Theory will get you only so far, so today, Alex is turning theory into a practical podcast commentary. Alex flies solo to fulfill his obsession with Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-winning masterpiece, “Oppenheimer.” The detonators are charged, the martinis are made, and it is time to hear the music.
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Listen to our Christopher Nolan episode here.
Listen to our "Oppenheimer" review episode here.
Listen to our "Oppenheimer" Update episode here.
Theory will get you only so far, so today, Alex is turning theory into a practical podcast commentary. Alex flies solo to fulfill his obsession with Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-winning masterpiece, “Oppenheimer.” The detonators are charged, the martinis are made, and it is time to hear the music.
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Listen to our Christopher Nolan episode here.
Listen to our "Oppenheimer" review episode here.
Listen to our "Oppenheimer" Update episode here.
Hey! Up, homies. Welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex with throw in. Oh, here we go. You're stuck with me today. I am doing the Oppenheimer commentary solo in the commentary. I'm going to explain why I'm doing this solo. Why I am doing this with Nick's full encouragement. He knows all about this. It's quite a story. I even have a little surprise cameo for you toward the end of the movie, so this is a long movie. Obviously. I don't think any further introduction is necessary, but my podcast journey with this film began in July, and it is concluding with this commentary. When you hear the beep, that is when I press play on the movie, hopefully this whole thing goes off with a tremendous bang in three, two, one. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity. I didn't need to look that up. When you've seen a movie this many times, it's just in there. We'll get to all that. I love watching this universal logo. Now I'm watching this on a laptop the way that Nolan intended. And the universal logo, like, you know, takes up the whole screen. But when you saw it in giant Imax 70 millimeter, it was just this little blip on the screen. And then you open with this insane Imax footage and you're like, oh my God, let's go. That was always a fun kind of litmus test to go back, look at the screen and be like, all right, here we go. It's going to be a big one. I'm very nervous to be doing this, mostly because I'm doing it alone. I feel like I've been studying for a test. If you've been with us with the podcast since July, since this movie came out, you understand how important it has been in my life and I am very excited to get into it. Today with all of you. So, you know, the first, I don't know, 4 or 5 times or 6 or 7. I saw this. I had no idea that noise was the stomping of the feet in the classroom or not the class or what? He's going to give that speech the world. Or remember this day I didn't realize that's what it was. I knew every other instance that that's what was going on. But yeah, that took me a while. When you see this in Imax, you can see a little camera bump there as it's pulling out. Oh my God, I love this. I was so excited to see this movie for the first time. The first time I saw Oppenheimer was the day we could all see it. July 20th, 2023 made a calculated decision, but a poor decision to see it in 70 millimeter. First. I very stupidly thought that would be harder to find in subsequent viewings. whereas of course Imax was sold out for a year, so I saw it in 70 millimeter first. It was quite a viewing, quite a showing. There was a disruptive member of the audience who took it upon himself to yell out often. Oh, well. But to say that I understood very little of this movie the first time I saw it is an understatement. Why? Then I became obsessed with it. maybe we'll figure that out here in real time. Already we're bouncing around this. The Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing was in April. In May of 54. And then this stuff with straws. Louis straws here. The Senate confirmation hearing. This was in 59. I just want to keep in mind something that the movie doesn't draw attention to for the clearance hearings is that this shit lasted for months. This was not like an afternoon that Oppenheimer went in there he was in, out, in, out. They would tell him he was done testifying. Then they would, like, bring him back a week later. And, you know, he's up there at Princeton. It's not close to DC because, of course, no one being Nolan. They shot all of this in the actual room in Washington, DC where Oppenheimer had his hearing. That's insane. If you think about insane just because the room is so small, one. But two, these Imax cameras are absolutely massive and they are louder than shit. So you'll notice when there's Imax footage in this movie, rarely is there dialog during the Imax footage because you can't, so you cannot talk over the camera. You'd have to do some sort of ADR in post-production, where you're having the actors record their dialog later and no one doesn't do ADR. So a lot of the sound is production sound, which means I just I can't imagine, negotiating all of that being like, okay, this is when we bring in the Imax camera. This is when we bring the 35 just back and forth, back and forth. It's going to be really hard to pick a subject to talk about because this I mean, my favorite part of the movie, I don't even know. I every time I saw it in the theater, I was so damn excited to. Can you hear the music to get to can you hear the music? Because that two minutes, the cutting, the song, all the visuals, oh my God, I mean, that alone, I think is, certainly what helped everyone who won Oscars for this movie win Oscars for this movie. I can get into a little background, maybe. I mean, we were supposed to record this so many times. The reason why I'm doing it solo. We were supposed to record this the day after the Oscars. Obviously, we did not know the way the Oscars were going to go. Everyone was telling me, this film is going to win Best Picture and Best Director, which it did, and Best Actor. Oh, thank God, thank God. And because the night went so well, we all had a little too much fun and went to sleep, perhaps little too late and woke up a little too late and were not in any state to record a commentary. State of California. We were not. Yeah, in any physical condition to record a commentary. So we let it go. And after talking with Nick extensively, Nick, who has seen this film once and with me, having seen it so many more times and reading the book, it's based on reading the screenplay, reading Bhagavad Gita, which I'm not going to talk about him just because I'm so obsessed. We figured, there may be a little bit of an imbalance, but then I was also, of course, nervous of just doing this on my own because who the hell would want to listen to me for three hours? Oh, my God, all this stuff. I mean, I kind of had an idea, you know, all these cuts to the I don't I don't know how to explain what all this shit is. The all the science shit, the visions that he's seeing. The first time I saw it, I was like, this looks real to me. I can't, I can't explain, it just doesn't look fake. It doesn't look like there's, an abundance of CGI. And of course, that was the case. They were doing a lot of it practically. They're really doing it the same way that the team behind the Tree of Life did that creation sequence. If you go watch both special features, both making of making of the Tree of Life and making of Oppenheimer, it's it's just a bunch of guys, like in some room or in a dark, I don't know, it looks like a garage or warehouse, just like spinning lights and coming up with all this crazy stuff and a lot of experimentation, a lot of camera test lenses, different things were doing it, and it all works. You get that together. Give it to Jennifer Lamb, the editor. Well, and it just all works. It works so well. Truly. One of the most thrilling parts of the movie for me are all those little quick cuts here in the beginning that doesn't keep going throughout the movie, but it's going to, peak here. Certainly. I think with the can you hear the music sequence, one of the all timers, this is like the exact same framing, that guy behind Kenneth Brown, they're they're standing like this in Dunkirk. You have to just assume, you know, we got Hoyte van Hoytema filming this. He also shot Dunkirk. Nolan. I mean, you know, you got to assume it's part of the same. It's all planned to a degree. Oppenheimer really did do that. Apparently. He really did inject his professor with some poison. Jesus, can you hear? Oh my God. Oh, you know, to talk during this. Jesus, this is just astounding. I mean, this song was like one of the most played on Spotify for the year. I definitely think this is how Lugo and Goranson why he won his second Oscar. The whole score is amazing, but I really loved the score for tenet. I thought that score rocked when I the first time I saw that movie, I hated it, hated tenet, but I loved the music. It was one of the things that, like, hooked me. And this, I felt was very appropriate. You know, the first time I watch it. But then I had no idea it was going to take off and become this big. I'm getting chills just watching this. Even though I have the volume low, the the cutting back and forth and back. And when we go to Picasso. Yeah. Like here. And this is when the music is really going to take off for the first time, when it goes boom is when he's staring at Picasso and we're back at him, that we're staring at Picasso, back in him breaking the wine. Wineglasses. Why, what what what? It's. Oh, my God, look at this. Boom boom boom boom boom boom here. Just going up. Jesus Christ, that's fucking beautiful. Oh my God, I love it. Back forth back forth. How do you decide. Do you just give all this to Jennifer Lame, the editor? Is there large discussions back and forth on what this mini cuts we need to show this. How do you know what to circle back to? How do you that is what is. So I'm going to get into a little bit of editing later and how sometimes the editing is a bit like a math equation. If you sit down and storyboard it out yourself and look at when the movie is cutting and what coverage it's cutting on, basically when when Damon goes, let's go recruit some scientists, pay attention to that scene and I'll bring it up again when we are meeting all those scientists. It's like a math equation. The editing of it. This I don't know, it all feels random, but it also feels complete. It's just beautiful. I think it's one of the most thrilling things Christopher Nolan has ever done. And there's no special effects involved. It's it's just miraculous. I love the way Downey plays is so kind of like, gentle in the beginning, like, well, yeah, but I first hired him as board member. You know, it's he's really tried to play it cool, play it as is. Not being a conniving, sniveling ass. You know, the second time I saw this movie, I waited three whole days, actually. Wait, look at this. A little Cary Grant thing here. I love that how he puts his, suit down. And then does that little, like, jog. It's a little flighty. It's a little. You can tell he's, He's excited to meet Oppenheimer. He's impressed by him. But this whole thing right here, when you, It's going too fast. I can't explain it all, but when you watch the movie, you know, in the double digits, they. Oppenheimer's just insulting him constantly here. He's insulting Strauss constantly, like, you know, no matter how you say my name, they know I'm Jewish. Meaning that. Oh, so strong as you change the pronunciation of your name because you didn't want people to know you're Jewish. Just that implication is, it's a bit mean. Calling him lowly, comparing him to his dad. There's all these things where they can't get the same footing like straws. It's really kissing his ass here. And Oppenheimer does not care. He doesn't give a shit about him. He doesn't give a shit, really, about any of this. He was, you know, Oppenheimer with its watch. The way this is, how you can tell down. He's just such a good, actor. He takes that little step toward camera. I love that he's so you can tell he's been in front of a camera for his entire life. When he goes into that damn meeting to discuss, you know, to discuss that the Russians have a bomb the way that he takes off his fucking scarf as he turns the corner. Oh, my God. Anyway, they're insulting each other. Really? Oppenheimer's insulting him back and forth constantly here. Straws, you can kind of tell is like, what the hell's going on? Like I'm offering him this really prestigious position. Like, what is this? This is the way Oppenheimer was when he was talking to non-science non-scientists or, you know, even when he was talking to scientists, he could be very arrogant. He could be very dismissive. He could be very I don't give a fuck about what you're talking about. And I think Killian Murphy plays that so well here. But again, none of that is explained. That's just the way Oppenheimer was. But right away, their chemistry, their antagonism. That's a great shot. Too slow pull out kind of looks like Downey's like slow moving toward to like the subtlest of subtle double double dolly shots that spike Lee does. It isn't that. But it kind of looks like that. How the hell they get his hat to blow off like that? That's the shit I wonder about. It's like on a string, like a wind fan. God, it's a dude who's made Paris collapse onto itself. Yet I'm sitting here wondering about a hat. You know, it's also hilarious, as if you start this scene directly with the movie ends. It's like this huge thing, you know? I think we did it. We're staring at Oppenheimer. Cody. Back to Earth. Oppenheimer. Earth. Oppenheimer. That he closes his eyes and then right away, you have this asshole coming out. What did you say to him? That would be the actual, you know, if it wasn't, and if it was in chronological order, it would just keep going like that. Oh, God. It's hilarious that he's cast him. So look at this suit, I love it. Okay, second time I saw Oppenheimer's three days after my first viewing did a legit Barb and Heimer Day with my aunt Sol Oppenheimer first. And Barbie Fun Day was a good time. Definitely picked up a lot more of this film. Barbie I kind of got on one viewing, but you know, that's okay. These guys, these senators, you know, appeared senators, everyone, this Mickey guy kind of questioning Charles. All these guys are great. This that Mickey guy. Oh, God. What the hell's his name? Harry Groaner. I mean, he's a Tony nominated actor. A lot of them up there are really big. You got Tim Decay. He was the star of White Collar. You got Gregory Jarba Barba. I don't know how to say it. He was in Blue Bloods, of course, which I haven't seen. He's a Tony Award winning actor. They're all heavy hitters up there. He cast everyone very, very well. Jason Clarke there is Roger Robb, Roger Robb, notorious asshole in real life. Wow. This movie, I kind of undersold it, even though they really sold it. Well. Krumholtz. Krumholtz has had a really good. He's rode this Oppenheimer wave. Well, he's, you know, see him on Twitter? He was just on Marc Maron's podcast. He sold some really funny stories in the making of this on Maron's podcast. My God, he can do amazing impressions. He was doing an Alan Arkin impression constantly doing a Nolan impression, which is great, but I don't know which version of this story to believe. But apparently Krumholtz was first seen in the movie. It's coming up when they're on the train together. Also, this little bit, this look at the background here, how they're doing this. The back left, I'll explain all that later. That effect is amazing. But this was Krumholtz, his first scene. Right. So they're they're on here. They're going. He says no one likes to do, you know, 4 or 5 takes, typically per coverage, then move on. So for Krumholtz is close up here. He did 14 takes. So no one's doing 14 takes and not really giving Krumholtz direction. And then comes up to him and it's like 14 Like okay okay. And I've heard Krumholtz tell versions of that story that he was not doing the performance correctly and Nolan was not digging it. So they really had to pivot, I guess, after take 14. But then when he told the story on Maron, he made it sound like Nolan was just fucking with him and being funny and made him do 14 takes just to do it. So I don't know if it's true, but the dude had to do 14 days and I think his performance is great in This is adore. Robbie. Oh god. I'm probably saying the name Wrong Robbie in real life really loved Oppenheimer till his dying day. They were great friends. I've watched, all of the documentaries about the Manhattan Project, the Trinity Test, Oppenheimer. I've seen him interviewed. He really, really cared about him and defended him very well. I mean, Jesus, Robbie won a Nobel Prize. I mean, a lot of these scientists were very, very acclaimed. He hated teller, too. That's another thing. A lot of these scientists in real life grew to hate. Edward Teller played so well by Benny Safdie. I mean, this is a really important scene because when when Oppenheimer was talking to Groves, he says, you know, this guy Heisenberg is so much smarter than my team in this one area, so he would have made that leap quickly. That's why the Nazis are ahead by six months. It goes so fast boom, boom, boom, boom, boom that you kind of miss this stuff again. Unless you've seen it, you know, in the double digits. That character that this guy is playing is, of course, who how Walter White got his nickname and Breaking Bad. Heisenberg. Pretty obvious one right there. Probably didn't even need to say that. I love the low key ness of putting an A-list star like Emily Blunt just back there, intentionally out of focus. It's genius for a lot of it. And you're like, okay, I guess she's going to come up later, but like, what's the deal? I just put her back there and she was there for a lot of it, Kitty. Until she got fed up. Dipped out. Oh, here it comes, folks. Here he comes. The great Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence. Hartnett is amazing in this film. I love the way he plays it. Start school of quantum theory. It's not really his voice. He's kind of, I don't know, playing it up a little register. I believe him so much that he likes Oppenheimer, wants to work with Oppenheimer. I believe his frustration with the politics, I just I believe all of it. But he seems nice. He seems earnest. I believe when he gets mad and he he's just great in this. I've always I'm so glad all the casting in this movie is perfect. He was definitely when I heard it, I was like, oh, Josh Hartnett. That was the last time I saw him and I thought he excelled in this. Absolutely excelled. Ernest Lawrence was a good guy to. One thing about Ernest, though, I got to tell you, he died in 1958 and he was not alive for Oppenheimer's award in the end of the film, which means that this movie is bullshit. This kid. Oh, my God, you never. I mean, the first time you watch this, you have no clue how important this kid is going to be to the entire movie and to the political scandal that would envelop Oppenheimer after the Trinity Trinity test later in his life. I love that they have the reoccurring, you know, you're going to be okay. That reoccurring thing, it's really it's kind of cool. This is what Oppenheimer would do. He would just cruise through his lessons. He would go so, so fast. People, students would, by choice, by choice, take his class two, three, four times just to understand what he was talking about. And he didn't change his lessons. He was teaching the same exact thing. But that's how complicated and new all this stuff was. It? Oh my God, I have of course no idea what the hell he's talking about throughout any of this movie. I don't understand any of this stuff, but I understand that they all believe it. Watch this. Watch. When he compliments his student and the reaction from Hartnett like the blank oh God, look at that. That he's so impressed and like, oh, okay. So you're a teachers willing to collaborate with his students. You know, he's right there. He's telling him you're bad. Your math is better than mine. Oh, I love it. I love how he's just taking control of the scene. Post-Grad kids. These shots are were really remarkable in the theater. Those Imax shots of him, just the focus settled on him. But everyone else kind of out of focus, buried out of focus. It's great. He plays is so damn well. Third time I saw Oppenheimer, one of the few times I saw it with someone. Saw it with friend of the pod, Dan, he came to visit me. This was seven days after my second viewing and this was my first time in Imax. We got lucky because everything was sold out and I had to. If we got lucky with our seats, we had to sit in the very back. We were asked to not talk fear and loathing joke and that was that was great. It did take three viewings to fully click for me, for me to get all of it, for me to get the structure, understand why black and white first color to get. And not that I say I figured it all out. That's not what I mean. But just to basically understand the structure took three viewings and from there the thing really opened up for me and now that I can understand it, I could see a lot. I started to get a lot more enjoyment out of it and I was like learning with it. I always thought the sound of his brother Frank hitting him on the back was so, so loud. Just boom. Like kind of scared you. Which I suppose is the intention. Alex. Dylan Arnold I've only seen him. The only thing I could remember him in as that's Frank Oppenheimer playing Frank was in Halloween and Halloween Kills. I guess he's in the show you on Netflix, which I have never seen. Hoke and Chevalier. This guy again loved Oppenheimer. They were such good friends, and I think he genuinely felt, horrible for the position. He put Oppenheimer, and they had no idea, you know, that the Chevalier incident would be the defining incident, one of the defining incidents of Oppenheimer's life and values. Life. But they the relationship they have. And, you know, when you meet someone and they, like, start asking you about your passions and they they're really, really interested. This happens to me with movies. Sometimes people have never met them. They'll start asking me about movies and I'm like, oh, okay, this person actually cares what I'm talking about. And it's it's kind of nice. And you're like, oh, well, a person who really cares, you can tell right here that this guy cares. And I love it, you know? Do stars die? I love him so much. Jefferson Hall is playing him also in Halloween, the 2018 one, when I reference Halloween earlier as well. He's also in tenet. He's the guy John David Washington tries to save. Does say from the opera. I don't remember if he if he makes it out. I can't remember, Florence Pugh here playing Jean Tatlock, a notorious figure in Oppenheimer's life, a brilliant psych, brilliant psychiatry, a member of the Communist Party. Of course. Pugh got her start. First thing I saw her in was Lady Macbeth, which I thought she was, remarkable. In The Commuter, Liam Neeson fighting with my family, which I haven't seen. I want Nick because, you know, it's about wrestling. I need Nick to comment on that. But he isn't here. And it was mid-summer. It's like, wow, we have a new talent who's going to be around for a while. I really like that movie. I like that movie more and more every time I watch it. I highly recommend the director's cut. It's a half hour longer. She's in little Women, let's get. Which gets her an Oscar nom. She's in the Wonder weird movie you can watch on Netflix. Really cool beginning Don't Worry Darling, which I think she walked away from the most unscathed. And it just, you know, she kept her mouth shut. It's just. Let's just walk away. Let's move on. Let's go to Oppenheimer. She was in a good person, directed by Zach Braff, which I another one I still haven't seen. It's one of the ones where got, like a lot of publicity, but I'm interested to see how she does in it. And then currently she's in Dune tune doing great. And I'm sure she's going to have a big role in Dune Messiah love. Florence Pugh thought she did really well here in a in a different kind of race. You could have seen maybe her and Emily Blunt nominated or you never know. What if they just put everything behind Florence Pugh and not Emily Blunt? But they made the right decision. Florence Pugh had an Oscar nom. She would not have won for this anyway. Emily Blunt didn't have an Oscar nom. It was right to to do that, to push it Blunt's way. Now, this is, of course, a, crazy important quote to Oppenheimer's life. I was watching, you know, we were doing a last action hero part, so I rewatched all of McTiernan s movies. Sean Connery quotes this, like, verbatim, he says, and now I'm become death destroyer of worlds. He's like, that's what the man who created the atomic bomb said. So I love that Oppenheimer doesn't say this quote in the context that we, the public, all know that he said it. Most of us know, which was when he was being interviewed on the news. I even included that clip in our Oppenheimer review at the very end of the episode when he was, you know, very, very old. He was close to death. Honestly, at that point. And we don't see that interview, I like that. So that's really the only time that is the only time we see him say it. And then of course, he says it later as the bomb is going off because wow, what a quote of immense power. What a guy to just, you know, learning all these languages so he could teach a course. He just learning this for fun, Sanskrit for fun so he can read his favorite text. What a guy. what a guy. I love these landscapes. I mean, Hoyte van Hoytema, cinematographer there right now. I am not sure there's anyone better filming landscapes, getting out there and just showing these vast areas of nature. Even in nope and nope. I thought the cinematography of nope was the best part of it, and the the broadness of the camera in that, my god, that that movie played so well in Imax because of him. This little back and forth that, I love this about Jackie, his soon to be sister in law, that he seems not at all interested in. If you also watch closely in terms of the editing of this, because Nolan uses production sound a lot and doesn't do a lot of ADR, the footage will cut often right after someone delivers a line like a millisecond. It will cut, cut, cut often, so we don't get a lot of off camera dialog. In this. We do some, but it's not a lot. He's very interested in what I caught on. Camera is here. What I caught in the microphones is here and I just respect that. As somebody who loves movies, I notice that here though, where we're just boom, we cut right back to their close up and their lines are I mean, they're almost on top of each other. They're you know, I don't necessarily think people talk like this in real life, where the millisecond someone is done speaking, you start talking, but it works so well. And I also think they had to do that for this baby to be at three hours flat because that, you know, 3053 ten could have strained people out. See, Babylon. Is X and New Mexico. What a trick. Emma Dumont plays Jackie. Jackie Oppenheimer, Frank's wife, Robert's sister in law. She was in Inherent Vice, and she played. She's credited as Airplane Brenda in Licorice Pizza. And I remember her in that airplane scene. That's great. So it's fun to look all. It's fun to look some of these people off and be like, oh yeah, I have seen them for, Of course we have Alex Wolff here talking about the Ari Aster connection. he was in hereditary. And if you've seen hereditary, you do not forgive. You do not forget him. Maybe you don't forgive him either. he's so good at this. Just everyone coming in and doing these, like, smaller parts, and it's so cool because Killian Murphy is usually who does the smaller part in the movie. But not in this one. He front of the call sheet. Oh, I love it. Oh, I love this. Quite clear. Very elegant, quite clear I don't know, I love the way heart that plays this. I just, Know what Alex Wolff is really good in not a lot of people talk about. He played the younger Boston Marathon bomber in Patriot's Day. No one talks about that movie, but he's really, really good at it. Go see it. He was in pig. He's a good actor, very good actor. I love this and I'm clicking everything figuring, you know, clicking a bomb. Alvarez a bomb. The fourth time I saw Oppenheimer. God. Six days after my third viewing. This was the first time I got to see it in true Imax, I went to the Air and Space Museum near Washington, DC outside of Washington, DC. Saw it there. No assigned seating at this theater. So it's old school. You cannot sit in the first like, I don't know, 20 rows or your neck is going to be killing. You got to sit in the back. So I'm there two hours early just, you know, with my audiobook, I was actually listening to American Prometheus at the time. what an experience. Also very, odd and surreal that you can walk out of Oppenheimer, the film and walk, I don't know, 30, 50ft and be in front of the Enola Gay, which, you know, dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Weird lantern here. Crazy fast scene when this guy is so important. To the detriment of the latter half of Oppenheimer's career, the political scandal. I mean, this guy was so, so important. And we hear this name over and over, but again, we just kind of skip right over him because in Oppenheimer's life, these things, there's no way he could have known what was going to happen to him and how this was going to affect him going forward, being, you know, involved in all this stuff. I mean, even here, he's defending it. So this is great. We're about to see Matthew Modine, of course, but then we're going to see Tom Jenkins come in. It's Richard Tolman and this is the guy, this Tollman guy. It is his wife who Oppenheimer is sleeping with. presumably now just, you know, he's been having a long term affair with. And according to Oppenheimer, Tollman did not know this this guy, this poor guy. You know, I just like to call that out. He's with him the whole way, but never knows about Oppenheimer and his wife. Yikes. So the reason I wanted to see Oppenheimer for that fourth time, because, I mean, three, three viewings in the theater for me is, that's enough for is excessive. Five. We're getting to what's going on. Hadn't done five in a long time, but I really wanted that true Imax experience. So that's why I went and saw it four times. And then it was. Then it was done. There was no real reason to go see it again. It's going to be, you know, 4K streaming soon. So let's just let it all let it all go. And there we go. Finally, literally, Emily Blunt coming into clear focus in the camera, just drifting back there. I love this. So, yeah, there's a lot of quick kind of rat a tat tat in this back here. Not even in the dialog, but just. I firmly believe that Kitty here, Emily Blunt is playing like she can tell that little look like that side eye of. All right, and leave us alone, Ruth. And she kind of suspects that maybe Ruth and Oppenheimer have something going on. But even if she doesn't, she's kind of given the side eye, like, get away. I'm trying to talk to Oppie here, but then this woman is married. Kitty's married right now. just what a time. You know, we talked about it a little bit on, our Place in the sun podcast with my dad. That stuff like this has always been around. It was just a little, perhaps a little more well hidden back in the day. But they're not being very hidden or subtle right here. He's got to put his hands all over. She's just going to go to New Mexico with him. You know, why the hell not? How civilized. She seems so sweet here. I really like this because Kitty Kitty Oppenheimer did. She did not fuck around. She was not well liked at Los Alamos or by, you know, by many people. But she did love Robert. They had a very, you know, they've been through fire together, very intense relationship, very complicated woman. And I love how this movie shows that without putting too fine a point on it, you know, she doesn't her drinking is kind of mentioned, but not really. It's never told. Like, hey, maybe you should take it easy. How bad of a mother she is is directly called into question and acknowledged. And they were of the Oppenheimer's were not good parents. Their daughter ended up dying by suicide. It it was a tragic life and their son thought it. He was kind of in their shadow for his whole life. So. Yeah. Not not the best home life really? Not really the best life, if you think about it. Did this thing the the government and military hired him to do and then his life was ruined because of it. An American Prometheus. They actually dedicate a bit of time to Joe here. The husband, the, you know, the widow. What I want to say. The husband that was Kitty's ex that was killed with an ax is because he was killed. So then whatever. You know what I'm trying to say. Sad story. Joe. There. It really helps paint a portrait of communism. At the time, how it was viewed, it was, It's a fascinating book, and you can see why it won the Pulitzer. So if you. Well, if you are interested in this movie, I highly recommend that book. I've read it twice, did the audiobook and then actually read it. Read it, which was it's like a fucking phone book, whatever the hell this is. I love this scene between Murphy and Pew. This is my favorite scene between them. Just I love cutting into it. It obviously didn't start here. They've had the conversation. They've had maybe the argument, maybe something was thrown. Tears are had, they're still being had and then it's arrested here. It's ended here. So it's like we missed the whole fight. If there was a fight, maybe there wasn't. Maybe it was a simple conversation. I doubt that knowing Jean Tatlock or what this movie shows of us, but whatever it was, I love that we just see this little bit and the way she is lit in the way her tears and, you know, eye makeup are all smeared. It's just, it's really beautiful. You really believe it, and you just believe that these two have a passion for each other that can't be necessarily contained or harnessed into something like a marriage. That's civilized. I love her. So the fifth time I saw Oppenheimer, I'm like, all right. If I go back for a fifth time, I got to do something special, right? Because I've seen it. Seen in 70 millimeter. Saw it on a DCP salt in Imax, salt and true Imax. So what's left? Got to combine the two. I got to find a theater that plays true Imax 70 millimeter. And I did find one of those three hours away from me. So I spent an entire Sunday driving three hours to this theater, sitting there for three hours watching this movie, having my mind blown, and then driving three hours back took like four hours to get back to the traffic. And that was a great way to spend a Sunday. I don't regret it now. Everything should be done with five viewings. This is it. I've seen it in every format possible. Why go and see it again? Why indeed? His hartnett's rage here. The the temperament, the register. He plays that like not screaming and then love that tell you that shit I look he kind of said kind of seems like he doesn't want to say the word shit, but then he does. You know, when you're like your kid and your parents have to curse or something? hilarious. And then everything kind of changes. This is what. It's why the movie flows so well for me. Because we're cruising, we're cruising, and we get these. Despite it being three hours long, it is an insanely rewatchable movie to me anyway, obviously. And that's because you keep hitting these different things, like when Damon comes into this, it is a this movie is injected with, there's some new humor, there's some it just it starts to move again. It's like, all right, now we got an A-list star here. We know he knows how to take care of us. And the way that Damon plays Groves, it's just it it gives us a little a little boost in the movie. Will keep doing that because then soon enough, you'll keep going. You're like, oh shit, Casey Affleck's coming up. Oh shit. And oh shit, the Trinity test is coming up. Oh, shit. There's always these like, oh shit moments where I like, got to see this because, you know, keep in mind Casey Affleck's in this for like 4.5 minutes, so you gotta. It's always getting to these intense, rewatchable scenes that you want to see, or just characters that you want to see over and over. You know what? I'm never time. Maybe this will be my next viewing. I'll time, the longest gaps away from the black and white footage, because I think the longest one is when they're doing, you know, the Trinity test. But it's really. How do you decide that? Like, how do you decide when to come back, when to cut back. And this is all scripted. Even the coloring is scripted in the script. It says black and white footage, color footage. Create line delivery and camera movement here. Content. And then it just goes and he's walking toward camera, but the camera's moving back. I love that Alden Ehrenreich is great in this film. I've always really liked him as an actor. Nick likes him as well, I, I hope I think he's on a bit of, sort of resurgence because of this. I love that he's just credited as an aide in this film. And they, he and Downey rehearse this a lot. They went out to dinner, they talked it out. And you can tell there every little thing. You can just tell that they've worked on it. You can tell that they've done this before, but where it's not flat and where, you know, they're almost talking over each other and it's it's just great in the way that Aaron Reich is playing this like kind of, kind of like he almost knows. And he's like who, you know, like who could of silence. You know, Robert, it's like, oh, who? I love that. Just the whole thing back and forth. You don't really know. Like who does? Does he know? Does insanity know? Is struggles like that? He's so far ahead. Yeah. And apparently all this is true. This guy just, like, could not let this shit go. That in 1947, Strouse recruits Oppenheimer to Princeton. And then two years later, in 1949, up and Heimer embarrasses drawers at a congressional hearing talking about just isotopes. And this is something that Charles could not let go for. apparently his entire career. And it was something that I guess was so humiliating that this is part of what soured him to use his word on Robert. And you're like, God, these damn people, man. Like they don't vacation. Like they have fun with powerbrokers in Washington. Like Jesus Christ, who gives a shit a little bit, you know what I mean? So he, like, embarrassed you about isotopes and you destroys. Oh. Fucking life. Oh, no. I love these people. Great instance here of seeing, the a different side of Kitty, of course, that we've seen and really showing the like the drinking is a thing. It's probably an issue to a two degree, but it is not discussed. And her inability to be a good mother is not outwardly, just outwardly disgust. There's no huge fight that they have about it in any other movie would do this. Any other biopic that we watch, there's always something about substances where they're arguing about it, how bad of a parent you are because you're gone a lot that's always there. But but it's always made to such a heightened degree in this. This is basically all we're going to get when he just, you know, passes off his Sunday joke here, which is true. And they did take him in for months while they went and just kind of like figured shit out. I mean, that's what a hell of a friend. Help friend. These Stuart is great together. The way they play this. And Murphy like seeing Murphy on the campaign tour. And of course, you know, I've been a fan of his for so damn long. Never seen him do anything like this. The way he'll make his eyes. So, like, steely and cold and open is Oppenheimer, which Oppenheimer would do. My God, I don't know. It's a complete, personification of who this guy was. So I'm, like, working out in late August 2023, it's Saturday, and I'm in the middle of reading American Prometheus and while I'm working out, I, I don't know if I've ever experienced this in my life. I was like feeling kind of down. It's like nine in the morning. And I got out my phone and bought an 11:30 a.m. Imax ticket to Oppenheimer, and I felt like someone had hooked me up to like, an IV, like I was on my last legs of life. Someone hooked me up to an IV and I was like, I'm alive. And I was so excited to go back and see this movie for a sixth time. Why? Why? Because I knew when I did that I was going to be tying my all time movie theater record for my parents took me to see Independence Day in the theater six times in the summer of 1996, and I thought it would just be fun. So I went again to AMC, to Imax to see Oppenheimer for six time. Here he is, injecting some much needed humor and levity into the movie. Groves really did that in front of Oppenheimer. Really just handed his jacket back to, lieutenant colonel. Lieutenant colonel, it's not a small rank. That's something you would do to, like, a private or something. And then again, so compare this scene to the first scene, that we see between Oppenheimer at straws, where I was saying they're like Oppenheimer's, insulting him on purpose or not really. It's just the way Oppenheimer kind of was. We have a similar thing here to where they're subtly insulting people. You know, I ever meet one, I'll let you know. And then it's kind of going. Going back and forth. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. So one, two, one upping each other back, but back, back, back but never taking it personally. Never taking, never getting mad about it. Never brooding and getting angry. And then when he mentions isotopes two years later, fucking barium. It's not that there's a mutual respect here because Groves, while being very intelligent, because he was he was an asshole. No one liked him. He was a military asshole who got the job done. He built the fucking Pentagon. That's a big deal. But he was the type of military dude that you always knew what you got with him. He was fair. And if you worked with him and you did what he asked, you could, get along. Maybe a bit of a stretch. There could be a mutual respect here. very few people on the Manhattan Project had good things to say about Groves, but he and Oppenheimer got along. They understood each other. They understood what the assignment was, what they needed from each other, and they did it. I don't think they were going out for drinks together a lot. I don't think they were having dinners, but I do think they had a professional relationship that I mean, it worked out for, you know, two terrifying reasons. It worked out. And it was smart that he. That Groves hired him. But I love this way of kind of going back and forth and then, you know, now the kind of insulting he's done since they're getting on the same track and you can feel them picking each other, picking up each other's vibe, leading to Damien, like, get up. And then I love when he drags a chair over and spins the other one around, sits down. He's like in Hanford when they're at the chalkboard and you can see kind of fucking chills again. You can see them like getting him getting invested, Groves getting invest and being like, oh my God, oh my God. I think I've got the guy. Yeah, this this is how we can do it. We can do it like this. He does that a few times. David does it a few times in the movie. What? Not like. I don't understand that comic. Can you explain it? Just all what? Like when he goes, what are we going to call it? He's like three. What is this? What is it? Say three headed something. David goes, what? That. you can in scores helping or you can just feel feel how they get along. So I, I love it, I love it, and this is one of the, I truly think one of Damon's best performances. Damon in recent years has done the incredibly intelligent thing and made the incredibly wise decision to, at times remove himself from the leading part and put himself in for supporting character parts. He's doing, he's little younger than Paul Newman was when you decided to start doing this, but I can see him doing this. He does not need to be the lead anymore. Not necessarily. He always he still can be. But I mean, he's I thought he could have been nominated for this. He is just, He's remarkable. I love him in this movie and very funny. I've seen it, as I've mentioned a bunch of times. And every single time I saw the movie, every single person laughed at or every I shouldn't say, every single person, every single theater had an audible laugh of we'll have him killed. When Damon says that that was like the one genuine laugh line of the movie. Love this. And then here we go, starting the editing again, connecting everything. These editing cuts, like they're so confident because these are some of these are like a second, less than a second. Like when we saw the train the first time we saw the train. Oh my God. All right, I got to switch gears here a little bit. Talk strictly about editing because. So pay attention here. Once we cut I mean, I love what Damon is thinking, thinking, building the town fast. So good. When we cut, we're going to have three different scenes that we're going to be cutting between. We're going to be in a hallway with Oppenheimer and Damon. We'll call that one. Number two, we're going to be with Josh Peck in the auditorium. We'll call that to number three. We're going to be with Dennis Quaid son, Jack Quaid walking outside. And number four is the guy alone in his office. All right. So one, two three, four. The audience. This is one. Then we're going to go to two. There's two. We're going to go to three. So that's 123 to don't include these two things. There's three now we're outside. And then we're only going to see this stuff again twice. We're going to go 23142314. So we're going to go Peck Quaid hallway. So this is a peck stuff. Peck Quaid hallway. Now we'll be outside. Peck. Now we'll go back in the shot. Now we'll go back in the hallway with the with the one guy. And then we're very quickly going to be introduced to a single guy in an office, which is seen for this. This is seen for very quickly. Could you excuse us. And then we're going to play this out 2314. Again we're back in the auditorium. Then we're going to be with Quaid walking outside. And then we're going to jump back to the hallway with Damien. It's the most important fucking thing that's ever happened. And then we were going to end this whole sequence with four, with the guy in the office, which is going to be longer than any of these quicker scenes. We've seen. Guy in the office. So that whole this is a montage that is like a math equation. It's scenes one, two, three. Then scenes two, three, one four and scenes two, three, one, four. There it. this is the only instance I've done this with in this movie. This movie is full of shit like this, and I love it. It is just it's fascinating. I love that stuff went by really fast, too. It's hard to kind of talk through it. So I finished American Prometheus and I'm like. You got to go back. You can't just let the record sit at six. So on August 31st, 2023, I went back to the Air and Space Museum for another true Imax experience of Oppenheimer, therefore breaking my all time movie theater record. And I felt just amazing. Seven screenings of the same movie in its initial theatrical run never happened to me. And of course, all the viewings would be done. Then why? There's no need to keep going. Like when you beat the record. You don't need to like, demolish it. You just kind of need to beat it. You know? Viewing seven. you can really tell how Robbie cares for Oppenheimer here. I love this spread too thin. He's so concerned for so concerned genuinely for him, for his friend. And this whole delivery of like, I want decades of science to be the culmination of I obviously I'm getting the lines wrong, but just the way he doesn't sometimes he can't even look Oppenheimer in the eye. Like in the end, when he's congratulating Oppenheimer on his award and he just puts his hand on his face, kind of chokes me up and, like, can't even meet his eye because he just has so much respect for him. I love him. Is he? I love that little nicknames. This is what I mean. Like he can't. He's like, I can't look at him in the eye. And this is what's crazy. They they built this bomb to fight the Nazis. I mean, Japan isn't even mentioned when they're building this stuff. It's to, you know, we got to build a bomb before the Nazis do. Then we beat the Nazis, and it's like, what do we do now? Do we press forward with Japan? And I. I really don't think Oppenheimer thought they were going to use this damn thing on Japan, let alone twice, as Groves insists. In his hat. I love that. I'm just glad Krumholtz is having a bit of a pop from this. this is such a good moment in the screenplay, which I did read, and it's like, it says something, you know, the hat, the silhouette, the pipe, Robert J. Oppenheimer personified. Like he's walking outside. Look at that shot. That shot is remarkable. In Imax, you can see, like, little snow falling. When I saw it with Dan, Dan said, no, that snow falling had to be CGI. And I'm like, no, dude, it just snows sometimes because it gets cold out there. Dan, love you. This scene is so funny because teller just, like, forces his way and notice no one else is here. Like, Tolman is not here. Josh Hartnett saw here. No one else is here. He just walks and he's like, let's get started. What he gets started before everyone else arrives. It describes his personality so well. Just so like over it disgruntled, like God. So evidently this was a Licorice Pizza hire that Christopher Nolan had talked to Paul Thomas Anderson and said how good Benny's after he was in a small part in Licorice Pizza, which he is. And that made him, I mean, Nolan, consider him for this role. And he is, he's just so good. It was great to see Nolan out there ripping the curse. That television show, The Cursed is after. He was in and co-created with Nathan Fielder, also costarring Emma Stone. Loved that show. Allegedly. This is no bullshit. Edward Teller, the real Edward Teller, was the inspiration for the actual Doctor Strangelove in the movie. It's so notorious of a guy. This wasn't how some people viewed him. So yeah, I've read that along the way and that would be hysterical if that's true. This is Tom Conti. Here is Albert Einstein. Cannot believe no one ever asked him to play the scientist because he sounds just like him. Looks just like him. Oh my God. He was actually an Oscar nominee, 1983 Best Actor. Reuben. Reuben. Never seen it. Never even heard of it. But this is an actor who's been around for a long time, and he is so, so good in this movie. I also love this thing, but like, I had no context of this, but they, you know, a lot of people are saying to Oppenheimer, you, you and Einstein don't have, you know, much in common. You don't share many things. And they're even talking about like, you know, the only thing we have in common is a disdain for mathematics. And I love that they can come together on this one thing because, you know, they're talking about destroying the entire world and maybe how that would be, a bad thing for everyone. And I love how he can just open the paper and get it. You know, we just saw that piece of paper, and it meant nothing to me. It means nothing to a layman, but someone with a brilliant scientific mind like this can just see that and boom, get it. And you're like, whoa. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty crazy that they that there was even amount of modicum, modicum of a chance that they could, destroy the entire world by just testing an atomic bomb. And they did it anyway, near zero, near zero. So that screenplay, after I finished it, I'm like, you know, that was cool to see it, see all the words in print, because I haven't seen it with subtitles yet. And I go, you know why? Why not just go back one? So my eighth viewing was five whole days after that last viewing, and I finished the screenplay and I went this time just to a good old DCP. That was all I did, just a regular, regular viewing and it was a lot of fun. It was indeed a lot of fun. Near zero. This is good news. Is it? Oh, is it good news? Remember how they like all that safety of the key and the safe and getting it all out, like all that stuff? And, you know, they had guards in the hallway and, And I was like, you know, don't don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. Just, put a pin in that and remember that, you know, Los Alamos security, safety. Can't talk about it right now because this is a cheval know incident. And wow, let me tell you, it took multiple viewings for me to understand that this little thing right here, this little conversation in the kitchen, completely changed Oppenheimer's life. Not immediately after took a few years, but it did. It completely disrupted his life. It is what all of Oppenheimer's enemies could use to, quote unquote, prove that he was a danger to America and that he was a Russian spy. And right. So what Valley is asking is, you know, this guy, Elton, if you need to get something to Communist Party members kind of outside of military influence, he may be able to help that which Oppenheimer is kind of putting together. Now, that would be treason. And Chevalier, the way that this actor plays it is brilliant because you don't know if he's true. You don't know if he's asking, like, yeah, it'd be treason. But it would also help out the party. So like, who cares? Or if he's like, hey, this Elton dude is bad news. Stay away. You can't tell. You can't tell the way that he plays it. He intends, in hindsight, to say, oh, I was just warning and that it was like bad news that that was it. That was it. But it was. I mean, that's why we immediately make this jump back to this, to the boardroom, because we're underlining how big of a deal this was. And it was probably the biggest deal of Oppenheimer's life. But just imagine that you're with your best friend in your kitchen, and you have a conversation that last 90s, and then your wife comes in, which she did, interrupted is asking for the martinis can sense a awkwardness in the kitchen, but then you just move on with your life and you don't even think about the shit for years until it's brought up in your a hearing. 15, 20 years later, it's wild. Oppenheimer also evidently made the world's best martinis. They were, scientifically done. And he used, his influence, influence his study as a scientist to understand exactly how to make the best martini possible. So they were, coveted. Also coveted martinis. Scott Grimes, they're as strong as his lawyer. God, I kind of grew up with him. He was in Party of Five. Er, big part in, er, Crimson Tide mystery. Alaska. Good actor. Hadn't seen him in a while. Showing his hand a little too early here. I fought Oppenheimer in the U.S. one. Henry Luce is a friend. I love that, line delivery of probably rocks. Like, probably. Yeah. I mean, I guess. It's. So. Greg's what he's saying here. You know, if you can get someone from the Chicago team, which Doctor Hill was, then that'll help our case better. And, of course, they bring in Hill and Hill buries him underground. And. Wow, do I love it. The production design of this is, like, remarkable. This town, they really built it. If you go watch the special features it's crazy because it's all, it's a little like forced perspective because if you kind of bend your head one way, like when you're actually there, you can see that the buildings don't keep going. It's just like a wall that ends. This is what no one does a lot. This is the actual house the Oppenheimer's were in. It just crazy. Hey, you know, let them film their, I got this, insistence on accuracy pays off. So, like, the buildings, those white buildings there, there may not be anything behind them. Right? It can just be like, Cut. I'm not a designer, or I'm not into construction. It's just like a facade. And then when you go behind it, there's nothing, you know, behind it. So that's how you can save a little money by not building the entire thing out. That's a really loud noise, too. And the theater, seeing this explosion or hearing it rather huge part of that theater, because we haven't had one of those quick like flashes of science in a long time. And we get that boom, you're like, Jesus. All right. Since he's kind of on screen, I'll do it now. Cinnamon roll. We say his name, the Jack Quaid character, Finnerman Fineman. Fineman. He's, you know, he's playing bongo drums, like, throughout the movie and stuff. After the test, this dude was a piece of work. He would go around because, you know, a lot of these scientists are geniuses, right? They're so smart. They're at the top of their leagues and they're doing this work, but not a lot of talk to it now, not even a lot of talk to their wives about what they're doing. Not allowed to talk to each other by and large, about what they're doing. So they would do things to keep themselves entertained. And what this this guy Fineman would do is he would break into different secure, top security buildings in Los Alamos for the fun of it. He would break into safes and put funny things in the safes so that when people see it, they'd be like, oh, he was here. And he would just walk around doing all this stuff and infuriate the military security personnel outlook at Los Alamos. By just fucking around, he would dress up in women's clothes and play those damn drums. You, you know, very eccentric character. But I love reading about him and reading about this. Just why is that scientist who's going around breaking into safes that have the, the most top secret information in America, just breaking it and putting it, I don't know, like a rubber ducky or something. Me like, oh, I got you. Michael androgen. Oh, I'm in grog. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm saying that wrong. He's a guy who plays serber. You know, he's putting the one of those, like, the marbles in the fish bowls and stuff, and, Damn it, I gotta talk about this thing. All right, hold on to server shit. look at this. Is the scarf I was talking about, like, an hour ago. That's all. It has to be intentional. He intentionally just had such a command down. He does of how this stuff. Oh, God. How this stuff works. I can't believe it. Here we are, August 1949. This is apparently just two months after Oppenheimer embarrass Strauss at the hearing with the isotopes thing. And you can. I'm really glad this movie doesn't give us give us time stamps, but you can tell that Strauss's, hostility towards Oppenheimer is here. And now they're just battling in public now. And Downey plays. Oh, my God, his temperament of all this, from the little chuckle he does two versions of a bomb President Truman needs to know about. It is so good the way we're revolving around this table, moving. this is a great scene. All right, back to Serbia really quick. The real guy after Oppenheimer died. After Oppenheimer died, Serbia's wife actually died by suicide. And he, Serber and Kitty began a relationship. And they were dating when Kitty got sick and died. Of course, none of that's in the movie, but I think the actor Michael is playing Serber perfectly. He does not talk like that, the real actor. But that is exactly how Serber talked, and the way that he smoked and how it was just had a lot of this, like nervous energy. He's he's really good. That actor, he plays young William in Almost Famous. He's young Red and Seabiscuit, Lords of Dogtown. Snow angels with Olivia. Thirdly which who will come up later? He's a kid in the car and haywire. He was great in The Knick, great actor, great actor. And he's playing his role really well here. I love the way Oppenheimer just calls out Groves here, you don't like anything enough for that to be a fair test. And, And Groves just eats it because he knows that he's been had, and you could see him kind of like he wants to smile, but not really. And then, you know, once a week. I look at his face, you can tell he wants this file. He's like, all right, you fucker. That's a good line. No walks away. Your communist brother, sister, mother. Of course. Dane. Down here on a stranger and love. Dane Hahn. He. This real character. Nichols. He hated Oppenheimer. Really, really hated. And he was a proxy for straws. That's it. He just hated everything about what Oppenheimer stood for. I mean, you gotta keep this in mind when they're building this bomb, this mil. The military doesn't. Do not trust these scientists. They think they're communists. Think they're disloyal to America. All this shit. It's crazy that they had to do this job while, like, not even being believed that they were good Americans. and, yeah, all the scientists were Armstrong. All of them. Teller wasn't. But a lot of them were like, when you talk about arms talks, not creating a damn hydrogen bomb. Jesus. The whole the batting around, the music kind of kicking up here. This is what I mean. Like, we're, you know, we're more than an hour into the movie, but we've we've gone into a new gear, and now things are kicking off and we're like, Jesus, all right? We're just going and going and moving. And it's exciting. Like, I look forward to this little powwow that they all have right here. And God, the first time we met them, these two together at the Princeton campus, where it was Oppenheimer doing all these subtle digs against Strauss. Now Strauss just like burying him, kind of talking down to him, holding up the piece of paper. So Patronizingly taking the advice of this Nichols guy. That actors playing Edward for. Is it Fermi? Fermi, Enrico. Fermi. Sorry. And that is who the award is named after that Oppenheimer wins in the end. That's the Fermi Award. It was named after this guy. Love it. You know, before this most recent Oscars, there was only one person in this scene who had a Best Actor Oscar. Only one. And it wasn't Killian Murphy. Here she is. Olivia. Third Valley as Lily Horne. Her and her husband were both out Los Alamos, and they were hugely important to the creation of the atomic bomb. You can see her every time they, like, cut to the actual bomb and they're like putting those things on it. She's in there doing that. apparently she was the one that came up with the OP and homies moniker, which I love, and I have always loved her since she's been in movies. Olivia. Thirdly, I was so happy that she got cast in this. So this is what I'm talking about to do. Just wait. This guy just went to Chicago to check stuff out, but he wasn't supposed to. You know, compartmentalization is the key. So he wasn't supposed to go to this thing, and he's just being screamed at like, you know, we work for a living. It's tough. Work is hard. But imagine being like scream, scream that untrusted the entire time. And just by these assholes, tough life. Tough life. Yeah. This was always a laugh line. And every single screening I saw, every screening. Including my ninth screening, which took place, I waited a whole three days after my previous screening and went to the theater. This one was funny because this is when I microdose a few mushrooms and I was in there. Well, and the screen was bright. It was very colorful, very colorful viewing. And I was sitting next to a guy, you know, and he was just a little like, I don't know, he was on his phone a lot, but had the brightness turned down, so it didn't bother me. But he was just kind of weird. He was sitting with like his knees in his chest. Had a hoodie on, and was just kind of like doing one of those things and texting again. I think he had a droid or like a screen protector because I couldn't. I could tell that he was texting, but I couldn't see the brightness on his phone. And I was like, oh, that's a bummer. He's not really enjoying it. And I'm telling you, the second that the atomic test was done, like when Oppenheimer's being, like, celebrating, you know, they lift him up on their shoulders and stuff. He just left. He left because I guess he just wanted to see the bomb go off. And I was sitting there going, did that just happen? Is that person real? Making Blair here plays Oppenheimer's lawyer. He's so good. I love this actor. You know, he got his start in Blue Ruin. He has, as a lead in that. I love him in that movie. So good. And now he directs as well. What the hell is that name of the movie did on Netflix? I am not alone in this world anymore. I want to try to guess it without looking it up. Blue ruin. He's also in Green Room, the Florida project. That's right, Thunder Road, the movie directed on Netflix. I don't feel at home in this world anymore. Sorry that I couldn't remember that one. What a trick. Here's Luminance low and this is back. There's no idea how much it could harm Oppenheimer's career. But then again, you know, we're kicking up. We're kicking up. I love this kind of show and shown him around. This is one of the few times we hear General Groves referred to as Leslie, though, which is his first name. And I love that he and, Lawrence are on a I don't know, he calls him Doctor Lawrence and he calls him Leslie. It just the first name basis, the one way first name basis kind of shouldn't work. It seems like a bit of a slight against the military man, but it works. I believe it. Yeah, and it's the thing like Groves. It's like you can't talk about this shit, man. Everyone needs to be compartmentalized, and we're not sharing the full picture. He's like, are you going to do that anyway? Cruz just walks away, all pissed, the makeup on. And and this is really, really good. Very good subtle makeup on him. And then, you know, I was talking earlier, obviously, when we cut to the when he's in the hearing and that old age makeup on him again very subtle, very, very good. And Oppenheimer's makeup throughout just fantastic. Yeah. Scene looming. It's getting called back into question here. I mean, imagine this is like this is years after you've done the test. It's it's been completed. Job well done. And now you're getting called around this table is impromptu meeting and like affairs you've had with women are being called out. And like your relationships with your best friends are being called out. It would suck. Be weird. I know if you listen to the music here, when he goes and talks to. Yeah, when he goes and talks to Nichols, you get the first little round. Well, I'm sorry, I know that's annoying, but the first little twangs of, the pash theme. You met Colonel Pash, Casey Affleck character. You can feel it just kind of coming in here and, the haunting melody of him. There it is. And, God, it's perfect. It's perfect. Casey Affleck is perfect in this movie. It it is a showstopping performance. He steals the movie for five minutes. That whisper. Line delivery. Whisper. just so good. Doesn't this room just look, like hot and sweaty and, like, stuffy? Probably smells. It's such good. like location scouting. I must said location casting. Idiot. yeah. I mean, he's just has people following him around all the time. I mean, the movie does not get into this at all. I mean, I was going to mention this at the end. Louis Straus followed Oppenheimer around for the rest of his life. Just because all this stuff was done. He didn't get a security clearance. Okay, fine. Done. They tapped his phones for the rest of his life. They tapped his lawyers phones for the rest of his life. Imagine that. So Oppenheimer never had a private conversation again? Not really. Not on the phone, not even. I mean, now it's like, when we talk to our lawyers there, that's, Oh, God. Whatever the hell it's called, you know, attorney client privilege that legally you can't disclose any of that. And you, no one is allowed to listen to it at all. And you can't use it against anyone. Never just blatantly ignoring that with the help of the FBI, with the help of Hoover and just. Yeah, genuinely tortured like Prometheus tortured him for the rest of his lifetime. He did. This actually was something I picked up on the first time I saw it. it's not going to be right here. It's going to be a little clearer a little later. But when we see Jean Tatlock, dying or being killed, you see, like a black glove, like a hand slowly come out of the water. And again, not a lot of attention drawn to it. And I love that they did that because the circumstances surrounding her death were serious. It was, I'm going to get this wrong. Oh my God, was it like someone found her and it may have even been her dad, I am sorry I'm going to get this wrong, but someone found her and then they, like, didn't report it for hours. And apparently a lot of evidently a lot of cleaning up was going on. And it was something like that. And I don't remember if it was her, if it was her father, per se, should have research that one a little more. But what I do know is that in the book American Prometheus, it is suggested it's not set out right, but it is suggested that Boris Pash, played by Casey Affleck in this movie, could have very well had something to do with Jean Tatlock s death, because she was it could have been a matter of national security and who knows what they were actually talking about in this room? And was he passing secrets back and forth, when in fact, he's saying, I'm not telling you anything and I'm not going to see you again. Sorry. Never saw her again. Yeah. We're just getting the first little snippets of it, you know, pillows on the floor, stuff like that. I always thought this is like an awkward cut because we're cut, you know, from one coverage to another coverage in the same room. But I think the awkwardness is the point. I'm not going to lie, that cut kind of bothered me for the first, let's say five, five viewings. I'm like, oh, I think that that is the point to kind of, you know, we were also hearing stomping and that thing, and then it just it gets us in its headspace and then boom, now we're out of his headspace or just a different angle, that double, almost triple take that make. And Blair does to look at the flask on the ground is, great. It's just great acting. I love that shit. Now Kitty's coming to life a little bit. It's going to get some strength behind her. Why don't you fight? And he didn't really. I mean, a lot of this. If not all, of the dialog in this is taken from the actual transcripts of what was said and is. Oh, here we go, here he comes. So that's, you know, it's accurate as to what was going on in these rooms. This guy's great. This is the guy that shows around, Robert Pattinson in Tenet in their free Freeport. You know. Yeah. and, I love wood pads. It goes. Can you show me when they're talking about, like, taking the oxygen out of the room? So he does really well here I think in kind of a similar role, small role. I love that that kind of, Okay. I'd love to get more details. And then we. Oh, my God, we're just going to cut right to Damon. And Groves is not someone that shows a lot of whatever demons doing here. Like you went back the next morning, you met Boris Pash or his past is the sun. I love the way you met Colonel Pash. Like, he seems scared. He's like, oh my God. And pash groves is. Pash is superior. Like Pash reports to Groves, and he's still nervous that Oppenheimer met him because this is a dude. So I'm saying there were entire teams assigned to, study Oppenheimer and make sure that he wasn't revealing secrets and follow them around and do all this shit. These people do not like Oppenheimer, even though they were all, you know, on the same team, a lot of the military dudes. And I think Oppenheimer was on the same team. I would never put you in a room with Pash. I love the way David plays the way, even though like his back is to him, and he has to keep turning his neck to see him. When Pash is introduced in the script. Oh my God, look at this. How the camera, when we cut it was covered. Boom. The camera's just kind of slowly moving the hair, the steeliness of his eyes. The script says the disarming friendliness of the truly dangerous. It's a great line. Best adapted screenplay, one of the Oscars. This film did not win. I'm okay with that. It's fine. It's fine. I never liked the shot. I never liked that angle from far away. And we're kind of going back and the actors don't really seem fully like in it. And I'm like, why? Why did he do that? What? And then, you know, it was like the ninth feeling. I go, oh, that's where the microphone is there. You know, we don't actually see the microphone, but he's giving some indication that there's something going on behind that desk. And something was planned to go on behind that desk. Also, keep in mind that there Damon is warning Murphy here about Affleck patches intense. And you know, he was going to take him out, interrogate him in the Russian manner, and he was going to do all this to luminance. He actually was going to do that to three guys. It was Loman into two other guys. And he was dead serious. These are going to take him out. I'm basically going to like torture them to death. So they so they give me all this information. Oh my god. In the way Affleck keeps looking at the, you know, his guy in the front of the room. And it's just like the double takes and looking like, why would anyone on the project want to do that? Irwin Oppenheimer starts lying and trying to spin his way out of this story, and he just I mean, we've all done that. You tell a lie, and then you try to tell another one to, like, get out of it. And that just makes it everything sound worse. And you're like, oh my God. And then when you try to double back and you're like, no way, that part was a lie. Which part? It just makes you sound totally incredible. and the way that, Affleck, we'll just kind of lean forward and he's, like, tilting his head, like trying to stay with him. It's like when someone's telling a story and they're like, yeah, my my friends, wife, sister, she has a boyfriend who went and you're like, what the hell are you talking about? Just say, like, Mike. I love it. Look at that face. Like, what the hell are you talking about, Bud? Probably my favorite. I mean, it's not a cameo. It's a full on supporting part. I don't know, it's. But my favorite, my favorite supporting performance in the movie, I think, is Casey Affleck. Like, not Downey, of course. Damon, of course. But, I mean someone who's not in there for very long. He's in the movie for like again, four and a half, five minutes. the way that Macon Blair is questioning Damon here about, like, just kind of, you know, easing it out. What do you think? because they're on the same team. You know, I love that. Well, now. I really we're about, a little almost close to halfway into the movie here, and I always looked forward to the scene to. Again, it's one of those pop scenes that make everything kind of pop and come alive and injects this new level of fear and terror. Even on my 10th viewing, which happened six whole days after my ninth viewing, this was another rare time I actually got to see it with someone. I got to take my father in law, Joe, who was 86 at the time, to see this. We just saw it in a DCP, one of those theaters, honestly, like these theaters that do these big, renovations. Now they serve food, they serve alcohol, and they have chairs, recliners that go all the way back. And you can kind of doze off. They all this theaters that that did that, what they did is they made it more comfortable to watch a movie, but they didn't make the actual movie better. Like the projectors in these theaters often sucked or too dim. The sound is not good. Anyway, ran on that too. That was an AMC. Joe. Joe liked the movie. He saw about half of it. He was in and out, you know, 20 minutes, 20 minutes on, about ten minute nap, 20 minutes on about a ten minute nap. Thought it was a lot of dialog, which I warned him. I told him it would be, but, you know, 86 years old, he remembers a lot of this stuff. Or he remembers like the immediate aftermath of it. So it was cool to talk to him about those events from the movie, what he could remember from the movie, great make up again, old age make up. And you get a little I love this little, hint here. Not hint, this little indication that Groves did indeed care about Oppenheimer, which is why he shipped it off there to Europe. Yeah. And then we. And I love that Oppenheimer getting it, like, oh, he did have my back. Okay. It's kind of cool. Oh, they're getting bigger. Almost ready for bomb time. Talk about Los Alamos here for a little bit. Just, you know, in reading, because American Prometheus talks about a lot more than what is in this movie. There is with his drums. Five Feynman. Feynman. I'm God scientist names. I'm not good at them all. Los Alamos, you know, you see them being a little, baby and Ruth being a little comfortable here. Kids picking up on that, maybe kiddies flirting a little bit with. I love pouring the whiskey into the champagne flute. Maybe she's flirting with someone. So there was, there's a lot of this going around at Los Alamos. There is a lot of, partner swapping. a lot a lot of partying, and I, I don't know, I just think if, you know, they're like, they're baby boomers. After the war, whatever kids were born at Los Alamos should do at 23 in me, because I don't know if what your parents are telling you, if that's really who. if that's really who your daddy was. Just a lot going on. A whole lot going on. Always. This guy was a trip. Niels Bohr, played by Kenneth Brana. He was another Nobel winning. He was a Danish physicist, actually philosopher. And Oppenheimer idolized him. He really, really loved him. We saw that, you know, in the beginning. And when he was in school, and he was an absolute, space had kind of an aloof genius. And he really did, you know, not know how to work is oxygen. So kind of passed out when he was being transported. And that's just the kind of guy he was, you know, never met like, I haven't spent considerable time with scientists, but I've met scientists, and they they exist in a different world. Kind of like what Chevalier says to Oppenheimer when he agrees to watch his kids. Like, you see the world in a way we don't. So they may not have time for simple like, how's the weather today? Talk. Their heads are a little more advanced in that. I just love that. Maybe Kenneth Branagh is like Nolan's new Michael Caine, because Caine seems like he's retired from acting. I mean, very cool with that. He cares about it like Bruno has that amazing line delivering Dunkirk of home when he is right on the edge of crying. I again was not a fan at all of anything in Tennant until like I don't know, the fifth time I saw it. Now it's one of my favorite Nolan movies. I thought he was so big in the movie that it was distracting, and that is entirely the point. He's playing a James Bond villain. He is supposed to be big B to do to death with a gold bar that's intense. Oh God, this is such a great scene. The way she's like, fuck you, buddy. Like, I have empathy. My empathy extends so far. But when you tell me that you've cheated on me, you need to pick yourself up. I'm not picking you up. And guess what? A lot of people here count on you, so get Ahold of your shit guy. I like that Kitty. Kitty was tough. Yeah. So pay attention here. You'll see this black glove. Kind of, lifting its hand up, presumably after it is held port Jean Tatlock underwater there. Yeah. You know, again, none. Not saying anything as a definitive fact, but that is what's going through Oppenheimer's mind. Like, did you just do this to G. Did she actually write a note and not sign it? Was she forced to write the note at, you know, gunpoint or something or at the threat of danger? And then she was killed anyway by some of this man. Who knows, who knows? Yeah. The way she grabs him, it's just. A really good cinematography here, too. I love these blue hues that were clearly in camera. They weren't doing this in post, but I've seen like behind the scenes footage of this. It didn't look like this on the day. It wasn't, you know, blue. You just turn your color temperature all the way down in camera to job hold. Look at this. Look at this. Like his his romantic love. Like, no, I'm not saying the love of his life, but like a huge flame in his life has is dead. And he's still got to do all this stuff. And he can't tell this to anyone, and he's just sitting there and like, I, the pressure. That's why he looked so much older when this project was done. It's like a president after four years, how they age. My God, I am engaged in research. Love this. Fuchs. Yeah, I get Fuchs to do it. The snitch. No one like teller. Teller is some blowhard that they all. Yeah. Kind of made fun of. Or did stuff. Teamed up against. I won't work for them. Then. I was talking over Olivia Thurber arguing about, her reproductions, working with, you know, your radio kid. Because my, I love what she says. Your reproductive organs are more exposed in mine. Presumably. He just. Murphy. Kelly Murphy plays all this so well that he's juggling all this stuff. I have a wife that's unhappy. Not being the best mom, drinking a lot. I've. You know, I I've personal chaos and professional, complete turmoil all the time. I believe if I've been tracking correctly, this is the first F-bomb in the movie. There aren't too many F-bombs. This is one of the a rare instance when I was so happy. When, you know the MPAA releases about a month ahead of time, why a movie is rated what it's rated, and we knew this was going to be R, and that's Nolan's first R since insomnia is first. Aren't 21 years. And I'm thinking, is it this dude's not going to show him dropping an atomic bomb, right? Like we're not going to see that. They're not going to do that. I wondered though I did. I wonder now at hindsight, that seems ludicrous. But I did wonder if that's what the R-rating was doing, that it was rated R for like brief language and brief nudity. And I went, all right, so there's not going to be any hardcore violence, but that was one race. This fucking barrier. Seven days went by and I decided to go for it. 11th time. This time I'm just going for fun because I'm like, these people are like my family. I have every beat of the movie pretty much memorized. I've done all the research I can do. It's still in the theater. So I'm watching all this on the all the special features that are online. I've read all the stuff I'm watching, all the documentaries. So yeah, that was another DCP went to a, Alamo Drafthouse. That was a lot of fun. That's when I talk about serving food and stuff. I'm not. Alamo is not in that conversation. They've been doing that. That's how they started. I'm talking about the AMC's that went and like, put all these fancy ass recliners, but then forgot to, you know, change the bulb on their projector so it's darker than shit. Alamos notoriously has very good scores of quality, both for the visuals and the audio. They they rank very highly. And I think almost every Alamo has like a special theater. Like a Dolby theater, at least that I have three near me and they all do. And that big screen's nice and the sound is nice. Also kind of jarring to see this scene in color, because we've only seen it in black and white, but now we're really getting it from Oppenheimer's perspective. And I love that just being totally kind of tapped out of everything and not being able to pay attention. We're hearing that stomping come up again, and it just has to like, click into everything. Robbie has a great line too, like why you can drown in ten feet of water, a thousand of water like watts. It's overkill. Like watts. You know, what's the difference? I just love this. The God, they never, never on the right foot. He's trying to board him like you might want to. You know, when they see you, they see a prophet. But of course, here we get bored by David Dasomi Milton. Of course I'm pronouncing that wrong. I love this guy. Oh, my God, I love this guy. He's very, scared of Oppenheimer. Just as you know, he was definitely on Team Straw, so I'll put it that way. This guy who's in the Dark Knight, prisoners, Twin Peaks, The Return, Blade Runner, 2049, Dune. He always. He uses his face just so well. I think he did like then you do some advertisements for, like, a funeral parlor. Was that real? If so, great advertising. And right now, currently, he's the star of this indie Late Night With the devil, which I saw last week. It's I highly recommend it really, really good movie. The whole thing takes place like from like a Johnny Carson type guy doing a broadcast one night. But instead of interviewing, like, you know, famous celebrities interviewing magicians and, people like that and people who can touch into the occult and all that. So it was good. It was really well done. It's been in the press a lot because, it uses three title cards that were apparently I mean by I and people just like, lost their mind about it. And I'm like, I don't know, there's, I don't know, I is going to be a thing. I know that. But you know, where I have been used and you don't hear any A-list celebrities bashing it. Wonder where touching up, touching their faces, up for closeups like in footage. You can do that by masking it and going frame by frame by frame and editing and doing that. And it takes and incredibly long amount of time. But with AI, it's a little bit easier. And they've been doing this for years. I don't every movie. Nolan's certainly not doing it, but go watch like a mission impossible or something. And Tom cruise is getting a little help in that area and that's okay. I don't hear celebrities talking about that. Do you? I title cards, I don't know, I get it, I get it. It's a good movie. Deserves to be talked about more than just some stupid title cards. And yeah, here's the kind of come to Jesus moment of like, Nazis have been defeated. Hitler's dead. It's true. So are we really going to use these against Japan? And Oppenheimer's holding steadfast. And no. Once everyone knows the power of this, it's. We're just going to have them in our back pocket as a threat. Like we could do this. We could use this. He really doesn't think they're going to use them. Oops. That is the thing. I mean, when the guys we're going to go in and invade Japan, it was going to be, evidently, just a massive bloodbath on both sides. And evidently it that would have killed more people than dropping two atomic bombs. That's what they tell us, that if America would have invaded Japan on foot, more people would have died than if two atomic bombs were dropped. okay. Okay. I don't know. I don't know if many innocent people would have been killed. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. The hell do I know about war? What I do know is that the 12 time I saw this film. Almost. no, only a few days went by. Yeah, for this viewing. And I went back to the scene of the crime. Back to the same exact theater. 70 millimeter theater that I first sold the movie in. We had the extremely disruptive audience member who was not asked to leave, despite being complained about several times. Good job. AMC staff went back to the scene of the crime, and now there's, oh, I don't know, maybe there's about ten of us in the theater. Just a great time, just a great way to spend, you know, three hours one evening for the 12th time. Now the here's where there's going to be. Two. Olivia. Three, please check it out. Do you want to come over the hill? There she is coming over the hill. There she is standing right there. I didn't we didn't know she was playing twins. Twins who wear the exact same clothing. It's a joke. Just a minor, very minor continuity error that I. It think of my second viewing in that it was fun to catch, you know, going and seeing it, 12 times, which, yeah, I only saw 12 going and seeing it 12 times. You can catch these minor continuity things. And then like two days after this was available, you know, to stream it on Reddit, here he goes, he goes, what? what? When it was available to stream Reddit, just, like, caught on like wildfire. It was getting all the continuity things, and I was like, oh, I already called that one. I already called that one. It's just, you know, it's cool to see other people catching it too. The smoking is interesting in this movie. That's one of the few times we actually see him, like, take a drag from a cigaret. And it's he's not like, there's no big thing made of the exhale. And I feel like smoking in movies is so like it. It's made to be such a prop. It's always made. They're lit a certain way, like it's meant so much. Time is dedicated to it of like lighting it. Do you have a light? Do you have all this? And I mean, you know, watching like all of Cassavetes movies, it was literally just like a six fingered him. There's no attention paid to it. It's just always with him. And that's how Oppenheimer was to. It's just it's just attached to him. So you don't. I wouldn't even call this like, you know, sometimes they say you're like, rated R for smoking. Maybe the stars now, which is just fucking hilarious. They say that, but I, I don't know, it's not like glamorize. It's just such a part of him. I, I don't know. I appreciate that detail, that's all. That it's not, like, made a big thing. It's just a part of who he is. You know, before Oscar night, there was only one person in this scene who had an Oscar for best actor, and it wasn't Killian Murphy. Love Rami Malek. Here's David L Hill, who has his moment at the end, certainly, but I love that, you know, he was one again before Oscar night, one of the few best actor winners in this movie. Gary Oldman's in it, too, but they don't have any scenes. And he's coming in and doing a small part in extremely small part. I love him for that. We're big fans of Rami Malek. On What Are You Watching podcast. That's not a joke. We like him. He's good. He's good guy, right? He's good. I don't like the movie won an Oscar for and I don't like that performance, but whatever, whatever. Here we get the great James Remar is Henry L Stinson, the secretary of war under President Truman. Of course, I think a lot of lot has been made about the fact that he improvised. He also my wife and I honeymooned there, you know, the Kyoto line, the taking Kyoto off the list. That was scripted. But then my wife and I honeymoon there, which is like a really kind of shocking laugh line at damn near every screening. I saw it in perfect bit of improvization and true, and he learned that remark just from researching his actor. That's it. So even if you're in one scene in a movie, you do a little research, just read about the guy, you figure this out, you add in one line of improvization and it becomes one of the defining lines of the movie. Truly, that is a great actor. Great acting is not just what happens between action and cut. Preparation, preparation, preparation. Oh it's great. So that guy talking, holding his glasses at Will Roberts as George C Marshall, the United States Army Chief of Staff from 1939 to 1945. And you may remember, if you've seen Saving Private Ryan Marshall has. He's the one who starts the he orders the mission to go save Private Ryan. You know that boy's alive. We are going to find him. We are going to get the hell out of there. Same guy. I mean, not the same actor, but they're both playing the same guy. Okay, you get it? Twice. Pat. Skipper, they're in the back playing James F Burns. He's the US secretary of State and future governor of South Carolina. We're going to see him again when he's in the Oval Office with Truman. But he only has one, you know, line here like President Truman has no intention of. But that guy is great because he plays William Randolph Hearst in Babylon. Now is the guy that Margot Robbie pukes all over at that party. Good sport. You see him in the red leather chair in the background. They're sitting, legs crossed, hand to his mouth. We'll get a line. But I wanted to call him out because, he's great in Babylon. What a good sport. There he is, Pat. Skipper. And how crazy that, like Truman and his people really didn't think that Russia had enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon. And we see with, you know, the impromptu meeting the congressional, that impromptu meeting where they're talking about the Soviet bomb test. You see, now that Charles is like, oh, well, the Russians have a bomb. And it's like, yeah, they've been telling me the whole time. Oppenheimer tries to tell Truman in the Oval Office like they they do have they have, the will and they have the materials. Great little bit of acting between Damon and Murphy here, because, you see, we've seen them get along for the most part. But we really see, you know, Groves undercutting him here and being like, when you agree, doctor, you know, keep your mouth shut. And I think Oppenheimer thought like this. Here was his big moment to convince him to not drop this thing. And it's just the wheels moving. It's out, you know, can't put the cork back in the champagne bottle. Whatever the hell metaphor you want to use. Can't put the uranium back in the wherever the hell you got it from. Well, now we're kind of switching. Here we go. We're on our on our path. That's Fuchs right there. That him? Spy building that thing. Jesus, that's fucking terrifying. Now we're on our way to getting to the point where we're going to be building the bomb that needs a bomb. Yeah, now they need Frank. Now they need the brother before, it was a hard no because it was communist past. And now you need him because you need the best to detonate the bomb. Now, 27 days after my 12 feeling, I decided to go back to the same theater. But this time, 70mm. It was gone, is gone. So I saw the DCP, regular DCP, and I felt like just wanted to, you know, at this point now I remember what I'm doing now. I'm like, this thing's going to be leaving theaters at some point because now it is October 24th, and I saw this movie for the first time on July 20th. So this is going to be out of theaters soon, and I need to I got to get in some viewings because, you know, I'm sure they'll play this intermittently on Imax screens in subsequent years. I'm sure they'll do that. But for the first initial run, I'm destroying my record. I've already destroyed it by two times. Two. So yeah, let's just go back. That's what I did for viewing number 13, and it was a great viewing. Scores changing here, becoming much more ominous. Handheld Imax camera. Just watching him all handheld. I mean, these scenes look remarkable. I mean, I know I am watching it now on a laptop the way that Nolan intended, but God, if you could see it on an Imax screen, it was just I really think no one would have encourage more people to see it that way. Looks great. That's my point. Look, right, there's Fuchs, the spy. Just like, gently setting it in, God, no matter. I mean, no wonder the Russians had it so quick. He was there. He was like, in the shit, doing all in a really important job. You can watch all this footage. There are documentaries where you can watch this footage and then, you know, raising the bomb up, putting all those mattresses down like he. In case this thing falls down. Let's have some mattresses here, because that should help. I mean, I don't I don't know, it's like, it seems like a lot had to happen for the bomb to actually go off. So I don't think it just like falling down would have made it explode. But I like to think that the mattresses helped. But it's really cool to go and watch, you know, watch him climb up there in the towers and spend some final moments alone with his with his bomb. It's crazy shit. Bringing the sheets. Great. I love this natural lighting here. It's, you know, it's really useful to occasionally film when it's overcast out because you get that natural look that bounce off of her face. You get that bounce because the the sun is a little hidden. Like you never, ever want to shoot direct sunlight on someone because it's so harsh. So you'll diffuse it unless you know you're doing it, like, stylistically. But here we have this this beautiful, warm glow over everything. So the the sun setting matched with the overcast helps out. And it just it looks truly beautiful. They may have had some diffusion up okay. But I'm saying like a lot of this looks just very natural and in-camera to me. Especially her close up coverage like that. So you can't even tell her what he's doing. I mean, presumably maybe she had some idea, but he can't even be like, I'm going out to detonate the atomic bomb. I mean, they can't speak like in plain English like that. This was great. This was in the trailer, one of the teaser trailers. Just watching him set it up and you're like, what the hell's this movie going to be? Good? I am going to go through this movie's Oscar wins because they mean a lot to me. The first award that it won was Best Supporting Actor Robert Downey Jr. what a great award. A lot of us thought he was going to win it. It was expected. He didn't necessarily conduct himself with the most humility along the way. That's okay. I've been a fan of his. I mean, you know, there are two pretty distinct phases to his career. There's, the youthful, energetic phase. I'll say. Lesson zero, Chaplin, Short Cuts, Natural Born Killers, two girls and a guy. Wow. And then we get, after he's cleaned himself up, you know, kiss kiss, bang bang. Zodiac. Iron man is Tony Stark, which he just does for 15 years. And then he gives us this and wins an Oscar. And I love in his speech when he said I needed this role more than it needed me, which is true. He did. And that is a little bit of humility to say and admit, and I appreciate it. Went on to win next and won Best Editing. Jennifer Lamb and I mean kind of commented on the editing, but we're here at the Trinity test sequence, so which is just miraculously cut together. And editing can doesn't have to be the addition of something like the most editing is the best. It's not necessarily that's not what it means at all. Actually. The Academy might occasionally award movies for that reason. Editing can also be the absence of something like the absence of sound when the bomb goes off is remarkable. What a choice that makes scientific sense. But something that I did not anticipate coming. I didn't know that was going to happen. Jennifer Lame she's the official editor of a lot of Noah Baumbach movies. Frances How While Were Young, Mistress America, The Meyerowitz Stories, and Marriage Story. She also edited Manchester by the sea, hereditary, tenet, wow, and Wakanda Forever, and she has some additional editor credits on Midsommar, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Blond. Wow. So young career, but very good career so far. I won't damn it. That is one of the benefits of growing up. You know, spending time in that desert that he knows that the storm is going to break it. Dawn, which it does. And this is all this is all real. This all happen. I love that there's taking like a couple of hours to themselves, or maybe just even a moment to themselves to kind of sit here and talk it out. And this is when Groves learns about near zero. Hoyte, the Van Hoytema, has announced himself quickly as one of our best living cinematographers. He's been nominated for some Oscars, and he never won until this Oscar night. That was the third Oppenheimer Award of the evening best cinematography. Previously, Hoytema shot Let the Right One In, which looks so good. That scene in the pool. He never forget that Tinker tailor soldier spy her interstellar. Wow. Spectra. Dunkirk. AD astra. Tenet. Nope. Great credits, great credits. Much deserved Oscar here. Like a little starry as near zero. Zero. Would be nice. This Damon was huge in the press about this was like his big, talking point in the press. They really thought when they did that the chances, you know, there was some chance that they could just totally blow everything up. I love Damon, pull up Damon on press tour. He gets so riled up, he's great. Fourth Oscar of the night. Best score, the second best score Oscar for Lugo and Gorn. And that made me nervous because he already won for Black Panther. He also did Fruitvale Station and Creed for Ryan Coogler, and he did the score for tenet, of course, venom. He's on a lot of score for TV two. So he's, you know, young, a young guy who already has two Oscars. And this is, you know, this score is going to go down as an all timer. Ten it just got screwed for the because of the pandemic and because people like me who saw it and because they didn't understand it, they rejected it right away. And I'm that is the biggest about face I've contemporary about face I've ever had on a movie and taught me a huge lesson of it's something we say a lot on this podcast. Just because you don't fully understand a movie does not mean the movie is bad. It just because the movie is complicated certainly doesn't mean it's good, but it does not mean it's automatically bad just because you didn't understand it. Some movies like this one, like tenet, deserves, further investigation. If you go watch the honest trailer for this movie, the the funniest part to me was like, it builds up this moment. It's like everything for the Trinity test came down to Josh Peck. It's hilarious. I didn't have that big of a relationship with this guy. But, you know, his, show came on Nickelodeon when I was a little too old, when it's obviously in the news again after this HBO documentary quiet on the set. But I've talked about that, and we're not going to talk about it now because it ain't fun. Fifth Oscar for Oppenheimer of the night went to best actor Killian Murphy, one of the few starring parts of his career and something that he just, excelled at. And it is a great Oscar win. He was not campaigning very heavily. He was more even his demeanor at the awards is kind of like sitting back in his chair like, I'm just, wow, what a ride. He seems like a really simple guy who just likes to read and watch movies, hang out with his family, cook with his family, disco pigs. I went back and watch that one, but that was a that's the earliest movie I've seen him in. The first thing I saw it was 28 Days Later. You know, Batman Begins, red, I like Red. I breakfast on Pluto, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a starring role for him, a Con Palme d'Or winner. Sunshine, Dark Knight Rises, Dunkirk, A Quiet Place Part two, which I forgot he was in, so he had already had extensively worked closely with Emily Blunt, and they did really, really well in that movie. He's damn near unrecognizable in that. The hat, the hair, the beard. And then, of course, Peaky Blinders, which is the star of which I watched, all of because of my friend Taylor. He told me to. And folks, the end of that show is bullshit. It's one of those shows that just like ends. They're talking about doing a movie. I hope they do. But sit through six seasons of something, and then it just peters out at the end and you're like, God damn it. Hopefully they end it. A lot of shows do that. Legacy shows. I love that little, handshake that Damon just gave to Modine there. It's great. And you see teller rubbing it in. Not really. Oh there's a look at Hartnett and Quaid are going to give each other here. Like here we fucking go. It's like kind of silent this. Yeah. Fucking love that. Quaid had a great line there. Like the movie the Glass Stops Love. Like really. So that works. here we go. It's working, it's building up, it's building up so tense, I my heart's even beating just watching it. And I have the volume turned down like, so low. He did say that these things are hard on the heart. And by all accounts, the last thing, the only thing that was said after the bomb went off was Frank did whisper. It worked. And that was it. No one talked. The fact that this is done practically, the fact that this is done real, this will be one of the most iconic sequences of this century in film. It will be the talk, it will be talked about, it will be discussed, and it will be remembered forever. It is brilliantly done. It's very odd to talk over all of this, but the tension that it mounts via score, via cinematography, via editing, via performance, it's, I don't know if it's Christopher Nolan's best set piece, but it is certainly one of his most iconic in the way that it just goes silent. There's a shot here when we see all the guys, you know, on the ground, it lasts very briefly. That is like, that's a signature shot. To me. It looks like something out of like a 50s like movie that I don't know, but it's real. Like it's it's just all real Jesus Christ. So just imagine you're seeing this movie. It's all silent here. No music. Bombs off, bombs away, and this fucking asshole. And it's sold out movie theater. The first time you're seeing the film just starts yelling, which is exactly what it was like. What's going on? here's a shot of that shot of the of the flames going all the way up. If you saw it in Imax. When I saw this on a huge Imax screen, the very top of that flame didn't even hit the top of the screen. And on my laptop here, the top of the flame went out pretty quickly. But that's how I always knew if I was in a big Imax screen like Will the flame touch the top of the screen? Jesus, I sound like a nerd, but it's true. This is my life and I love it. I love it. You know, it's funny, there was an eclipse, a solar eclipse earlier today that I got to see, but kind of seeing as I didn't have like, special glasses. But it's so funny to see them watching this with their glasses. And then, you know, we just had one of those today. That's the only other time we hear the line, that iconic line from Oppenheimer's life, I think I would have been I think that would have been the move. Like going outside and actually letting that shockwave, that Soundwave, like, blow you over. I think I would have done that. I love the way Damon plays that just boom, that little jumping in theaters of combat all over the world. create six award Oppenheimer one of the night best director Christopher Nolan could have won best director for that scene alone. It's just really, really something. I'm so glad he has won his 12th film we got following memento, insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, inception, The Dark Knight Rises, interstellar, Dunkirk, tenet, Oppenheimer, I love memento. I've said even on this podcast, that memento would always be my favorite Nolan movie. And it's it's just Oppenheimer. I think Oppenheimer is the best movies made. It is my favorite. I cannot believe that. And this one of the most incredible things about this statement, and about the fact that I genuinely think this is that I, a lot of directors aren't making their best work right now. To me, to me, I don't think I don't think the avatar movies are fun. And I like to see them. I don't think that's the best word James Cameron has ever done. I don't think Licorice Pizza is the best movie Paul Thomas Anderson has ever made. I don't think The Killers, the best movie centers ever made. You know, it it. I like these movies. I don't think, you know, whatever. I could go on and on and on. I certainly don't think The Fabelmans is the best movie Spielberg's made. On and on and on. It's wild that I think this is this is the best movie Nolan has made, and it's his 12th movie, and he's still a relatively young guy and he's got, God, I just, I can't I don't know what he's going to do next. He's really cool and humble about saying that, because he has the ability to command these budgets and use all the filmmaking tools he feels like he has to like going back to a $5 million memento type movie wouldn't make a lot of sense. He's got to keep, you know, he's he wants to do spectacle. And remember, Oppenheimer was like 50 or $60 million less budget wise and tenet. So it it's not like more money for Nolan equates to better, more acclaimed movie. So I'm very, very interested in what he's going to be doing next in his career. And a lot of people are speculating if it'll be a sci fi thing because I don't know, you know, Dunkirk was very realistic and tenet was the sci fi James Bond thing. Oppenheimer realistic? I don't know. I said in our Nolan episode that what I've wanted him to do forever is to go back to something like memento, to that scale and that size. And he actually did that with Oppenheimer. When I look back, the scale is much bigger, of course, but even the black and white and the color, the focus ever focusing much of the action on one person, it is, you know, trying to solve something, trying to create something. I'm not I'm not trying to stretch and make comparisons, but there are comparisons. And I do think that's why I responded to Oppenheimer. So incredibly, using that word too much, so intensely. For instance. The 14th time I saw Oppenheimer was 12 times after 12 days, after my 13th viewing, and I went back to there and space Museum in true Imax because they lied to me and they told me it was not coming back. They told me it was gone, and they brought it back for a weekend. And I was like, well, I mean, I like, I have to go. So I did viewing number 14. I went to see the Enola Gay right after. Yes, yes, yes, indeed. The final award of the night and the final award that Oppenheimer won was Best Picture. I, I just couldn't believe it. It. I'm not saying how do I say this? It will have to go down as one of my favorite Oscars ever. Because never in my life, never, certainly in my adult life, has my favorite movie of the year, a movie that I had seen, more than a dozen times before Oscar night. Never has that won Best Picture. Never. I mean, rare, is it? Even nominated for Best Picture? My favorite movie of the year? It almost never is, in fact. And the fact that this was and it was the frontrunner from the beginning, which terrified me the entire time, I really was not able to enjoy the awards season leading up to the to the Oscars, because I just thought they were going to. I thought for sure Giamatti was going to win actor. They were going to do something to take away some big award. But seven is fine. Seven wins is great. I have no complaints about it losing anything that it lost. It wins. Best picture wow. Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, partners in art, partners in love. Her only producing credits are movies that Nolan has been involved with, whether he directed or executive produce him like Man of Steel and then Charles Roven, who's the last person to talk and like no one knew who he was. I wanted to go through some of his credits really quickly. He did 12 monkeys, Three Kings, Scooby-Doo, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, American Hustle, which was his first Best Picture nomination, didn't win. Thank goodness Wonder Woman, good producer. We're going to see if they keep going. They keep producing. First time I saw this, I genuinely thought this was Truman's voice, the real Truman. But you go back and listen to it and it's Gary Oldman. Does anyone think that Gary Oldman is better in this movie than he was in The Darkest Hour? I'm not saying he's not good as Winston Churchill as Winston Churchill. I'm just saying that movie is really, like, bad and not good. I don't know, I do, it's kind of like I saw some wise ass is on Reddit. Say that this is, that Margot Robbie's performance in Asteroid City was better than her performance in Barbie, and she's in Asteroid City for one scene, and she's amazing. Like, amazing. I love her in it. I thought that was a funny thing to say. Apparently went with the tremendous bang. Did it ever? I love how everyone, you know, in different areas, like Jack Quaid looked like he was about to cry. You know, some people, you know, some people laughed, some people cried, most were silent. That was his quote. And I thought of Bhagavad-gita now he become death, destroyer of worlds. I really can't believe it. I mean, now we're getting to this scene that I just never didn't hear anything about. Going into the movie never anticipated you. You assume they're going to detonate the Trinity test and do that. But this thing is like just a what a seemingly small event that he entered into to give thanks to. Clearly, some of the most enthusiastic group at Los Alamos. And the way this is written in the screenplay is fascinating, because when he can't hear them, when the when the silence gives out, the implication as written in the text, is that Oppenheimer just boom. Like, can't hear them all of a sudden. And he's like trying to hear them, but he can only hear his voice. And, you know, that's where that struggle comes from of like, what is this? This is so weird. I mean, he only says, I think he says five sentences, short, brief sentences in this little speech. And one of them is like a, a kind of a stammer, and he picks himself up and then starts it. So it's like 4 or 5 sentences. We don't recognize any of these people because we haven't seen them yet. That's ingenious. Oh my God. You go watch the special features on the 4K to see how they did this trick with everything moving behind him. I no idea how you do that. Like, I am a cinematographer. I work with cameras all day. I work with editing equipment all day and audio equipment all day. It's all I do. And I had no idea. You know how they did this? You know they did the shit the most. Like, basic, obvious way possible. They took a picture of that background, just a picture with a camera and put that picture into a projector. Set the projector up and ran the projector behind Tilly Murphy. So it's just like bouncing off him when you see them shooting this, it looks exactly like it does in the behind the scenes footage, as it does here. That is. That is so insanely simple and I would have never, ever thought of that. It just that's all it is. It's just a projector moving one image around really, really quickly. That's it. It is so, so simple. And it, wildly effective here. And you don't I mean, a lot of the stuff to do in making those like electrons and making all this stuff, it was very practical effects. That's terrifying. That isolated scream to match the woman in the red dress. The thing, the thing that will always, kind of, dismay me the most about this. Or just put me in a place of like, what the fuck? For some reason, it's when they stand up and we can only hear their chairs. I've never seen that or heard that in a movie before, and it was so it's still so jarring to me because they're all standing now anyway. And then they stand that it because it's not too loud. And I got this focus dipping in and out. And I've heard that this is the loudest. Oh wait, I'm go back the what that is Christopher. And Christopher Nolan and Emmett Thomas's daughter with their, flesh seemingly peeling off. I think it's the loudest moment in the movie. Boom. Like, literally, decibel level wise, that was the loudest kind of pain in the movie. So I read, so I heard brilliant scene, brilliantly executed. I'll tell you what, when I waited 70 long, cold, dark. Terrible days between seeing Oppenheimer for the 15th time, or I should say, before seeing it for the 15th time, this one was going to be special. 15 is, that's kind of that's kind of crazy. And I knew this was going to be my last time seeing it in the movie theater. So I set my wife down and I said, look, I hadn't even been honest with her about how many times I've seen it. I was like, look, there's something that's happening, and it's something that I want to do, and you're going to think I'm insane. Anyone I did I tell this to is going to think I'm insane, but I think you're going to do it at the AMC at Lincoln Square in New York City rests the, at the time, the largest Imax screen in the country. I think somewhere they made one that's like two inches bigger, two feet, whatever. And this screen plays true Imax 70 millimeter. So I think I need to buy a ticket there. Only do it at one weekend. So I need to buy a ticket for Saturday. And when we need to take our asses up there and stay in a hotel. And then I'm going to go to this movie because she had never seen it, the only person who had seen it. And that is what we did, folks. And it was one of the most amazing theatrical experiences I've ever had. Seeing a movie for the 15th fucking time in a movie theater, presented in a way that I just shattered my expectations. That theater was gorgeous. I'm so happy I got to do that and so happy. That's how I ended my Oppenheimer theatrical journey. Here we go. Gary Oldman knew it was him right away. He looks great. He plays it great. There's a fantastic special feature on the Blu ray that this set, this Oval Office set fell out like five days before. It was not this, it was something else. And they built this in five days round the clock. Everyone were working in shifts, so that work was never stopped. Like including for sleeping or eating. There was always someone building it and working on it. And the production designer says, well, think it's good enough in the movie? I don't think it'll be good enough for it, but we'll see. And I saw someone on Reddit kind of pick it apart in a nice way. But I mean, you know, the oh God, just again, the, the sort of, scientific, arrogance that could come over Oppenheimer, which everyone admitted was a part of who he was. It still it comes through here. And God, the way Oldman plays it, just like leaning forward. And then it's not really in focus on on him when, you know, he pulls out the hankie. Oh, just great. What's the benefit there of Truman and his guys just being like, no, I don't think the Russians have this. What? Yeah. Why the hell would you just be like, nah, they don't. Sorry. Leading scientists. You're wrong. Fucking. You know, after in my, like, Oppenheimer obsession, I was just watching anything Oppenheimer related that I could think of, which included the H direct to HBO 1995 movie Truman, where Gary Sinise played him was pretty good. Tony Goldwyn was in that as well. He's playing the head board member there. I didn't I haven't mentioned Tony Goldwyn at all. I just love this. Not on the same page at all. I feel I have blood on my hands. The way you can hear, like, the wood creak from the chair when he leans forward. I also kind of wonder if, like, Oldman was sick during this because he's kind of playing it sicker was Truman sick on the day? I don't know. Oh my God, look at his face. Fucking brilliant. And just like, leaning forward and he's out of focus. Like when you see this on the biggest Imax screen possible in 70mm film, which has so much higher resolution, you can see that he's out of focus. And it's still it just works. It's he's so close to Oppenheimer and just invade, invading his space. You know, Oppenheimer is perfectly in focus, but great transition to from the, you know, the guy puking outside like everyone celebrating to different degrees, people crying. And I was rambling on and on to this, to that. And, you know, we get his face on the cover of time. I love that looking at his guy, his assistant, take this over. So apparently when he left, he said, Truman said, don't let that son of a bitch back in here. And then was heard later calling him, saying that that man was a crybaby, stuff like that. Well, either way, it was it was, it was said it was. He, insulted him on his way out the door, that's for sure. Here we go. It's a handoff, folks. We're getting a handoff from one character to another. Although not like I've always wondered where this shot was from. I guess the board meeting. Not the board meeting. The, When you just leaving, like, his deposition one day or something, I don't know, see, this is what they're skirting by over a lot. Just, you know, being on magazines, but also having people go through your trash, having your phones tapped. American Prometheus hones in on this. The book a lot. And that was like, wow, you can really it just it's crazy. It's truly crazy what they put this man through and how they just, like, spied on him for the rest of his life. Yeah. And see, it's like you did this miraculous thing, and now the brother's doing this. Lohmann s is here laying track chivalry. It's just like, out in exile. He's gone. His life's ruined even when they're interviewing him in the documentary later, there's a great, I don't know, sadness to fallenness about how maybe he contributed to damaging his best friend. You know? January 1950. Truman. And now Truman approves the hydrogen bomb development. Huge blow for, of course, for Oppenheimer. And he's just a pig and shit. So this is all, like, the thing where, you know, making fun of him for the isotopes. That was in mid 49, the when they meet to talk about the Russian as a bomb, that whole thing. That was in August of 49. This is in January of 50. So these things are pretty close. Like the the straws Oppenheimer thing not really getting along very well. Also, it's great to see, Downey in another color scene because we see him so much in black and white. Really tell it to make up. Holds up. Oh, dear. Yeah. What an asshole. You. Hey, buddy. You were on my ass like six, five months ago. There was a spy, and now, okay, there was, but I didn't even have anything to do with it. I didn't hire this dude jerk. You know, I got to understand this movie a lot better because YouTube, they were releasing, like, some YouTube behind the scenes stuff when the 4K dropped and I bought that didn't watch it right away because I was like, I don't know, I just I was like nervous to open it, watch it. But the 16th time I saw Oppenheimer, it was six days after that in New York City screening, when I watched it at home on 4K for the first time. Love the. They preserved the 4K scene, so they are in a different aspect ratio than the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, that's not the way I'm watching it now, because I couldn't hook all this gear up to my 4K TV in a way that I don't know, made sense, but that was a lot of fun. And then, you know, Nolan does a lot of work on his 4K and, you know, his special features. Now, he's kind of turned them into there's typically like, one really long making of. And you just watch that whole thing. It's like 90 minutes or 2 hours and they go through the whole movie. And that's how I learned that the way they were doing all those special effects, that it was like the tree of life, and you just learn all this cool stuff, like the production design of the Oval Office. It's it's a great, great disc. Glad I own it. Board and dredge it all up. Yeah, the fall guy board. Aaron Wright just playing all this, like, how could it be? This doesn't make any sense to me that, like, how could it be him? It always makes. I've always wondered like, does he know a little bit or maybe suspects? And then he kind of lays into him with his eyes, you know, when when all is revealed later. There it is, lowly and a little, that word still ringing in his head. God like, let it go, man. Lowly shoe salesman. He soured Einstein on me. He talk crap about my isotope research. Yeah, yeah. Who? This is. This is true. I'm so glad they don't show us these. And instead, we have to watch it play out on their faces. But, yeah, they. I mean, they show these to the scientists, and they were in complete horror. Like it really? You know, I feel like I have blood on my hands. It really, really damaged Oppenheimer for a long. He didn't sit well with him. I'll put it that way. Not in the slightest. I know he's not on screen right now, but he will be soon. I just didn't get a chance to mention Jason Clarke is right. Rob loves Jason Clarke. Always have so good in things like zero Dark 30. I mean, he's honestly great and everything and yeah, he after these hearings, he went on to become a US circuit judge. And you know, he was going back every night to straws like two straws is whether calling him or meeting with him on person and telling him how the confidential secret dealings of the hearing were going. He wasn't allowed to do this, but he was just doing it. So it was a kangaroo court. As Oppenheimer's lawyer keeps warning him, he did not have a chance to win, but he went through it anyway for, you know, I don't know, just to see moral superiority in some way, see what kind of shit they're going to cook up on me and Jason Clarke. Oh my God, he just plays it perfectly when he gets close to it's kind of his idea to move his chair and get close to Emily Blunt when he's, sort of interrogating her. And then, of course, we see how well that goes. like your phrase. Oh, my God, I call him Robert J. Oppenheimer. Earlier, like an hour and a half ago, didn't I? I completely invalidated myself. It's j. Robert Oppenheimer. I apologize to everyone, man. I almost did it. You know, I'm just gonna stop. Stop the recording. Here it is. The time magazine cover, which has that pull quote that he pulled out, you know, yesterday or the day before. And God, the way Heinrich plays all this, I just I love it. The shock, whether it's feigned or not. And yet you can tell Downey really coming into his own and being like, all right, this is these are the moments that I have to excel at. And now, whether it's being quiet, you know, in the in the boardroom as is getting smashed. I also want to say, because I haven't had a chance to talk about the hearing, the way that he keeps asking the guys, you know, on the do who are conducting the hearing, like, I'd really like to see a list of the scientists and they're just like, you know, slamming papers down like an I would like to remind you. And it's all very patronizing tone. And I really love that, that they seem like they're not here for his bullshit. And he thinks he can like, you know, just steamroll over them because all of his connections and he works in the shadows and all this bullshit. And because Henry Luce is a friend and they're just they're not having it. And I really enjoy that. I love the way all those guys play it. And then mentioned it briefly before. But Tony Goldwyn, who again, is not on screen here, but he's the plays. Gordon Gray is the chairman of the of the committee deciding to revoke Oppenheimer of his security clearance or not. And he's been around forever. You know ghost. He's directed a few movies. Last kiss was Zach Braff. Good actor scandal. He was in that which I never saw. But, you know, don't get TV lot. As we near into the toward the end of the film here, we're going to see if something I have planned pays off. We'll see. Put a pin in that. Yeah. Just all these sneaks going around like you're not, you know, bored until I can. This. All this seems pretty normal. Like it's extensive, but there's nothing. It's nothing new in this shit. And they're just all passing it back and forth like, no, you do it, you do it. yeah. Highly illegal, highly sneaky, highly un uncool. This is what they did. Oppenheimer's life. And he just. I mean, God, the way he has all this planned out to a tee. Strouse I'm talking about terrifying. I was trying to think of a comp like a modern day comp. I, I couldn't I'm not I don't know, because everyone I could think of is like an actual politician, like who are who were elected or appointed to something. And Charles at this point necessarily wasn't, but, you know, just a political shithead. You know what else? What else can you say? God, you know, it was funny. So the Oscars were on March 10th and a few days before, on March 6th, 2024, 46 days and passed since I had watched Oppenheimer in 4K. Then my wife requested to see it. My wife, Ali, not the biggest movie person, had heard a lot of a lot of the just hubbub around the movie. And, I don't think wanted to really engage with that went to see Barbie. We saw Barbie together. She loved that. She goes, all right, I'll watch it. I also think for a lot of people, still like three hours is long, even though all these people, most of them can sit down and watch five hours of TV in one sitting. No problem. She's like, all right, I'm ready to watch it. I'll put the phone away. She also had a few of her friends watch it who were like, you need to watch this movie. This movie fucking rocks. So I couldn't convince or the friends had to convince her. So he put the phones away, put on the 4K, and she loved it. She loved it. She thinks I can be ridiculous when I say things like, hey, it's three hours long, but I promise it moves. I promise it cooks because you say that to someone who, like, doesn't watch a ton of movies in three hours is still three hours. You're still passing three hours. But as I've explained to her, I could show her the most boring, slow 80 minute movie imaginable, and she would want to pull her hair out and it would still only be 80 minutes. You start that thing at one. At 220, it's done. Start Oppenheimer at one. It's going to be till four. It's done. But I promise you, this movie will move fast. And she agreed. She agreed that in like Wolf of Wall Street I go cooks, cooks sleep. So she loved it. one of the things this was rated R for, not the language, but the other thing was, yeah, lot of whatever. I'll just get into it. A lot of I don't think a lot of people enjoy seeing sex scenes and movie. It's it is a new thing. I think that, you know, people are calling for, like, the end of sex scenes in movies. You don't need nudity. I've never been a fan of the glorification of them. I've never been a fan of having one just to have one. I am, I mean, who's a fan of seeing it when it's, a sort of assault. But we've talked about some of those scenes, and I'm only gonna, go in for that if it's very integral to the movie. But if it's just like a click consensual sex scene, I don't see the big deal. And my point is, my wife is no fan of gratuitous sex in movies of, you know, really any of it. And when the scenes were done, she in Oppenheimer, she looked at me and she's like that. And I went, that's it. This is what I've had to hear. Like a summer of people flipping out about in like a summer and fall season and I go, yep, God, people's need to grow up a little bit. That's all I'm saying. That was a 17 feeling. I believe I said that at home only the third time I've seen this movie with someone. So with Dan, so my father in law Joe, Allie's dad, and then saw it with Allie, that's it. Watch about myself a lot. That was going to be. The thing is that with Nick and I did this commentary, it would be our first time watching it together and his second time seeing it overall. this is when Clark making Blair, Tony Goldwyn, they all just get to step up and they do great. There you go. Now we're putting in this is where we see the bug go in. That's why the shot was back there for a little longer than expected. But still even those cuts of like Affleck right there that was you know, there's 24 frames in a second that had to be less than 24 frames. I do not think that was one second. That's you're really, really moving. I mean, in a three hour movie, we usually think, all right, they're going to take their, their time. It's, it's three hours. They can like have time like killers of the flower moon is three hours and 26 minutes because it has time to breathe. And it's spinning a lot of times. And it's scenes Oppenheimer's three hours long. Just because there's so much movie, it's not like it's holding out one scene. With the exception of the Trinity test for like 20, 30 minutes, it's not what it's doing. Everything is just moving really quick. And then it's down to these individual edits cut, cut, cut. Calls himself an idiot there. It's a pretty big deal when it happen. In the room? Yeah, sure. Well, it was a friend up until, until his dying day. I love this with, you know, Josh Hartnett turning the corner and then not. But this is when we learn of, like, the the affair with Ruth Tolman. And we learned that, you know, that it was Richard who also noticed that at the, when they're looking at the on Strauss's birthday, when they looking at the headline of Truman Approves hydrogen bomb, you know, research, she's saying, I miss my Richard. So bad. So he's died. And Oppenheimer's like, I know Ruth, I know he doesn't give a shit. Thank you. Jesus said you were, I don't know if these sites ask God. he's great in here. It's great when the people who stick up for Oppenheimer in this hearing, and it's going to go really, really fast. Really fast. But when Damon comes back and, you know, Roger Robb basically not tricks him, but it's like, would you approve him today? And, you know, he goes, no, but I don't think I approve any of those guys. You have to pay attention to my lines. So I lines are where is an actor looking. Because right now Krumholtz the other actors may not even be back there. It's oh my God, here he is. We have a surprise guest, folks. We have a surprise guest folks here on the. What are you watching? Oppenheimer commentary. Friend of the pod, Dan Brace. He's on how are you, friend? Oh, I just called to see if you're watching the eclipse. shit. And, folks, no, no, I bet I bet it bad a watch, a tune the up and over commentary. Can you hear the eclipse, Robert? I cannot hear the eclipse, Robert. But no, I'm literally. So where am I now? They're, They're interviewing Krumholtz and in the deposition, I only got, like, 25. Oh, yeah. Did I got, like, 25, 30 minutes left. Yeah. Oh. How are you doing? Any orgies right now? What you say? Is he eating oranges right now? He just did eat oranges. Well, you got it. God. And we, you know, Hartnett comes in and then does leave thing. So I did tell Dan to, you know, I let him know that I was going to be doing this. And I told him to call to try to break up the monotony a little bit. So I appreciate you calling. Yeah. You can, you know, I listen to you for so long. Yeah. This is this. I'm going to release this episode next. So this will be three appearances in a row from you. Oh, my God, I should retire on a high note. Yeah. Or take over. I could, I could, well, you're almost done. I'm glad. Yeah. And never have to watch it again. Do you think you'll owe me? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll never see it again. Do you think you'll ever watch it again, Oppenheimer? I will rewatch Oppenheimer if it gets rereleased in Imax. That's kind of what I've been saying is I went because I went through all of my, viewings of it, and I'm like, I know they're going to bring it back. But yeah, I'll probably do that. I'll go back for it kind of the same way how I feel if they're actually going to rerelease interstellar and Imax, I would see again in Imax, even though it's not my favorite Nolan, but I would see it because of those visuals in the Imax are incredible. Will they do that, like for a day or two? I mean, I think it was just here, but no, they've been talking about it. It's on the internet. I'll go see it. If it's on the internet, then it must be true. So I'll go see it then. how was I on Oscar night? When we were watching all these? I went through all the awards, was I not? Oh, you were, you were. You were on cloud nine. You were so excited. I was I was very excited, but I haven't had one. And the first time I ever saw this movie with someone was with you. Everyone, we saw it and Imax. Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah. It was a I forget that was your first thought that your at least your third time. No, no, it was my third time but it was my first time seeing it with someone who was, I guess I just, I guess the number three. I'm Jesus, right. Good job. You are right. But yes, I remember when I first time I only saw it twice in theaters and it was both in Imax and it was it was worth it. Goddamn right it was. Yeah. Well, I'll let you, I'll let you get back to, your movie. All right. Thanks. Who's your favorite performance in Oppenheimer? I'm just gonna say Josh Hartnett because it's Josh Hartnett. Thank God. that's what I was hoping he'd say. Thank God. From the faculty to Oppenheimer. I'm gonna go rewatch the faculty now. I fucking love the faculty. Garrett. Jack, you up? Great stuff. Well, thanks for calling. Thanks for checking in. Thanks for picking up. Yeah. Of course. All right. I'll talk to you later. Bye bye. told you the eclipse was today. Then get to watch it. J Robert Oppenheimer, more probably than not. that was fun. I didn't know if he would be able to call it. Good to hear from Dan. Of course, I have no idea what the hell I was talking about. I was probably on some damn Jag that's lost. what a great, dismissive thing to do. Just to, like, get up from the desk. Oh, it's talking about Eileen's. I was talking about Eileen's. Yeah, yeah. Do we. Damn it! Did we did I miss it? I don't think I did. When Damien leaves, when he's done with his remarks. You know, I don't think I want to any of those guys when he's right. As he's about to leave, he stares at Jason Clark. That's where his eyeline is. So he gives him a silent look. A fuck you and I can't, I sorry, I got too distracted with Banana Dan calling. That's what happens when Dan's in your life. You get distracted. Here we go. He'll coming in. You know, before Oscar night, there was only. No no no no no. Yes. Before Oscar night, there was only one person in this scene who had an Oscar. And there's still only one person in the scene who has an Oscar for best actor. And it is not Robert Downey Jr. this is great. Just buries him. I love Downey, you know the best of the background shot through. You see him in the background just like kind of tilting his head or trying to, like, hide when you're right out here in the open. what a snark. I call him a snark. I meant to say shark, but I guess Snarky shark. Yeah. This guy, this guy is just great. And Matt looks like. No. Aaron. Right. Waking up. Great stuff. Will I ever watch Oppenheimer again? If I would just, like, rejected it, like Chris Cooper adaptation. Don't fish. That'll never happen. Matthew Modine great. This is a direct quote. What the scientists actually said. I love that. I've never heard that before. If I seem stirred because I am. Great. From Full Metal Jacket to here. Wrote a good, book on Full Metal Jacket, didn't he? Didn't? Yeah. Matthew Modine like a good memoir. Highly recommend. I've always liked him. Josh Hartnett, Josh Hartnett, what a talent. What an actor. So glad that's a Dan picked. I mean, if you know, if you like grew up when we did you grew up with him. So it's like, God, that's so great. I hope he gets more work from this. Like big work because he's gotten work like he was. You know, he he's always in something. But this was always that one. that Guy Ritchie movie rooms together, I watch on a plane. He was funny in that. He was really funny. I actually thought that movie was funny. I'm a little easier on planes. I don't know why. If there's something to that way easier laugh, easier to cry. Is it like the altitude? I don't know, but then, isn't the altitude, like, pressurized? So you shouldn't feel so, so much. I know about science. Whatever. Yeah. And teller, they the science community never really forgave him for this. It was they just, like, buried him. And it's hilarious to think about this guy and think of, like, Stanley Kubrick studying him and hearing about him and then talking to Peter Sellers. And he's like, all right, when you go do this Doctor Strangelove scientist, we're, this is who it's based on. This absolute quack who wanted to, like, destroy the world with hydrogen bombs. So rude. You see him interviewing in some of the documentaries, and he's not, like, backing down. He's kind of. He's maintains his overall point. But he did say that, the Kitty Oppenheimer refusing to shake his hand. That did happen. And that, destroyed him. It really I think that's when he realized the full implications of what he had done. He was like, oh, man. And that's God. The way she the way Emily Blunt plays, that is just perfection. And with that sort of hand off, you know, we've it's not like a full hand off like the movie is belongs to. Okay. Here it is. Good. I didn't miss it. I didn't miss it. All right, let's pay attention to eye lines here. So the people behind him may not even be sitting there. It might just be the camera and Nolan and the camera crews like Tony Goldwyn, Jason Clarke. They may not him. He may not even be looking at them, but he knows where to look for. Okay, I need to look at this spot. Whatever on the wall for Tony Goldwyn Face. I need to look at this spot to my left for Roger Rob's face. I need to do, you know, so that the audience knows who I'm looking at. So we see him looking at him there. He sees looking at him. He's looking at him. All right. So just know that that's his eyeline. That's his Roger Robb eyeline. And now he's you know, he's talking very kind of openly and warmly. Him making player because that's Oppenheimer's lawyer. Not like warmly. But I wouldn't want to suggest that for an instant. And then when right before he leaves and gets up, watch, watch his eyeline. Fuck you, Roger Robb. That's what that means. That look of total contempt. I love this respect. Understanding. It's all it needs to be. But I love that look from Damon. That's what you get from being in an act. Being an actor for so long. You got it. You understand my lines and what they can mean to an audience and how I don't know if that really, really translates to me. I love that shit. Great line in Fenner. Adolescent presumes no relationship love. Cheers. It's scripted that she's a little, not walking kind of strongly. So it doesn't say she's drunk in the script, but I think that's the way that she's sort of playing this. But then in American Prometheus, it's described that she had a pretty, pretty rigid childhood. And at times, maybe she was boring school or something. She had to sit very, very still and kind of interlock her fingers, you know, back perfectly postured. And that's how she would have to conduct herself. So she in the room. You it was like you could see, a switch go off. And she just snapped into that from being kind of, trepidatious, trepidatious here and, doesn't really know, like how she can't find her footing. Maybe, maybe she did turn it on, and she's had a few pops before she walked in, and she's just, like, trying to, like, find herself and then stills herself and boom, H's hand and what she says, what Emily Blunt says in this movie is exactly what Kitty Oppenheimer said to Roger Robb. And it is awesome. I love that just screwing with someone because they mispronounce something. You ever do that? Like just to be a total, arrogant asshole? To try to, like, when something over on someone. nothing I've ever done that you've heard Nick do that to me more than once on this podcast. Of course I've done it, you know, once or twice, just whenever. I love the way she plays this. This is her, you know, her Oscar scene. They say. They say that some performances are nominated. You can see why they're nominated and why they won the single tier. And glory gets Denzel Washington best supporting actor. You they have you know you can kind of parse these moments out. And I think this is her big Oscar scene. This the thing that really made it us pay attention to her and be like, all right. She's not I mean, in these biopics, how often do we just see, like the the supportive or sad or troubled housewife who the nagging. It's usually the nagging housewife, right? And we're all sick of that shit. Oh my god. And this just turns it right on its head. I love the way that she plays. She's going down an octave. You know, I don't like your phrase. Can a distinction be made? So articulate. Just so well spoken. I, love everything about how she handles this. Another those again, very quick cuts when she's, like 16 back. 17 back. Sorry 18 back where we're in that those are frames. Those are not seconds. That's, I love that. And I love, you know, making Blair the lawyer kind of pick it up on it up Murphy back there, kind of picking up on it, seeing what she's doing, bearing this guy before. Right before we recorded the Last Action Hero podcast, Dan asked me a question. He wanted me. It's too complicated to explain, but the first thing he wanted to do was a terrible Arnold impression when I introduced him. So he asked me literally right before I hit record, he goes, are you not going to introduce me as Dan? Because if you don't do that, then I can't not do my. Arnold. And I looked at him and I'm like, the fuck are you talking about? Can you say a sense of that? Like quadruple negative? So I, I don't know, just survives me here. And Rob kind of gets tied up and, you know, you can ask that any way you want. She's like, yeah, I know, I love that when people get so tongue tied with like negatives, double negatives. That's Dan talk, quadruple negatives. What the hell he's talking about. Start over at the beginning. Shrug your shoulders. Burn after reading. Well, what do we accomplish here? Not much. I love it. I'm kidding. I'm glad you called in. And then Einstein coming in, I just I love the kind of the big sweater, you know, like the relaxed vibe, the walk. Tell him to go to hell. Yeah. I'm not sure you understand. No. Yeah. He fled his country as soon as the shit started. He gets it, man. He gets it. Oh, this stuff's great. You know, thrown over the coat rack. And I love Scott Grimes being like. Like, stop yelling than Aaron, right? Like his eyes just getting bigger. And I love the whole way they play this. And. Yeah. You know, it's a bit wordy, like, though it's being a little cute here. Using the same type of language. Like the lowly shoes, man, the lowly shoe salesman, and then the convicting. I love it like he sees it, you know, is it wrong for someone to do the right thing as he sees it? Yeah. Just imagine being this bent out of shape about something that happened like years ago. This is 1959, and he's talking about something that happened in 1947. it really is funny. This is great. I love, you know, getting to whether it's whatever it is, when things are too much that this atomic bomb thing happens and everything goes white and everything goes bright. And it's just now we're in this, like, chaotic mess. We saw it once before. I had no idea he was going to do it again. And it just plays so well, you know about this stuff. Look at that guy to Oppenheimer's left to our right. Just like staring at him the whole time. Like staring him down. Now we can only see his hands. What's that guy's job like? What? It's like he's a bailiff or something, and he's afraid off. And I was going to jump up and, like, attack Roger. Rob. Like the guys just stared him down the whole time. Not a fun way to do, like, a deposition. Not a fun way to do much of anything. Why? Look at that Aaron Rex face. Like, what the hell are you talking about? Strauss has such a down. It's such, like, a wordy line coming up, like he wanted the glorious insincere. I don't remember how it goes, but it's so wordy. And I love it. I remember when I got the script like a nerd, I immediately went to that line and I was like, wrote it out. You ordered the glorious, insincere, Gil to the self-important part. I wish I could memorize it and just, you know, flip it out. And then again, crosscutting flip out. It's worked so well. And you see how one person flips out. He just raises his voice once, and the other person's losing his shit in the capital. I hope I've done a good job of explaining why I like the movie so much. Even watching it now, I'm not even remotely bored. I've tried to keep talking, but it's hard to. It keeps like pulling my attention away, even though I'm. Oh my God, I've seen it so many times. I guess part of it is that it kind of reminds me of like making there it is of self-important to wear like a fucking crown. I love that I think this movie kind of reminds me of, like making a movie a little bit like, you know, I don't understand all the science stuff. I don't understand how to make a bomb, but it's just get a bunch of people together doing something. You're it's high pressure. Obviously, the creative making a movie process is not as, strenuous. Hopefully, as making it an atomic bomb. Certainly shouldn't be, but I don't know. I just like everyone coming together is like kind of an Ocean's 11 thing to it, too, of like, planning something and pulled it off. I like how the movie moves and how it's not defined. We get those chapter title cards in the beginning, but the movie's not like clearly defined by it. There's no huge chapter breaks. It's not like hour one is this our two? Is this, our three is this. It's not like that. It just it has this revolving way, this fluidity to the editing that makes it all work. And because everything shot perfectly, it's fun to look at. It's brilliantly performed. So everything just went right in this movie for me and I cannot. I still can't believe my journey with it. I cannot believe I've recorded this damn thing on my own, which I did talk to Nick extensively about. I think I mentioned at the beginning I can't even remember. I've done all this in one shot. I haven't stopped once. So this is actually kind of to use the bathroom. I'm doing it, I'm doing it. I'm going. I will not pause. we had a little interruptions, Dan. It's just been it's been great. It's been great. But. Just try to explain how someone who's obsessed with movies like I am and have been for my whole life since we've been doing the podcast. This is the first movie that has come along that has taken over my life. It happens occasionally. Shame in 2011 took over my life for a year longer. Waves in 2019 took over my life. I was, just so infatuated with those movies for different reasons. I mean, who knows why this happens? And Oppenheimer. Yeah, completely took it over. Completely took over my life in a way that I welcomed, and that it wasn't just that I watched the movie over and over. It's. Yeah, read all the texts about it, watch all the documentaries, got as much information as I could to try to paint context because I found it all to be so fascinating. And the fact that it was true is even more fascinating to me. I love that go the fucking press. You know, it's going to come and go pretty fast. There's going to be a lot of stuff going on. So the the Fermi Award stuff. I know I've said this on other podcast, but I haven't said it. Some of the information I've been repeating, I know I've said in other podcasts, I'm sorry, but I wanted it all here, you know, for the, for the Oppenheimer commentary. Interesting story there. So JFK had a lot of respect and a lot of reverence for Oppenheimer. Did not like the way he was treated after the fact. And it he got him that award. JFK, you know, nominated Oppenheimer for the Fermi Award and he was going to give it to him. But then, of course, JFK was assassinated. So this scene, when he is getting the award, that actor is supposed to be playing LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson. This was like a week after JFK was assassinated. It was so close to the assassination that Jackie Kennedy was still living in the family quarters in the white House. And when Kitty and Oppenheimer were done, they were asked if they wanted to see. They were called up to the family quarters to see Jackie. And they were like, because they they loved Kennedy. They were so sad at what happened to him. And Jackie, through tears, was sad. You know, Jack really wanted you to have this. He really did. And I'm so glad you got to have it. And, you know, I think there were tears. And I think when I think Oppenheimer said that was the most moving thing that he had ever gone to the most moving point of his life, just at all of this time. And I love that. I also love the way JFK is mentioned here. I love the way that Downey plays that rejection. Who are the holdouts? And he kind of like, smacks his knee and taps his foot a little bit. Kennedy. John F Kennedy. That'd be wild if, Nolan's next movie was JFK Nolan version. Kennedy. Oh, boy. Now, he would never do that. That shot of Emily Blunt from behind is a direct lift from Andrea Tarkovsky's The Mirror, which is an amazing film, a completely singular film onto its own film that I can never, describe adequately or accurately. But that was lifted from that. Really cool. I'm sorry I haven't been calling that out. As we went by, Oppenheimer was not a movie that I could see a lot of film comps for. There is the Tree of Life in terms of the way, like the the design of the special effects. There is even something like Doctor Strangelove or maybe we have teller involved, but otherwise there's not much in common there. I mean, there's memento where you get the same director in the black and white color, but I didn't see a lot of comps. I didn't see, like, if you like Oppenheimer, go check out this other thing. I'd be recommending a lot of documentaries, probably my, like, additional footage for an additional for, you know, further reading. My further reading for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer would likely not be other narrative features. It would be documentaries and stuff. So it's kind of hard to call out like, oh, this shot is from Tarkovsky. The shot is from that because I don't know. I think that helps make Nolan Nolan. I'm not saying, of course it's influenced by the directors. I just don't think they're in this movie as obvious as others that look they give each other. But the way Aaron Reich says something more important and then opens the door, great in the looks to each other, it is perfect. Yeah. So keep in mind this is going to be the last scene of the movie. And then but right after this, chronologically, that goof starts just comes up to one what just they do want and then up. And I was going to click right back in from the, you know, the leading scientist of his time telling him that, you know, he's telling him that maybe we destroyed the world. Then right away, this political goon, this asshole comes up. But what do you say to him? Because he ignored me. I was like, what am I talking about? You a hell do you think we're talking about you? You're an idiot. You don't even know what an isotope is. Great way they play this here. These two actors playing off each other. Sam. And in potato salad. I mean, what? Just a great line. Yeah. So his kids are in the back there. You can kind of see him. The Oppenheimer children again. Kind of sad resolution of them I love. She's fixing his collar. Great old age makeup. They're just like truly on all of them. On him. Brother. All right, look at this. I can't even, like, see, is I really just a pat on the face? Great. Yeah. Yeah. He wasn't alive there. That's bullshit. Fucking movie. Movies just lie. Who cares? Take a little liberties here. There. I don't want you wholesale making up something like massive. Yep. This really happened. Looks like he cut him. Shell cut himself shaving. Is that like a little piece of, like, you know, toilet paper tissue on his face there a little bit. Just a great detail. I love that in the warm smile. what a perfect way to play it. Emily Blunt, all these people are young Murphy blunt. They're going to have they're still going to go on a big career. Downey just won an Oscar. What the hell is he going to do next? What's Murphy going to do next? What's Nolan going to do next? I can not wait. I'm so excited to see where all these careers go. Never had a better time watching the Oscars. It just all went, I mean, in addition, like, actress was great. Like, holy shit. Like it went to Emma Stone. It was just, the whole night I thought was superb. And here we go. Music kicking up. Oh, man. Fascinating to watch how they, you know, did this stuff. 33 days have gone by since I watched this film with my wife. And today on the 33rd day, April 8th, 2024, marks the 18th time I have seen Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Watch it on my laptop with all of you, and I sincerely appreciated it, and I sincerely appreciate it. I should say we did it. We made it. I'm so excited for the maybe dozen people that listen to this. See you as downloads of the episode, ever. No, I don't know. This. It was it was never. I never wanted to do this by myself. Never want to do any commentary or really any any episode by myself. Sometimes it has to happen. Nick endorsed it. We kind of thought it would be funny. We wanted to see, you know, if I would sink or swim. I'm really happy for Dan calling in. That is the third appearance in a row from Dan Bracey on what are you Watching now? You probably gonna have to wait another year or so for that. We haven't done again. No, I don't know. I love having him on. Brings an interesting flavor, of course, to the to the podcast. Wow. Now we're in credits Andrew Jackson not nominated for an Oscar for best visual effects. Of course not. if they would have done that, then it would have been a record tying 14 nominations for Oppenheimer and weren't ready to do that. They didn't even want to give it eight wins to put it in that, you know, category, which I'm fine with. I'm fine. Seven is good, seven is good. It's been a lot of fun. I hope, I hope it's been a lot of fun. It's not fun for me. what else next time? Well, what are we gonna. Yeah, a little behind. I'll do a little behind the scenes stuff. So we did. We have a few in the can that are, you know, they're in there. So we recorded those in person. These are fun. One of them is a commentary. What am I saying? Two of them or commentary? Sorry. Two of them are commentaries. One is a director. We revealed the who the director was on our Instagram Live video right before the Oscars. So if you want to know, you can go watch that. We're very we were really excited to do that. We had so much fun researching all of his work. Terrence Malick I'll just wait. I'll just say it, okay? Terrence Malick Terrence Malick is going to be the next director. We are doing a commentary for one of his movies, and we did a commentary, another commentary unrelated to Nolan or Malick or anything. So I don't know the order in which those are going to come out. It's all how I how I'm feeling today. But that was a lot of fun. Thank you all so much for listening, especially to this one. If you watch along with your 4K at home or on Peacock, which I think Oppenheimer still is, then thank you. Thank you very much. And that's it. We did it. Thanks everyone. We did it. So glad we made it. Thank you so much for listening to the entire thing. It's the next day. It's April 9th. I have just edited all of this together, heard a few things that I they kind of bugged me, so I wanted to correct or give a little more context when I said that Bhagavad Gita quote was in a John McTiernan movie, I said, Sean Connery says it. I didn't say that. He says it in The Hunt for Red October. Totally. Just breezed over the movie. Jean Tatlock okay, I was kind of right. Her father did discover her body. He got to her apartment around 1 p.m. she didn't answer the door. He climbed in through a window, found her lying dead on a pile of cushions on the bathroom floor with her head underwater in the tub. There was an unsigned suicide note. And if that wasn't bad enough, now it gets weird. Then her father spends four hours doing, What? He's burning letters, destroying incriminating evidence, getting rid of embarrassing elements from his daughter's life. Who knows? But that's weird. It's weird to find your daughter's dead body, then clean her apartment for more than four hours and then call a funeral home to report her death. He didn't even call the cops. The funeral home did. At the time of her death, Jean Tatlock was being heavily surveilled by the FBI under specific instruction from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Her phone was tapped. The whole thing was just very, very bizarre, Richard Feynman is how you say Jack Quaid's character's name. What a guy. Richard Feynman. And then a few times, I'm just going too fast, and I, like, I misspeak, you know, when I did that little editing thing like the two, three, one four, I said, all right, we're about to cut between three scenes here, but obviously we're about to cut between four scenes. And then when I'm talking about the 4K, I'm like, oh, I'm so glad that they preserved the 4K scenes in this different aspect ratio. I meant that they preserved the Imax scenes. You know, the entire disc is in 4K, so whatever. Just small little things. Thank you all again, so much for listening. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. Oh, and the 19th time I watched Oppenheimer was when I edited this podcast together. What a ride! Thanks so much for listening and happy watching. Hey everyone, thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog at Alex withrow.com. Nicholas Dose Telecom is where you can find all of Nick's film work. Send us mailbag questions at What Are You Watching podcast at gmail.com or find us on Twitter, Instagram and Letter Box at WWI Underscore podcast. Next time we are stepping into the unique world of Terrence Malick, we're talking about all the movies, all the lore. Cannot wait for you all to hear this. We had an absolute blast recording it. One of us cries, Stay tuned.