest of college football and the SEC just off doing their own thing, and not just in college football, but all sports. Go ahead and do that.

Go ahead.

That seems super wack to me.

I know Greg Sankey mentioned it— what was it, yesterday— where, hey, you know, yeah, this is something that's still being talked about. But to me, that's just lip service, saying it's something that athletic directors and school presidents are talking about. I mean, that doesn't mean that they're actually negotiating leaving the NCAA and doing their own thing. To me, that's just posturing.

Yeah, and it sets up for where this is eventually headed, which is all those majors banding together and forming their own league.

But right, and that— hey, if that gives us some type of college football commissioner, I'm for that. Can we, can we get somebody who can, who can lay down some rules and some laws and regulations here? If that's going to— like, I don't want the SEC to break off on its own,. But if they're going to break off with the other major conferences and you actually have a body of government that can rule what's going on here and keep things in order, yeah, I'm good with that.

I will continue to say that all of the people who are covering college football in the offseason and have a great deal more knowledge than I do, and whatever it is that you're hearing as homerism from me on the University of Miami program, last year is obviously something that was special to the University of Miami, but it's a beginning more than an ending. Everyone who is talking about what this team is doing in recruiting suggests to me that the amount of power and the amount of business that can be built around the $90 million contract that they gave Mario Cristobal— they're going to have ended up getting him cheap because they're going to be good in a way that they used to be good, every year in the conversation, because they're getting much better players.

Uh, Mensah says that he came down here because he saw specifically what they did with Cam, Cam Ward and Beck surrounding him, them, and creating a pipeline to the pros.

Why would that happen every year?

That's the thing. If you can just take it, it just got so much easier for Miami based on last season. It was hard to get Cam Ward. As I recall, Cam Ward was not the first choice. Then that allowed you to get Beck. Everybody wanted Beck. But the play now is going to be all the quarterbacks are going to want to come here. It's not about you going to have to go get the quarterback. You're gonna have your choice of quarterbacks because they all understood Dorsey was not Dorsey because he was that good. It's because all of his teammates were that good. Geno Toretta did not win a Heisman Trophy because he was that good. What were his stats that year? 19 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, something absurd.

It's shocking when you go back.

I, I was expecting—

I remember one day I went back and I looked at his numbers. I thought one of the years was gonna say 40 touchdowns.

So the pursuits of the last two portal quarterbacks were harrowing. Cam Ward was the top choice, was a top choice, and Miami put itself in an all-or-nothing situation because he was a top choice and they valued him over Will Howard by enough.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say he wasn't their top choice.

I meant to say that among the college football landscape, not everybody was looking at Cam Ward as the top.

Although I think Rivals had him as the top portal quarterback. But look, Will Howard was in the portal. He ended up winning a national title the following year. Carson Beck was not their top choice. And Carson Beck, like Cam Ward, had announced that he was entering the NFL Draft and a lot of great quarterbacks came off the board. And then you were once again left with, for a different reason, an all-or-nothing situation. And then in year 3, once again, Mensah was an inspired deal. No one knew that he was even on the table. He had a multiyear NIL agreement. With Duke, and that was going to be a controversial one, one that came with a mess. He wasn't the top choice either because he wasn't a practical choice. He wasn't a practical option. Other guys came off the board and Miami once again, back up against a wall. They found a way to get the best guy. That is not sustainable. It is not great for your heart health, I'll tell you that.

Gino Toretta's Heisman year, he threw for 3,060 yards, 19 touchdowns, 7 interceptions with a 7.6 yards per attempt.

What was his completion percentage?

57.

Yeah, 56.7.

That's not good.

It's a different sport.

That's amazing because as a kid, as a kid, Geno Toretta was the greatest quarterback.

Was 19 touchdowns like 55 touchdowns? Like, what was that back then?

Well, he led the country in yards per game with 278.

Different sport.

Can you look up for me please just what the schedule was that year so I can find out how many times he threw 14 touchdowns against, like, or 4 touchdowns against San Diego State or whatever to get up to that 19 total.

San Diego State was good that year.

Iowa, Marshall Faulk, famu, Arizona, Florida State, Penn State, TCU, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Temple, Syracuse, San Diego State, Alabama.

What a schedule.

How many top 10 teams is that? That's 1, 2, 3, 4 top 10 teams.

That's not what I was asking you.

Where did the 19 touchdowns come from? Like, what I was asking is how many of the 19 touchdowns were against those top 10 teams and how many of the 19 touchdowns were against not those top 10 teams.

I mean, 4 top 10 wins, though. Yeah, it's a big deal.

Yes, agreed. I just think that the, the University of Miami now finding itself back in the place where it's bigger than the conference. Clemson felt like that for a little bit.

But the only times really that I think that in the history of the conference that the conference has felt like it has one team that's like Notre Dame is FSU and Miami. Those are the two.

Did Clemson feel like that to you, that Clemson could break off? Like, obviously they won championships.

Yeah.

I mean, Clemson could break off and feel like Notre Dame to you.

They did it against Bama. They did it against heyday Alabama. Documentaries will be made about the series between Clemson and Alabama. So Clemson had a lot of juice back then. But as the ratings have reflected, when Miami is good, that white helmet with the U on it, It does flash more than other programs.

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Dan Levitar.

I don't think strange, strange for me, but like Mike Ryan.

Oh boy, this is the Dan Levitar Show.

Christopher Nolan, I don't know where you guys would place him on the order On your list of best directors ever, if he would be a top 5 best director ever, put it on the poll, Juju, please, @LeBittardShow. Is Christopher Nolan top 5 director ever? The Odyssey is a movie that was both very difficult to make and very expensive to make. He used a kind of camera that—

look this up for me, please, Jeremy—

how many theaters can that play in across America where it's a movie that is watched the way Christopher Nolan intends for it to be watched because I heard some people saying it was fewer than 10 theaters across America have the capacity to play the movie because it's burning through projectors with the equipment that they used and it's, it's making them start smoking, literally start smoking where it burns the projectors because of the materials they're using.

Matt Damon is saying that a movie will never get made like this again, that this is the last movie of its kind until the next Christopher Nolan movie.

There's a lot of theaters that have the capability to—

How many are smoking the projector?

That's a good movie if the projector starts smoking.

That can't be true, Dan.

Where did you see that?

But there's certainly more than 10. I think in the state of Florida alone, like we're approaching close to like 15, 20.

It says there are 41 theaters worldwide and 24 or potentially 25 where you could see that in the United States.

The entire movie was filmed with IMAX cameras. It's the first movie start to finish that used IMAX cameras. But while some are, you know, breathless over The Odyssey, and I get it, it's a tremendous aspiration.

I can't stop thinking about it.

Yeah, it was incredible. Uh, it also speaks—

whatever, man, what are you laughing at? You can't stop thinking about it? What are you thinking about it? What are you thinking about?

Okay, tell us what you're thinking.

I want to read everything about it. I want to know everything.

How about that?

What? You know, The Odyssey was a— it was a poem.

Read it.

Yeah.

Uh, Time magazine had a review, and I read an encapsulation of their review that just cut out a certain part of it, and it kind of connected with me because the reaction to Christopher Nolan— and I'm like, he's just making movies, they're big, they feel super ambitious, there's a lot of money that goes into it, but why does this feel the way that it does? And so Time magazine said, we want and need more movie artistry and more dedication to the craft, which Christopher Nolan, no matter what you think of him, surely espouses. But a movie still needs to add up to something you actually want to watch. We've reached a where we get so few extravagant, ambitious studio movies that we're expected to collapse with gratitude whenever we're presented with one. That's not opening ourselves to what movies can be. It's succumbing to a kind of hostage-taking.

What is happening that we're talking around here all the time about with streaming is there's an antisepticness happening to moviemaking because you have the streamers so involved in this and they're not moviemaking studios. Amazon Prime, Apple, Netflix, and they're also corporately compromised in a way that keeps them from making the kind of movie that's gonna piss anybody off with its subject matter. They're gonna be very careful about that. Go on. But you dismissed what it is that I said 'cause I had the number wrong and I said it was like 8 theaters, but Jeremy came on and just told you that basically a blockbuster movie has been made and it's available in 1 out of every 2 states in the United States.

No, no, no, it's available everywhere.

Right.

It's just if you want to watch it to like the full capability, 70mm, and on IMAX as well.

But that's what I'm saying. Yes, it's available anywhere, but the way that the director intended for you to see it, it is only available in one of every two states the way that he is making the art and wishes to present it to you.

It's an absolute crock. Oh, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make sure that the only way that people can really see my vision is by paying $987 to go to, to the movies with their entire family. I'm gonna do the most expensive thing so that we're gonna be able to go. Mike spent $75 on the ticket.

No, no, no, I saw it in a standard theater. Attaboy, good for you. I enjoyed my experience.

I might pirate it.

I might pirate it.

You're gonna sit there with a camera?

I might pirate it.

Yeah, I saw it in a standard one.

What are you gonna do?

I don't know what I was missing out on.

I'm not gonna do anything.

I've already seen the movie. What's the matter with you?

You can't stop thinking about it.

You can't stop thinking about it.

Yeah, why is it funny to you?

I don't understand.

What did it make me feel?

Everyone's talking about it. It's one of the great pieces of literature ever made.

The movie's so good. I wanted to cheer in the middle of the movie.

It's required reading. Everyone's—

we've all read The Odyssey in high school, yeah? We're all familiar.

Tony, did you know how to read in high school?

I knew how to read in high school, didn't read The Odyssey.

Well, like, you're familiar with parts of the story, if not all the story, because you've seen movies like Troy and like even 300, which is derivative. Like, you're familiar with Greek mythology, so you know, you're at least familiar with the source material. And yeah, it's hugely ambitious, but also it kind of sucks that it feels so much more ambitious by comparison.

What Christopher Nolan does gets all of my admiration because I find completely overwhelming, just completely overwhelming, his starting points on the things that he decides to make. He does not tackle anything that is small or simple.

It's, it's the galaxy. It's, it's just stuff that he tackles that is so wildly ambitious that I get overwhelmed by the size of his ambition.

Which is why Tenet missed the mark for so many. Yeah, but, but like, these are really difficult I mean, he's largely been rewarded for the ambition and the difficulty and what's required of the viewer. It is an elevated experience, and I think people appreciate that. I've seen some quotes that maybe he wants to strip it down a little bit, and if this film is any indication and his quotes are hinting in one direction, he might do something in the horror genre. Oh yeah. And given some of the practical effects between the Cyclops scene and the Circe stuff, like that— there was stuff there that is— it was really uncomfortable to watch. He kind of invented a new way to do some, some horror GFX that I'm into.

Well, the practical effects are part of what made Obsession great, and, and that's where the quotes you're talking about come from, Mike. He said of Obsession to The Hollywood Reporter, you have to have an amazing idea when you go to see a film like Obsession. That movie works like a mother bleeper. It's not about the technical side, it's about story. And that's what's so fascinating about this, is he took something that we all know, The Odyssey, and was able to present it in a, a new way, a unique way. And using his type of aggrandized filmmaking style, it really captured people like Zaz and all of these men who are like, is it— is this what empathy is?

Is—

am I, am I experiencing empathy.

The movie's about empathy.

Is that what you were thinking the whole time?

It's welcome people in.

I just, I, I loved the message.

I— what was the message?

You want me to spoil it for you?

Yeah.

Why are you being such a jerk about The Odyssey?

I'm asking.

I got—

because I got some theories. I'm asking what's happening.

I'm asking.

I'm not gonna pay $800 to watch it.

I'm gonna pirate it.

No, you don't have to watch— you don't have to pay $800. You can go to Sunset Place, brother, spend 7 bucks.

I mean, the message is essentially we need to treat people better. We need to treat people better, and that war is bad.

Yeah, war is bad. John Stewart John Stewart interviewed Christopher Nolan on The Daily Show, and John Stewart somehow made it a sequel to Oppenheimer because the message is very similar. The prevailing message in Oppenheimer was Oppenheimer really struggled with the hell he unleashed on Earth.

Like, I've—

we've invented this capability and it's just going to destroy the Earth. And not to give things away, spoiler alert, like Chris Nolan said, the poem came out thousands of years ago. Yeah, on a 3,000-year-old piece of source material. But the reckoning that he had with the Trojan War really shined in a way that was celebrated in other films like Troy, which I loved. That's when movies were making more ambitious movies like this.

Like the reckoning that Odysseus had without that he hurt the way that we live.

Yeah. And it was a lifelong, it was a lifelong pursuit of war and battles. He was a celebrated warrior, but going within those walls changed the man.

Put it on the poll at @LeBittardShow. Did you need Matt Damon for you to understand that war is bad? Uh, yes or no.

He's done that a couple times, by the way, with him.

He's always trying to get saved from something. He's up in Mars, he's trying to get saved here, he's there. Like, figured out.

Well, no one's trying to save him, he's saving himself.

Down levitar!

If Daniel Day-Lewis did it, you'd be jerking off all over yourself.

Oh, come on.

Yeah, I would be. Aggressive description.

I mean, what is it? What is that? I'm just saying. No, no, that's just saying what?

That's me. That was something. Yeah, I see that photo of Daniel Day-Lewis looking like Lincoln before he's about to start filming Lincoln, and you know what I do, Amin?

Mike Ryan!

I jerk off all over myself, that's what I do.

Lincoln, who you outed the other day.

Don't make this a rejoin.

This is the Dan Levatar Show.

Matt Damon's career has been really interesting. It's one of the biggest in the history of Hollywood. The idea that he and Ben Affleck came up together writing Good Will Hunting when they were in their early 20s, and Ben Affleck just sold an AI company. I don't know what is happening here. I really don't. He just sold an AI company to Netflix for $587 million. I did not even know. Did you know that?

Did—

put it on the poll at Le Batard Show. Did you know that Ben Affleck had a $587 million AI company?

He was on with Matt Damon on Rogan, and they were talking about the future of Hollywood and how he was producing— him and Matt were doing stuff with this AI to help Hollywood do X, Y, and Z. Like, he didn't really go into detail what it was, but now that it's sold for $587 million, like, we got to go.

Matt Damon has He has been, been spending a lot of time talking about the business and how much it has changed. And so when he says we're not going to be able to make the kind of movie that Christopher Nolan is making anymore, he does so with both an investment and a knowledge that the rest of us don't have when he says it because of his understanding of not only where the business has been, but where it's going.

So I found one theater in Colorado, in Denver, that the projector broke. I didn't see anything about it overheating, but the people did have to wait outside for 45 minutes and they were overheating because it was 90 degrees outside. But I'm going to keep looking.

Matt Damon certainly knows more, and I think he's speaking to a macro sense, but it's a weird quote from a guy that is at the center of a movie that is going to be profitable. It is going— for all the money that was spent in production and marketing and ambition, It is going to be a huge global success, and Christopher Nolan is going to get to be able to do that whenever he damn well pleases because they always make money. So no, it's not the end of it. If anything, it's encouraging because the reception of this one is the biggest of Christopher Nolan's celebrated career.

The move that he made before this though was The Rip on Netflix with Affleck, and when I heard him talking about what they did there, he said among other things, uh, this was—

I'm oversimplifying, but he's been talking a lot about this, and I've always found him interesting when he starts talking about it. He's like, I've got to repeat the premise of the movie 8 times during the movie because of how Netflix is now doing things. I have to keep explaining to people what it is that we're doing with our storytelling. That's not what they were doing with Good Will Hunting.

Like, that's not when— it's still one of the most amazing things to me in the history of Hollywood that Affleck and Damon wrote and made Good Will in their early 20s, that they were able to get the opportunity to do it and that they made a movie that, that was that good.

Hailé.

I do think certain filmmakers are going to be given the Christopher Nolan green light, and we're gonna enter a golden age of filmmakers where those guys are the tastemakers. That's— that becomes a conversation piece because a lot of people are uniting over The Odyssey.

It—

people feel like they're missing out on the water.

It feels like an event.

It does.

It is.

And there are certain directors, even ones that are bursting on, on the scene, like Krasinski, the, the director of Top Gun: Maverick. He is being given an opportunity with his Miami Vice remake that other filmmakers wouldn't. They'd go on the cheap and not make it a period piece. That's a little bit more ambitious. That's way more expensive. But he's got the box office track record to do it. And I think that you're going to see studios investing in filmmakers and trusting that, and the marketing budget will be like, this guy is going to give you what Christopher Nolan made you feel.

I think part of what was or is exciting to me about The Odyssey— we've been looking forward probably for over a year when you saw that Christopher Nolan was making The Odyssey, and so there was this excitement level because it's Christopher Nolan. And then the movie delivered like above expectation, and I don't think you You don't get that too often in movies where you are that excited for the movie and it was that good.

So at the IMAX theater in Hong Kong, they had an issue where the screen went blank about 10 minutes of the film left. The shopping center's fire alarm was triggered shortly after. Members of the public report hearing, hearing noise and then smelling a strong odor of smoke in the shopping center corridors during the evacuation. It was during the Robert Pattinson line of somebody get these beggars out of here, which, man, he made the word beggars sound rough. Firefighters rushed to the scene and it turned out the smoke came from the floor below.

This Robert Pattinson is a real piece of shit in this movie. You know about that, Antonis?

I think I'm gonna watch it again.

I'm dying to go see it again.

I want to see it again.

You're dying to go see it again?

I am. I'm dying to.

How about you watch it?

I'm good.

How about you watch it?

I'm good.

I'm good too.

How is it that you arrived at thinking about this? I don't think of you as leaving a theater altered. I don't think— I don't—

I was I was, I was in awe of the way the movie made me feel.

Yeah.

And, and it's just, and like, the movie's long, obviously. It's 3 hours long, but it doesn't feel 3 hours long. But it's long enough that when you get to the final scene where he's getting home, it's like you, you feel how long it's been because the movie is so long. And then you have the final scene, which equals to everything that you wanted it to be. And I just, I was very moved by the whole thing. I was.

Yeah, I got, I got to the edge of my seat. Scene.

Mike said he cried.

Yeah, well, anytime you have something with a dog, I would never cry.

Anything, any—

yeah, dog scene. Jesus Christ.

Roy got emotional recently. This is, uh, this is the rarest of things that we have around here, when Roy's emotions pour forth. Uh, what, what triggered, uh, you getting all weepy here recently, Roy?

Yeah, you know, on social media where they're doing this, uh, throwback stuff, you know, they show you a picture from like some odd years ago. What just happened to me, uh, over the weekend, uh, 8 years ago, Facebook— this is from 8 years ago— there was a picture of Claire in a little stroller, and we have a picture of it. Uh, she was all cheeks, no chin. She was, uh, about 6 or 7 months old.

That is a fat face.

That— hey man, it's my daughter you're talking about.

I'm the owner of a fat face. I'm a fan of fat faces. I've had one all my life.

Yeah, she was a part of the club, except that fat face got kind of thinner because this was her 2 weeks ago at 8 and a half years old. She's now 4 foot 7.

Yeah, grown up. And so how did that, uh, and so what happened? You just got it, you saw something on Facebook and you just got all, you got all weepy?

I can't picture you too weepy.

Yeah, because, you know, you spend a lot of time, you know, providing for your family, making sure they have a roof over their head, and you just don't stop to think about, hey, you know, your child is growing up at this point. And that really got me into thinking, You know what, this is becoming a young woman right now, and I'm kind of emotional about this. And it's gonna happen to Tony too, as he just became a new father. It's gonna happen to you too, Tony.

It already has, Roy.

You're a weepy dad.

I've become more of a misty-eyed dad, for sure.

And Zazz is just looking at you right now and saying, I will never cry during—

He cried during The Odyssey.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, I cried, and it wasn't a little. It wasn't a little cry.

I don't cry about dogs.

Crying is cool.

Yeah, it is, but not about dogs.

D-Money has like this whole theory that Cubans are weird with dogs.

It's not weird with dogs, it's just like—

Yeah, like Cubans, like, dogs are outside normally. Cubans are weird with dogs.

Wait a minute, that's not Cubans.

Oh, like D-Money did a straw poll. Cubans are more likely to put their dogs outside.

I don't have a dog, so I wouldn't know.

Put it on the poll at Le Batard Show. Are Cubans more likely to put their dog outside? Also put on the poll Uh, can an Odyssey be only 3 hours long? Uh, what has happened to our viewing habits? Because this one snuck up on me, okay? What I'm about to say is weird, and I don't know when it happened, and I don't exactly know how it happened, but it's caught me off guard. You tell me that a movie is 3 hours long, and my answer is no.

Any movie, anytime, the answer now from is I do not want a 3-hour movie. But if you break it into 3 parts and make each part an hour, I'm gonna want more of that movie. I'm— if I like that movie, I'm gonna want 8 parts of that movie. I'm gonna want it to be like— I don't know how that happened to me, because at one point in my lifetime, if I'm watching Pulp Fiction, I don't want that movie to end. I want it to keep going for as long as it wants to go.

This is actually one of the good things about having a finely tuned algorithm, because now my entire IG algorithm has been hijacked by The Odyssey in a way that only—

that's a good algorithm.

I'm not as good as yours, but it's up there. The only time a movie did this to me is another one of my favorite filmmakers, Robert Eggers, with Nosferatu, where my entire algo was Nosferatu content. And I— it is such a supplemental experience. I discovered that there's an Odyssey starring Armand Assante.

I saw that too.

And Eric Roberts plays the Pattinson role.

Good.

I'm—

yeah, I'm watching You better believe it.

I continue to get texts from people and notifications on the reporters around the news media who are telling us who's getting laid off at ESPN. Longtime SportsCenter anchor David Lloyd, Stephania Bell, the injury expert and fantasy analyst. Lloyd had been there nearly 30 years, Bell for nearly 20 years. We already told you that Carl Carl Ravitch has been let go. And we told you as well that Ryan Clark was let go yesterday while they were taping. How are people going to feel about all of this? Because ESPN has long prided itself on the letters are what matters. The first conversations I had with anybody about us going to ESPN, all they pounded me with was, you got to care about the brand, you got to care about the brand. And all I kept saying was, I don't care about the brand. Like, I— You're— it's not—

it's not what you're going to get me to care about.

And what's happening now is that ESPN is getting crushed for not just hemorrhaging money, paying for people as all of these salaries have changed. Like the whole—

the entire media market has changed, at least in part because ESPN has realized we don't have to pay people this way. We don't have to continue to give people $3 and $4 and $5 million or $2 million $1,000. All of you are disposable. All of you can be changed. And all that matters is the letters and the allegiance from the customer to the letters. But those customers are getting mad when some of the people they care about are being let go. And I ask you guys, how do you feel about this news? As you told me, that it's not right what they did to Ryan Clark. It's not right what they did to Carl Ravitch. But I don't think there's a right way to fire people that customers care about.

No, all that stuff sucks and it sucks for the people going through it and sucks to the viewers that have built up a relationship. A lot of the names that you've highlighted are people that you think about in a nostalgic way. They're part of your formidable years. But I don't think ESPN spending less money on talent.

I don't.

I just think they're spending loads of money on the top end of talent. And in a way, it did kind of dilute the brand because because the brand was a star-making venture. It was more about the ensemble, was about SportsCenter anchors. Now the brand is, let's farm this out to Pat and let's— Stephen A, you're— Stephen A right now is as big as the brand. He is the face of that network. And they've just decided our cable television daytime programming is going to be carried by these tentpole attractions. And that is going to be— we're going to prioritize salary.

No, but Mike, they are They are doing it differently and they are spending less money because the people that they're giving that money to are people who pay for themselves.

Like the things that they're making make it so that they make all their money back on those people and have had to give those people independence that they'd never given before. But the reason they're giving that independence to Rich Eisen, to Stephen A., to Pat McAfee is because the money they bring in in pays for those salaries. It's the same investment that DraftKings made with us. What they pay us, DraftKings makes back because it's just what we're worth. Like, we're just— we, we've cut out the, the middleman. It's a deal between us and the money, and they just pay us what we're actually worth with what they can sell with their inventory. So these people that I'm talking about, you may care about their names, they're not needle movers who pay for themselves. None of them. You can replace them with cheaper models and do no damage to the things that you're televising by eliminating them. It causes a temporary outrage, but these are not people who pay for their own salaries. Like, they're just— they're just not.