How ‘Contagion' Belatedly Became a Disturbing Rewatch
00:05:
(Bill Simmons)
All right, this is an unusual rewatchables.
00:08:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
And we're taping this on a Friday.
00:23:
(Bill Simmons)
Chris Reince here, Sean Fennessy is here.
00:24:
(Bill Simmons)
The movie is called Contagion.
00:27:
(Bill Simmons)
You might remember it.
00:28:
(Bill Simmons)
You might notice on the iTunes store, it is, I think, like the third or fourth episode
00:33:
(Bill Simmons)
rental pay-per-view thing right now, along with all the new movies that came out.
00:37:
(Bill Simmons)
It's had this bizarre, but not that bizarre, resurgence.
00:41:
(Bill Simmons)
The New York Times wrote about it two days ago.
00:44:
(Bill Simmons)
Again, we're taping this on a Friday.
00:46:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I watched this last night.
00:56:
(Bill Simmons)
It was just kind of an unbelievable experience.
00:59:
(Bill Simmons)
I couldn't get over how uncanny it was
01:03:
(Bill Simmons)
almost predicting how this was going to play out in 2020.
01:08:
(Bill Simmons)
Not as deadly, but the same kind of panic and the way it's shot.
01:13:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
It's all stuff we've been thinking about the last two weeks.
01:26:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
The thing that was really wild re-watching this was the details that I know that I did not notice in 2011.
02:19:
(Chris Ryan)
And the opening 30 minutes of this movie is essentially just...
02:24:
(Chris Ryan)
it's like watching a serial killer movie.
02:27:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And I think that I was aware of that in 11 years.
02:42:
(Chris Ryan)
But I wasn't like, oh, yeah, I see what this is about.
02:44:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And that kind of germophobia, I think going back to this movie then, it was really striking to see that.
03:03:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
But I don't recall personally being fearful about those epidemics in the same way the coronavirus has kind of dominated.
03:19:
(Sean Fennessy)
I just got back from a lunch and it dominated the lunch that I was at.
03:22:
(Sean Fennessy)
I mean, it is like.
03:23:
(Sean Fennessy)
There is an on-the-surface anxiety about it.
03:26:
(Sean Fennessy)
And the movie shows that that's what can happen to people when you're inside of something like that.
03:31:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's such an unusual thing.
03:33:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
But I completely agree with what you said, Chris.
03:41:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I only saw this movie once.
03:49:
(Bill Simmons)
I saw it because Soderbergh did it and Damon was in it and all of these actors I like.
03:54:
(Bill Simmons)
I remember watching it being like, oh, that was scary and then never thinking about it again.
03:58:
(Bill Simmons)
But it wasn't watching it.
04:00:
(Bill Simmons)
I didn't feel any differently than when I watched like iRobot or it was some sort of futuristic.
04:06:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, futuristic.
04:07:
(Bill Simmons)
Here's the most appalling version of how this could go.
04:10:
(Bill Simmons)
And it was like, man, that would suck if something like that happened.
04:13:
(Bill Simmons)
But I mean, it basically ends with an apocalypse.
04:16:
(Bill Simmons)
You know, and it felt like a science fiction movie almost, even though it was based in realism.
04:22:
(Bill Simmons)
And I think, you know, re-watching this, it starts out, you hear somebody coughing.
04:28:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Let's say you're at a Clipper game tonight.
04:40:
(Bill Simmons)
The guy behind you is just coughing on your neck.
04:43:
(Bill Simmons)
In the old days, you'd be like, fuck this guy.
04:45:
(Bill Simmons)
I don't want to get sick.
04:46:
(Bill Simmons)
Now you'd be like, I'm leaving.
04:47:
(Bill Simmons)
I don't want to be near this person.
04:50:
(Bill Simmons)
So just hearing that cough at the beginning, it just sets its tone.
04:54:
(Bill Simmons)
The first 20 minutes of this movie, watching it now, 2020...
04:58:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
The score is amazing.
05:36:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
We just did an Ocean's 12 rewatchables, and that's almost the complete...
05:47:
(Sean Fennessy)
like intellectual inverse, you know, it's like the feeling in that movie, which is so breezy.
05:51:
(Sean Fennessy)
This is, it, it never winks at you.
05:54:
(Sean Fennessy)
It takes it, it takes it literally deadly seriously.
05:58:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
It's a little bit shakier in 2020 than it was in 2011.
06:58:
(Chris Ryan)
It is.
06:58:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And Soderbergh, actually, that was something he wanted to get at in 2011.
07:11:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
And obviously, like, we're trying to figure out what's the best way to combat the coronavirus.
08:03:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
So...
08:13:
(Bill Simmons)
They did The Informant together in 2009, Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott C. Burns.
08:18:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
So they started talking about a medical thriller based on pandemics like 2003 SARS, 2009, whatever that flu one was called.
08:38:
(Bill Simmons)
And...
08:40:
(Bill Simmons)
There was also, this is the end of that decade.
08:42:
(Bill Simmons)
So he had September 11th there.
08:43:
(Bill Simmons)
He had Hurricane Katrina.
08:44:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
What's the worst case scenario of this?
08:54:
(Bill Simmons)
That led them to write it.
08:55:
(Bill Simmons)
And they consulted with this doctor who's a professor at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.
09:02:
(Bill Simmons)
who basically helped create the virus for them, what it would look like.
09:05:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
So they come up with like, all right, well, what if, what if it's bats and pigs?
09:18:
(Bill Simmons)
And what's the, and how fast would it spread and all this?
09:21:
(Bill Simmons)
And, uh,
09:22:
(Bill Simmons)
It's pretty crazy how close they came to nine years later, how everybody's feeling right now.
09:30:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
But I feel like— Yeah, this isn't the summer of the shark or something.
09:39:
(Bill Simmons)
No, no, no.
09:40:
(Bill Simmons)
I feel like this is going to get worse, not better.
09:44:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's very hard to say.
09:45:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
And then the first title card you see when you see Gwyneth Paltrow is day two.
09:57:
(Sean Fennessy)
And it's not day one.
09:59:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
That was smart how they did that.
10:08:
(Sean Fennessy)
Very clever.
10:10:
(Bill Simmons)
Burns consulted with...
10:12:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
He had seen one of his TED presentations and...
10:29:
(Bill Simmons)
This is Burns talking about it.
10:31:
(Bill Simmons)
He said he realized the point of view of people within that field wasn't if this is going to happen.
10:37:
(Bill Simmons)
It's when is this going to happen?
10:39:
(Bill Simmons)
And that's what made him really start thinking about movies like this.
10:43:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I like to, my, the way I deal with it is I just don't think about stuff.
10:52:
(Bill Simmons)
I'm the same way.
10:52:
(Bill Simmons)
Sweep it under the rug and be like, ah, it'll be fine.
10:55:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
It's like in the beginning of the movie, Damon's stepson is still at school.
11:06:
(Chris Ryan)
The stores are still open.
11:07:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Yes, right.
11:20:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
I would be like, okay.
11:26:
(Chris Ryan)
Maybe not the literal bat phone.
11:27:
(Chris Ryan)
Not the literal bat phone.
11:28:
(Chris Ryan)
That would be bad.
11:29:
(Bill Simmons)
So this movie has five Oscar winners and five nominees.
11:33:
(Bill Simmons)
The cast is incredible.
11:36:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, just John Hawks as like a janitor.
11:38:
(Bill Simmons)
He's like the 10th man.
11:39:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah.
11:40:
(Bill Simmons)
Damon, Paltrow, Winslet, Jude Law, Cotillard.
11:44:
(Bill Simmons)
Is that how you say it?
11:44:
(Bill Simmons)
Cotillard.
11:45:
(Bill Simmons)
Cotillard.
11:46:
(Bill Simmons)
I'm bad with French names.
11:47:
(Bill Simmons)
Fishburne.
11:48:
(Bill Simmons)
Tarantino's great.
11:50:
(Bill Simmons)
The next Brando.
11:51:
(Bill Simmons)
Cranston.
11:52:
(Bill Simmons)
Hawks.
11:53:
(Bill Simmons)
Son of Latham.
11:56:
(Bill Simmons)
Pretty good starting nine.
11:58:
(Bill Simmons)
And I think I remember that when it came out.
12:01:
(Bill Simmons)
Like, loaded cast.
12:03:
(Bill Simmons)
It did well.
12:04:
(Bill Simmons)
It was $60 million budget.
12:06:
(Bill Simmons)
It made $135 million.
12:08:
(Bill Simmons)
Successful.
12:08:
(Bill Simmons)
No Oscar nominations or anything.
12:11:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And then it kind of goes into this almost short stories about a topic.
12:26:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's very similar to like The Towering Inferno or Airport, you know, these like big all-star cast 70s disaster movies.
12:49:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Because if you have like, Elliot Gould is played by, I don't know, like a Paul Rudd type person.
13:31:
(Bill Simmons)
Where it's like, he's playing it for laughs a little bit.
13:35:
(Bill Simmons)
It's like, ah!
13:36:
(Bill Simmons)
And he's the comic relief of Contagion.
13:38:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
Nobody's really showy.
13:47:
(Chris Ryan)
Gould could literally be anyone in this movie.
13:51:
(Chris Ryan)
He's just like, should I burn my samples?
13:53:
(Chris Ryan)
I don't know.
13:54:
(Chris Ryan)
And I'm going to look.
13:54:
(Chris Ryan)
And then next thing you know, he's out of the movie.
13:58:
(Chris Ryan)
They play it so straight.
13:59:
(Bill Simmons)
And then the other big thing, the other big decision is
14:03:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
just has the wrong feel.
14:18:
(Bill Simmons)
Because I think they're suspensive.
14:19:
(Bill Simmons)
Like, well, how did this start?
14:22:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah.
14:22:
(Bill Simmons)
Well, who was patient zero, basically?
14:24:
(Bill Simmons)
And then you realize it's...
14:26:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
He can seem very promiscuous.
14:36:
(Chris Ryan)
He's just going to jump into this genre, jump to that story, kind of try this out.
14:40:
(Chris Ryan)
But I do think if you look at all of his movies together, there's some real thematic concerns that come out.
14:44:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
But Side Effects is about the effect of...
14:58:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
It's like Terry Benedict is still the house.
15:48:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
See, we might not have listed Contagion in that highlight reel.
16:06:
(Bill Simmons)
No, no, but that's the thing.
16:07:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Like, whatever you want to do, I don't think Contagion would have made it for me.
16:15:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
pandemic movie again.
16:23:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Like a lot of people didn't like that movie.
16:36:
(Sean Fennessy)
It had a kind of a middling reception.
16:38:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think we both thought it was great.
16:40:
(Sean Fennessy)
That's in my top ten.
16:41:
(Sean Fennessy)
And
16:42:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
I thought it was consistent.
16:51:
(Sean Fennessy)
It did the same thing.
16:51:
(Sean Fennessy)
A lot of movie stars, Antonio Banderas, Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, all these famous people seem to be having fun, big ideas.
16:57:
(Sean Fennessy)
But he's just so consistent.
16:59:
(Sean Fennessy)
He never makes anything that is actively bad that the bar...
17:02:
(Sean Fennessy)
kind of gets lowered.
17:02:
(Sean Fennessy)
And I feel like Contagion suffered from that in some respects.
17:05:
(Sean Fennessy)
Like this was kind of a down period for him.
17:07:
(Sean Fennessy)
He's coming off like The Good German, Ocean's 13, Che, The Girlfriend Experience, The Informant.
17:12:
(Sean Fennessy)
I like all of those movies, but they're not considered Hall of Fame movies.
17:17:
(Sean Fennessy)
Soderbergh movies by general consensus.
17:19:
(Chris Ryan)
And this is the five and four years run, isn't it?
17:22:
(Chris Ryan)
And it's like contagion, it's contagion side effects, Haywire.
17:26:
(Chris Ryan)
Magic Mike.
17:26:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I wouldn't call it like a deeply likeable movie.
17:33:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's hard to like.
17:33:
(Sean Fennessy)
Yeah.
17:34:
(Bill Simmons)
I mean, you look at the Oscars that year, it was a bad Oscars year.
17:37:
(Bill Simmons)
This is the first year at Grantland, but...
17:40:
(Bill Simmons)
The Artist won.
17:41:
(Bill Simmons)
That's embarrassing.
17:43:
(Bill Simmons)
The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, got nominated for an Oscar.
17:46:
(Bill Simmons)
The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, and War Horse.
17:53:
(Bill Simmons)
Now, if we redid that, Contagion's better than half of those movies.
17:57:
(Bill Simmons)
And it's not even close.
17:58:
(Chris Ryan)
Interestingly enough, Soderbergh was the original director of Moneyball.
18:01:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Also led to this.
18:08:
(Bill Simmons)
But best director, like Scorsese for Hugo, and then Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris.
18:14:
(Bill Simmons)
Do that over again.
18:15:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
You know, like this is actually quite a serious film about something with great performances and clear style.
18:30:
(Sean Fennessy)
Almost a little too serious.
18:32:
(Sean Fennessy)
And also, you know, Soderbergh does so much of this himself.
18:35:
(Sean Fennessy)
He's in close collaboration with Burns.
18:37:
(Sean Fennessy)
He shoots his own movies.
18:39:
(Sean Fennessy)
He usually edits his own movies.
18:40:
(Sean Fennessy)
Like he's doing all of this.
18:42:
(Chris Ryan)
It's all his vision.
18:43:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And over the course of two hours at the bar, Soderbergh cuts together the day's shooting that they had done.
18:54:
(Chris Ryan)
That is highly unorthodox.
18:55:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Because initially it was the sex, lies, and video type celebration.
19:11:
(Sean Fennessy)
That's right.
19:12:
(Sean Fennessy)
That was his big emergence.
19:13:
(Sean Fennessy)
Then he goes into a little bit of a weird period where he makes some challenging movies.
19:16:
(Sean Fennessy)
Then he has this big comeback in the 90s.
19:18:
(Sean Fennessy)
And then...
19:19:
(Sean Fennessy)
crescendos in 2000 with traffic and Aaron Brockovich.
19:23:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And it's all about how he's relating to his family.
19:36:
(Chris Ryan)
And you can have that crisis phone call that he, that Fishburne makes or,
19:40:
(Chris Ryan)
but it's played much more for the man who stood between the world and total annihilation kind of thing.
19:46:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
But at each point, he was always really insistent that we never saw anything that the character wouldn't see.
20:03:
(Chris Ryan)
So there was never...
20:04:
(Chris Ryan)
He was like, I made a rule, like, no president.
20:06:
(Chris Ryan)
No president shot, no president...
20:08:
(Chris Ryan)
press conference, no helicopter shots to establish anything.
20:12:
(Chris Ryan)
It would only be like, this is realistically what a character would be seeing.
20:16:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
He's like, I've got a virus that's taken out half of America.
20:29:
(Bill Simmons)
I've got a stepdaughter who won't look at me.
20:34:
(Bill Simmons)
And he's doing the Vincent Hanna.
20:35:
(Bill Simmons)
And it's like, no, no, no, we don't need that for a contagion.
20:38:
(Bill Simmons)
I'm sorry if the samples got cooked.
20:42:
(Bill Simmons)
I think the other thing, we did that podcast with Tarantino with Tony Scott about the unstoppable.
20:50:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Like you could just show Tarantino the movie and he would know who the director is.
21:01:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, you could show him a frame of it.
21:02:
(Bill Simmons)
And just these little things.
21:03:
(Bill Simmons)
And he went and got super, in a good way, film nerdy on us about these little tricks that Tarantino would do.
21:10:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
It can go five countries in four minutes telling us how this virus spreads.
21:24:
(Bill Simmons)
Like what other director could do that?
21:27:
(Bill Simmons)
He really is singular.
21:27:
(Chris Ryan)
I can't think of anyone else.
21:29:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And it's like any other director or movie would be like,
21:55:
(Chris Ryan)
Him saying, did I not know my wife that well?
21:57:
(Chris Ryan)
Instead, you're just like looking at this guy who's like, I've just been through the most unspeakable tragedy.
22:02:
(Chris Ryan)
I'm at the epicenter of a global pandemic.
22:04:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And it's just like, that's just in one shot with no talking.
22:11:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Look, every man.
22:21:
(Bill Simmons)
He's the every man.
22:21:
(Bill Simmons)
Let his hair go.
22:22:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's like, once again, working with Soderbergh.
22:38:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's funny, the decision to make that one of the key characters in the movie...
22:44:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Because conventionally, it would be the Matt Damon movie.
22:54:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, that's Tom Cruise.
23:02:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And now it's brilliant.
24:15:
(Chris Ryan)
Of blogging or bloggers and of conspiracy theorists.
24:19:
(Chris Ryan)
And now he's Alex Jones.
24:21:
(Chris Ryan)
I mean, he's almost way more well-reasoned than Alex Jones.
24:26:
(Chris Ryan)
I mean, you know what I mean?
24:27:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think a lot of people, you were a blogger once upon a time, Chris.
25:13:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think a lot of people took it personally.
25:15:
(Sean Fennessy)
2011 I was a blogger.
25:16:
(Sean Fennessy)
Yeah.
25:16:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Solid.
25:26:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Think of the context of 2011.
25:33:
(Bill Simmons)
This was the first kind of backlash to, wait a second, don't let...
25:39:
(Bill Simmons)
the Gawker type blogs, they can't win.
25:42:
(Bill Simmons)
Let's start discounting these guys a little bit.
25:45:
(Bill Simmons)
They're getting a little too much power here.
25:47:
(Bill Simmons)
And then there's a backlash to that from the actual people who are like, hey, fuck you.
25:51:
(Bill Simmons)
Don't marginalize what I do.
25:53:
(Bill Simmons)
And now you have that Jude Law character and those bloggers are like, oh, that's bullshit.
25:58:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
sort of presages more like 4chan, 8chan, like the power of conspiracy.
26:09:
(Sean Fennessy)
The Reddit conspiracy board and all that stuff.
26:11:
(Chris Ryan)
I agree.
26:12:
(Chris Ryan)
And the ability of you can tell you like you can't prove anything, then you can say anything.
26:15:
(Chris Ryan)
Exactly.
26:15:
(Bill Simmons)
But the thing is, in 2011, he was the blogger.
26:19:
(Bill Simmons)
And this guy, they're trying to make bloggers look bad.
26:21:
(Bill Simmons)
And it's actually, you look back now,
26:23:
(Bill Simmons)
It's a pure conspiracy theorist thing.
26:25:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
He's the first person who has this video.
26:49:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think that's in Hong Kong.
26:52:
(Sean Fennessy)
And he's like, this is a huge thing.
26:54:
(Sean Fennessy)
This is going to be something.
26:56:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's going to reverberate around the world.
26:58:
(Sean Fennessy)
Just you wait and see.
26:59:
(Sean Fennessy)
The editor is suspicious.
27:00:
(Sean Fennessy)
Doesn't really trust him because he seems like an internet hack.
27:03:
(Sean Fennessy)
And then he's proven to be right in the early stages.
27:05:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Because he immediately puts that video on Twitter, right?
27:14:
(Bill Simmons)
I mean, in 2020.
27:15:
(Bill Simmons)
And it gets shared by a gajillion people.
27:17:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And I think that they would start, I mean, it would just be accelerated.
27:26:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
And you see government officials actually speculating about that in the movie because there's no way to know.
27:36:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And he's like, they don't have to.
27:43:
(Chris Ryan)
Birds already did.
27:44:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Damon read it and was like, I just want to be in this.
27:57:
(Bill Simmons)
You mentioned Cliff Martinez before he did this soundtrack.
28:02:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Mission accomplished.
28:14:
(Bill Simmons)
Really good.
28:15:
(Chris Ryan)
Not nominated for an Oscar.
28:16:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
So there's 20.
28:25:
(Chris Ryan)
Michael Mann.
28:26:
(Chris Ryan)
Tangerine Dream.
28:27:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah.
28:27:
(Bill Simmons)
Now you're talking my language.
28:30:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Handshake, Bat and Pig.
28:58:
(Bill Simmons)
It's just weird.
28:59:
(Bill Simmons)
Bat and Pig.
28:59:
(Sean Fennessy)
Bat and Pig is song 19.
29:02:
(Sean Fennessy)
I mean, they sound like they could be Massive Attack remixes.
29:06:
(Bill Simmons)
So that was strange.
29:07:
(Bill Simmons)
A couple other facts.
29:09:
(Bill Simmons)
Marrying Cotillard.
29:13:
(Bill Simmons)
Marrying Cotillard.
29:14:
(Bill Simmons)
There you go.
29:15:
(Bill Simmons)
Great.
29:16:
(Bill Simmons)
Six months pregnant when she finished shooting.
29:18:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Obviously Soderbergh has more clout than most filmmakers.
29:28:
(Chris Ryan)
He's also super fast.
29:29:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
Do you think the all-star cast should happen more often?
29:37:
(Chris Ryan)
Because it's what I grew up with.
29:39:
(Chris Ryan)
Well, it's not distracting in this movie.
29:41:
(Chris Ryan)
I think there are times when it is.
29:42:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
They made a shitload of money, those movies.
29:56:
(Bill Simmons)
They still work.
29:57:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think the formula works.
29:58:
(Sean Fennessy)
But those movies are not good, though.
30:01:
(Sean Fennessy)
Contagion is so involving.
30:03:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I thought the fact that there were so many people in it was actually good.
30:21:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I mean, that was just like...
30:34:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
John Cazale.
30:47:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah.
30:47:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Like Hobbs and Shaw is obviously centered around The Rock and Jason Statham.
30:58:
(Sean Fennessy)
But there are big stretches of the movie that feature Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds.
31:02:
(Sean Fennessy)
And those are four of the nine biggest movie stars in the world right now.
31:06:
(Sean Fennessy)
Yeah.
31:07:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Yes.
31:13:
(Bill Simmons)
Traffic's an example of it actually working.
31:15:
(Sean Fennessy)
Mm-hmm.
31:15:
(Sean Fennessy)
Yeah.
31:16:
(Sean Fennessy)
Well, there's, like, traffic seem to be... And maybe...
31:19:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Sometimes they cross over, sometimes they don't.
31:33:
(Sean Fennessy)
And you're telling this kind of broad story with big themes and,
31:36:
(Sean Fennessy)
These movies are more like that.
31:38:
(Sean Fennessy)
They're more sophisticated.
31:40:
(Sean Fennessy)
They're not about drawing attention to the famous person.
31:42:
(Sean Fennessy)
Kate Winslet's one of those actors.
31:44:
(Sean Fennessy)
You just put her in any movie.
31:45:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's always going to be good.
31:46:
(Sean Fennessy)
And you're never going to be like, am I watching Kate Winslet?
31:48:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
And that kind of became a meme.
32:32:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And it's like she's the sort of...
32:48:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
She was also in the Avengers.
33:07:
(Bill Simmons)
Oh, Country Strong.
33:09:
(Bill Simmons)
Oh, yeah.
33:10:
(Bill Simmons)
It's on the rewatchable slate.
33:11:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Solo pod?
33:18:
(Bill Simmons)
Solo LK pod?
33:19:
(Bill Simmons)
No, we're going to do Country Strong.
33:21:
(Bill Simmons)
It's a 10-year anniversary.
33:23:
(Bill Simmons)
It's the movie Liz Kelly's going to make her case that it was better than A Star is Born.
33:27:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
I was paying her penance.
33:34:
(Bill Simmons)
There was one other Gwyneth movie.
33:36:
(Bill Simmons)
I thought that was her last year before she went back to being... She starts doing a lot of...
33:43:
(Bill Simmons)
I think it's before that.
33:45:
(Bill Simmons)
Oh, Country Strong was 2010.
33:47:
(Bill Simmons)
Oh, Iron Man 2.
33:48:
(Bill Simmons)
She did that whole thing and then was in Avengers.
33:50:
(Bill Simmons)
It was like she kind of
33:52:
(Bill Simmons)
resurfaced in their consciousness and that's it.
33:55:
(Bill Simmons)
I just have a couple more notes.
33:57:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Ripley and Marge married.
34:09:
(Bill Simmons)
The gang was back.
34:10:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, you're right.
34:12:
(Bill Simmons)
Bats just freak me out.
34:13:
(Bill Simmons)
I actually feel like they're underrated as a horror movie slash make me unsettled device.
34:19:
(Bill Simmons)
Has there ever been a scene with a bat where you're not like, oh, no.
34:23:
(Chris Ryan)
Bats.
34:23:
(Chris Ryan)
Well, yeah.
34:24:
(Chris Ryan)
I mean, bat representation in film tends to be pretty monochromatic, pretty one note.
34:29:
(Chris Ryan)
What are you talking about with Batman?
34:30:
(Chris Ryan)
Yeah, but like even in Batman, he gets swarmed by bats.
34:33:
(Chris Ryan)
You know what I mean?
34:34:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, but they're protecting him.
34:35:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
So you'd keep bats?
34:46:
(Chris Ryan)
Yeah.
34:46:
(Chris Ryan)
Although this movie, it's a tough mark against bats.
34:50:
(Chris Ryan)
Big loser.
34:51:
(Chris Ryan)
I'm not long on bats.
34:52:
(Chris Ryan)
Let's put it that way.
34:53:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Okay.
35:02:
(Bill Simmons)
It doesn't have to be an all or nothing kind of thing.
35:03:
(Bill Simmons)
I don't really understand what God was doing with the bats.
35:05:
(Bill Simmons)
Maybe if we stop bulldozing your jungle.
35:07:
(Bill Simmons)
You know?
35:08:
(Bill Simmons)
Kind of thing.
35:09:
(Bill Simmons)
Make these guys.
35:10:
(Bill Simmons)
They'll be blind.
35:11:
(Bill Simmons)
They're going to fly around.
35:14:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
Not a fan.
35:21:
(Sean Fennessy)
This is a really strong takeaway from contagion.
35:25:
(Sean Fennessy)
Not a fan of bats.
35:26:
(Sean Fennessy)
I mean, there is like a long speculated history that they do spread disease in this way.
35:31:
(Sean Fennessy)
You know, it's been connected to coronavirus and some of the science.
35:35:
(Sean Fennessy)
It's very possible.
35:36:
(Sean Fennessy)
And they do also exterminate stuff.
35:40:
(Sean Fennessy)
Like I can't say, you know.
35:41:
(Sean Fennessy)
The ending.
35:42:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
I may hit it out of the stadium.
35:50:
(Chris Ryan)
Just go ahead.
35:51:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
And then all of a sudden, the chef in the restaurant is carving it up.
36:00:
(Bill Simmons)
Him wiping his hands.
36:01:
(Bill Simmons)
And then he wipes his hands and is like, hey, Gwyneth, nice to meet you.
36:04:
(Bill Simmons)
It's chilling.
36:04:
(Bill Simmons)
It's just brutal.
36:05:
(Bill Simmons)
That is such a really well-done ending.
36:07:
(Bill Simmons)
A couple things I didn't get.
36:11:
(Bill Simmons)
The doctor telling Matt Damon that Gwyneth Paltrow was dead is a really weird scene.
36:16:
(Bill Simmons)
And I thought that was the strangest scene in the movie.
36:18:
(Bill Simmons)
I didn't understand.
36:19:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
So it was intentionally awkward.
36:27:
(Sean Fennessy)
I thought it was really realistic.
36:29:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
And there's a reason that Damon's character at first doesn't...
36:40:
(Sean Fennessy)
pick up at all on what the doctor is saying.
36:42:
(Sean Fennessy)
And it's like, so can I see her?
36:43:
(Sean Fennessy)
Can I go talk to her?
36:45:
(Sean Fennessy)
You know?
36:45:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And then five minutes later, she's dead.
36:52:
(Sean Fennessy)
Yeah.
36:52:
(Sean Fennessy)
And I think that that's like a very purposeful thing.
36:54:
(Sean Fennessy)
And also the fact that the doctor's
36:56:
(Sean Fennessy)
You know, we think of doctors as the most educated and intelligent people in our society.
37:01:
(Sean Fennessy)
Other than the people on this podcast.
37:03:
(Sean Fennessy)
Right, of course.
37:03:
(Sean Fennessy)
But this guy's like meningitis.
37:06:
(Sean Fennessy)
Maybe she got it from herpes.
37:07:
(Sean Fennessy)
You know, like he doesn't know.
37:08:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
The autopsy scene is so disturbing.
37:17:
(Bill Simmons)
That was the next thing I was going to bring up.
37:19:
(Bill Simmons)
The Gwyneth Paltrow skull getting basically cut and open.
37:22:
(Bill Simmons)
I know Craig had some issues with that one.
37:25:
(Craig Horlbeck)
The skull is tough.
37:26:
(Craig Horlbeck)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Craig Horlbeck)
Should I call someone?
37:51:
(Craig Horlbeck)
Call everyone.
37:54:
(Sean Fennessy)
Because he's looking at a medical anomaly.
37:56:
(Sean Fennessy)
He's looking at a potentially fatal virus that could spread across the world.
38:01:
(Sean Fennessy)
She actually, she does her own stunt work.
38:03:
(Bill Simmons)
She did that.
38:03:
(Bill Simmons)
They cut her open.
38:06:
(Bill Simmons)
She looks great.
38:06:
(Bill Simmons)
It's amazing what stitching can do.
38:08:
(Bill Simmons)
Next question.
38:09:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
There's no mistaking the fact that there's some judgment made.
38:20:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, John Neal here.
38:28:
(Bill Simmons)
You just had sex with me in a hotel and left without saying goodbye.
38:31:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, it ended up being delayed.
38:33:
(Bill Simmons)
So, sorry, I was panicking.
38:36:
(Bill Simmons)
Well, if I don't get to see you again, I just wanted to say it was nice to see you again.
38:40:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
So it might be an environmental whatever.
39:02:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think it's an environmental story.
39:03:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think there's something there about cheating.
39:06:
(Sean Fennessy)
But ultimately, I think that that's just a storytelling device to get the virus in a different city.
39:11:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Soundbite)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
You hear me, Aubrey?
39:48:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
I want you to drive here to Atlanta.
39:57:
(Bill Simmons)
Drive by yourself.
39:59:
(Bill Simmons)
You do it.
39:59:
(Bill Simmons)
You do it now.
40:00:
(Bill Simmons)
Don't tell anyone and don't stop.
40:04:
(Bill Simmons)
And stay away from other people.
40:05:
(Bill Simmons)
You understand?
40:06:
(Bill Simmons)
Keep your distance from other people now.
40:07:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Call a family member, alert them and then risk.
40:25:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
And that friend of hers.
40:38:
(Chris Ryan)
And it's very purposeful that Soderbergh shows that woman with a child.
40:43:
(Chris Ryan)
You know what I mean?
40:44:
(Chris Ryan)
So you get this idea of the stakes that go into.
40:47:
(Chris Ryan)
If Sonalathan just says, I'm just going to drive to Atlanta and be like, yeah, you know, crazy road trip.
40:51:
(Chris Ryan)
I'll be back.
40:52:
(Chris Ryan)
See you soon.
40:53:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Oh, that's right.
41:02:
(Bill Simmons)
When they'd heard there was a, Wanda told Larry and Cheryl there might be a terrorist attack that weekend.
41:08:
(Bill Simmons)
Don't tell anyone.
41:09:
(Bill Simmons)
And then Larry told Paul Reiser's wife.
41:11:
(Bill Simmons)
And then all of a sudden everyone in LA knew.
41:13:
(Bill Simmons)
And people were mad that he didn't tell them, but he told somebody else.
41:17:
(Bill Simmons)
And that was probably like five, six years before this.
41:20:
(Chris Ryan)
So it's really good.
41:21:
(Chris Ryan)
It's a Curb Your Enthusiasm original.
41:24:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's really good.
41:37:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
No.
41:45:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
I'm going to put her in contagion.
41:54:
(Chris Ryan)
So what happened to her?
41:55:
(Sean Fennessy)
Well, she has this run.
41:56:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
Which is, you know, I mean, those are some of the biggest productions, dramas of that time.
42:07:
(Sean Fennessy)
And then it kind of goes sideways.
42:10:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's in a Robocop movie that you and I saw together, actually, Chris.
42:14:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's in The Forger.
42:15:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's in Fifty Shades of Grey.
42:16:
(Sean Fennessy)
Like, her career just kind of doesn't, she doesn't get the same projects for whatever reason.
42:20:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's a really good actor.
42:21:
(Sean Fennessy)
She was on a show called A Gifted Man in 2011, the same year.
42:26:
(Sean Fennessy)
She's on Low Winter Sun.
42:27:
(Sean Fennessy)
Not ideal.
42:28:
(Bill Simmons)
Sometimes you just don't find the right... Carla Gugino, our girl.
42:32:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah.
42:33:
(Bill Simmons)
It's another one.
42:34:
(Bill Simmons)
Never totally found the right awesome movie, but I'm still a huge fan.
42:38:
(Bill Simmons)
Me too.
42:39:
(Bill Simmons)
We can agree on that.
42:41:
(Bill Simmons)
Well, I remember when you had her on a podcast and then didn't introduce her to me.
42:45:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
She walked right by my office.
42:50:
(Bill Simmons)
And Chris was just like, should I just peek in and see if Bill wants to meet?
42:54:
(Bill Simmons)
No.
42:54:
(Bill Simmons)
No.
42:55:
(Bill Simmons)
Just kept going.
42:56:
(Sean Fennessy)
I would never do that with Jennifer Ely with you, Bill.
42:59:
(Sean Fennessy)
I would definitely bring Ely by.
43:00:
(Sean Fennessy)
I appreciate that, Sean.
43:01:
(Sean Fennessy)
Thank you.
43:01:
(Bill Simmons)
Anything else before we go?
43:03:
(Bill Simmons)
I'm sorry about Carlo Gugino.
43:06:
(Sean Fennessy)
I don't accept your apology.
43:08:
(Sean Fennessy)
I think that this is the first movie that has redefined the rewatchables.
43:14:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Chris Ryan)
My wife was like, oh, I was thinking about that earlier.
43:27:
(Chris Ryan)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
And then within 20 minutes, you're just like stone-faced.
43:43:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
Is there another example?
43:52:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
And that was a cool version of that conversation.
44:05:
(Sean Fennessy)
We talked about the social network and some of the negative things surrounding Facebook in the last five years.
44:10:
(Sean Fennessy)
There were reasons to talk about those movies, but they weren't the only reasons.
44:14:
(Sean Fennessy)
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:
(Sean Fennessy)
This wasn't a movie that we loved and was on the long list.
44:22:
(Sean Fennessy)
It was something that was pushed in front of us because of something that's going on.
44:26:
(Sean Fennessy)
And that's new.
44:28:
(Sean Fennessy)
All right.
44:29:
(Bill Simmons)
Well, we'll be back with a regular rewatchable next week.
44:31:
(Bill Simmons)
Stay safe out there.
44:33:
(Bill Simmons)
Check out this movie.
44:34:
(Bill Simmons)
We highly encourage it.
44:35:
(Bill Simmons)
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:
(Bill Simmons)
It's on Cinemax, I think on demand.
44:41:
(Bill Simmons)
Yeah, you can rent it on Amazon.
44:42:
(Bill Simmons)
If you have that, you can rent it on Amazon and all those places.
44:45:
(Bill Simmons)
But for Chris Ramch, I'm Sean Fantasy.
44:47:
(Bill Simmons)
Bill Simmons.
44:47:
(Bill Simmons)
See you next time.