#15. 1999: Best Movie Year Ever?
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With the weekend's actual releases limited to The Curse of La Llorona taking first with $26.5 million on the worst Easter frame in twenty years, ahead of Shazam! at $17 million and Breakthrough at $11 million, Sonny turns the show into a book club on Brian Raftery's Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, which he recommends warmly for its hundred-plus original interviews while pushing back on the thesis — he'd argue 2007 beats it, with There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men and Zodiac on top and Superbad, Knocked Up and Juno underneath, and he credits 1999's classic status less to something in the water than to the DVD boom putting Office Space and Fight Club in Best Buy bins for ten dollars. JVL actually accepts the thesis but with a twist: the year's prestige slate (Boys Don't Cry, Girl, Interrupted, The Cider House Rules, American Beauty, The Green Mile) doesn't hold up at all, so 1999 is the Bad Boys Pistons of movie years — a roster of role players and no all-star — carried by overlooked mid-list titles and what he calls the greatest teen-movie slate ever assembled. Vic cheerfully admits he read the prologue and a bit of the ending, "as much as I did for a Georgetown midterm," argues any thesis book overstates its case, and counters with 1986 as his own perfect year, from Platoon and Aliens down to Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School. The top-five lists are the heart of it: JVL runs Cruel Intentions, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Matrix and Office Space up to The Insider, which he calls the best movie ever made about journalism and rhapsodizes over at length — Bruce McGill's deposition, Michael Gambon's ninety-second cameo, the bleached blue-and-white palette; Sonny goes Being John Malkovich, Rushmore, Office Space, The Matrix and Fight Club at number one; Vic can't break a tie between Office Space and 10 Things, with Notting Hill sneaking in at four. That spins into a good stretch on whether streaming can ever manufacture classics the way VHS made The Princess Bride and DVD made Office Space, with Sonny calling algorithmic recommendation the real death of the monoculture and JVL noting that Walmart's Vudu front page is the only service that still feels like a Blockbuster new-release wall. Up front, Vic reports back from a week at the Ritz-Carlton in Grand Cayman on tripled Starwood points — the club-within-the-club lounge, the photos of roosters he insists on calling cock pics, and a genuinely scary moment at Rum Point when his daughter lost a fin and started drifting toward Cuba until Giovanni the South African ship's captain fished her out, which JVL treats as an indictment of Vic's understanding of duty.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this episode, sponsored by Robinhood and Calm, the gang gets book clubby and discusses Best. Movie. Year. Ever...
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00Unfortunately no one can be told what The Matrix is take dead aim on the
Mike00:00:07rich boys get them in the crosshairs and take them down PC load letter the
JVL00:00:13does that mean the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club you have to see it
Mike00:00:25for yourself
Vic00:00:38hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon sponsored by Calm and Robin Hood I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch, Jonathan V. Last I'd like to remind you the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play just look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends
?00:00:55Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play just look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play just look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends
Vic00:00:55and leave a review gentlemen how are we no no forget this Vic go I want to say I want to say the first thing is I enjoyed the show we'll
JVL00:01:07talk about the Mandalorian show yes I okay good and I haven't even seen them
Vic00:01:11about your island adventure okay well okay we'll get right into it they let you through on the way back in so easily they're very friendly over there I thought it would be much harder which island did you go to oh I went to Grand Cayman yes everybody went to Grand Cayman for
Sonny00:01:25for for almost a week on one of your many lengthy vacations four days a year
Vic00:01:30apparently is four days too many yes that's right I went with Gene Hackman to check up on the account did you like the picture of my cock here look at that you
JVL00:01:40didn't like that you only said that's a different one oh you only sent that to
Vic00:01:43me I said no I sent a couple of pictures sent me your cock pic that's right and this is a new one I forgot to send this one and look how big it is is it shaved it no it's big and hairy and look at that look at the head is so angry and red and then they'd have
JVL00:01:55up and down running around wild don't look it in the eye why why are there why
Vic00:02:01are there chickens running okay yes there are roosters and chickens almost all Caribbean islands right yes it's true in Hawaii it's very it's like what this world once was true in Moana yeah so it's like Moana absolutely and but this is a big that was a skinny chicken this is that was a big fat are you gonna post your cock pic to your twitter are you gonna tweet that out yes and so yeah so but that was uh that was funny because as soon as you get out of the airport does Kate keep that on her phone too? yes uh and but they're everywhere and I'm like what is going on with all the
JVL00:02:33you know they like being in your fraternity days all over again I
Vic00:02:36imagine that they all probably raised in one giant farm JVL okay you know can I just say this as a quick aside I was reminded while but the worst thing about this is that you're going through the vacation and in my mind I'm like oh this will be a funny thing to mention on the show oh that'll be a funny thing to do you write that down I did did you have a little notebook I did on the airport you had a little you had a little stick book during my layover I put it in my iPhone notes the layover at Fort Lauderdale which was interminable I put I put it all down there but I was reminded of a story by our friend Chris Caldwell who when he was traveling through like Italy and France in the 80s and 90s he said there was a perfume called a woman's perfume called it was like Le Coq Noir so it's like not Dracar Noir no no Le Coq Noir like the black rooster oh okay but it was very he said but you see these billboards and posters and it was but it's like very obvious because it would be like Le Coq Noir if you dare or fear fear Le Coq Noir fear it but this is a perfume yes a perfume so anyway from back in the day so so there
JVL00:03:47was that the trip was wonderful there's so very where were you staying were you staying in an all-inclusive resort an Airbnb kind of it was kind of inclusive it
Vic00:03:55was the Ritz-Carlton because for all of us Starwood card holders I'm sorry Sonny
JVL00:04:00the doctor's son was staying at the Ritz-Carlton in the Cayman Islands sadly even my father's
Vic00:04:05never stayed but so what happened was Sonny you could have had the situation too but you gave up your Starwood card right they merged with Marriott and there was this big fight that I was reading about in the Wall Street Journal as it was ongoing negotiations because the Starwood people felt like they were
JVL00:04:20getting the short end of the stick because Starwood was the best rewards program
Vic00:04:25Marriott so Marriott of course they owned the Ritz-Carlton and a bunch of other properties and they took it over and as a as a is a concession a one-time only they tripled your points tripled your points I tripled whatever your
JVL00:04:37balance was tripled really oh it's only for doctors children yeah that's right
Vic00:04:42it was it was so suddenly I had all these points because I hadn't gone on vacation for a while with the kids and like three months he hadn't he hadn't
Sonny00:04:49gone on a ridiculous he hadn't gone on a cruise or a jaunt you know it's
Vic00:04:55all the years blend in you just went on a cruise like four months ago no that
Sonny00:05:00was last summer no that was literally not true that's the Disney cruise in
JVL00:05:06July of 2018 okay so it was not a calendar year ago that was correct no
Vic00:05:13that was two days off that was two days okay so in any event I'm pretty sure you
Sonny00:05:18also went out of town on Thanksgiving Christmas you're like oh I don't
Vic00:05:25think anything he works so hard with these lunches he has to go to for business development we got a good one coming up too but when you arrive at the airport yeah we do oh yeah well that's a dinner right when you arrive they have these in the customs dinner they have these yes they have these big portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip framed oh yeah and there's the
Sonny00:05:47Grand Cayman is the Grand Cayman's a British protector it is still they were
Vic00:05:51offered they were given independence but they still chose to be part of a British we should have done yeah so they just renovated the airport and Prince Charles was just there a couple weeks ago to do the cutting the ribbon-cutting ceremony and wheeled him out and Camilla yes so so it was lovely had a few painkillers thought of you and we were there a long time ago JVL you mean Mike Murphy Catherine Lowe that was British Virgin Islands with the painkillers yes that's right but we were also in Grand Cayman once and that we went to Macabooka and Catherine Lowe was with us and we drove Kate was with us as well unless you weren't on that one I can't remember but okay I would say this so we get into the Ritz but the Ritz Carlton Carlton and it
Sonny00:06:36turns out on your one of your numerous vacations and we I check in they bring
Vic00:06:41us to the front desk and goes oh I'm sorry you're a Club Lounge member which I guess you get all these things so they took us away they go this way sir leave everything behind so we go and there's like don't forget your top hat there's a club within the club so there's like different levels of elitism wear a monocle yes glasses yes it's a supper club again so we go to the club lounge and it's like welcome please relax we'll take care of everything for you why don't you just have something to eat we have breakfast and lunch here we don't have dinner but we do have dessert and after-dinner drinks and cordials and you could just relax and we'll take care of everything and it's like you could eat so you could literally live it my mother would live at the club lounge and she would take a giant bag and then fill up the food and put it in her bag and that would be dinner and she would never leave because it's all about the con like how much can you get away with for free getting comped in a casino yeah yeah it is so that what did you do to deserve club lounge I think it's because of my Starwood card because if I was like you know gold status because how many times have you stayed at Ritz-Carlton properties in your life this was the first time no yes false you've seen a
JVL00:07:40Ritz-Carlton like up in New York you've told me dozens of times St. Regis the St. Regis I'm sorry my mistake how dare you how dare you give me a greater
Vic00:07:49sign lesser sign what was it oh that's a tough one which is really that is I can't make that oh my gosh that is a hard question because choice St. Regis is smaller right Ritz is huge but even at a large scale with that many people they still do an excellent job the interesting thing and the guests were you know by far very friendly people we met a mother and all rich people are other rich people except for so I'm on the beach right and I'm just relaxing there and then there's the one annoying dude so this guy is this this old you know heavyset white guy like it is late 50s or whatever and like trying to be cool and trying to talk to the staffers in Island talk that's the worst you know those he'll come up you're like Sebastian man how you doing and trying to do the fist bump those poor guys have to just like smiling and then and he's like hey you sell a pina colada I might not be old enough to drink man I'm like
Sonny00:08:54there's a great riff on that and forgetting Sarah Marshall remember when Oh like Peter Siegel goes up to one of the guys who works at the property they're at like a party off the property yes and he's like hey guys what's up and he's like oh we're friends cuz you work at the cuz cuz I work at it and then he
Vic00:09:10punches him in the face he punches over the face I thought that I also thought about Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places you know Ningay Ningay and Boko you know it's me Lionel Joseph you know whether they have this thing it was like it was just that was terrible
JVL00:09:24but otherwise I have never been in a lobby of a Ritz-Carlton nor a St. Regis
Vic00:09:29oh that's not true you've been at the Ritz-Continetti got married at the Ritz yeah oh I guess that's true yeah that's right I would say there was one scare one scary moment and that was so we had done a wonderful excursion Stingray City Starfish Point no but so it turns out March April is still choppy like the waters right and there's a strong current it's much more quiet it's hotter in the summer but the water is much more still and that's what I remember from the last time I was in Grand Cayman which was like 11 years ago but it was in the summer so it was very calm hot but calm so this time the water was choppy and we were on a catamaran and by the time we got to the second excursion which was Rum Point Reef to go snorkeling the kids got seasick so my daughter she just refunds breakfast on the side of the ship a little bit on the ship but it was mostly off and my son just doesn't want to move he's just sitting there like I'm he didn't he doesn't even want to talk so I said fine I've snorkeled before that's what I'll hang out with you here in the Sun that's fine but my daughter said she's feeling better so she and Kate go out snorkeling the the current is so strong when they get to with the group my daughter starts drifting away she has a life preserver on but she's not strong enough to step up with the group starts drifting on her way on her way to Cuba you know what I mean so Kate's swimming after her to bring her by now my daughter lost a fin right and so swimming in circles yeah yes and and just drifting away and so Kate's trying to bring her back but the currents really strong of course I'm in the front of this catamaran far I don't hear anything I'm just enjoying the peace and quiet we're having a painkiller I always know I wasn't I just have some water at that point but at which point then Kate panics right you yeah how it is in the water you just panic and then she just yelled help us help us and thank God for Giovanni the South African bronze God who rescued them the ship's captain and I I talked to I said you know had I
JVL00:11:31been in the water you would have taken care of it I would have Giovanni would have rescued me you all would have died no you would have dragged me Michael what
Vic00:11:39couldn't leave your son oh that's right no I kind of want to leave him on the boat alone he was your response you don't know what's gonna happen you know
JVL00:11:45whose responsibility your daughter was yes that's her that's how it works out
Vic00:11:49that's Kate that's how it's ability so I'm sorry she wanted you to leave your
JVL00:11:52post taking care thank you your child to save them thank you JV that's that's Giovanni's job you know what you had you know a little something about a thing called duty I do and and
Vic00:12:03you know what you would love in the hotel they have all those jewelry stores oh did you get any tanzanites I went to Effie Jewelers and the Colombian Emerald Exchange and I got some amazing tanzanite you would not believe and I brought it here to show lots of watches not making anymore oh watches yeah no and I thought did you buy I didn't buy anything but I had a watch ladies and I talked about you and they said oh he's a big fan of the Omega and the citizen and they were showing me the Omega they had they have both the Seamaster and the Speedmaster mmm we watched Apollo 13 this weekend oh
JVL00:12:36yeah I very nearly bought a Speedmaster yeah which one is better I mean better the different watches which one's more expensive there's so many variations of this like there are you can get the more expensive variation Speedmaster or the more expensive very why you're trolling forget this I don't really want to know okay good how are you JVL happy Easter how's the powdered cheese I'm fine it's great Jesus is risen I had like three cups worth of powdered orange goodness
Vic00:13:05it was amazing straight did you just like right in the vein on popcorn some
JVL00:13:10of it just off the spoon it's so good okay all right Santino how are you fine I'm fine yeah can I ask this giant thing is
Vic00:13:21it a hookah that we have in the middle this is our spirit of the
Sonny00:13:24week we'll get to it now on the show are you why are you doing things out of order come on you know I didn't know his spirit of the week it looks like it's
Vic00:13:30Polish pottery it's beautiful it's Mexican pottery okay cool you're fine sunny everything I'm fine all right you know what I like about hotels by the way hotel channel I'm not talking about the other hotel channels I'm talking about the channel about the hotel do you ever you know those channels I can watch that all day you watch and love that channel the thing that tells you all of the activities in the hotel and they could do it on loop Starwood used to have a good one and I would make fun of it because they would have like people who like at the Starwood experience to go to concerts and things but they have the Ritz channel and then there's the other channel that's just all about Grand Cayman with a woman named Monica Walton and I was actually on a treadmill because I did go to the gym a couple times and I watched I watched that for 35 minutes and it's it's wonderful but one of the other things was the kids actually saw one night because you get like island time where we're waking up at six or seven in the morning and going to sleep at eight you know what I mean you just adjust that way but one night the kids watched for the first time pirates of the Caribbean the first one yeah and you know what that movie holds up yeah that's a it's an
Sonny00:14:32entertaining movie and Johnny Depp was really good as far as two and a half hour movies about theme park rides go it's pretty great no I mean me that's
Vic00:14:40because my expectations were that low because I thought it was a stupid idea that we're doing a movie about a theme park had you never seen it before oh no no no at the time and but watching it again there's some funny moments it would have been fine if it was just that one movie instead of yeah it's funny
Sonny00:14:54is amusing. Jeffrey Rush is nicely creepy. Oh, yeah. He's really good.
Vic00:15:02It's great. Is that like at World's End? Which one is that? The first one? Black Pearl. Curse of the Black Pearl. Whatever. I just know it's... Yeah, Curse of the Black Pearl. Yeah, as long as it's not Curse of La Llorona. Speaking of which, over the weekend...
Sonny00:15:18That was like the Inigata De Vida of transitions.
Vic00:15:23You know how many other possibilities there are to transition to the Curse of La Llorona?
JVL00:15:28What is the Curse of La Llorona? He doesn't even know!
Vic00:15:30Over the weekend, JVL, the Curse of La Llorona took the top spot at the box office. What? With $26.5 million followed by Shazam with $17 million and in third place, Breakthrough with $11 million. We're going to get to that in a second. Box office thoughts, this was the worst Easter weekend ever, they said.
Sonny00:15:50It's the worst in 20 years or something like that. Yeah, it was bad. The Curse of La Llorona, I didn't even try to suggest that as a movie for us to watch
Vic00:16:00because it's a horror film. It looks like The Nun.
Sonny00:16:02It is a James Wan produced horror film. It is apparently part of the Conjuring Expanded Universe. Oh, it is! Oh, now maybe I want to see it now. So there's that. What do you call it when
Vic00:16:15they cut to and it's the fast, sort of they zooms up and guts in your face.
Sonny00:16:19They've run this a million times.
Vic00:16:21Jump scares. Jump scares. They do this constantly. A million times. You know it's happening already.
Sonny00:16:25Yeah. I mean, look, this is another one of these cheapo horror films that is going to make a ton of money. Costs nothing. Costs nine million bucks. It's already grossed 26 million. Question.
JVL00:16:37At what point will we start to consider the Conjuring Expanded Universe to be one of the most successful film franchises of all time? How many solid hits are we away? I mean, I think it's
Sonny00:16:53a weird thing to think about because only two of these movies are called Conjuring movies, right? There's Conjuring 2 and then Annabelle, Annabelle Creation, The Nun, The Curse of La Llorona. I don't know. I think I'm missing one. I think there's one more. I mean, it's already one of the most successful franchises. If we get to ten of them. Let's see if Box Office Mojo has a...
Vic00:17:21Do you know what The Curse of La Llorona is about? I literally did not know it existed. I actually watched the trailer for the first time yesterday. It's a story about a sort of ghost demon woman who wants to take
Sonny00:17:37your children away. It's a Mexican folk tale. It's a Mexican folk tale about a woman whose, I think, husband or something killed her two children and then she kills herself or her husband leaves her and then she kills herself and her two children, something like that. And so the ghost, the spirit then goes around trying to kidnap other people's
JVL00:17:55children. Question? Yes. Which children does the spirit want to take away?
Sonny00:18:01Because depending on the answer to that, maybe it's not a horror movie. Well, you know, maybe it's a it's a, it's a, the interesting thing about this is that it is Maybe it's a whimsical thing. Like the Audrey tattoo. It's like a Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins. The interesting thing about this movie, I mean, I guess, is that it is, it is one of, it's one of these films that is marketed specifically at Hispanic audiences. So the audience, the audience was, I think, if you looked at the audiences after the fact, it was something like 50% Hispanic. Wow.
JVL00:18:3630% white. Is it Spanish language?
Vic00:18:39No, no. I don't think so. But it's, maybe, but I, all I know is I saw the trailer with Linda Cardellini and yet another number one movie at the top of the box office between this and Green Book. She's on a roll. Linda Cardellini. And, and, and, you know, who else? Is it the trailer? It was Marta from Arrested Development. Which Marta? I think second Marta. Marta 2? I think it was
JVL00:18:59Marta 2. Marta 2 is Jason
Vic00:19:01Bateman's wife. Really? IRL, I believe. That's funny. I could be wrong. We'll find out. Our listeners will let us know. But I just thought to myself, really, a story about a monster that takes your children away, that is not exactly the most ideal bedtime story. Certainly there have got to be better ones, JVL.
JVL00:19:15We are back with, I've been actually dying to do this read with our, our one of our favorites. I love all our favorite, I love all our sponsors equally, but my favorite sponsor is Calm. Calm.com. It's a website that you go to and you subscribe and you download an app to your phone and this app is filled with all sorts of good stuff. There are meditations, guided breathing exercises, and sleep stories. And the reason I have been waiting to do this now for a week is because last week while you were away, I got an email from one of our long time fans, Justin, who wrote to tell me that he was about to run a half marathon and the night before he could not fall asleep. He was having insomnia and so he was like tossing and turning and he started getting worked up about how he was not going to be able to get to sleep and then I'm going to be wrecked for the race. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And he thought, you know what? I will just try these ridiculous sleep stories that JVL has always. So he hopped onto his phone, downloaded Calm.com, put in our little code, subscribed, put on What's our code? Calm.com slash WFB. He got his 25% off thing and put on the dulcet tones of Tamara Leavitt and was asleep, his words, five minutes later. Wow! Had a great race, is now totally hooked. None of this is shtick. This is all real. This is real. Testimony. Customer. This is as
Sonny00:20:48real as it gets. This is as real as a commercial
JVL00:20:50can be. So I was setting up Calm for my girls last night, as I do literally every single night. And when you finish your, oh you can hear the gentle rain sound. So when you finish a sleep story, it gives you a little readout where it's like, you know, this is your streak. You've now used Calm for X number of days in a row. You've used Calm for X number of hours. And our like number of days in a row was like 752. And the number of hours was in the tens of thousands of hours.
Sonny00:21:21But they only actually listen to like 20 minutes.
JVL00:21:24And this is actually the genius of it, is that the sleep stories, they add new sleep stories all the time, but the sleep stories never get old because you never get all the way to the end. I still couldn't even tell you how any of the sleep stories end.
Vic00:21:36That's like me watching Blue Lagoon.
JVL00:21:39It's like Benadryl for your children, but even better. So anyway, I'm always shilling. I'm thrilled to be shilling it again. It works. It's really great. Especially if you have kids, but as Justin's case shows, even if you're a grown-up. So go to calm.com. That's C-A-L-M dot com slash W-F-B calm.com. They will give you 25% off of their premium subscription. It gives you unlimited access to everything. It's fantastic, and you will thank yourself. Get calm.com today.
Vic00:22:12Thank you, JVL. So this week, we're actually not discussing, obviously, La Llorona. We're not talking about movies. We're not talking about
Sonny00:22:20a movie this week. Instead, we're talking about a book. One thing before we move on. Yes, Sonny. We should note that Captain Marvel crossed $400 million domestic. I saw that. Which I am kind of surprised. I did not think it was going to get there, but it has hung around. I also noticed... Actually had a drop of plus 5.7% last weekend. So people getting excited for Endgame, which we'll be talking about next week. Oh my gosh. Which I see in like three hours.
Vic00:22:44We're taping this on a Tuesday. That's right. This is very exciting. I also saw that Shazam, you know, while it's still at the top there. I didn't realize the budget was so big so that, you're right, it's not going to...
Sonny00:22:57It's going to what? The number Box Office Mojo has is $100 million. I've seen lower numbers. I've seen like $80 to $90 million. For the budget, yeah. But like I mean, it's what it's grossed about $322 million worldwide, which... Okay.
JVL00:23:14Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. While we're on the subject of comic book movies. Sure. I was re-watching the trailer for Joker. Yeah. And there is a moment in Joker where I saw the face of Brett Cullen, an actor whose name you don't recognize but whose face you would. And you would recognize him most recently from The Dark Knight Rises where he is the congressman who is at the party talking to Matthew Modine in the beginning saying, we're going to need a new congressman and... Not Pat Leahy. Not Pat Leahy. And is then taken away. He's not an actual congressman. He plays the congressman in the movie. And then is taken by Selina Kyle. She says, hey, where are you going? And he shows up in the Joker trailer. He is on television and he is talking about how Gotham is broken. And for a moment, I thought to myself, holy crap! Joker is going to take place in continuity with the Dark Knight trilogy? No. He's playing Thomas Wayne. Oh, he plays the father? I was so excited. For about 90 seconds while I went and looked to make sure he... No continuity. How great would it be to get a Joker to take place? But we've already had a Joker in the Dark Knight. No, no. But imagine a Joker movie that takes place concurrently with Batman Begins. Yeah, right. So it's happening in Gotham at the same time. Because we don't see the Joker. And Batman Begins is just happening way out over here. That's a great idea. And we don't see it. And Joker is happening over here. That's a bad idea.
Sonny00:24:52I'd love to see that. I don't think that's a good idea. I think that's a bad idea. I love it. Because there's already a Joker movie in the Dark Knight trilogy.
Vic00:25:01But not in the
Sonny00:25:02first movie. This is like a prequel. Yeah.
JVL00:25:04What would... Why?
Vic00:25:06Why would that happen? Because. And, uh, okay.
Sonny00:25:10Disagree. Or disagree.
Vic00:25:12Uh, the question is, which Joker is going to be better? I mean, can you really fill in Heath Ledger's shoes is the question. Can he? And I like Joaquin Phoenix. I think it's great. And should you be explaining the nature of his evil is the other big question. As I say. Sorry. I didn't mean to derail this here. We're doing, we're talking about our
JVL00:25:28we're doing our book club. Yeah, book club. Because I was going to say. Vic, did you read it? I love you.
Vic00:25:34We should tell people what the book is. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I'm just going to jump right to it. We're talking about a book today and it's called Best Movie Year Ever. How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Raftery. I was going to say Bill Raftery. No relation. No relation. Brian Raftery. Sonny, what's going on here? What are we doing a book?
Sonny00:25:52We're doing a book because I knew I couldn't get anybody else to go see The Curse of La Llorona and I wasn't going to do another movie all by myself again. So I was like we're getting a book. We're getting a book this week. That was very subtle of you. No, I thought we could do this because it is an interesting, it is interesting fodder for conversation. Raftery's book is, I'm going to shill for the book for a second because I liked it a lot. Yeah, go for it. It has a ton of new interviews with a bunch of actors and directors you know. Actually Vic, you have the galley over there. Can you throw it down here because there's a list of the actors on it. Featuring over 100 original interviews with folks like Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Kirsten Dunst, Steven Soderbergh, Mike Judge, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, M. Night Shyamalan, Josh Hartnett, The Josh Hartnett, James Vanderbeek, Michael Mann, David O. Russell, John Cho. I mean it's there's a ton of work that went into this. There's lots of interviews and lots of stuff and it all works because 1999 was in fact a great year for movies. Now we can get into if it was the best ever in a minute or two. But 1999 was undoubtedly a great year for movies. You had how best to put it. You had a lot of very quotable movies. A lot of movies that penetrated into the popular culture in deeper ways than movies that are necessarily just good often do. So you had The Matrix, Fight Club, Office Space. The Sixth Sense. Blair Witch. Blair Witch. You had I don't know. What else is in this book? You had Magnolia. Magnolia. Eyes Wide Shut. You had The Insider. You had Eyes Wide Shut. Being John Malkovich. American Beauty.
JVL00:27:49Oh, Election, Rushmore, The Virgin Suicides,
Sonny00:27:53Being John Malkovich, Three Kings,
JVL00:27:56The Limey. Anyway,
Sonny00:27:57so lots of great movies. The Mummy. The Mummy. The Mummy. The Mummy is a, again, interesting.
Vic00:28:06It's not rewatchable, by the way. Oh, have you rewatched it recently? Yeah, the effects. Well, like The Phantom Menace. The effects are so jarring, but it was the early years of that sort of stuff.
Sonny00:28:15Anyway, so anyway, I like the book quite a bit. It is quick. It's a quick read It's very entertaining, especially if you, I mean, look, I was, what, 16 and 17 in the year 1999, so
Vic00:28:31this is like... I was about to ask, where were you?
Sonny00:28:33Did you see any of these movies in the theater? I saw a lot of these movies in the theater. I didn't see all of them, certainly. I didn't see Office Space, for instance, like everybody else. Like everybody else. I caught Office Space on DVD. I didn't see Fight Club because my parents wouldn't let me go see Fight Club, which is kind of amusing because this was remember it came out after Columbine and everyone was like, oh, these violent movies are teaching the kids to whatever. But I did see The Matrix. I saw The Matrix. The Matrix is the first movie I saw in theaters more than once. Saw it three times. Loved it. Blew me away. Really? Let's see. What else? The Phantom Menace I saw a couple times that year. American Beauty, of course. I don't know.
Vic00:29:15I would say 1999 was the year that JVL and I probably saw the most movies together. Every time I'm looking at the list, I'm like, oh, I think we might have seen these together either in theater or rented.
JVL00:29:29You and I, at that point in my life, I was seeing upwards of 90 movies a year. Yeah, you were missing. So, Kim, how do you want to structure this discussion, boys?
Sonny00:29:39So, I have two separate ideas. One, we could discuss our favorite movie from this year. And the second is, I would like to get into the idea of whether or not it is actually I don't like discussions of the best movie year of all time because I don't have any real interest in talking about 1939. Sorry, J-Pod. But over the last 20 years, let's say. Does that sound good? Maybe 25 years. We could do 25, 30 years. Close to 30. So, since 1989, maybe. Does that sound good to you guys? So, best movies of this year. What's interesting or, I don't know, an interesting thing about this book is that it does spend a chapter on American Beauty, which, as everyone can remember, won the best picture at the Oscars and was a huge and has aged the worst of any of these films, I think. I would say. I mean, it is like this kind of boomer nostalgia. And that's the thing. The terrible suburbs and how awful everything is. At this end of history moment. Homophobia.
Vic00:30:51All sorts of issues they're tackling.
Sonny00:30:52It's also vaguely awkward to watch now after following the Kevin Spacey debacle because you realize that the closeted Marine neighbor was actually right about Kevin Spacey being a creepy pedophile. So, I'm sorry. I just made my mic. Vic had a... Chris Cooper. He knew it when he saw it. But I've been kind of flipping through all of these. I've been re-watching some of these movies recently. The Matrix holds up I still love that movie. Love it. I re-watched Three Kings recently, which is a very interesting movie to re-watch after 9-11 because it's actually it's basically Gulf War Tears of the Sun. It's like the... David O. Russell has made a movie in which the problem with the Iraq War is that we didn't go to Baghdad and finish the job. That's like all of the characters...
Vic00:31:42That's right. We abandoned these people. We let them down.
Sonny00:31:44All of the characters are upset that we are leaving these civilians to get slaughtered by the Iraqis. It's very kind of fascinating.
Vic00:31:52It's Bush's fault. It's funny.
Sonny00:31:55It's very much an anti H.W. realist type book or movie, which
JVL00:32:00is fascinating. Which is funny because a few years later these folks have a way of being to realism.
Sonny00:32:05Oh no. It was very funny. Let's see. What else? I re-watched Election recently. I don't know if you guys have thought about this before. Hillary Clinton? A lot like Tracy Flynn. I could probably get like 10 think pieces out of this. That was a sigh from JVL. A sigh. Even the movies that don't work for me like Eyes Wide Shut did never work for me and I love Stanley Kubrick I thought you were going to say Lili Sobieski. Well, everybody loves her. But it's still interesting.
JVL00:32:42So here, what strikes
Sonny00:32:44me about so I agree
JVL00:32:47actually with the Raftery's thesis that 99 is the best year of movies, at least in the modern era and I went back further than you did. I even went back to like 74 where you have Chinatown, Godfather 2, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Conversation and a bunch of other things. But what's interesting to me about 99 is that the top of the batting order, I think, is extraordinarily weak. And so when you look at the movies which
Vic00:33:14Are you talking about Box Office?
JVL00:33:17No, no. I'm talking about the critically acclaimed movies of 1999 in 1999 were Boys Don't Cry, Girl Interrupted, The Cider House Rules, American Beauty, Green Mile. None of those movies holds up even a little bit. And all of the classics and again, I just define classic as a movie that people willingly go back to over and over again. Maybe it's great, maybe it's not. The classics are things which were very much overlooked, like The Insider, Office Space, Matrix wasn't overlooked, it was sort of ground breaking. Fight Club. Fight Club is another one of these. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff happening here. So the big artistic, it had two giant artistic failures, which were I think Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut. But both of which are highly interesting failures.
Sonny00:34:09Sorry, when you say artistic failures, do you mean movies that do not work as pieces of art or box office failures?
JVL00:34:16I think, well they were box office failures, but I think what I mean is that they don't quite they don't quite achieve their ambitions as pieces of art. And yet I don't have a single criticism about either one of those movies. I mean the final judgment is
Sonny00:34:36I don't think they work. I mean Magnolia's 30 minutes too long, which I think even Paul Thomas Anderson himself. Easily. But on the other way
JVL00:34:42I am very happy that both of those movies were made. And there are lovely things in both of them. It has this world defining movie in the Phantom Menace which brought back a thing we never thought we would see again and which has changed our world and pop culture forever in very important ways. The reinvention of the indie horror scene with the Blair Witch Project. I mean Blair Witch is in many ways one of the most influential movies in the economics of
Sonny00:35:10Hollywood over the last 30 years. I would suggest that it is every decade has essentially a reinvention of the horror film in which they find a way to make movies cheaper somehow and still make more money. So you had the Texas Chainsaw Massacre which was like legendarily cheap, had a huge return. The Halloween, the first Halloween a few years after that and then the Blair Witch Project and then after that Paranormal Activity which took the same basic idea and yet did it even, did it better frankly and cheaper. Yeah.
JVL00:35:42And then it had I think the best slate ever of teen movies. Oh my gosh. The teen movie slate from 1990 is Cruel Intentions, Varsity Blues, American Pie, She's All That and Ten Things I Hate About You. Every one of those is a classic of the genre. And that of course is my favorite is Ten Things I Hate About You. Ten Things I Hate About You is amazing and in a weird way Heath Ledger is the least good part of that movie. Our friend. It's filled with great stuff. Great Larry Miller. Larry Miller is a great dad in that. Julia Stiles, everything about that movie. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Everything about that movie is
Vic00:36:20a lot of talent. A lot of talent
Sonny00:36:22on that screen. What's interesting about that to me is that again as a 16 slash 17 year old in that I watched none of those movies. Didn't care about any of them. Those movies were
JVL00:36:32actually made for people like Vic and I who were leaving our. No, no. Who were leaving our seniors. Oh yeah. 24, 25. 23 year olds. I watched those movies numerous
Vic00:36:40times. You were talking about The Matrix. That was me. I watched those movies a lot.
JVL00:36:45You had Cruel Intentions on a loop.
Vic00:36:48I'm surprised that Can't Hardly Wait was not 1999. It wasn't. Yeah, no. It would have fit with.
JVL00:36:54This is what I'm saying. 99 is a mid-list success. 99 is made by the fact that it's got again, what is it? 15 great movies none of which people talked about at the time.
Sonny00:37:04At that time. So here's what's interesting about this and I have written a piece for Decider.com. It should be up by the time this podcast goes up. When you start looking at these movies and thinking about how they actually became classics, you realize that the real big hits, the movies that stick with you, leaving aside The Matrix, which was again a box office hit and critical success. The movies that stick with you are the movies like Office Space, Fight Club to a lesser extent like Election and some of these movies. But the reason that they became classics, the reason they became quotable and everybody was talking about them is because they also coincided with the DVD boom, right? So the DVD comes out a couple years before 1999, but it doesn't become a real used technology until 99-2000, which is the same time that Best Buy and Circuit City are essentially dumping DVDs on people to get them into stores. So you can go pick up a copy of Office Space for $10, you go pick up a copy of The Matrix for $10, or Fight Club for $10, whatever, and they become these kind of like dorm room bull session type films where you watch them over and over again and you talk about them and you laugh about them and whatever. So I do think there's a technological business aspect to this year being what it is that is kind of under-discussed. Raftery has this whole thing about there's something in the water, there's a whole new creative urge and I am skeptical of this because I think you can go through the years and find years that are better at the top than 1999, as you say. So I mean, just kind of like riffing, I think you could make the argument that 2007 is a better year than 1999. 2007 you have There Will Be Blood, you have No Country for Old Men, and you have Zodiac, all of which are in contention for best movies of the millennium so far, best movies of the last 20 years. But then on top of that you have Superbad Knocked Up in Juneau, which kind of basically defined the comedy of the 2000s, right? Let's see, you had an auteur making his, making a great final film, Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which is fantastic. I think it was actually probably better than Eyes Wide Shut, but whatever. You have some overlooked classics, right? You've got like the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Eastern Promises. You've got some great parodies. You've got Hot Fuzz, Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story. I mean there's like there's a lot of stuff going on in that year and it's all kind of auteur driven and and again very top heavy. Now you're right. I don't think that the the kind of mid list films are as good after that. 1999
JVL00:39:59was an NBA team. They would be the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons where it's just like you know, you've got 10 guys who are all role players and a bunch of dudes who can hit mid-range jumpers and nobody aside from Isaiah who's actually an all-star. Is that about fair? I mean, I'm Victorino. What are your thoughts
Vic00:40:24on that? You asked me if I read the book. Did you read in the book? I read it. I haven't even reviewed it. That's an old journalist joke. I read as much as I did for a Georgetown midterm. Oh no, JVL closes his eyes. Which is to say I read the prologue
JVL00:40:46and a little bit of the ending. The Jacket copy. Did you read any of the Jacket copy?
Vic00:40:51I read the editor's note in the front and then I went to sleep like I normally do. I will say this. I think as you do with any book that you're sort of pushing this thesis, you tend to overstate it. So I mean this great anxiety about sort of the movies that were reflective of the zeitgeist and the Y2K fear. I remember that. We were there at that time, but I don't think it was that reflective. I think there's a lot of movies that were, as you mentioned, already critically acclaimed, but don't hold up like American Beauty. And there's certainly movies that are just very pre-9-11 movies, right? And the Fight Club, you cannot have a movie about collapsing skyscrapers and be rooting for it at the end
Sonny00:41:31like that. You're just going to do it. You're not really supposed to be rooting for it at the end. This is the brilliant thing about Fight Club is that it is. Fight Club is fascinating because it is both a condemnation of consumer culture and then also a condemnation of the fascist response to consumer, to
Vic00:41:47anti-consumerism. But the book is great because you can just open it to any page and read the interviews and you get sucked into it. I mean, literally, because he's interviewed, Raptor, he's interviewed all of these actors and directors and just to get into their mindset, whether it be about office space or cruel intentions or whatever it is, I found the book fascinating in that sense. Also, there's a nostalgic connection. When I look back at that, right, I'd been at the, I was probably, I was about I think at the time or so. And was working at the Standard for three years. JVL, you were there. And you think about the different movies that you saw. It just brings you back. But one of the movies I absolutely love from that list is Office Space. And it's just because any time I watch it, it reminds me of that time in my life when I lived in Shirlington in 95. There was nothing. There was nothing. And you could have bought for cheap in Shirlington at that time. And you just, you know, I was looking for a job that summer, in the summer of 95. It was a gorgeous summer, but, you know, you were sort of like the anxiety of like, where am I going to work? And going to all these different office parks for interviews and things. And the office parks that take place, where is this supposed to be? Arlington, Texas or somewhere like that, right? It's so reflective. I mean, it's a mirror image of that. I see that. And I'm like, I'm there again. And it just reminds me of that time. And I think back on that happily. It was just a happy time. And I think about some of the other movies, JVL, like The Insider. Do you remember seeing that?
JVL00:43:16We saw that. Who was sitting next to us? Joe Lockwood. Joe Lockhart. Joe Lockhart was sitting next to us.
Vic00:43:21At the premiere. We went to the D.C. premiere.
JVL00:43:23The D.C. premiere for it at the Uptown Theater. I drove. And you
Vic00:43:27had to change in the back seat. That's right. It was the terrible traffic. We thought we were going to be late for the red carpet.
JVL00:43:33We walked. We literally walked the red carpet. Did you walk? Did you wear tuxes?
Vic00:43:37Yeah, no, we wore suits. I think we were totally dressed up. You wore your sunglasses that night and you wore sunglasses walking down the red
JVL00:43:43carpet. I was kind of a jackass. No, it was
Vic00:43:45a great time. That's what I'm saying.
JVL00:43:47It was a great time. Russell Crowe was there. Yeah, so this is my question though. Because I reading through this book, I really feel like we should praise Raftery here. I think it is just a very good book and I thank them for doing it. But I did wonder if there was like a Saturday Night Live effect here where this was the moment where movies were more important to me than they had ever been in my life or ever would be in my life again. I was seeing them constantly. I was reading Variety front to back. Back every day. Gotham Edition. I knew the whole release schedule all summer long. I had followed many of these projects through the trades.
Vic00:44:27We could easily write in Variety's language. We knew who was ankling what? Perfs? Perfs? Who was
JVL00:44:33helming? Ten Percentories? I knew the directors of all these movies, even Disposal. You know, like, oh, that's, you know, and not just like the, you know, even like the Disposal, like Varsity Blues. I was paying attention to all this stuff. And so I did wonder if there is something like that where if you, the movie, if you are a person who's really into movies, if around that age, 22 to 27, if you're going to have a year that just really speaks to you. I kind
Sonny00:45:02of assumed that was the case, frankly, because I... Like, what is the Jurassic Park year? Is that 93? 93. Like, 93 is a great year. It's amazing movies, right? Yeah. But no, I kind of assumed, like, even down to the SNL example, like the, you know, people on SNL always say that the best year of SNL was the one when you were in high school. Yeah. Those are the best years of SNL. That cast was amazing. It is, yeah, right. And it's very much the same for me. I mean, you know, 1999, I was going to the movies literally every Friday with my friends and just seeing, like, whatever the new thing was, right? And we were, you know, it was always... I remember going to see Bringing Out the Dead with four, like, 16 or 17-year-old high school guys. And we were all bored out of our skulls. We had no... We were like, what is this movie? This is nothing like Goodfellas. This is nothing like... Like Casino. This is nothing like Taxi Driver. Nick Cage is boring. This movie... It was terrible. I've come to appreciate it more in the intervening years, but... And Tom Sizemore
Vic00:46:04was in it. How could you go wrong? I was just going to say that
Sonny00:46:06Tom Sizemore was in it. That was the height of Tom Sizemore.
Vic00:46:08You can't go wrong. For me, you mentioned 2007. I've brought this up before, and I'll bring it up again. For me, personally, it's 1986. And that year was the year of Platoon, Aliens, Top Gun, Ferris Bueller, The Color of Money, Stand By Me, Highlander, Blue Velvet, Hoosiers, Crocodile Dundee. I mean, it goes on and on. That's a very strong year. That's a very strong year. Roland Jaffe's The Mission. And of course, the greatest movie of 86, even greater than Top Gun and Aliens, is Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School. So I'm... Courtney Thorne-Smith? Oh, no, that's Summer School.
JVL00:46:41That's Summer School with Mark Harmon. Yes. Also a good movie. So, Sonny, you raised... You raised a very interesting point. Maybe this is about distribution channels and not the art. And so it made me wonder if there is a corresponding effect when we look at, say, the mid-80s as the mom-and-pop VHS store is creating a new life for... Because there are a whole bunch of movies which are classics that succeeded because of video. Sure. So, like, The Princess Bride is the classic example of this. Like, everyone in the world has seen The Princess Bride now and loves it. It's universally accepted as a... instant classic, except that nobody saw it in the theater. Right. And it grossed, like, $4 million total. Right, right, right. And we had something similar like that with the advent of, like, widespread basic cable where HBO and TNT could turn movies into basic cable classics. Basic cable classics. And then there were DVD classics. Yeah. So the big question, and I think you are the person perfectly equipped to answer this, is is streaming going to be the same
Sonny00:47:43or different or worse? I'm glad you brought this up. We didn't even talk about this before, but I was thinking about this on the drive-in today. Because the fascinating thing about streaming is that, so, you know, the rise of the DVD blockbuster, right, is very much a function of the monoculture. Right? You have the Best Buy circulars where you're like, look, you can come get office space for $5. Or, you know, you've got the stand at the front of the blockbuster that's like, hey, here are the used movies. Or, but, like, here's what's popular. This is what's new and popular, and everyone should rent these things, right? But with the rise of Netflix in particular, but also Amazon streaming and Hulu and the rest, you know, all of these businesses are programming algorithms to try to attract your eyeballs, specifically your eyeballs, right? So, like, whatever you have watched before, they want you to watch more of that. Whatever you have liked before, they want you to watch more of that. And all of these individual recommendations are creating, you know, these tiny little channels that we fall into that, you know, maybe there are other people who are watching the same things, and maybe there are other people who have similar tastes and are getting trapped in similar wormholes, right? But, like, this is a very individualized, a very specialized recommendation. This is the real death of the monoculture, right? There's been a lot of talk about the monoculture recently with Game of Thrones, which is watched by literally less than 10% of the population, right? Like, the monoculture used to be like, okay, you would go, everyone would go into a Best Buy all across the country, and the movies would be essentially the same, right? You would have to choose from, like, the same 10 new releases every week. But now, everybody gets their own recommendation, and it is very specific and specialized, and you, you, there is no shared, there is no shared
JVL00:49:35thing like that. I think it's worse than that, actually, because when you go to Netflix, Netflix actually, their second order of business is to try to program to you personally, their first order of business is to try to program Netflix content to you. So when you, when you log into the app, the thing it is pushing to everybody all the time is the stuff that Netflix is making Netflix originals. And it was, this was not true at Blockbuster, right? So Blockbuster was a classic middleman, and Netflix, who is no longer a middleman, but is now a producer, has a vested interest in pushing their stuff to you over in a box. But the other, the other difference in this is that, there's too much content. And when you have too much content, you get choice paralysis. And it becomes the difference between when you walk into Blockbuster and look at the new releases section, or like the edited curious section, or whether you have to go like to the giant wall that just goes on forever where everything is there. Comedy. And once you're into that. Action. Or the room
Vic00:50:35that you have to go through the beads.
Sonny00:50:39Sorry. There's a lot of specialized choices in there too, you know. You know what you want.
JVL00:50:44But it, no, but it becomes, this idea that, oh, well, you know, everything will be there on the internet, because it's the internet and there are no space constraints, that winds up having bad effects. Certainly there are some things about it that are good. Yeah. But there are some things about it that
Sonny00:50:57are bad, because it does destroy the monoculture and it makes it harder for us all to surface and find things, right?
JVL00:51:03And the truth is, even because both Netflix and Amazon are because they are both doing their own productions, their incentives are to push their productions on you, in a weird way, the only pure place is actually Walmart. And so if you are using Walmart's video service, which is called Vudu, the Vudu front page, if you ever go and pull it up on your Roku device, is like Blockbuster. It's like, hey, here are the 15 new movies out this week. This is what you can rent now. This is what you can buy now. And the Vudu page feels much more like what I thought and I think what we all thought streaming internet video would look like someday. Whereas Netflix and Amazon do
Sonny00:51:53not. Amazon, well Amazon is great if you know what you want to watch. Right. Because Amazon has, I mean, doesn't have everything, but it has lots and lots of things you just have to pay for some of them. So this is why I actually, if I had to choose between Amazon and Netflix, I would take Amazon because I would rather pay, I would rather have the option to pay $2 to rent something.
Vic00:52:14Yeah, exactly. I'm often surprised about what you'll suddenly find on Amazon, but what I hate about the streaming and this is just a quick correction from last week's episode. I think Matt thought that I was still a Netflix snail mail subscriber. Yeah, that's what I thought too. We cancelled that some time ago, but what I and streaming is obviously easier, but what I hate is certain movies that you see on and then you when you want to see it, suddenly the next week it's gone. Yeah. And other, you know, and you're waiting for other movies that aren't there and they'll, sometimes you'll end up paying for a movie and then
Sonny00:52:41the next week it's free. This is why I, well, I mean, you know, that's that's, that's neither here nor there, but I always do, I always do make sure to Google before I like go, just go to Amazon to see where something is streaming, what it's on. Do they ever tell
Vic00:52:55you when and how long it's going to be there though for?
Sonny00:52:57There are websites that track this sort of thing, but I don't know. Do you have any other thoughts on it? No.
JVL00:53:03I just, I wonder where this is all going though. And is it, I mean, are there upsides to having totally siloed a thousand cultures where everybody's, everybody's finding the thing they really want, except that I get the sense that people aren't actually finding what they really want. Yeah. That the truth is nobody's actually happy. It's just not to go full Bernie bro, but that, you know, the people who are happy are the, are the guys running the tech algorithms and the rest of us are looking around and it's 500 channels and nothing to watch. And so we're going to get less of it. And I, I don't know, in a weird way, it's good for the content creators. Maybe not good for the artists, but good for the creator, right? You have close as close to full employment out in Hollywood as they've had maybe ever because you have all of these apps out there throwing around Silicon Valley. So money. So if you are a screenwriter or a best boy or gaffer or actor or actress, like you can find work now. The writers,
Sonny00:54:01the writers though are all, I, have you been following the writer versus talent agents anymore? I keep on getting those emails. It's, it's fascinating. I, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. We should have our friend Rob Long on the show at some point to, to, to fill a guest on our show. No, we'll never do that. But, but Rob Long actually has a couple of, he does these little like three minute podcasts called Martini Shots there. And he has a couple of episodes on this and it's very interesting, but basically the writers are mad at the agents for packaging products by for like getting their, all of their clients in on the same thing and then taking a cut off of that from the studio more or less. I don't really want to get into it too much. But it's, but it's interesting because the writers, the big complaint from the writers, and I think this is not an unreasonable one, is yes, there are more TV shows than ever, but seasons are shorter and we are tied to one show. So we are getting paid less because we're making, we're making fewer episodes. Right? We're making 10 episodes instead of 20. We're making 13 episodes instead of 22. Making six episodes instead of 12. So they're getting less money, but they're also tied to these shows for like nine months. I mean, you're working on a show, you're exclusive to that show for a certain amount of time. So it's causing some problems. It's interesting. I don't know, like I don't know where this all ends. And at the same time, you do have contraction, right? Like Disney buying Disney buying Fox. I have a friend who I won't mention, but a project he was working on has gotten the axe because Disney's looked at it and said, no, we don't want to make this. And it was about to start production. I mean, like just, it was on the way to rolling film. And it's it's, I mean, look, I'm I'm a corporate shill. So I am not opposed to this exactly. It's all part of the process. But it is there is contraction in the midst of this boom. Before we move on. Yes. Can we get some rankings
JVL00:56:03from 1999? What do you want to rank? I don't have my movie list. Your your top five of 1999? Sure, go. You go first. Do you want me to go one to five or five to one? Five to one. Number five, Cruel Intentions. I love that it's so trashy and it just owns the trashiness the whole way through and everybody in it is subverting what their public personas were at the time. I just, I love it. I love everything about that movie. I love Selma Blair. I love Sarah Michelle Gellar. I love Ryan Phillippe. It's fantastic. Number four, Ten Things I Hate About You, which is a wonderful and also falls in line with that little sort of Shakespeare mini revival where they were doing it's really a remake of Taming of the Shrew. Number three, The Matrix, which the only reason anybody doesn't go totally nuts for that movie now is because the sequels were so bad. The original is just tremendous. Number two, Office Space. The one of the two best comedies of the last 40 years. I will stake that right there. And number one, The Insider, which is it's not me.
Vic00:57:19Not me either. My phone's off.
JVL00:57:21Oh, it's totally me. Sorry. Fine, leave it. The Insider, which is the most underrated Michael Mann movie, I think. And is my second favorite Michael Mann movie after Heat. There are years of my life in which it's my favorite Michael Mann movie. It gets journalism right. It's the best movie ever about journalism.
Vic00:57:49Go onto YouTube and just type in Insider Mike Wallace and it's the great clip of Christopher Plummer chewing out both Gina Gershon and Stephen
JVL00:57:58Tobolowsky. The lawyers.
Vic00:58:00Because it's lawyers versus journalists. It's Mr. Wallace.
JVL00:58:03Mike, finesse me. Mike, finesse me. It is the best movie. And the intersected, it gets at the heart. I mean, maybe this is just an industry thing. But it gets at the heart of the conflict between print and broadcast. It gets at the idea of having imperfect witnesses. Because that's what Russell Crowe's character is. He's highly imperfect. He's like vaguely paranoid. Jeff Wyand is. You think he's telling the truth basically as much as he understands it, but maybe it's not all of it. And there's this great scene where Pacino's, you know, the oppo dump is coming on Wyand. And he says, what do you expect? These are normal people going through extraordinary circumstances and they're not perfect. This is what it looks like. It's got this fantastic walk-off cameo by Michael Gambon, who plays the Mr. Sand... I think it's Sanderford, the head of the tobacco company. Oh yeah, Michael Gambon. It's, I don't know, a 90-second scene where he's sitting talking to the Jeff Wyand character and telling him to keep his mouth shut.
Vic00:59:10And don't forget Bruce McGill during the deposition.
JVL00:59:14The performance of Bruce McGill's life. And the whole thing is shot in this super broad, very washed out and bleached color palette. So everything is like bleached blues and whites. If you haven't watched The Insider recently, treat yourself and go back to it.
Sonny00:59:32It's great. Bruce McGill, best career out of Animal House?
Vic00:59:37Yes. I think so. Let me think about this. It's not Tom Hulse who hit his apex with Amadeus. And Tim Matheson
Sonny00:59:46is great. I mean, John Belushi has the bright life. No, it'd be Tim Matheson.
JVL00:59:50Wouldn't it? No. Doesn't he direct and stuff too? He's had a real career in Hollywood. The last time I saw
Vic00:59:56Tim Matheson was in Van Wilder. Okay. Alright. I'll go quick. We gotta go. Number four, I would say Notting Hill, which has some very funny moments about what would it be like if a friend started dating a real movie star. And the scene where Hugh Grant brings Julia Robertson to the dinner party birthday thing is a genuinely funny scene. And also it has one of the great lines in my life, lines in the movie rather, Reese Eifert talks about Pandora's box. Okay, very funny. Number three, I liked The Insider, also JVL. And I don't know. I mean, these are all very personal picks though. I mean, it's like a tie for first place between Office Space and Ten Things. I just really, really like them both. And if they're on, if I'm flipping, I'm staying. I'm locked in that channel. Before we go on,
JVL01:00:42Tim Matheson has 45 directing credits. Whoa! Okay. So yeah, I was right.
Sonny01:00:47Bruce McGill is in everything. He's always popping up. Well, anyway. Okay. A movie we haven't, I'm gonna go five to one here. Being John Malkovich, which we haven't really talked about at all. No, it's true. And another movie. I hated that movie. Really? I love that movie.
JVL01:01:06It's great. I love the premise of it. It didn't like all Charlie Kaufman movies. Literally every Charlie Kaufman movie has a surefire fantastic, mind-blowing, great promise that you think to yourself, I know how the pitch meeting for this went, and of course they bought it, and of course they made this movie, and I'm glad they did. And then the movie just doesn't pay off.
Sonny01:01:26And another one we haven't really discussed at all, Rushmore. Yeah. Rushmore. It's great. Yeah, Bill Murray. You don't like Rushmore either? It's fine.
JVL01:01:34But we have the perfect Wes Anderson movie. The perfect Wes Anderson movie comes the next year. The perfect Wes Anderson movie.
Sonny01:01:39You don't need any of the others. The perfect Wes Anderson movie comes the next year with the Royal Tenenbaums but Rushmore also signals the beginning of the Bill Murray resurgence, of course, and it is the first movie of the Maraissance. Let's see, what else? Number three, Office Space. Number two, The Matrix, and number one, Fight Club. Okay. The Matrix really does hold up. I watched it again recently, and it is just entrancing. I keep coming back to this movie once every two or three years and expecting it to be dated and kind of lame, and it really is just, entrancing, and like, leave aside the, you know, whatever, the philosophy of it. But the look of the film, I just, this is why I saw it three times in theaters, because it was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
Vic01:02:27I thought it was interesting, you were talking about Lord Bezos, and Raftery mentions, Time Magazine's 1999 Man of the Year was, in fact, Jeff Bezos. Do you remember JVL, our former colleague, Fred Barnes when he said that he was asked to buy stock, offered to buy very early on stock in the online book company Amazon for cheap? No. And didn't. So sadly he's only a hundred millionaire, not a billionaire. He could have been a billionaire, Fred. Well, he's, you know, look,
JVL01:03:01he made his money on all those NCAA pools.
Vic01:03:04He did. He didn't need Amazon for that. Anyway, but, you know, had he done that, that would have been an amazing investment. Speaking of amazing investments, Robinhood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options and cryptos all commission-free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees, so you can trade stocks and keep all of your profits. Plus, there's no account minimum deposit needed to get started, so you could start investing at any level. The simple, intuitive design of Robinhood makes investing easy for newcomers and experts alike. View easy-to-understand charts and market data and place a trade in just four taps on your smartphone. You can also view stock collections, such as Hunter Most Popular. With Robinhood, you can learn how to invest in the market as you build your portfolio, discover new stocks, track your favorite companies, and get custom notifications for price movements so you never miss the right moment to invest. Robinhood is giving listeners of the Sub-Beacon a free stock like Apple Fort or Sprint to help you build your portfolio. Sign up at subbeacon.robinhood.com Now, moving right along, we actually have a spirit of the week. Sonny, you mentioned it in last episode. Listener Sam Huffines of Texas sends us the most beautiful bottle ever made handmade in Mexico, a bottle of Clase Azul Tequila Reposado, which you can then, when you're done with the tequila, it's a beautiful vase. It's like porcelain. It's 100% Weber Blue Agave. Sam says, quote, thank you for giving me the opportunity to actually look forward to my long and traffic-laden commutes. And a special shout-out to listener Charles Foose, who turned him on to the Sub-Beacon in the first place.
JVL01:04:46How much money did Sam spend on that? Because that bottle looks like it cost $500. At least $100.
Vic01:04:52So, let's take a quick shot here, Sonny. Tell me what you think. You're not a tequila person. I'm scared of tequila myself. We'll see what happens.
Sonny01:04:59Yeah, I... Wow! I'm not a... I like it. I'm not a tequila person. You know what?
Vic01:05:05I'm back in. I'm drawn back in. It didn't have any of those... I usually have these bad flashbacks to bad tequila moments. This was very pleasant. And warm. So, thank you very much.
JVL01:05:15Can you pass me that bottle? I don't want to...
Vic01:05:16Okay, there you go. Other than
Sonny01:05:19that, corrections, shout-outs, additions? Yeah, I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to Stephen Phillippe, who was nice enough to send us a copy of Ennio Morricone's In His Own Words. Stephen works at the Oxford University Press. It's a collection of the great composers, interviews with an Italian journalist. It's kind of in the weeds. There's a lot of him talking about... talking about the Italian composing he did and working on some TV shows and stuff. There's a lot of... Look, if you like The Man With No Name trilogy or his work with John Carpenter or Quentin Tarantino, it's pretty interesting. Definitely check that out, too, after you read the Brian Raftery book. Okay.
Vic01:06:07That is all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Sub-Beacon under Podcast and we're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. Outtakes. Anything. You got anything?
JVL01:06:34You know, I wanted to say about the cover of the book. Yes, great cover. Great cover. Describe it to our listeners. Best movie year ever is, if you are familiar with Tyler Stout, the graphic artist and poster designer. Oh, I've probably seen his work. This is in the style of Tyler Stout. Yes. And the artist is... It's very distinct. Where is his name? Chad Malone. And it is a montage of sort of caricature type drawings of scenes from every one of the movies. They all blend into each other.
Vic01:07:08They all blend into each other. All the movies mentioned
JVL01:07:11specifically and called out. In the Raftery book. It is just fantastic. I actually kind of wish I had a poster of this. So if anybody sees that Chad Malone is selling this, you should send me a link. Okay. Anyway, what other... So Vic, were you... Yes. Did you guys have babysitters while you were there? Did you have two rooms?
Vic01:07:32No. And then we had the kids with us the entire time. But, you know, the kids did do a little snorkeling excursion on their own for a couple hours. I'm sure it's fine.
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