00:05 Bill Simmons All right, this is an unusual rewatchables. 00:08 We are basically tossing away the categories for this one, and we're talking about a movie that came out nine years ago and is incredibly relevant right now for a bunch of different reasons and is one of the most fascinating rewatches I've had. 00:21 And we're taping this on a Friday. 00:23 Chris Reince here, Sean Fennessy is here. 00:24 The movie is called Contagion. 00:27 You might remember it. 00:28 You might notice on the iTunes store, it is, I think, like the third or fourth episode 00:33 rental pay-per-view thing right now, along with all the new movies that came out. 00:37 It's had this bizarre, but not that bizarre, resurgence. 00:41 The New York Times wrote about it two days ago. 00:44 Again, we're taping this on a Friday. 00:46 And we were hesitant to do this because we didn't know if the coronavirus was going to get worse or I'm sure it's probably not going to get better. 00:53 I watched this last night. 00:56 It was just kind of an unbelievable experience. 00:59 I couldn't get over how uncanny it was 01:03 almost predicting how this was going to play out in 2020. 01:08 Not as deadly, but the same kind of panic and the way it's shot. 01:13 And it almost uses germs like the shark in Jaws or something, where it's like somebody touches a pole on a bus and it just lingers on the pole for an extra second. 01:23 It's all stuff we've been thinking about the last two weeks. 01:26 What was your reaction when you rewatched this? 01:28 Sean Fennessy The exact same one, which I think is why it's been 01:30 booming and been so in the consciousness in the last few weeks and months um i mean we're far from the first people to be talking about what it's like to re-watch this movie i mean there have been so many articles our old colleague cam collins wrote about it for vanity fair six weeks ago now um and what the experience is like watching the film um it's it's just eerie it's eerie how prescient the first 20 minutes of the movie are and the 01:54 the sort of panic that it induces and also the kind of fascination that you have to try to understand something that you don't... 02:03 I don't understand science at all, but it's a movie that tries to make science legible to people the same way that I feel like a lot of people are trying to understand what's happening in the world right now. 02:12 Chris Ryan I think it's... 02:12 The thing that was really wild re-watching this was the details that I know that I did not notice in 2011. 02:19 And the opening 30 minutes of this movie is essentially just... 02:24 it's like watching a serial killer movie. 02:27 It's like watching the, you know, the transference of germs on door handles, on ATM cards, on iPad touchscreens, on railings and subway trains or in public transportation. 02:38 And I think that I was aware of that in 11 years. 02:42 But I wasn't like, oh, yeah, I see what this is about. 02:44 And now that has become obviously like the number one talking point that people are talking about now is like washing your hands and not touching your face, whether or not Purell is going to be taken off the shelves or it's being stockpiled and stuff like that. 02:56 And that kind of germophobia, I think going back to this movie then, it was really striking to see that. 03:03 I mean, to call it prescient is almost like an understatement, you know? 03:07 Sean Fennessy I also, it was inspired by the SARS and Ebola and H1N1 epidemics over the years. 03:13 But I don't recall personally being fearful about those epidemics in the same way the coronavirus has kind of dominated. 03:19 I just got back from a lunch and it dominated the lunch that I was at. 03:22 I mean, it is like. 03:23 There is an on-the-surface anxiety about it. 03:26 And the movie shows that that's what can happen to people when you're inside of something like that. 03:31 It's such an unusual thing. 03:33 There's this long history of movies that do this, that try to make us aware of something that could happen if things go wrong. 03:39 But I completely agree with what you said, Chris. 03:41 I wasn't paying close enough attention the first time I watched it, I guess, was my takeaway. 03:45 Bill Simmons I felt the same way. 03:47 I only saw this movie once. 03:49 I saw it because Soderbergh did it and Damon was in it and all of these actors I like. 03:54 I remember watching it being like, oh, that was scary and then never thinking about it again. 03:58 But it wasn't watching it. 04:00 I didn't feel any differently than when I watched like iRobot or it was some sort of futuristic. 04:06 Yeah, futuristic. 04:07 Here's the most appalling version of how this could go. 04:10 And it was like, man, that would suck if something like that happened. 04:13 But I mean, it basically ends with an apocalypse. 04:16 You know, and it felt like a science fiction movie almost, even though it was based in realism. 04:22 And I think, you know, re-watching this, it starts out, you hear somebody coughing. 04:28 Black screen and you hear the cough. 04:30 Chris Ryan It's like hearing the music in Jaws or something. 04:33 Bill Simmons The way we are now, just the way everybody's mindset is. 04:37 Let's say you're at a Clipper game tonight. 04:40 The guy behind you is just coughing on your neck. 04:43 In the old days, you'd be like, fuck this guy. 04:45 I don't want to get sick. 04:46 Now you'd be like, I'm leaving. 04:47 I don't want to be near this person. 04:50 So just hearing that cough at the beginning, it just sets its tone. 04:54 The first 20 minutes of this movie, watching it now, 2020... 04:58 It's about as disoriented and uncomfortable as I've been watching a movie probably ever. 05:03 Sean Fennessy Yeah, and I think we probably should be careful not to draw direct one-to-one comparisons because obviously the way that the virus in this movie, which I guess is MEV1 is what it's called, it's a lot more quick acting. 05:15 Yeah, it's two days and it's like a coma and a fever. 05:17 Bill Simmons And you're like frothing at the mouth and all that stuff. 05:20 Sean Fennessy And the beginning of the movie, which is done in this incredible montage style where it's cutting frequently and fast and going around the world very quickly and moving from character to character to character. 05:31 Bill Simmons With great pounding music, too. 05:33 Sean Fennessy Everything about it. 05:35 The score is amazing. 05:36 It's all of the things that Soderbergh has done so well over the years, but really pitched in a very serious way. 05:42 We just did an Ocean's 12 rewatchables, and that's almost the complete... 05:47 like intellectual inverse, you know, it's like the feeling in that movie, which is so breezy. 05:51 This is, it, it never winks at you. 05:54 It takes it, it takes it literally deadly seriously. 05:58 And it's so funny to think about the fact that they used science very specifically to build the movie, you know, like it's not, this isn't the China syndrome where it's like speculative fiction about what could happen in a nuclear disaster. 06:13 It's clearly grounded in reality. 06:15 Chris Ryan I'll tell you one of the scariest things about this movie now compared to 2011 for me, and I don't know if you guys noticed this too, but the characters in the film, and I think that it's somewhat based on, it's very much rooted in, okay, so how would this work and how would the CDC react and how would the World Health Organization react and how would the military react? 06:36 It still feels like a very 2011 version of global collaboration to combat something where I think that one of the scary things about 2020 is like a feeling like that global kind of community and fraternity of, hey, science can step in here and help is kind of 06:53 It's a little bit shakier in 2020 than it was in 2011. 06:58 It is. 06:58 I feel like the relationships between countries and this is not really a political statement as much as just an observable kind of like the whole kind of power balance of the world seems to be slightly tilted. 07:07 And Soderbergh, actually, that was something he wanted to get at in 2011. 07:11 He said he wanted to convey the feeling that he gets all over the world that the fabric of society is stretched thin, you know, and I think it's only gotten stretched thinner. 07:19 Sean Fennessy I think one of the other things about it that while the countries may have been in a better state at that time in terms of their relationships, the fact that it's kind of a Hail Mary in the movie to discover a vaccine makes the film even scarier. 07:33 The idea that basically a professor played by Elliot Gould has to disobey orders from the CDC to develop something, and then a brilliant scientist has to... 07:43 basically risk her own life, which is what Jennifer Ely's character does in the movie, by exposing herself after giving herself what she thinks would be a successful vaccination to her sick father, you know, the stakes are incredibly high. 07:56 And obviously, like, we're trying to figure out what's the best way to combat the coronavirus. 08:03 Again, they're not the same thing necessarily, but it does make you worry the fact that there's clearly so much science at play in this movie. 08:11 So... 08:13 Bill Simmons They did The Informant together in 2009, Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott C. Burns. 08:18 They started talking about a medical thriller. 08:20 Chris Ryan Did Scott Burns do side effects with him, too? 08:24 Sean Fennessy I don't think so. 08:25 He just did The Laundromat. 08:26 Chris Ryan Right. 08:27 Sean Fennessy But I don't think... Maybe he did. 08:29 Bill Simmons I'm not sure. 08:29 So they started talking about a medical thriller based on pandemics like 2003 SARS, 2009, whatever that flu one was called. 08:38 And... 08:40 There was also, this is the end of that decade. 08:42 So he had September 11th there. 08:43 He had Hurricane Katrina. 08:44 And just you could kind of take a bunch of things that had happened and say, what's the worst case scenario of this? 08:52 What's the worst case scenario of this? 08:54 That led them to write it. 08:55 And they consulted with this doctor who's a professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. 09:02 who basically helped create the virus for them, what it would look like. 09:05 And he based it on some of the traits of the Nipah virus from Malaysia in the late 1990s, which spread from pigs to farmers. 09:13 So they come up with like, all right, well, what if, what if it's bats and pigs? 09:18 And what's the, and how fast would it spread and all this? 09:21 And, uh, 09:22 It's pretty crazy how close they came to nine years later, how everybody's feeling right now. 09:30 Now, two weeks from now, this thing might be dying down, and we're like, oh, man, remember when we freaked out about this? 09:36 But I feel like— Yeah, this isn't the summer of the shark or something. 09:39 No, no, no. 09:40 I feel like this is going to get worse, not better. 09:44 Sean Fennessy It's very hard to say. 09:45 I mean, part of the genius of the movie is the way that Soderbergh carves out the origin from the beginning of the movie. 09:54 And then the first title card you see when you see Gwyneth Paltrow is day two. 09:57 And it's not day one. 09:59 And you almost forget as you're watching the movie that you haven't seen day one until you get to the end of the movie when they reveal the origins. 10:07 Bill Simmons Yeah, that's smart. 10:07 That was smart how they did that. 10:08 Sean Fennessy Very clever. 10:10 Bill Simmons Burns consulted with... 10:12 A guy named Larry Brilliant who had helped eradicate smallpox to kind of figure out what a pandemic event, worst case scenario, would look like. 10:24 He had seen one of his TED presentations and... 10:29 This is Burns talking about it. 10:31 He said he realized the point of view of people within that field wasn't if this is going to happen. 10:37 It's when is this going to happen? 10:39 And that's what made him really start thinking about movies like this. 10:43 You know, I think, I don't know about you guys, but I like to, and there's a lot of things to be scared of day to day. 10:49 I like to, my, the way I deal with it is I just don't think about stuff. 10:52 I'm the same way. 10:52 Sweep it under the rug and be like, ah, it'll be fine. 10:55 And then every once in a while it's not fine. 10:57 Chris Ryan Well, in the background of this movie is the way in which something moves from the background to the foreground, right? 11:01 It's like in the beginning of the movie, Damon's stepson is still at school. 11:06 The stores are still open. 11:07 Even by the time Lawrence Fishburne calls Sanaa Lathan, people are stocking up on stuff in stores, but there's not martial law. 11:17 Sean Fennessy And she's not taking her fiancé seriously. 11:19 Yes, right. 11:20 Which is crazy because he's a doctor at the CDC. 11:22 Chris Ryan Yeah, that would be the bat phone for me. 11:25 I would be like, okay. 11:26 Maybe not the literal bat phone. 11:27 Not the literal bat phone. 11:28 That would be bad. 11:29 Bill Simmons So this movie has five Oscar winners and five nominees. 11:33 The cast is incredible. 11:36 Yeah, just John Hawks as like a janitor. 11:38 He's like the 10th man. 11:39 Yeah. 11:40 Damon, Paltrow, Winslet, Jude Law, Cotillard. 11:44 Is that how you say it? 11:44 Cotillard. 11:45 Cotillard. 11:46 I'm bad with French names. 11:47 Fishburne. 11:48 Tarantino's great. 11:50 The next Brando. 11:51 Cranston. 11:52 Hawks. 11:53 Son of Latham. 11:56 Pretty good starting nine. 11:58 And I think I remember that when it came out. 12:01 Like, loaded cast. 12:03 It did well. 12:04 It was $60 million budget. 12:06 It made $135 million. 12:08 Successful. 12:08 No Oscar nominations or anything. 12:11 Kind of one of those just well-done movies that came and went. 12:14 Chris Ryan It's a movie that he has... 12:15 Sort of repeated the formula a couple times, like we talked about The Laundromat, where it starts out and there's a recognizable star and you're just kind of like, okay, this is what this movie is about. 12:22 And then it kind of goes into this almost short stories about a topic. 12:26 So this movie kind of moves on from Matt Damon and his family to Winslet, to Fishburne, to Cotillard, and then finally Jennifer Ely. 12:36 Sean Fennessy Yeah, and it has the hallmarks of a very familiar movie strategy. 12:40 It's very similar to like The Towering Inferno or Airport, you know, these like big all-star cast 70s disaster movies. 12:49 The difference is like those movies are kind of tacky and like 12:53 Chris Ryan kind of silly at times this movie is so it's played straight it's more it's more like all the president's men or you know so we're often cited uh also cited day of the jackal do you ever see that the assassin movie where it's basically just like here is everything this guy does over the course of the weeks leading up to his attempted assassination of de gaulle and you're like i'm just like locked in on this and that's the same thing here it's just like this is about the pursuit of how would you stop this thing with some digressions did you lose character 13:20 Bill Simmons So the two best decisions in this movie are that, what you just said. 13:24 Because if you have like, Elliot Gould is played by, I don't know, like a Paul Rudd type person. 13:31 Where it's like, he's playing it for laughs a little bit. 13:35 It's like, ah! 13:36 And he's the comic relief of Contagion. 13:38 That's a disaster and that really hurts the film. 13:40 Chris Ryan You keep waiting for all of these actors to have their moment. 13:43 Bill Simmons To break anyway. 13:43 Chris Ryan And really with the exception of Jude Law... 13:45 Nobody's really showy. 13:47 Gould could literally be anyone in this movie. 13:51 He's just like, should I burn my samples? 13:53 I don't know. 13:54 And I'm going to look. 13:54 And then next thing you know, he's out of the movie. 13:58 They play it so straight. 13:59 Bill Simmons And then the other big thing, the other big decision is 14:03 keeping day one and putting it at the tail end of the movie because I think the ending's great and you also could have started the movie that way and now I don't know how you end it you end it with that prom scene basically and 14:16 just has the wrong feel. 14:18 Because I think they're suspensive. 14:19 Like, well, how did this start? 14:22 Yeah. 14:22 Well, who was patient zero, basically? 14:24 And then you realize it's... 14:26 They show it. 14:26 Chris Ryan It's kind of fascinating to look at this movie in the context of Soderbergh's movie, the last 10 years or so of his career, because... 14:33 He can seem very promiscuous. 14:36 He's just going to jump into this genre, jump to that story, kind of try this out. 14:40 But I do think if you look at all of his movies together, there's some real thematic concerns that come out. 14:44 And one of them is a real unease with the way in which modern medicine and modern science has also introduced this world in which something like this could happen. 14:55 But Side Effects is about the effect of... 14:58 mood-altering, mood-stabilizing drugs. 15:00 Sean Fennessy That is a Scott C. Burns script, by the way. 15:01 Chris Ryan And then, obviously, Informant is about big farming and agribusiness. 15:08 And this is, as you find out at the end of the movie, the company that Gwyneth Paltrow's character works for is plowing up jungles, knocking bats out of trees, and that's how this whole chain reaction starts. 15:20 Sean Fennessy That's the thing that runs through all of his movies is that he is very suspicious of corporate culture and very suspicious of money. 15:29 All of Soderbergh's movies, even the fun heist movies, but Aaron Brockovich, Traffic, the way big global corporations interact with government, it's a theme up and down all the movies. 15:40 And this is probably the one where he plays it the most straight. 15:44 Chris Ryan Yeah, even Ocean's Eleven, you're right. 15:45 It's like Terry Benedict is still the house. 15:48 Those guys are still trying to take down the house. 15:50 Bill Simmons So if you're going to go through Soderbergh's best movies, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Out of Sight, Aaron Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean Eleven, Contagion, 16:03 See, we might not have listed Contagion in that highlight reel. 16:06 No, no, but that's the thing. 16:07 I think now it's in there. 16:08 Sean Fennessy And now all of a sudden, it's so interesting. 16:10 Bill Simmons Magic Mike. 16:11 Like, whatever you want to do, I don't think Contagion would have made it for me. 16:15 Because it was, again, it was one of those movies you saw once that did the job, and then it wasn't like you were going to be like, oh, man, I'm going to sit down and watch that movie. 16:22 pandemic movie again. 16:23 It was definitely a I only want to see this once movie. 16:25 Sean Fennessy Chris and I talked a lot about The Laundromat last year and the conversation has started around him where we just take Soderbergh for granted now. 16:34 Like a lot of people didn't like that movie. 16:36 It had a kind of a middling reception. 16:38 I think we both thought it was great. 16:40 That's in my top ten. 16:41 And 16:42 Top 10 ever? 16:43 Chris Ryan No, just of last year. 16:44 Sean Fennessy It's that and heat. 16:47 Chris Ryan Right. 16:47 Sean Fennessy But it seemed to be in keeping with a lot of his movies. 16:49 I thought it was consistent. 16:51 It did the same thing. 16:51 A lot of movie stars, Antonio Banderas, Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, all these famous people seem to be having fun, big ideas. 16:57 But he's just so consistent. 16:59 He never makes anything that is actively bad that the bar... 17:02 kind of gets lowered. 17:02 And I feel like Contagion suffered from that in some respects. 17:05 Like this was kind of a down period for him. 17:07 He's coming off like The Good German, Ocean's 13, Che, The Girlfriend Experience, The Informant. 17:12 I like all of those movies, but they're not considered Hall of Fame movies. 17:17 Soderbergh movies by general consensus. 17:19 Chris Ryan And this is the five and four years run, isn't it? 17:22 And it's like contagion, it's contagion side effects, Haywire. 17:26 Magic Mike. 17:26 Magic Mike. 17:27 Bill Simmons I don't feel like people like this movie that much, even though it did well in the box office. 17:31 I wouldn't call it like a deeply likeable movie. 17:33 Sean Fennessy It's hard to like. 17:33 Yeah. 17:34 Bill Simmons I mean, you look at the Oscars that year, it was a bad Oscars year. 17:37 This is the first year at Grantland, but... 17:40 The Artist won. 17:41 That's embarrassing. 17:43 The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, got nominated for an Oscar. 17:46 The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, and War Horse. 17:53 Now, if we redid that, Contagion's better than half of those movies. 17:57 And it's not even close. 17:58 Chris Ryan Interestingly enough, Soderbergh was the original director of Moneyball. 18:01 So that's like, it's such a fascinating point in his career. 18:03 Bill Simmons And not getting Moneyball really changed the way he looked at things. 18:07 Also led to this. 18:08 But best director, like Scorsese for Hugo, and then Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris. 18:14 Do that over again. 18:15 Those two aren't happening, I don't feel like. 18:17 Sean Fennessy I mean, the other thing too is, well, it's a reminder that what is deemed a serious movie by the Oscars is very rarely serious. 18:24 You know, like this is actually quite a serious film about something with great performances and clear style. 18:30 Almost a little too serious. 18:32 And also, you know, Soderbergh does so much of this himself. 18:35 He's in close collaboration with Burns. 18:37 He shoots his own movies. 18:39 He usually edits his own movies. 18:40 Like he's doing all of this. 18:42 Chris Ryan It's all his vision. 18:43 There are stories about him shooting and then him and Matt Damon and the crew going to a bar after the day of shooting. 18:49 And over the course of two hours at the bar, Soderbergh cuts together the day's shooting that they had done. 18:54 That is highly unorthodox. 18:55 And was like, hey, Matt Damon, take a look at your day of shooting. 18:59 Sean Fennessy And he doesn't, we don't, nobody is like, what a genius, isn't it incredible? 19:03 Because people feel like they celebrated him 20 years ago for Traffic and Aaron Brockovich when he had that crazy... 19:08 Bill Simmons It was a double celebration. 19:09 Because initially it was the sex, lies, and video type celebration. 19:11 Sean Fennessy That's right. 19:12 That was his big emergence. 19:13 Then he goes into a little bit of a weird period where he makes some challenging movies. 19:16 Then he has this big comeback in the 90s. 19:18 And then... 19:19 crescendos in 2000 with traffic and Aaron Brockovich. 19:23 And then it's just like, well, he's a genius and it's great, but we don't have to recognize him in the same way. 19:27 Chris Ryan There's a version of this movie where it's Tom Hanks and it's, it's more, Tom Hanks runs the CDC and that's who this movie is about. 19:34 And it's all about how he's relating to his family. 19:36 And you can have that crisis phone call that he, that Fishburne makes or, 19:40 but it's played much more for the man who stood between the world and total annihilation kind of thing. 19:46 And instead, he really just goes from micro to macro and goes from Mitch and Beth in Minnesota all the way out so that you can see the whole thing. 19:57 But at each point, he was always really insistent that we never saw anything that the character wouldn't see. 20:03 So there was never... 20:04 He was like, I made a rule, like, no president. 20:06 No president shot, no president... 20:08 press conference, no helicopter shots to establish anything. 20:12 It would only be like, this is realistically what a character would be seeing. 20:16 And I think it winds up being really effective because of that. 20:19 Bill Simmons If Michael Mann had directed it, I think Pacino is the Elliot Gould character. 20:25 He's like, I've got a virus that's taken out half of America. 20:29 I've got a stepdaughter who won't look at me. 20:34 And he's doing the Vincent Hanna. 20:35 And it's like, no, no, no, we don't need that for a contagion. 20:38 I'm sorry if the samples got cooked. 20:42 I think the other thing, we did that podcast with Tarantino with Tony Scott about the unstoppable. 20:50 And Tarantino did the whole thing about like when Tony Scott did a movie, it was going to have this distinctive Tony Scott 20:57 Like you could just show Tarantino the movie and he would know who the director is. 21:01 Yeah, you could show him a frame of it. 21:02 And just these little things. 21:03 And he went and got super, in a good way, film nerdy on us about these little tricks that Tarantino would do. 21:10 I feel like this kind of movie is specifically a Soderbergh kind of style where it's like it's moving, it's fast, it's got a pace, it's being edited a certain way. 21:19 It can go five countries in four minutes telling us how this virus spreads. 21:24 Like what other director could do that? 21:27 He really is singular. 21:27 Chris Ryan I can't think of anyone else. 21:29 And also in the middle of what is essentially a blockbuster budgeted globetrotting movie, the little subversive choices that he makes, like the Kate Winslet scene, the scene with Kate Winslet and Matt Damon when she's asking him questions about his wife, and it's just this long shot of Matt Damon not talking because he's processing, well, maybe I didn't know my wife that well. 21:51 And it's like any other director or movie would be like, 21:55 Him saying, did I not know my wife that well? 21:57 Instead, you're just like looking at this guy who's like, I've just been through the most unspeakable tragedy. 22:02 I'm at the epicenter of a global pandemic. 22:04 And now I'm considering the fact that my wife might have been unfaithful to me in the last days of her life. 22:09 And it's just like, that's just in one shot with no talking. 22:11 And there's not that many directors who would be like, I'm going to let the actors and the story do the work. 22:16 Bill Simmons Also, kind of like chubby Matt Damon in this one. 22:20 Look, every man. 22:21 He's the every man. 22:21 Let his hair go. 22:22 Think he had some milkshakes and a couple cheeseburgers and just a different kind of feel for him. 22:28 Chris Ryan He's a stay-at-home dad in Minnesota. 22:30 Yeah, he doesn't look like Jason Bourne. 22:31 Sean Fennessy And two years later, he'll be the golden god in Behind the Candelabra. 22:35 It's like, once again, working with Soderbergh. 22:38 It's funny, the decision to make that one of the key characters in the movie... 22:44 But then also this wide swath, the not just deciding on the Captain Phillips version of the story where we see it all through one guy's eyes. 22:51 Because conventionally, it would be the Matt Damon movie. 22:54 It would be my wife died and I'm on a race to keep my daughter safe from this virus. 22:59 Bill Simmons That would be the War of the Worlds version. 23:01 Yeah, that's Tom Cruise. 23:02 Tom Cruise is now going to escape the virus and win. 23:05 Sean Fennessy But letting us be in the room with Bryan Cranston's character and Enrico Colantoni's character and watching the way that a government would respond to this, watching the way that scientists respond to this, watching the way that the CDC scientists could be infected by it. 23:19 I mean, one of the most horrifying moments of the movie is when Kate Winslow wakes up coughing and you're like, oh my God. 23:24 It's kind of dark, so you're not sure it's going to be her for a second. 23:27 Chris Ryan Yeah. 23:28 Bill Simmons I wonder another reason why this movie might have slipped through the consciousness a little bit was Walking Dead was that same year. 23:35 Chris Ryan and was another apocalypse scenario i think you're were we apocalypsed out i think that that was you know we were i'm not i can't remember when 28 days later came out but there was a lot of dystopian yeah that's what i mean and films i mean i don't know why it was like it was definitely an error there was like two but it was almost those movies were almost being made in a kind of like this is scary but we've got it under control so like hunger games isn't really gonna happen you know yeah 24:00 I would ask, though, guys, though, I think that one of the things that I was challenging in 2011 with this movie was the Jude Law character because it did feel kind of like this sort of cartoonish caricature. 24:14 And now it's brilliant. 24:15 Of blogging or bloggers and of conspiracy theorists. 24:19 And now he's Alex Jones. 24:21 I mean, he's almost way more well-reasoned than Alex Jones. 24:26 I mean, you know what I mean? 24:27 He seems like a more grounded character. 24:29 Sean Fennessy If you smashed Alex Jones and Martin Shkreli together, it's somebody who's essentially profiting off of people's sickness while also sending bad faith messages via the media. 24:40 Bill Simmons And inflaming everything and appealing to a certain... 24:44 Brand of people who are going to be more freaked out. 24:47 Chris Ryan I think in 2011, I was like, so this guy is like selling homeopathic remedies that don't work. 24:51 And I didn't know back then that that is literally what a lot of these shows do is they're like, get your vitamins, you know, like this special kind of vitamin to get the fluoride out of your water or whatever. 25:02 Sean Fennessy You know, it's like... Yeah, it feels... 25:05 Orwellian when you're watching it and then you realize the way that the media has changed so much over the last 10 years. 25:10 I think a lot of people, you were a blogger once upon a time, Chris. 25:13 I think a lot of people took it personally. 25:15 2011 I was a blogger. 25:16 Yeah. 25:16 I think a lot of people were like, this sucks that they think that, you know, Elliot Gould has that line that blogging is just graffiti with punctuation. 25:25 Solid. 25:26 Right. 25:26 Chris Ryan This is also during the year of Moneyball, where Brad Pitt's like, don't go on the internet. 25:30 Bill Simmons But think about it, though. 25:31 Think of the context of 2011. 25:33 This was the first kind of backlash to, wait a second, don't let... 25:39 the Gawker type blogs, they can't win. 25:42 Let's start discounting these guys a little bit. 25:45 They're getting a little too much power here. 25:47 And then there's a backlash to that from the actual people who are like, hey, fuck you. 25:51 Don't marginalize what I do. 25:53 And now you have that Jude Law character and those bloggers are like, oh, that's bullshit. 25:58 They're trying to make, you know, tied into that. 26:00 Sean Fennessy But I feel like he, in a way, the Alan Crumworthy character 26:04 sort of presages more like 4chan, 8chan, like the power of conspiracy. 26:09 The Reddit conspiracy board and all that stuff. 26:11 Chris Ryan I agree. 26:12 And the ability of you can tell you like you can't prove anything, then you can say anything. 26:15 Exactly. 26:15 Bill Simmons But the thing is, in 2011, he was the blogger. 26:19 And this guy, they're trying to make bloggers look bad. 26:21 And it's actually, you look back now, 26:23 It's a pure conspiracy theorist thing. 26:25 It's kind of the early stages of where we were going with Sandy Hook and all that other stuff. 26:31 Sean Fennessy It is, but it's also a little bit more nuanced than that because the movie introduces his character sitting in the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle 26:39 Pitching a story to an editor about something that is real. 26:43 Chris Ryan And then being afraid that the editor is going to steal the story and give it to a staff writer. 26:46 Sean Fennessy He shows the Shinko bus video. 26:47 He's the first person who has this video. 26:49 I think that's in Hong Kong. 26:52 And he's like, this is a huge thing. 26:54 This is going to be something. 26:56 It's going to reverberate around the world. 26:58 Just you wait and see. 26:59 The editor is suspicious. 27:00 Doesn't really trust him because he seems like an internet hack. 27:03 And then he's proven to be right in the early stages. 27:05 And what he does is he finds a way to capitalize on it in a very cynical and cold way. 27:10 Bill Simmons So how does that play on 2020, though? 27:11 Because he immediately puts that video on Twitter, right? 27:14 I mean, in 2020. 27:15 And it gets shared by a gajillion people. 27:17 And then he's playing off that. 27:18 Chris Ryan And also, like, immediately, I think that the conspiracy theories started around coronavirus. 27:22 And I think that they would start, I mean, it would just be accelerated. 27:26 It would just be, it would be the second you heard about something, you'd be like, oh, it's a biological weapon gone rogue. 27:31 Sean Fennessy Right. 27:32 And you see government officials actually speculating about that in the movie because there's no way to know. 27:36 The CDC doctor has to say. 27:38 Chris Ryan That's one of the most chilling lines in the movie is where he's like, could somebody weaponize the bird flu? 27:42 And he's like, they don't have to. 27:43 Birds already did. 27:44 Exactly. 27:46 Bill Simmons Well, Scott Burns sent Damon the script and said, read this and then go wash your hands was the note attached. 27:54 Damon read it and was like, I just want to be in this. 27:57 You mentioned Cliff Martinez before he did this soundtrack. 28:02 Soderbergh gave him the note, I need a brisk pace with fear and hope and all these things, and it's just got to make people unsettled. 28:13 Mission accomplished. 28:14 Really good. 28:15 Chris Ryan Not nominated for an Oscar. 28:16 Yeah, he modeled it off of the Marathon Man soundtrack and the French Connection soundtrack and also some of Tangerine Dream's 80s soundtracks. 28:24 So there's 20. 28:25 Michael Mann. 28:26 Tangerine Dream. 28:27 Bill Simmons Yeah. 28:27 Now you're talking my language. 28:30 risky business thief there's 20 songs on the contagion soundtrack which was for some reason released um for some reason they decided to name the songs not what you want you're gonna read some of the titles yeah i was going to okay the birds are doing that oh god 100 doses bad day to be a rhesus monkey that's a line from the film i'm sick 28:56 Handshake, Bat and Pig. 28:58 It's just weird. 28:59 Bat and Pig. 28:59 Sean Fennessy Bat and Pig is song 19. 29:02 I mean, they sound like they could be Massive Attack remixes. 29:06 Bill Simmons So that was strange. 29:07 A couple other facts. 29:09 Marrying Cotillard. 29:13 Marrying Cotillard. 29:14 There you go. 29:15 Great. 29:16 Six months pregnant when she finished shooting. 29:18 Kate Winslet filmed a role in 10 days. 29:21 Sean Fennessy That's the genius of getting the all-star cast together is it's just not that big of a commitment. 29:26 Obviously Soderbergh has more clout than most filmmakers. 29:28 Chris Ryan He's also super fast. 29:29 So he's like, I mean, he talks about how he's like, if we're doing more than three takes of something, I'm not really sure why. 29:34 Do you think the all-star cast should happen more often? 29:37 Because it's what I grew up with. 29:39 Well, it's not distracting in this movie. 29:41 I think there are times when it is. 29:42 There are times when it takes you out of it. 29:43 Bill Simmons So what's an example of when it took you out of it? 29:45 Don't say the Gary Marshall, Valentine's Day, New Year's Day, those kind of movies. 29:50 Sean Fennessy It's a great example, though, of a movie that you're like, I'm just looking at Julia Roberts. 29:53 Bill Simmons I'm not looking at a character. 29:54 They made a shitload of money, those movies. 29:56 They still work. 29:57 Sean Fennessy I think the formula works. 29:58 But those movies are not good, though. 30:01 Contagion is so involving. 30:03 It's part of the reason why we're watching it. 30:05 Bill Simmons It's a good strategy if you're trying to be like, I need to make a movie that makes money. 30:08 I'll just get 12 famous actors and just throw them in the movie. 30:12 Chris Ryan Would you say that it takes you out of it during JFK? 30:16 Bill Simmons But JFK had other flaws. 30:18 I thought the fact that there were so many people in it was actually good. 30:21 I was thinking more like Towering Inferno, if you go back, got nominated for Oscars. 30:26 Chris Ryan I know, but that's a crock of shit. 30:28 Bill Simmons Fred Astaire was the best supporting actor. 30:30 He was like a real thing. 30:30 Chris Ryan Isn't that one of the legendary, like, what the hell is happening? 30:32 Bill Simmons That's a bad one, though. 30:33 I mean, that was just like... 30:34 It's a whole run, though, which led to airplane parodying in 1980. 30:37 Chris Ryan Wait, isn't that like a Godfather snub year? 30:39 Like, didn't somebody not get a Godfather nom because of Towering Inferno or something? 30:43 Bill Simmons Yeah, it was like... We talked about that on Kazell. 30:44 Chris Ryan Yeah, Kazell. 30:45 Bill Simmons Yeah. 30:46 John Cazale. 30:47 Yeah. 30:47 Lost out to, yeah, tough one. 30:49 Sean Fennessy So the only thing, like there are examples of it right now that I find distracting. 30:54 Like Hobbs and Shaw is obviously centered around The Rock and Jason Statham. 30:58 But there are big stretches of the movie that feature Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds. 31:02 And those are four of the nine biggest movie stars in the world right now. 31:06 Yeah. 31:07 And it's just distracting because you're just like, I'm just watching Kevin Hart on a plane. 31:10 Bill Simmons Yeah, like, why is Ryan Reynolds in this? 31:12 Yes. 31:13 Traffic's an example of it actually working. 31:15 Sean Fennessy Mm-hmm. 31:15 Yeah. 31:16 Well, there's, like, traffic seem to be... And maybe... 31:19 an inspiration for this that we haven't really talked about is like more like those Robert Altman movies where he would kind of, you know, Nashville similarly is centered in one place, but is featuring basically 10 or 11 storylines at any given time. 31:30 Sometimes they cross over, sometimes they don't. 31:33 And you're telling this kind of broad story with big themes and, 31:36 These movies are more like that. 31:38 They're more sophisticated. 31:40 They're not about drawing attention to the famous person. 31:42 Kate Winslet's one of those actors. 31:44 You just put her in any movie. 31:45 She's always going to be good. 31:46 And you're never going to be like, am I watching Kate Winslet? 31:48 I feel like audiences don't have that relationship to that kind of actor. 31:53 Chris Ryan I think a good example of a criticism some people had in 1917 was that the celebrity, the movie stars in 1917 who would show up every 15 or 20 minutes actually took them out of the... 32:04 Sean Fennessy experience of watching the movie famous because it's like now Colin Firth just shows up and you're like hey like that's not what this movie is about but one of the interesting parts about this movie which I think we should talk about is the Gwyneth Paltrow the use of Gwyneth Paltrow and her sequence which at the time was it like a big joke because she makes that unforgettable face as she's dying 32:29 And that kind of became a meme. 32:32 And I feel like they used it to sell the movie, if I recall. 32:36 Chris Ryan Yeah, I think also the way in which they staged that is that she looks really scared of something that's kind of out in the middle distance. 32:46 And it's like she's the sort of... 32:48 the lighthouse that sees something coming, you know, and I think that's why that's so terrifying. 32:53 Sean Fennessy And she also was such a, and she was such, I mean, she was such a huge star at the time too. 32:58 And they killed her in the first 15 minutes of the movie, which was just so, so terrifying. 33:02 Bill Simmons Kind of a sneaky, strong ear for her. 33:05 She was also in the Avengers. 33:07 Oh, Country Strong. 33:09 Oh, yeah. 33:10 It's on the rewatchable slate. 33:11 It's going to be Liz Kelly's first and probably only appearance on the rewatchables because she'll melt to death at the end of it. 33:17 Solo pod? 33:18 Solo LK pod? 33:19 No, we're going to do Country Strong. 33:21 It's a 10-year anniversary. 33:23 It's the movie Liz Kelly's going to make her case that it was better than A Star is Born. 33:27 And A Star is Born swam in its wake. 33:30 Sean Fennessy Maybe that's why she had to die in Contagion. 33:32 I was paying her penance. 33:34 Bill Simmons There was one other Gwyneth movie. 33:36 I thought that was her last year before she went back to being... She starts doing a lot of... 33:43 I think it's before that. 33:45 Oh, Country Strong was 2010. 33:47 Oh, Iron Man 2. 33:48 She did that whole thing and then was in Avengers. 33:50 It was like she kind of 33:52 resurfaced in their consciousness and that's it. 33:55 I just have a couple more notes. 33:57 There's a talented Mr. Ripley reunion in this movie. 34:02 Charlie Sykes They never share the screen. 34:03 Bill Simmons Dickie, Marge, and Ripley all together again, but they're never in one scene, which is disappointing. 34:08 Ripley and Marge married. 34:09 The gang was back. 34:10 Yeah, you're right. 34:12 Bats just freak me out. 34:13 I actually feel like they're underrated as a horror movie slash make me unsettled device. 34:19 Has there ever been a scene with a bat where you're not like, oh, no. 34:23 Chris Ryan Bats. 34:23 Well, yeah. 34:24 I mean, bat representation in film tends to be pretty monochromatic, pretty one note. 34:29 What are you talking about with Batman? 34:30 Yeah, but like even in Batman, he gets swarmed by bats. 34:33 You know what I mean? 34:34 Bill Simmons Yeah, but they're protecting him. 34:35 Chris, what did bats bring to the table in your opinion? 34:38 Chris Ryan Well, I think that they serve a pretty useful role in the food chain in terms of like, you know, God's own exterminators. 34:44 So you'd keep bats? 34:46 Yeah. 34:46 Although this movie, it's a tough mark against bats. 34:50 Big loser. 34:51 I'm not long on bats. 34:52 Let's put it that way. 34:53 But I think that I'm not, I don't have the education to say we could just remove bats from the food chain and we'd be okay. 35:00 Bill Simmons Not a fan of bats. 35:01 Okay. 35:02 It doesn't have to be an all or nothing kind of thing. 35:03 I don't really understand what God was doing with the bats. 35:05 Maybe if we stop bulldozing your jungle. 35:07 You know? 35:08 Kind of thing. 35:09 Make these guys. 35:10 They'll be blind. 35:11 They're going to fly around. 35:14 What do they go after? 35:14 Chris Ryan I mean, I thought kind of like bugs and rodents, but I could be wrong. 35:19 Not a fan. 35:21 Sean Fennessy This is a really strong takeaway from contagion. 35:25 Not a fan of bats. 35:26 I mean, there is like a long speculated history that they do spread disease in this way. 35:31 You know, it's been connected to coronavirus and some of the science. 35:35 It's very possible. 35:36 And they do also exterminate stuff. 35:40 Like I can't say, you know. 35:41 The ending. 35:42 We're just a couple of zoologists here just chatting up bad culture. 35:47 Chris Ryan You can volley this to me. 35:48 I may hit it out of the stadium. 35:50 Just go ahead. 35:51 Just going right out of Arthur Ashe with this one. 35:53 Bill Simmons The ending, they show the pigs who look terrible. 35:56 And then all of a sudden, the chef in the restaurant is carving it up. 36:00 Him wiping his hands. 36:01 And then he wipes his hands and is like, hey, Gwyneth, nice to meet you. 36:04 It's chilling. 36:04 It's just brutal. 36:05 That is such a really well-done ending. 36:07 A couple things I didn't get. 36:11 The doctor telling Matt Damon that Gwyneth Paltrow was dead is a really weird scene. 36:16 And I thought that was the strangest scene in the movie. 36:18 I didn't understand. 36:19 I think it's supposed to be. 36:20 Chris Ryan Because they consulted with an ER doctor on how they deliver this information. 36:25 So it was intentionally awkward. 36:27 Sean Fennessy I thought it was really realistic. 36:29 I think if you've had any experience like that, you sometimes find that doctors are not good at sharing bad news. 36:34 Chris Ryan It's not Grey's Anatomy. 36:35 Sean Fennessy Yeah. 36:35 Chris Ryan They're not here to hug you. 36:36 Sean Fennessy Yes. 36:37 And there's a reason that Damon's character at first doesn't... 36:40 pick up at all on what the doctor is saying. 36:42 And it's like, so can I see her? 36:43 Can I go talk to her? 36:45 You know? 36:45 And then he can't understand that she's just talking to her. 36:47 Chris Ryan He's like, did you take too much of that flu shit when she can't hold a coffee cup? 36:50 And then five minutes later, she's dead. 36:52 Sean Fennessy Yeah. 36:52 And I think that that's like a very purposeful thing. 36:54 And also the fact that the doctor's 36:56 You know, we think of doctors as the most educated and intelligent people in our society. 37:01 Other than the people on this podcast. 37:03 Right, of course. 37:03 But this guy's like meningitis. 37:06 Maybe she got it from herpes. 37:07 You know, like he doesn't know. 37:08 He has no idea what could have possibly happened to this person, even though he spends all day, every day, figuring out what's wrong with people. 37:15 The autopsy scene is so disturbing. 37:17 Bill Simmons That was the next thing I was going to bring up. 37:19 The Gwyneth Paltrow skull getting basically cut and open. 37:22 I know Craig had some issues with that one. 37:25 Craig Horlbeck The skull is tough. 37:26 The scalp getting peeled over Paltrow's face. 37:29 Sean Fennessy But think of the camera angle where you get the flap right down in front of the camera. 37:33 Craig Horlbeck If we did the least rewatchable scene, it's up there. 37:36 Chris Ryan I think the thing that's more disturbing to me is the two medical examiners being like, and then what does he say? 37:42 Should I call someone? 37:43 Sean Fennessy He says, call everyone. 37:44 Chris Ryan Take a sample? 37:46 Craig Horlbeck I want you to move away from the table. 37:50 Should I call someone? 37:51 Call everyone. 37:54 Sean Fennessy Because he's looking at a medical anomaly. 37:56 He's looking at a potentially fatal virus that could spread across the world. 38:01 She actually, she does her own stunt work. 38:03 Bill Simmons She did that. 38:03 They cut her open. 38:06 She looks great. 38:06 It's amazing what stitching can do. 38:08 Next question. 38:09 Is this movie a virus movie or a don't commit adultery movie? 38:13 Sean Fennessy Well, I think that there is a lot of morality in it. 38:17 There's no mistaking the fact that there's some judgment made. 38:20 Also, not a mistake that that voice that you hear from John Neal when he calls Gwyneth Paltrow at the beginning of the movie is Steven Soderbergh. 38:26 Bill Simmons Hey. 38:26 Yeah, John Neal here. 38:28 You just had sex with me in a hotel and left without saying goodbye. 38:31 Yeah, it ended up being delayed. 38:33 So, sorry, I was panicking. 38:36 Well, if I don't get to see you again, I just wanted to say it was nice to see you again. 38:40 You know, that is very purposeful. 38:41 Chris Ryan And even if you were feeling forgiving of her, or if you're not like, yeah, like this, if she just could have gone home, maybe this wouldn't have spread the way it did, which that's not the case. 38:53 At the end of the movie, you find out that the company that she works for is essentially responsible for the desecration of the planet, which is leading to viruses like this. 38:59 So it might be an environmental whatever. 39:02 Sean Fennessy I think it's an environmental story. 39:03 I think there's something there about cheating. 39:06 But ultimately, I think that that's just a storytelling device to get the virus in a different city. 39:11 Just get the virus in Minnesota and get it in Chicago and get it in Hong Kong and get it in London and then Philly. 39:17 Bill Simmons Anything else? 39:19 Do we exhaust this movie? 39:21 Chris Ryan Oh, you don't want to do any—is there any categories you want to do? 39:23 Bill Simmons Nah, we can't do categories. 39:25 I mean— If there's any last thoughts, let's hear them. 39:30 Chris Ryan No, I mean, there's, like, hypotheticals that I'd like to— Like, I was going to ask what you guys thought about the Fishburne calling Santa Lathan. 39:37 Soundbite If one and four are dying, that means three out of four are living, right? 39:41 So the odds are in our favor. 39:44 Bill Simmons I want you to get in your car, and I want you to drive down here to Atlanta right now. 39:47 You hear me, Aubrey? 39:48 Yeah. 39:51 Soundbite What are you talking about? 39:52 Bill Simmons I want you to get in your car and leave Chicago. 39:55 I want you to drive here to Atlanta. 39:57 Drive by yourself. 39:59 You do it. 39:59 You do it now. 40:00 Don't tell anyone and don't stop. 40:04 And stay away from other people. 40:05 You understand? 40:06 Keep your distance from other people now. 40:07 Call me when you're on the road, Aubrey. 40:11 Chris Ryan Because it's an interesting way that they play it out where it's like, everybody I've read interviews with who was involved in the movie cites that scene and they're like, and of course I would do that. 40:20 Sean Fennessy You know, right. 40:21 Call a family member, alert them and then risk. 40:25 I mean, his character's arc basically ends with Bryan Cranston telling him that there will be a hearing and you will probably be. 40:30 Chris Ryan And the best part and I thought the most interesting part is that she immediately gets called by someone else and it's put to the test. 40:37 And that friend of hers. 40:38 And it's very purposeful that Soderbergh shows that woman with a child. 40:43 You know what I mean? 40:44 So you get this idea of the stakes that go into. 40:47 If Sonalathan just says, I'm just going to drive to Atlanta and be like, yeah, you know, crazy road trip. 40:51 I'll be back. 40:52 See you soon. 40:53 Stay safe. 40:55 Bill Simmons Well, this was a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode a few years earlier. 40:59 Sean Fennessy Was it? 40:59 Bill Simmons Yeah, the one that Alanis Morissette was in. 41:01 Oh, that's right. 41:02 When they'd heard there was a, Wanda told Larry and Cheryl there might be a terrorist attack that weekend. 41:08 Don't tell anyone. 41:09 And then Larry told Paul Reiser's wife. 41:11 And then all of a sudden everyone in LA knew. 41:13 And people were mad that he didn't tell them, but he told somebody else. 41:17 And that was probably like five, six years before this. 41:20 Chris Ryan So it's really good. 41:21 It's a Curb Your Enthusiasm original. 41:24 Larry David invented Contagion. 41:27 Sean Fennessy The only other person I wanted to single out is Jennifer Ely, whose character is basically the hero of the movie, Dr. Hextall. 41:36 She's really good. 41:37 Who's such a good actor and does not have really much of a public reputation. 41:42 Chris Ryan Did you see the story about how he found her? 41:45 No. 41:45 She was cut out of Michael Clayton, but he saw a version of Michael Clayton with her in it and was like, she's great. 41:52 I'm going to put her in contagion. 41:54 So what happened to her? 41:55 Sean Fennessy Well, she has this run. 41:56 She's in The King's Speech, The Ides of March, Contagion, The Adjustment Bureau, and Zero Dark Thirty, all within a three-year period. 42:03 Which is, you know, I mean, those are some of the biggest productions, dramas of that time. 42:07 And then it kind of goes sideways. 42:10 She's in a Robocop movie that you and I saw together, actually, Chris. 42:14 She's in The Forger. 42:15 She's in Fifty Shades of Grey. 42:16 Like, her career just kind of doesn't, she doesn't get the same projects for whatever reason. 42:20 She's a really good actor. 42:21 She was on a show called A Gifted Man in 2011, the same year. 42:26 She's on Low Winter Sun. 42:27 Not ideal. 42:28 Bill Simmons Sometimes you just don't find the right... Carla Gugino, our girl. 42:32 Yeah. 42:33 It's another one. 42:34 Never totally found the right awesome movie, but I'm still a huge fan. 42:38 Me too. 42:39 We can agree on that. 42:41 Well, I remember when you had her on a podcast and then didn't introduce her to me. 42:45 I'll never forget. 42:45 Sean Fennessy You had Carla Gugino on a podcast and didn't introduce her? 42:48 Bill Simmons Yeah, I walked her. 42:48 She walked right by my office. 42:50 And Chris was just like, should I just peek in and see if Bill wants to meet? 42:54 No. 42:54 No. 42:55 Just kept going. 42:56 Sean Fennessy I would never do that with Jennifer Ely with you, Bill. 42:59 I would definitely bring Ely by. 43:00 I appreciate that, Sean. 43:01 Thank you. 43:01 Bill Simmons Anything else before we go? 43:03 I'm sorry about Carlo Gugino. 43:06 Sean Fennessy I don't accept your apology. 43:08 I think that this is the first movie that has redefined the rewatchables. 43:14 People are literally rewatching this movie right now because of something that is in the world. 43:19 Chris Ryan When I got home yesterday, I was like, I'm going to watch Contagion. 43:23 My wife was like, oh, I was thinking about that earlier. 43:27 She had thought about it, but she was like, I just didn't want to do that to myself. 43:33 Bill Simmons Well, and then you're going to rewatch it, and you're like, I'm sure it'll bring up some similarities. 43:38 And then within 20 minutes, you're just like stone-faced. 43:43 It's powerful. 43:44 Chris Ryan Duct-taping your sleeves. 43:46 Bill Simmons Yeah, I can't remember a movie being reinvented by something that happened well after the movie. 43:50 Is there another example? 43:52 I couldn't think of one. 43:53 Sean Fennessy I mean, you know, I mentioned to you guys when we were chatting about whether we should do it or not and trying to be thoughtful about how to do it, that like we did all the president's men and you could talk about the idea of fake news and scandal in the White House. 44:03 And that was a cool version of that conversation. 44:05 We talked about the social network and some of the negative things surrounding Facebook in the last five years. 44:10 There were reasons to talk about those movies, but they weren't the only reasons. 44:14 Like we wanted to have some fun with social network. 44:16 Charlie Sykes We wanted to talk about the score. 44:18 Sean Fennessy We love those movies. 44:19 This wasn't a movie that we loved and was on the long list. 44:22 It was something that was pushed in front of us because of something that's going on. 44:26 And that's new. 44:28 All right. 44:29 Bill Simmons Well, we'll be back with a regular rewatchable next week. 44:31 Stay safe out there. 44:33 Check out this movie. 44:34 We highly encourage it. 44:35 I don't know why one of the streaming services hasn't grabbed it, but I think you have to either rent it. 44:39 It's on Cinemax, I think on demand. 44:41 Yeah, you can rent it on Amazon. 44:42 If you have that, you can rent it on Amazon and all those places. 44:45 But for Chris Ramch, I'm Sean Fantasy. 44:47 Bill Simmons. 44:47 See you next time.