Wes Anderson: An Overview (w/ Jacob Phillips)

Eli Price (00:01.655)
Hello, I'm Eli Price and you are listening to the Establishing Shot podcast. This is our first ever episode and we're excited to get this going. I have with me today for our first show, Jacob Phillips. Jacob is a good friend of mine. And yeah, we're going to get going on today's show. I'll let him introduce himself in a second. But.

We have an exciting series that we're starting things off with. I'm going to share the vision for this podcast in a minute, but I just wanted to share first a little bit about myself. I work at a college ministry here in Lafayette, Louisiana, and I've done some work at a church as well. And I...

I really grew to love just film and cinema part-time as a hobby. And yeah, it's really just become a really huge passion of mine over the past several years. And so this is something that I've wanted to do for a long time that I've really been excited about.

Jacob Phillips (01:10.659)
Thanks for watching!

Eli Price (01:30.111)
And so I'm excited to share just the vision of the podcast before we get into the main content. But first I wanted to let Jacob introduce himself. So yeah, Jacob, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jacob Phillips (01:43.454)
Yeah, so I also do some stuff with the collegiate ministry that Eli works at. That's how we met along with attending the church that Eli used to work at as well. And really, I grew to love film, like growing up, but more on a critical and like analytical side once I got to like college. And so I'm about three years out of college now. And so, you know, just

being able to watch movies and really sort of analyze why a movie is good or why it is bad versus growing up, you just watch movies or whatever your parents throw on and it's just kind of like, oh, that was fun or that was good and now becoming, I guess, a cinephile, being able to analyze the art form of things and the medium as a whole. So I love movies as well and it's just,

It's been something that has been a big part of my life for really as long as I can remember, but also just been a big part, especially through college.

Eli Price (02:51.947)
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you know, I grew up watching movies, too. I remember going to the movies with my parents. And I remember I don't have a memory of the situation, but I have a memory of like my parents talking about my grandma showing me Jurassic Park before my parents really thought I was old enough to see it. And then, yeah, so that's kind of a movie memory from when I was a kid.

Jacob Phillips (03:21.166)
For sure.

Eli Price (03:21.519)
But yeah, and I still love Jurassic Park to this day. So, but yeah, you know, I guess my journey just kind of as a film buff, cinephile, whatever you want to call it, really started a few years ago. I was reading a book and I was talking about kind of curating your media. And I was kind of thinking about what that would mean for me. And, you know, I would.

Jacob Phillips (03:25.494)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (03:48.583)
I would throw on TV shows and binge TV shows and really I decided to cut out TV shows completely and I decided what I'm going to do to kind of curate my media intake so that it's something that doesn't control me but that I'm in charge of in my life is I'm going to watch just movies, whether I can watch a whole one at a time, break it up while I'm eating lunches each day or whatever it was going to be. I was going to write.

something on every movie I watched. So that really started back in 2018 and since then for a whole year I wrote on every movie I watched at least a short paragraph sometimes longer and so I haven't kept that up completely since then but I would say probably 75% of the movies I've watched since then I

Jacob Phillips (04:31.758)
Nice.

Eli Price (04:47.359)
I write some thoughts, I write some takeaways, sometimes a full on review sort of thing. And so it's just really grown my love for movies for one and two just, I feel like my ability to watch a movie, think about it both on a technical side, on a thematic side, an emotional side.

And I just really wanted to do something more with that and that's Where the vision for this podcast came? One of my favorite ways to watch movies that's kind of grown out of some podcast I've listened to is Listening through a director's filmography or listening watching through a director's filmography

and starting with their first movie and going chronologically through all their movies. And I was like, man, this is one of my favorite ways to watch movies is to do that. And so I've done that with a few directors just on my own time, just because I like it. And I was like, well, why not take this and put something out there for other people to do along with me?

Jacob Phillips (05:47.724)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (06:13.627)
And so that's kind of where the vision of this podcast came from is just, man, I, I really think it's, you really get a ton out of it when you say, I want to watch through this director and you start with their first movie and just see their progression of their work and the themes and techniques that they use throughout their filmography. And it helps you grow in love for film in general, for that director.

And so, yeah, that's my hope for this podcast is if you take these journeys through these directors with me that you will grow in your love for film, that you'll grow in your ability to analyze film, to understand it. And so, yeah, that's kind of the vision, the vision I have for this podcast.

And so if you listen to the trailer, then you know that our first director we're gonna be covering is Wes Anderson. And so I am super excited. I know Jacob is too. Wes is one of my favorite directors. There's a good handful of directors that I've seen all their movies. And Wes is one of those. And...

Jacob Phillips (07:23.051)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (07:42.147)
I want to say the first Wes Anderson film I ever watched was Moonrise Kingdom, probably not quite a decade ago. And I don't think I really grasped what was going on in that Wes Anderson film back then. But then I started to watch more like Grand Budapest was coming out and I wanted to see

Jacob Phillips (08:09.215)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (08:12.747)
Then I went back and saw Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox and other movies like that and over time I was like, man, I need to see all of this guy's movies. Yeah, I just really have grown to love Wes and something I'm excited about is a lot of some of his movies I've seen several times, but a lot of them I've only seen once. And so I'm going to be...

Jacob Phillips (08:18.742)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (08:37.458)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (08:40.611)
watching these movies as we go through the series. I haven't sat down and watched all of them before we started this series, like before today. And so before each episode, I'm gonna be just watching that movie along with hopefully you guys, the my guests and the audience. And so I'm excited. I'm also excited because I haven't seen Moonrise Kingdom since almost a decade ago.

Jacob Phillips (09:07.607)
Oh wow.

Eli Price (09:08.227)
I haven't watched it since then, so I'm excited to kind of work my way back and see that again and see kind of how I like it now that I'm really into Wes Anderson, you know. But yeah, would you like to share your kind of introduction into Wes Anderson's films, Jacob?

Jacob Phillips (09:21.483)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (09:28.65)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when I started, you know, we didn't watch like any, for whatever reason, like just growing up, Wes wasn't really on our radar and our family. So once I, once like late high school, early college, when I really started getting into the films and things like that, I would also watch YouTube videos and top 10 lists from like WatchMojo and stuff like that. And Wes Anderson kept coming up over and over again, just because he's a special, you know, filmmaker.

And, but for whatever reason, I just didn't watch it. I didn't go out of my way to watch any of his movies. I think part of it was like, and I'm kind of glad I didn't watch him back then because I don't think I would have fully gotten it or grasped it. But the first Wes Anderson movie I ever watched was actually Fantastic Mr. Fox. And yeah, I just, I loved it. And I was like, oh yeah, I'm in. And so I watched Isle of Dogs and then,

Eli Price (10:17.327)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (10:28.215)
Thank you, Grand Budapest.

Eli Price (10:28.596)
Wow, so you went full in on the stop motion before you moved on to live action, huh?

Jacob Phillips (10:34.822)
Yeah, yeah, I just heard, I think, I think Isla Dogs had been, other than maybe the French Dispatch, I guess it was like the most recent one. And I was like, man, I just need to go ahead and watch it. Uh, cause I think both of them were on Disney+. So I've watched, I think I've watched now with watching bottle rock. I've watched seven of his movies and they've all been within the last about year and a half actually. Um, so, so they're all pretty fresh. Um, and yeah, I've loved.

Eli Price (10:58.011)
Wow.

Jacob Phillips (11:03.342)
pretty much every single one of them out. I mean, there's parts that I didn't like in some, but I mean, for the most part, they're all like super enjoyable. And for the most part, I think I have like two or three of them are, I've rated like four and a half out of five. So, I mean, he's just, he's a ton of fun and just makes a very enjoyable yet deep movie.

Eli Price (11:18.861)
Right.

Eli Price (11:25.903)
Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, that's really cool. I feel like a lot of people that are just kind of casual, more casual movie watchers, but still enjoy watching movies, have seen or at least heard of Fantastic Mr. Fox. And so I feel like that's a really good introduction to Wes Anderson. It might be a little bit...

Jacob Phillips (11:44.886)
Yeah.

Eli Price (11:54.791)
to kind of head first into the deep end, to go straight into like Grand Budapest with his style and everything. But yeah, I think my wife has seen Fantastic Mr. Fox. And I think that's the only, oh, she's seen Isle of Dogs with me. So yeah, she's only seen the stop motion ones as well. And so.

Jacob Phillips (12:00.684)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:20.779)
You know, maybe maybe that works better for some people in that format than the live-action ones. That's that's great But yeah, so I just want to give a quick rundown of what we're gonna be doing through this series Today for this first episode we're gonna be doing a Wes Anderson overview or a Wes Anderson establishing shot if you will

Jacob Phillips (12:24.616)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:48.719)
So what we're going to do is we're going to take this episode and look at who Wes is, kind of his background, how he got into filmmaking. And then we're going to kind of do and this is part of where the name of the show comes from, the establishing shot. We're going to do an establishing shot of his film. We're going to look at, OK, what sort of things should we be looking for?

as we watch through his filmography, what sort of techniques does he use that we can kind of look for? What sort of themes kind of go through all of his movies that we can be on the lookout for? And hopefully by doing that, we'll be able to really grasp and be able to enjoy to a fuller extent his films as we go through.

Jacob Phillips (13:20.275)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (13:45.711)
So that's what today's about. We're gonna give a little bit of background on him, just some interesting things about who he is, and then take some time kind of talking through some of his filming techniques and some thematic elements that we're gonna be looking for. So yeah, I wanted to start it off, and yeah, Jacob, at any time, if you...

hear something interesting through this first part, feel free to just cut me off and give your two cents. A lot of this is just stuff that I've been researching and so I kind of put together some interesting things about Wes that I think will be, I don't know, will be informative for his films. So yeah, so.

Jacob Phillips (14:21.198)
for sure.

Eli Price (14:39.367)
Wes was born in Houston, Texas in 1969. And that's where he grew up. So all the way through high school, college, and even a little after college, he was in Texas. He's a Texas boy. You wouldn't think that. But yeah, he's a Texas boy born and raised. And so one of the things that kind of stood out

Jacob Phillips (14:58.014)
No, not at all.

Eli Price (15:10.423)
from his childhood is he took some time when he was a kid to record, you know, make a few movies. His dad had a Super 8 camera that he let him use. And yeah, he recorded some movies. I think I read that his first ever movie he made was about, it was one little reel, 180 seconds.

Jacob Phillips (15:22.614)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (15:37.763)
And it was about some kids skateboarding. And yeah, he kind of said in one interview I was reading that he made some kind of Indiana Jones type with some like little sets and costumes that him and his friends made. And so yeah, he loved Indiana Jones and wanted to make his own. So yeah, from a young age, he was making movies. And...

Uh, I think one of the, one of the funny things is, um, that he was talking about. Cause, uh, the interviewer asked if he still had those and he doesn't he, um, he's the camera and the, all the case that all the film reels were in were stolen out of his car. Uh, and he, he said, uh, when he was older, he said he went to like all the pond shops around town and, uh, he just couldn't find them. So he doesn't have any of that stuff anymore. Yeah. Uh,

Jacob Phillips (16:17.076)
Aw.

Jacob Phillips (16:24.389)
Oh.

Jacob Phillips (16:32.858)
Dang.

Eli Price (16:35.431)
I was like, someone out there has something probably pretty valuable right now, and they probably have no clue. Oh yeah, I just thought that was really funny, and he was like, you know, devastating in the moment, but he kind of acted like, no big deal now, you know, they weren't very good anyway. But yeah, one of the things that stood out about his childhood that Wes himself has pointed out,

Jacob Phillips (16:39.638)
Yeah, for real.

Jacob Phillips (16:50.547)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (17:05.131)
in interviews and whatnot is that his parents were divorced when he was pretty young. And Wes has been recorded as saying that, you know, that was the kind of most crucial defining event for him and his brothers in his childhood. And, you know, I think that's pretty that's going to be pretty informative for.

his films thematically, especially as we watch through them, you know, it's something that was just very influential in his life. A traumatic event, it was tough. We'll talk a little bit about that when we get to his filmmaking kind of philosophy, but yeah, that was something that stood out. And then kind of moving on into his older age, you know, he

He obviously wanted to direct movies when he was young. And then in high school, he said he kind of switched. He was like, I'm gonna be a writer. But he still, even in high school, he went to St. John's private prep there in Houston. And he actually wrote and directed plays at his high school.

Jacob Phillips (18:05.198)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (18:09.707)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (18:26.69)
Yeah.

Eli Price (18:28.235)
There at st. John's and so even though even when he switched in high school to be wanting to be a writer He was still writing movies and directing well, not movies but plays and directing them um, so man, it's just Obviously this is in his dna, you know He was born to do this and so um, it just came out of him no matter where he was in life Um, but yeah, so he uh

Jacob Phillips (18:38.187)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (18:44.371)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (18:56.283)
When he went to college, he kind of switched back to wanting to be a director. And a lot of that was, it kind of came out of his kind of diving into film history and whatnot. He went to the University of Texas in Austin, and he's talked about in interviews how they had several libraries there at UT. And...

Jacob Phillips (19:10.083)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (19:24.427)
he would go to these movie sections, all of them had a movie section, and they would have all these books on film. So there would be books about Fellini and Gerard and all these. He said it was almost as if they collect all these books on movies and then they stopped. And so like...

all the books they had were on these 50s and 60s European films, like in the French New Wave and all this sort of stuff. But then they didn't have anything past that. I thought that was kind of funny. Yeah, so he starts looking at all these movies, kind of all these guys and...

Jacob Phillips (20:10.974)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (20:22.283)
ends up happening is he just he's like well I'm reading these books let's watch these movies and so yeah he's he's reading these books he's watching these movies kind of some of the guys that he he's mentioned Fellini Ingmar Bergman Trufont yeah a lot just a lot of 60s European films

Jacob Phillips (20:45.292)
Yeah.

Eli Price (20:47.847)
You know, and he said they had some some books like on Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, John Ford, but but yeah, a lot of a lot of it was was that that yeah, that 60s European film. And so he's watching these and he took he took a playwriting class. And he he actually majored in philosophy there at UT. And

Jacob Phillips (20:53.892)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (21:17.387)
and graduated. And yeah, so he, you know, he grew this love for film, kind of just by like diving headfirst into these books and watching through all these movies. And yeah, so it's funny. You can kind of see those those influences on his film of those kind of 60s 50s and 60s European

Jacob Phillips (21:38.212)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (21:49.007)
Yeah, so you go through his life journey. He's a kid that is watching movies with his family, that's making movies on a Super 8 camera. He even talked about when in an interview, a kind of question like, when did you first know you wanted to be a director? That was even something that was possible.

Jacob Phillips (22:02.622)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (22:15.667)
He talked about having these Betamax tapes of Alfred Hitchcock movies like Rope and Rear Window. He said the reason that he realized, oh, this is something that I can do with my life is on the artwork on the front, kind of the little movie poster on the front. The big name would be Alfred Hitchcock.

Jacob Phillips (22:18.428)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (22:42.475)
And so he said as a kid that really like struck him because most movies, you know, you'll see the actors or actresses kind of highlighted. But for Hitchcock movies, it wasn't the star wasn't the people in front of the camera. The star was the person behind the camera. And I just thought that was really a really cool thought of like as a kid seeing that and thinking like, oh, this is something that.

Jacob Phillips (22:50.262)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (22:59.117)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (23:12.063)
I can do with my life is be a person behind a camera making movies. And so, you know, starting with that all the way through, you know, just diving into these films in college. He just, you know, he grew a love for movies and he, when he was at UT, actually he is when he met Owen Wilson. He was.

Jacob Phillips (23:14.208)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:40.583)
actually in a playwriting class with Owen Wilson, but they didn't talk to each other then. I thought that was funny. He said that he would kind of be in one corner of the room being seclusive over there and Owen would be in the other, being seclusive on his side. And yeah, they didn't even talk to each other. They ran into each other the next semester and kind of hit it off and kind of realized that he

Jacob Phillips (24:04.694)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (24:09.147)
they both loved film and both had kind of thought about like, hey, maybe we can make a film. And so, yeah, after he graduated, Owen kind of like, he didn't graduate, but he just was like, I'm done, I'm done with college. And so Owen convinced him to come back to Dallas with him. And he was working for Andrew, Owen's older brother,

Jacob Phillips (24:36.759)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (24:38.271)
And so he was working for him. They were actually all living in this little apartment. I think Wes said it was technically a three room apartment, but only one actual bedroom in the apartment. And so there was times where there was like four of them between like Wes and Owen and Andrew and and Bob, who is in their first film, Marderocka. They're all just like living in this.

sleeping in the same room together in this apartment. And yeah, so they're in this apartment, they're like, let's make a movie. It's something we wanna do. They actually wrote a feature, like they wrote a script for a feature film. And they were like, well, we gotta record it. So they kind of scrapped together a few thousand dollars. I think,

Jacob Phillips (25:16.956)
Yeah.

Eli Price (25:35.043)
I think that most of it came from their parents.

Jacob Phillips (25:38.11)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I read that it was a lot of it was from the the Wilson's parents

Eli Price (25:44.139)
Right, so yeah, they kind of scrapped together a few thousand and they were able to shoot eight minutes, eight minute black and white film. And actually it's funny, you know, a lot of times what happens with these filmmakers as they're getting started, they'll make a short that's kind of like a concept. You know, it's kind of like, let's make this short.

and we're gonna take it to some people and it's gonna be to show them, hey, this is what the feature could be like. And so they'll show the short, they'll be like, yeah, we like it, we're gonna give you more money. And so you can kind of start from scratch to make the feature. But actually they didn't have that vision at all. They were like, we have our script, we're gonna just start shooting scenes. And so the original Bottle Rocket short,

Jacob Phillips (26:37.94)
Yeah.

Eli Price (26:41.615)
that came out. They actually, from one of their mentors, Kit Carson, who was also a writer, director, in his own right, he kind of mentored them. He was able to scrounge together a little bit more money for them, and they extended it to a 13-minute short from eight. So what they were doing was actually, they were like, let's shoot some scenes.

Jacob Phillips (26:52.995)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (27:03.009)
Yeah.

Eli Price (27:08.651)
and they just shot scenes until they ran out of money. And Kit convinced them like, hey, he had some connections with Sundance Film Festival and convinced them to submit it. It got accepted as a short, but they never saw it as a short. They just saw it as, here's some scenes from the full movie we wanna make. Which...

Jacob Phillips (27:27.762)
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like they kind of did like the pilot essentially for a for a movie.

Eli Price (27:34.955)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good way to think of it. It's not like a concept of the film where you kind of see, oh, this is what the plot will be like. No, it's just like some scenes from the movie. Now it ended up being like one of the first scenes in the movie, which makes sense. Like they were like, let's start shooting from the beginning. But yeah, so yeah, they...

Jacob Phillips (27:43.596)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (27:47.244)
Yeah.

Eli Price (28:02.959)
They got it accepted at Sundance. It did fine. And then they were just like, OK, where do we go from here? And so I think the progression was, so Kit Carson, who was their mentor early on, he got it to a producer named Barbara Boyle. And yeah, Barbara.

Jacob Phillips (28:12.12)
Hehehe

Eli Price (28:31.991)
He got it to Barbara Boyle. Barbara Boyle knew Polly Platt. Polly Platt did The Last Picture Show, and she was a major producer at the time. Polly Platt knew James L. Brooks, who, if you don't know who James L. Brooks is, he's kind of, he's kind of, he's done some stuff that you would recognize, but he's also done a lot of like mentoring and.

Jacob Phillips (29:00.236)
Yeah.

Eli Price (29:00.543)
and investing in people coming up. But yeah, he did the Mary Tyler Moore show and then he directed movies like Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News. So yeah, Jim Brooks got it from, so Kit Carson to Barbara Boyle to Poly Platt and Poly Platt liked it enough that she took it to Jim and she was like, you gotta make this. And Jim has, Jim Brooks has mentored him kind of

Jacob Phillips (29:09.964)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (29:24.353)
Yeah.

Eli Price (29:30.415)
Then the guy behind people like Matt, I have trouble with his last name, Matt Groening, who made The Simpsons, Danny DeVito, Steve Kloves, Cameron Crowe that made Say Anything. Those are some of like Jim Brooks' protege's. And so, you know, you wouldn't think like you get this kind of weird, strange movie from these guys living in an apartment together in Dallas. And Jim's like, yeah, I wanna make this.

Jacob Phillips (29:37.957)
Mmm, yeah.

Jacob Phillips (29:55.487)
Yeah.

Eli Price (30:00.883)
But he did. Yeah, he saw it. Polly was, and Polly Platt actually was a major proponent in like, Jim, we've got to get you down there to these guys to make this movie. So Jim goes, she convinces him. He goes to Dallas. He meets them at their little, their little kind of messy apartment. And they kind of get a little room.

Jacob Phillips (30:13.132)
Yeah.

Eli Price (30:30.063)
at a hotel, a little conference room, and Jim's like, have y'all read it? Have y'all read the script? And they're like, no. It had never occurred to them to like, actually read through the whole script. And I think I read somewhere that the original script was 225 pages, which in general, I think, just like, you know, it's probably give or take, but in general, that comes out to about like, a four hour movie. And so, yeah. And so, Jim.

Jacob Phillips (30:45.5)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (30:55.398)
Yeah, no, it's super long. Like I think for, just for reference, like I was listening to podcasts on Boogie Nights from Paul Thomas Anderson, and the original script for that one was 185 minutes, which if you've ever seen it, that's a really long movie. That's almost three hours long. So like 185 page script is like really long. So then like going to 225 is like crazy.

Eli Price (31:05.529)
Yeah.

Eli Price (31:10.817)
Right.

Eli Price (31:18.383)
Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, you need an intermission for sure in that movie. But Jim in interviews, Jim, you can kind of see like the smirk on his face. He's talking about, you know, they read it and they kept reading and they kept reading and, you know, we got hungry and then we ran out of water and everyone was parched. And he said, but, you know, eventually we got through the movie and

Jacob Phillips (31:23.351)
Hehehe

Eli Price (31:47.499)
Yeah, it was too long. He said he didn't really have to say anything. He just kind of looked around and everyone kind of knew what needed to happen. And so he's leaving and all the guys have kind of said in different interviews, West ran across the street. He was like, wait, ran across the street. And he actually said to Jim Brooks, something to the effect of, so are you gonna make our movie?

Jacob Phillips (31:50.562)
Hehehe

Jacob Phillips (31:55.915)
Yeah.

Eli Price (32:16.507)
Or do we have a deal or something like that? And Jim's like, well, you know, he starts to go into this thing and Wes like actually supposedly like kind of interrupts him and is like, but do we have a deal? And Jim's like, I don't know, man, let's see what happens. And so they ended up moving them out to Hollywood to do a rewrite of the script. So yeah, it's just funny. These guys just scrapping together.

Jacob Phillips (32:36.909)
Oh wow.

Eli Price (32:47.131)
a short in Dallas, get Jim Brooks somehow to come to their little apartment, read through their script with them and then move them out to Hollywood to make this film. And that's where Bottle Rocket came from, their first film. And it's really incredible. It's really incredible to look at, you know, this.

You know, we'll talk about bottle rocket in much more detail at a later date. But, um, yeah, it's just really incredible to see these guys. They were like, we really want to do this. And they, they did it. Um, and they did it their way. Um, and, um, that just really, um, stood out to me as I was, as I was learning about, um, you know, how he got started and so, um, yeah, it's, it's just, um,

Jacob Phillips (33:26.049)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (33:30.46)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:46.299)
I don't know, it's kind of a testament, and we'll get into this. It's kind of a testament to just having a vision and knowing something that you want to do and love doing and enjoy and just sticking with it. Yeah, so yeah, I don't know. Was there anything from kind of that bio that stood out to you?

Jacob Phillips (33:59.543)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (34:04.503)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jacob Phillips (34:14.314)
Yeah, I just think that like, you know, he just grew up and as we'll talk about it in later detail, but like, you know, he really is so, I think he's a very cerebral guy, obviously, and he just kind of took everything from his life and just puts it into his movies. So it's really like knowing that aspect of it means that he had probably a pretty interesting upbringing and...

high school life and college life, you know. But I just love like the stories of people, you know, that are now major people in Hollywood, like having these sort of just random like friendships and upbringings that get them to where they're at now, you know, so like Owen Wilson, who had like no formal acting, you know, schooling or anything like that, you know, and now he's, yeah, and so like they just kind of banded together, like you said, and lived together.

Eli Price (35:06.563)
Right. Yeah, none of them did.

Jacob Phillips (35:13.058)
very similar to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Boston back in their days. So I just love stories like that and I think friendship is obviously one of the big things that runs throughout his movies. So you can see that through his life that's been a very important part. So yeah, it's just really cool to see success stories like that.

Eli Price (35:35.343)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, just real quick, I just wanted to note just a few other random things. Wes, over the years, he hasn't really got a ton of, I guess, interest from the academy as far as awards go and stuff like that. The only thing, I think he won

Um, he definitely was nominated for a lot of things, starting with Royal Tenenbaums, he got like original screenplay was his first nomination. Uh, he didn't win that. He was nominated for animated feature for Mr. Fox didn't win that, um, original screenplay again for moonrise kingdom didn't win that. And, uh, really it wasn't until grand Budapest, I think that he started winning stuff. Um,

Jacob Phillips (36:12.951)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (36:32.717)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (36:34.247)
Did you see, did you happen to see if you won anything at the Academy for Grand Budapest? I know he won a BAFTA for original screenplay.

Jacob Phillips (36:44.198)
Yeah, he won BAFTA and he won the Golden Globe for musical comedy, but he actually didn't, he was nominated for best director and best picture by the Academy in 2014, but didn't actually win it.

Eli Price (36:52.132)
Okay.

Eli Price (36:56.471)
Right, right.

Eli Price (37:00.547)
Yeah, I think original screenplay too, for at the Academy. I think Grand Pooda Pest got that too. Isle of Dogs also, I think was animated featured and didn't win. I think I was, I remember watching and being really disappointed because I loved it that year, but yeah.

Jacob Phillips (37:03.592)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (37:11.918)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (37:16.98)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (37:20.982)
It's a really good year, by the way, for the Academy for 2014. That was Birdman, Grand Budapest, Imitation Game, Selma, Whiplash. Some really good ones in there.

Eli Price (37:25.511)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (37:30.999)
Yeah, right. Yeah. Mm hmm. For sure. But yeah, so he you know, he's gotten some he's won some awards with like some critics, associations and stuff like that, but really hasn't won a whole lot of big stuff. Really just that one BAFTA win for screenplay for Grand Budapest. So yeah. And then yeah, I wanted to note, you know, I talked about his

Jacob Phillips (37:43.202)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:00.635)
His Hitchcock tapes was a big influence on him. Just kind of some of his inspirations. And this is one thing that you'll notice with Wes. He, a lot of times when people kind of are influenced by something, they'll like do something exactly the same. But he kind of like, he does something and you're kind of like, man, that looks familiar. And it's just, he does a little something different with it.

Jacob Phillips (38:02.443)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (38:24.842)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (38:29.051)
which I think is cool, but Hitchcock, Scorsese, he's been, he said before that when he started making movies, Scorsese was one of his favorites. You know, I talked about him making kind of Indiana Jones stuff when he was little, he loved Raiders. Like who didn't, who didn't as if they were a kid when that, you know, came out. True Faux was...

Jacob Phillips (38:44.352)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (38:48.127)
Right.

Eli Price (38:53.599)
Um, he watched, uh, I remember in an interview, he said he watched the 400 blows, uh, by Truffaut who was, uh, you know, part of the kind of French new wave and, um, that was a, that was probably one of his biggest, like, okay, I want to make movies kind of moments. Uh, that was when he was at UT. Um, but yeah, a lot of those same guys that I've already mentioned that he was reading, um, and, uh, like Kurosawa, um, was a big one.

Jacob Phillips (39:18.766)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (39:20.931)
for him and you kind of see that in Isle of Dogs. He kind of does a little bit of a Curasaw influence there. But yeah, his filmmaking philosophy. I know you had some notes for this kind of section. What are some things that kind of stood out as you were looking at? Okay, what does Wes think about when he's making movies?

Jacob Phillips (39:23.574)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (39:44.842)
Yeah, so he has this quote and he said that he doesn't mind making movies that are linked together, but he wouldn't love to have someone say, that's just like something you did before. So like he wants to be distinct, but also he also just wants to do what he likes. So like he's kind of fine with things looking similarly.

just because that's what he likes. But I think he wants like the product overall to be different. I think they are for the most part. And then, you know, I think that like, obviously he has an unusual sense of humor. He's very, you know, like you have written down, he's precise. And this was something I heard in an interview with his cinematographer. He said, before Wes even comes in, he makes sure that the cinematographer

Eli Price (40:18.889)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (40:41.162)
and his assistants, like make sure that the camera is quite literally in the dead center of wherever they're shooting, because he's so meticulous with being symmetrical and everything like that, which I thought is pretty cool.

Eli Price (40:52.811)
Right. Yeah, that was Robert Yeoman is his DP or cinematographer for pretty much all of his live action stuff. He has someone else for the stop motion. But but yeah, yeah. In that interview, he said he said, like, Wessel, come in. And the first thing he'll say is, are we are we centered on that wall? And he'll be like, yep, yeah, we got it.

Jacob Phillips (40:56.447)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (41:04.5)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (41:10.199)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (41:20.103)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:21.755)
We got it done for you. We know what you like. And actually, Robert Yeoman has a big influence. And when we start talking about his technique, Wes has the vision for it. But Yeoman is actually, he works so well with Wes because he shares a lot of his vision of what to do. And so, yeah.

Jacob Phillips (41:43.462)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (41:49.763)
Yeah, one of the things that stood out to me that Wes has kind of talked about is just write what you know. And that's something, when you think about his childhood and how one of the critical events was just like the traumatic experience with him and his brothers of having your parents separate, and how you see that kind of brokenness in families kind of.

Jacob Phillips (41:56.937)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (42:18.923)
As a thread through all of his movies and it's because he he knows it and that's something that he believes You should do with your heart you make what you know And I think that's important I think sometimes directors and filmmakers can get a little a Little big-headed and start making stuff that's a little out of what they actually know and a lot of times they can come off as like very like

I don't know, appropriating of maybe other cultures or ideas or even just like come off as just, I don't know, pompous. You know, and so that's something I appreciate. What were you going to say?

Jacob Phillips (43:01.438)
Yeah. Or... Yeah, they can get bogged down too with trying to like, over explain something because they've put in so much time and effort into like researching whatever it is, that like, the movie can get bogged down with stuff like that, so yeah.

Eli Price (43:20.023)
Yeah, I think that would be like a lot of people's complaints with Christopher Nolan movies. Like he's spent so much time studying space that he wants to explain it to you in his movie. And that doesn't bother me a whole lot, but I know some people really hate that about Chris Nolan movies. But yeah, you're not going to find that in Wes. Even his dialogue with his characters, it's very like,

Jacob Phillips (43:24.98)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (43:33.476)
Yeah.

Eli Price (43:48.999)
cut and dry like they say exactly what they're thinking or feeling a lot of the times. And so write what you know. Build a world for your characters to live in. And I think that's something that he does really well. And I'm going to get into that a little bit later on. But yeah, I'm going to kind of move through here.

One of the things he talked about is just finding a spark. You know, I don't know who might be listening out there, but, you know, if you're an artist of some sort, find something that, you know, just sparks your imagination, sparks your interest. You know, that's what this podcast is for me. You know, I just have grown to love.

Jacob Phillips (44:19.511)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (44:37.315)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (44:40.815)
be passionate about films and watching through directors. And I was like, man, I'm gonna make something. Why not? And then, you know, along with that is just the idea of just go shoot, just do it. That's what they did with bottle rocket. You know, I talked about, they're like, we wrote this script, let's go do it. Let's start making it. You know, and now here he is, a very accomplished director, very well respected. And so, you know, that's...

Jacob Phillips (44:53.057)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:11.319)
kind of a word of advice that kind of Wes has had, I guess, indirectly for people through interviews is just, hey, you know, this is my story. You can see, just go do it. You know, maybe it'll flop, maybe it'll fail, but just go do it. Yeah. So let's move on to kind of, we're gonna,

Jacob Phillips (45:26.178)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:41.011)
move through this pretty quickly. We're going on a while here now. But let's look at some of Wes's techniques. So we probably won't hit on everything, but the good thing is we're going to be watching through all these movies. And so we're going to be able to talk about these things as we go through. One of the things, one of the first things in his kind of filmmaking technique is

Jacob Phillips (45:56.171)
Yeah.

Eli Price (46:08.839)
More on the writing side would be That one thing that I kind of see in his movies is that they're pretty low in plot Meaning there's not like a plot driving the movies, but it's very like it has a very high view of his characters He's more interested in okay. What are these characters doing and how are they relating to each other then like? What's the story being told? So that's that's one thing

Jacob Phillips (46:18.275)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (46:28.46)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (46:33.441)
Yeah.

Eli Price (46:37.999)
that I wanted to highlight because as we watch these movies, I feel like a lot of people have trouble with his movies because there's not really a story being told per se in the traditional sense of a plot. So that's one thing that we can look for. What are some of the kind of technique things that stand out to you?

Jacob Phillips (46:50.476)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (47:01.846)
Yeah, when talking about characters, he said before that he feels that any one of his characters can walk out of any of the movies and walk into another one of his movies and be at home there, which I think is very interesting and also just plays into the fact of, one, like the plot isn't always as important to him, but also I think, you know, kind of what I mentioned earlier, how he feels that like all of his characters are people that he's known are a combination of people.

that he's known and so, you know, they're all part of his life, he's making what he knows. So of course they would all, you know, be able to interact with each other and it just makes sense, all of that being there. The symmetry is obviously like, you know, I think that's kind of what he's sort of known for on a basic level, just how, you know, perfectly symmetrical every shot seems to be.

Eli Price (47:56.664)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (47:57.01)
and everything like that, which I really like. There's some people that obviously they don't like it just because it's really different from basically every other filmmaker, you know? But I really like it. I think it's unique, you know, how he sort of shoots conversations, sort of just, you know, a back and forth, you know, image flipped, which I think is just, is really fun.

Eli Price (48:08.025)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (48:23.523)
Yeah, yeah, and kind of on that, it's funny because you talked about characters and then went straight into kind of that head-on symmetry thing. And that's one of the things with his technique is he does these when he's like cutting back and forth between characters and dialogue. Instead of most of the time you get kind of offset shots.

Jacob Phillips (48:52.107)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (48:53.751)
When you cut back and forth in dialogue and he does him and in his DP Robert Yemen that we talked about They like to do these straight-on shots. So you're looking directly kind of like, you know we're looking at each other straight on right now over this video and And you get that back and forth cut and what that does is it it highlights? their character your

Jacob Phillips (49:02.721)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (49:07.562)
Yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (49:22.475)
You know, even sometimes with the editing, you know, you'll be there'll be people on the phone. It'll go back and forth between their two sets where they are and One of the things you know, because he's so into the production design, you know the costumes and the sets Those end up really highlighting who the character is So like and the Royal Tenenbaums, they're having a conversation over the phone A few of the siblings and you're going

from these completely different sets that each of the characters are in. But the set and the costumes of the characters kind of show who the characters are, and highlights and emphasizes that, which I think is really cool. And the symmetry, too, it's not just in the shots, like the still frames, but it's in the editing. You'll get a lot of cuts.

Jacob Phillips (49:54.21)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (50:16.99)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (50:19.743)
and dialogue where you'll cut to one character talking and they'll be on the right side of the screen, then you'll cut to the other character and they'll be on the left side of the screen. And you kind of get that in the editing too. The editing in his movies are really incredible. Like you get these rhythmic patterns that happen. You'll even have scenes where

Jacob Phillips (50:28.684)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (50:39.777)
Yeah.

Eli Price (50:49.083)
things are happening like these editing cuts and stuff are happening to the rhythm of like the score. Or you'll get this pattern like in the Grand Budapest when they're like calling from hotel to hotel, you'll get this pattern of like calling the bellhop over the bellhop gets on the phone, he says kind of the same things, and then he hangs up and goes to do something and then you'll cut to the other the next one and it's like this pattern. And

Jacob Phillips (50:55.694)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (51:02.273)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (51:14.54)
Yeah.

Eli Price (51:15.359)
Man, that's one of the things that stood out to me and looking into this is just like, man, the editing is just incredible. There's so much going on that's so purposeful.

Jacob Phillips (51:24.097)
Yeah.

Yeah, and everything's so equally timed too, whenever he does like those rhythmic things, which is really cool.

Eli Price (51:32.779)
Yeah, yeah, and he'll do these. He's one of those directors that really like, he knows what he wants. And so he doesn't do like all these different shots where you have to like edit together all these, oh, we need to see what works together. He kind of has a good vision. And so I think Polly Platt, one of the producers that we were talking about of Bottle Rocket, she was talking about, there's a scene where Dignan, one of the main characters, Oham Wilson,

looking down and Bob has left with the car and she's like, man, I really tried to convince Wes that we need a shot down, you know, seeing the empty spot, but he just wouldn't shoot it. He was like, no, I'm not, I'm not even going to shoot that because I don't want that. Yeah. So he just knows what he wants. And so he really doesn't do like a ton of different shots. He, he does these like tape, like two takes edits, which really like keeps you focused on the characters.

You're not like getting whiplash, you know looking around the scene So I really appreciate that about the editing and then he'll have these moments to one of the things the hell of is he'll have these moments of just like Most of the movie like we said just like these two-shot edits where you're getting you know You're kind of staying within these two shots in the scene But then you'll get these moments where like something frantic is happening like a chase or a fight

between some characters or something. And there'll be these really aggressive edits of like, cut, cut, cut, a lot is happening, very frantic. And then all of a sudden you'll, boom, pause, and you'll be on the still frame. And it's really, like, it can do two things. One of the things it does is it's really comedic. Like to have this thing going on, and then you kind of cut to a still frame, you pan to a still frame of these people watching, and it just pauses for a second.

Jacob Phillips (53:06.017)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (53:10.721)
Yeah.

Eli Price (53:30.115)
And it's funny. Like it's a funny, it's editing that is comedic, which is really incredible that like, it's not just like the writing that makes it funny, it's the way you edit it that makes it funny. And two, another thing it does is it can create like an emotional inertia. So like you with the characters through the way that they're cutting together these different frames, like you're building up this emotion, like there's a lot going on, oh my gosh, like.

Jacob Phillips (53:30.176)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (53:59.247)
Maybe it's adrenaline or maybe it's anger. And then all of a sudden, you stop. And you're left with this inertia of emotion that now you have to sit with it, along with the characters. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. And so, man, the editing, I look forward to talking about these different things that he's done with that.

Jacob Phillips (54:05.611)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (54:11.146)
Yeah, and ponder it and think about it and get that time to reflect on it, you know.

Eli Price (54:28.451)
But yeah, just real quick, you know, we all know the colors. The colors in his movies, they create moods and tones. As we get into each individual movie, we can talk about, you know, the costumes. You know, a lot of times a character will be connected to a color. You think about Gustav H. and in Grand Budapest, he's he's purple, like, yeah. And so.

Jacob Phillips (54:51.415)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (54:57.559)
You know, they one of the things that that I saw pointed out somewhere is that you you have these like brights kind of storybook sets and colors. And and then you have these dark themes and we'll get into that in a minute set on top of it. And it really. It really forces you as a viewer to reconcile those two things. There's this like bright.

Jacob Phillips (55:10.349)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (55:26.395)
beautiful world full of wonder, but yet there's these like dark things happening in it. And it forces you to kind of reconcile that darkness and light, that kind of like depression and cynicism with like hope. And so that's one of the things that I think hope and even humor, you know, how can this be both depressing and humorous at the same time? And it's not just in what's happening. It's in like.

Jacob Phillips (55:40.917)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (55:50.411)
Yeah.

Eli Price (55:55.823)
the colors too in the production design. So yeah, the only other thing that I wanted to highlight is just the music. He has a very distinctive kind of, he has a very distinctive like, I guess, scores and the way he uses music. He's,

Jacob Phillips (55:59.98)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (56:20.031)
Yeah.

Eli Price (56:24.479)
I think that's one of the big Scorsese influences is the needle drop. Man, Scorsese knows how to throw that needle drop and throw that pop song in to fit just right. And Wes, man, he's so good at it. You know, we've watched Bottle Rocket, both of us recently, and man, there's some moments where like that needle drops and you're just like, yes, this is the perfect song for this moment. But also like his scores, those kind of folksy, like Euro rock.

Jacob Phillips (56:27.573)
Oh yeah.

Jacob Phillips (56:33.89)
Definitely.

Jacob Phillips (56:46.11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (56:54.723)
like scores are just like, they just fit. And it's sort of like the colors. It kind of, it forces you to reconcile like what you see happening on screen with this kind of whimsical sound that you have going on behind it. Yeah, was there anything else you wanted to point out in that regard for his technique?

Jacob Phillips (56:58.763)
Yeah, definitely.

Jacob Phillips (57:07.276)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (57:15.538)
Yeah, it's just, you know, like you said with the colors, like everything and we'll talk more about it with the themes, but everything is just typically like very fantastical. And that comes out, you know, with and I think like the way that the movies are shot and the way that the production and set design and colors and all that. Like, it's not, I guess, it's not like realistic, quote unquote, you know, like you're you're literally just kind of looking in the fantasies of.

Eli Price (57:24.058)
Oh yeah.

Jacob Phillips (57:43.234)
the things that he wants to talk about and put on screen. And so, I think once you understand that and you're not like, because there's certain times where you watch a movie and you're like, a character would never do something like that. But like this is literally just what he wants you to see. This is what he likes. This is what he's wanting to do here. And so once you get that and grasp onto that, I think that it really unlocks a lot of his movies and you can just.

Eli Price (57:57.178)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (58:11.274)
sort of enjoy it just because it's like, yeah, this is like what Wes Anderson is enjoying as well, you know.

Eli Price (58:17.623)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna touch on that in just a minute. I think there's really something even more profound going on with that. We'll talk about that. But real quick, these themes, you talked about people will kind of say like, you've made that before, you've done that before. And I think that's, a lot of that has to do with his technique, but also like his themes. And really like,

Jacob Phillips (58:26.156)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (58:31.39)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (58:48.099)
All of his movies are essentially, like when you break it down to its very core, I feel like his movies are about flawed characters and flawed relationships, and what do you do with it? What do you do when you have one flawed person that is in a family with other flawed people, and they let all of their flaws out at each other?

Jacob Phillips (58:56.853)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (59:08.791)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:17.743)
You know, it's these misfits that like don't know where they are in life or maybe they do, but they're just like terrible at it or they're terrible at relating to other people. And yeah, it's like he drops them into this world, this beautiful, whimsical, you know, storybook world and he's like, you know, wreak havoc on this world, all these flawed characters.

Jacob Phillips (59:40.905)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (59:48.363)
Yeah, so I think that's what it really boils down to his movies, you know, we talked about they're not so much interested in plot as they are interested in the characters and And if there's like one thread that runs through all of his movies. I think it's that it's these it's this idea of what happens when flawed people interact with flawed people, you know,

Yeah, what was there? Are there any like major themes that you wanted to point out that you've seen?

Jacob Phillips (01:00:20.302)
I think there's really like, you know, we've talked a decent bit about it, because I think like the technique and the theme kind of they go together a lot. But there was something that he said in an interview once and like it didn't quite like I didn't really notice it. Like as far as like a common thread throughout his movies. But he mentions that there's always a shift in his movies. Like there's always something serious that happens typically.

Eli Price (01:00:28.949)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:00:44.999)
Mm.

Jacob Phillips (01:00:49.202)
in his movies that kind of not necessarily halts it, but like you kind of said, like brings about like the dark things that happen in this world. So like, you know, there's the moment in Roll Tenenbaums, there's the children's death scene and the Darjeeling Limited. There's a number of examples where there's just like, man, something like hits that's like not funny at all. Like, and you can't really find any humor in it.

Eli Price (01:00:49.484)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:01:16.304)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (01:01:19.554)
But yeah, it's interesting that he's able to make movies that are so whimsical, like you said, and so entertaining, but also that are dealing with such deep and really sometimes depressing ideas behind it.

Eli Price (01:01:36.355)
Yeah, yeah, and that's something, you know, that's also a threat is, you know, his movies, like really thematically are, are pretty dark. Um, he deals with, I mean, he deals with a lot of stuff. He, he, he, like, he doesn't shy away from anything. Nothing is like. You, you have this kind of storybook, uh, childlike perspective that's going on in his movies. Um, but it's kind of at the same time, you know, it's.

Jacob Phillips (01:01:57.686)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:05.615)
He's dealing with things like mental illness and depression and suicide and like childhood trauma. And it's not like something that like, you kind of have to interpret. It's like, it's right there in your face. And yeah, he kind of, I think he deals with this theme along those lines of, man, we're never really done growing up.

Jacob Phillips (01:02:07.815)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:02:16.82)
No, yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:02:33.058)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:33.751)
You know, a lot of his characters, what you'll see is, it's funny, you'll see this kind of flip where children kind of act like adults and the adults kind of act like children. And it's kind of like a funny way of emphasizing like, you know, the adults need to grow up, like we need to grow up too, right? And that's what ends up happening a lot of his movies is like, you know, these characters who...

Jacob Phillips (01:02:52.265)
Yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (01:03:00.451)
are adults, but acting like children in some ways, like have to have something happen where, you know, they really, I don't know, have to come to terms with who they are or what they've done, sort of thing. So yeah, it's, and it's, again, it's that idea of, that we talked about in his technique where you have like humor and hope, jokes deposed with darkness and cynicism.

Jacob Phillips (01:03:24.926)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:30.495)
And yeah, one of the things I saw too that I thought was cool about is just kind of a thread is it seems like all of his movies end to some degree in one way or another with like these flawed characters that we talked about like kind of reconciling in some way, whether it's like through forgiveness or just kind of like acceptance of some sort, which I think is something that, you know, we can start like kind of look for.

Jacob Phillips (01:03:48.178)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:00.471)
as we watch through these movies. Yeah, the only other thing that kind of stood out to me that I saw someone mention in an article or interview was that like his characters are walking contradictions. And I will up to that, I was like, man, I relate to that. I'm a walking contradiction for sure. And I think that's kind of going back to the...

Jacob Phillips (01:04:02.135)
Yeah, for sure.

Jacob Phillips (01:04:19.791)
Oh, yeah

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:28.859)
the idea of like his interest in characters, you know, that's why you can have, I don't know, he pulls off kind of the impossible in his movies. And I think that's why like, guys like Martin Scorsese and Jim Brooks, and guys like that have kind of said, you know, early on in Wes's career, they said, man, he has a unique voice. He's not just like going to have a good career, he but he has a unique voice. He's bringing a new voice.

Jacob Phillips (01:04:58.679)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:59.143)
to cinema. And I think, you know, you can talk about a lot of different ways he does that. But I think one of the main ways is his interest in the characters, you know, that's why you can have this really whimsical, humorous, like storybook world, and somehow like have these very direct interactions with darkness. And it doesn't feel

Jacob Phillips (01:05:11.638)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:05:29.999)
You know, that shouldn't work, right? That should be like, it should be like two cars in a collision, like, and it's just a wreck. But somehow it works. And I think the reason is because of his deep passion and care about who these people are. You know, you mentioned he, all of his characters are like kind of combinations of himself and his friends and people he's known in his life. And I think that really shows up because

Jacob Phillips (01:05:31.806)
Right, yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:05:38.903)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:05:47.233)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:59.383)
For me, at least, you know, obviously not everyone's going to connect with these movies. But for me, at least I connect with them because I look at these people and I'm like, these are real people. They might be saying like really funny things and very dry humor and like they're like set against this like weird, strange world that he's created to put them in.

Jacob Phillips (01:06:04.363)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:06:10.775)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:06:25.592)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:06:26.543)
But when something serious happens, it's like, I actually care. I'm like, man, I hate this for this character. Man, I really feel for them. I pity them, or whatever it may be. And I think that's the unique voice he brings. And I guess just kind of wrapping all of this up, wrapping up this segment on this kind of Wes Anderson establishing shot overview. You know?

Jacob Phillips (01:06:31.063)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:06:37.514)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:06:55.535)
That kind of brings me to this idea that I was wanting to talk about. I've just. He creates kind of these scale models of the world, I guess, is a way you could put it. There are these very precise, very detailed little scale models of, of this world. And he drops these flawed characters in them. And, you know,

Jacob Phillips (01:07:09.038)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:07:26.251)
So I guess the best way to explain this is by contradiction with like another way of doing filmmaking. So like I feel like a lot of directors and it works a lot of this works a lot of the time, but a lot of directors, what they'll do is they'll force you in to these characters lives. So you you know you they want to push you in. They want to you know shove the emotion down your throat. And a lot of times it works, you know.

Jacob Phillips (01:07:44.023)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:07:56.815)
I'll finish a movie and I'll look back and I'm like, man, why did I like ball at that movie? Like, they were really shoving it down my throat, but it still worked. You know, that can work. But I think what is interesting about what Wes Anderson does is he is not, he doesn't shy away from the fact that what I'm creating is artifice. It's something not real. It's something artificial. It's this kind of scale model.

Jacob Phillips (01:08:02.709)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:24.823)
of the world and I'm putting all these kind of broken pieces in it. And what we can do is we can hold it. It's almost like he's giving us, in an essay I wrote, read about kind of his movies, it's like he gives us this little world in a box and we can look at it and we can, in that essay he kind of talked about

Jacob Phillips (01:08:28.908)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:54.799)
A lot of times, kind of holding the world, a child holding the world in his hands, can see both like the vastness and detail of it and also like its tininess in the universe better than a man who has circumnavigated the globe. And I thought that was such a profound, just a profound statement of like, sometimes like we just need to be handed the world in a box.

Jacob Phillips (01:09:09.111)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:09:12.759)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:09:24.355)
so that we can hold our emotions and griefs and like, you know, feelings kind of like in our hands and look at them and see why is the world this way? You know, it's almost as if like, what Wes Anderson is doing is like, he like, all of us have this kind of like,

Jacob Phillips (01:09:40.489)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:09:53.719)
longing inside, this kind of deep knowledge that this, the world isn't the way it's supposed to be, you know? This is not how it's supposed to be. And we kind of have, we can kind of like pull these images of like this, I feel like this is the way it's supposed to be, this is the way it's supposed to be. And he kind of builds this like scale model of this world, but all the while knowing like

Jacob Phillips (01:10:12.011)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:10:21.839)
I can kind of pull together some remnants of how I think everything's supposed to be, but at the end of the day, like, it's artificial, and I'm going to be dropping these people in it that are real people, and they're going to, like, destroy it. But what it does is it lets us, like, hold it at arm's length and examine it. You know, turn it around. Look at, like, okay, I see some, like...

Jacob Phillips (01:10:25.943)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:10:34.126)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:51.763)
kind of like Pointers or like arrows to like this is how it should be and like these are some things That we've done in this world like this is this is like this Depression this is what this broken relationship has done This is what this has done in this world you can like hold it out here and look at it and say man like

Jacob Phillips (01:11:08.366)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:11:17.095)
you know, why is that? And maybe it doesn't give you any answers, but it gives you a way to to see it And to feel it and to experience it that's different than just like shoving you into a scene with with you know these melodramatic emotions, you know It's just a very different way of making art in general

Jacob Phillips (01:11:18.657)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:11:25.695)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:11:38.69)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (01:11:43.33)
Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's sort of kind of like, it's kind of like a mature children's book. Cause you know, children's books are designed to teach, the good ones at least, to teach children lessons and things about the world and things about, you know, friendships, relationships, love, and things like that. And his movies seem to be, you know, we talk about that childlike scale or that childlike perspective he has, and it's sort of like that, but like teaching us something.

Eli Price (01:11:52.187)
Sure.

Jacob Phillips (01:12:13.786)
about the world. I think what's so incredible about his movies, and this has kind of been brought up as we've been talking, but he makes fantastical and like sort of, like I said, like unrealistic movies, but the characters and the things that they go through and the things that they sort of experience, like despite it all being very whimsical, fantastical and stuff, it's also some of the most like real character, some of the most real characters that we'll see.

Eli Price (01:12:26.864)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:12:39.167)
Yes. They are like human. Yes. For sure.

Jacob Phillips (01:12:42.934)
Like in film, yeah. And he captures that so incredibly well, better than so many other filmmakers that try to do it, despite his like, his nature of making films, despite it being so unrealistic, if that makes sense. So it is that collision as you'd said earlier of doing almost the impossible of making something so unrealistic yet so real and.

and touching too at times.

Eli Price (01:13:13.675)
Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think a part of it is just like, you know, it's he's. Man, it's it's like. It's playing God in a sense, it's like, OK, I'm going to build this like beautiful world and then I'm going to drop these these people in there and see what happens. And it's, you know, not I don't mean playing God in like a bad way. It's it's more like.

Jacob Phillips (01:13:34.784)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:13:41.902)
Sure.

Eli Price (01:13:43.343)
in a creative way. I think we all have that quality in us of creating. And so he's creating these worlds. He's dropping these real people in them. And let's see what happens. And really, I feel like in most of his movies, you don't walk away saying, this is what he wanted me to take away.

Jacob Phillips (01:14:01.559)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:14:10.483)
He doesn't make those sort of movies. He's not really, I don't think he's really interested in that. He's just interested in, you know, what happens when we put these people in this world. And, and I think there's a degree to which like, you know, I really respect that because he, he's not dumbing things down for his audience. He doesn't need to tell you what to think about it. He's like, hey, this is something that's real that happens. These are real, real people with real things happening to them.

You know, you can take away your, you know, you're a person too. You can relate to it and you can, you can take it away what you need to. And, um, really there's a, I think too, like that childlike perspective, um, is a lot too, I think a lot of times, you know, I was talking about this kind of like longing and, uh, and the human heart or soul for, you know, the, the world to be how it was.

Jacob Phillips (01:14:45.096)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:15:10.603)
supposed to be or how it should be. And I think, you know, I think one of the reasons he makes these like storybook worlds that are from like almost a childlike perspective is because, you know, a lot of times children have a better vision of that perfect world than we do. We're too like cynical and weathered down.

from our life experience that we like lose vision of this like world as it should be. And children still have that. And so I think that's another element. You know, children are so innocent. They're experiencing the world. They're taking in things and just a totally different perspective that's full of wonder. And I think you see that in a lot of his characters. They have this

Jacob Phillips (01:15:45.411)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:16:06.995)
You're like, man, this character is really childlike. And in some ways, it's bad that they're childlike, obviously. But in other ways, it's like, man, but also they have a perspective that is good, a kind of hopeful perspective of the way things really should be in our world. So I don't know. That's just something that I think is like.

Jacob Phillips (01:16:14.487)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:16:24.331)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:16:35.791)
really cool about Wes Anderson with his filmmaking techniques and themes that are kind of like a thread that run through it. Not necessarily specific, but just a general, like what is he doing when he's making a movie sort of thing.

Jacob Phillips (01:16:49.826)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:16:54.103)
Yeah, so, yeah, I think what we'll do is wrap up this section on Wes. I hope everyone's enjoyed kind of listening to us ramble on for so long about Wes Anderson and who he is, what he does when he's making a movie. So, yeah, we'll take a quick break. And, yeah, when we come back.

We'll kind of wrap up with some closing segments that I think are going to be really fun. So yeah, I hope you'll stick around to see what we're going to do when we come back.

Eli Price (01:17:40.859)
Oh man, that went way long, but I think there's a really good discussion in there. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:17:44.974)
I think it was good. Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:51.099)
One thing I wish this had is like, I wish it had like somewhere, wait, there is.

Eli Price (01:18:00.303)
you can mark clips.

right there at a marker. Sweet. So I hit that a little late obviously but it'll be a general idea of where we need to be.

Jacob Phillips (01:18:05.742)
Let's go.

Eli Price (01:18:15.907)
Okay, and when we come back in, I'll be able to hit the marker again. So yeah, I think we'll kind of zoom through this movie news real quick. And we'll spend a little bit of time on the movie decades. Man.

Jacob Phillips (01:18:27.116)
Yeah, no.

Jacob Phillips (01:18:35.65)
How many are we drafting?

Eli Price (01:18:38.135)
Let's do this. We'll do, so just trying to think like.

Eli Price (01:18:51.625)
really 10.

like 10 or 11 we can pull from really. Like let's do, yeah. Let's, I'll take a jockey riding a horse, eight seconds of jockey riding a horse, please. From 1898.

Jacob Phillips (01:19:00.078)
I'm gonna take the 1890s.

Eli Price (01:19:16.155)
Uh, yeah, so let's do, let's do four decades each. So, um, yeah. Um, and, uh, you're the, you're the guest. So.

Jacob Phillips (01:19:21.995)
Yeah, I think that's good.

Jacob Phillips (01:19:27.098)
Sweet, I'll take the 1900s for a trip to the moon.

Eli Price (01:19:35.119)
I really, I'm pulling up my letterbox stats because I meant to do some research on this beforehand, but I totally forgot, man. So, oops.

Jacob Phillips (01:19:38.91)
Yeah, that's what I'm doing too.

Eli Price (01:19:53.679)
I think I do know what I want to draft first.

Hopefully you don't take it, because if you do, I'm going to be all thrown off. Okay.

Eli Price (01:20:11.247)
Alright, I don't really have anything profound to say about Beaux Afraid. I'm just like, what is going on? I think, I don't think we really have to say a whole lot about it other than just like, what in the world is happening here? Um...

Jacob Phillips (01:20:17.282)
Yeah, there's some.

Jacob Phillips (01:20:24.044)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:28.983)
Yeah, let's do this. Let's, um.

Eli Price (01:20:35.367)
Let me pull up.

Here we go. I have some Mario stats pulled up.

So I have that ready.

Eli Price (01:20:51.639)
Okay, I'm gonna hit a marker.

and then bring us back in.

Eli Price (01:21:00.871)
Alright, 3, 2, 1.

Eli Price (01:21:07.887)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Establishing Shot. I'm still here with Jacob. And yeah, if you are interested in other podcasts, Jacob is actually a seasoned podcaster for what? How many episodes have you all made of the Committed Football Guys?

Jacob Phillips (01:21:30.978)
I think we just, yeah, the Committed Football guys, we're a dynasty fantasy football podcast. If that piques your interest at all, go ahead and check us out. I think we've done, we just recorded our ninth or 10th. So pretty excited. We've been having a lot of fun with that. So you can check us out on Twitter at CFG pod. So.

Eli Price (01:21:55.331)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, me and Jacob are in way too many fantasy football leagues together. So that's something else about us. That's probably pretty informative of, you know, we're football nerds and movie nerds. So there you go. But yeah, if you're interested in fantasy football at all, Jacob and a couple other guys that we know do a great job.

Jacob Phillips (01:22:02.262)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (01:22:23.483)
with that podcast, so go check that out, the Committed Football Guys podcast. But yeah, I wanted to do a few more fun segments, so we're going to do some movie news in a second, and then we're going to do a segment that we're going to do pretty much every week is a movie draft of some sort or another, so we have something fun planned there.

Eli Price (01:22:53.147)
recommendations of the week. And so yeah, so movie news. So our day of recording, we're recording on April 19th, so you know some different things might have come out since we recorded when this finally releases, but man I have seen so much about this

Bo is afraid movie. I don't know what's going on with it. It's all over the place.

Jacob Phillips (01:23:23.028)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:23:27.506)
Yeah, I don't get it either. I don't know if this is like marketing is part of it or what, because it seems like from all the quotes from Ari Aster and just people who have seen it, it seems so confusing and conflicting. It feels like marketing to me. But man, there's like...

Eli Price (01:23:33.924)
I don't know.

Eli Price (01:23:38.693)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:23:46.099)
Yeah. Yeah, the Ari Aster quotes are for sure marketing. Because I wish I would have pulled up some of the quotes, but you can just go Google when you get done listening. Go Google like, what has Ari Aster said about Bo is afraid, and you will read the most bizarre things you have ever read in your entire life. I mean,

Jacob Phillips (01:23:51.732)
Yeah.

Hehehe

Jacob Phillips (01:24:03.799)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:24:08.716)
It's so true. But yeah, there's like visceral reactions to the movie so far in screenings, which is like.

Eli Price (01:24:14.847)
Yeah. Yeah, people are like standing up and like cursing out Ari Aster from, you know, from across the country. You know, it it's it's just so bizarre. You know, I don't have anything profound to say about it. I just wanted to ask you and our listeners like what is happening? Like, oh, man.

Jacob Phillips (01:24:20.738)
I'm sorry.

Jacob Phillips (01:24:25.206)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:24:40.202)
Yeah, no, it's a good question because I have no idea what's happening either, but I'll definitely it's definitely piqued my interest. Like I'm definitely I was already excited about it, but now I'm like, all right, I have to see this. So.

Eli Price (01:24:48.699)
Right.

Yeah, have you seen any of his other films? He has two. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:24:54.474)
I actually haven't, I'm not a big horror guy and that's kind of like what he dwells in.

Eli Price (01:24:59.799)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've seen hereditary It's it's a very good movie I have not seen Midsommar Midsommar. However, you say it I've heard it said like several different ways I have not seen that yet Heard great things. I just haven't seen it So yeah, you know, I just I don't know what to think about this movie if it's This is all marketing. It's one of the most brilliant marketing campaigns

Jacob Phillips (01:25:05.665)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:25:13.438)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:25:32.862)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:33.079)
maybe since Blair Witch Project. Because I am very intrigued. But yeah, the other thing in our movie news segment that I wanted to bring up is just like the phenomenon that is the Super Mario Brothers movie. Yeah, have you been able to, you haven't seen it yet, have you? Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:25:50.869)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:25:55.922)
No, I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet, but everyone I know that's seen it is like really giving it like a really solid review. And so it's definitely one that I wanna see, obviously like any kid, I loved Super Mario Brothers and all the games and stuff growing up. So it's definitely one that I wanna get around to seeing just cause it seems like it's a pretty faithful, I don't know if adaptations the word since it spans so much.

Eli Price (01:26:02.523)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:26:22.495)
I mean, yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:26:23.69)
but faithful rendering of these characters that we've loved for so long.

Eli Price (01:26:30.359)
Yeah, yeah, I took it's actually my son has seen like a film at a theater before, but it wasn't like a new movie. It was like kind of a church group saw like the Grinch and he was like to and he went with us. And so, you know, he's been to the theater before, but this was like his first like Going to the movies to see a new movie. Experience and man, he was excited.

Jacob Phillips (01:26:39.592)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (01:27:02.116)
And I was watching it as someone that grew up playing Mario games. You know, we had an NES and so like it was a cartridge that had Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt and some like running game. It came with like a, I never played that one, but I played Duck Hunt and Mario all the time. So like I grew up playing these games and so it's fun.

Jacob Phillips (01:27:05.538)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:27:21.887)
Oh yeah, classic.

Eli Price (01:27:28.371)
It was fun just seeing them on screen. Like obviously like the movie itself like is just kind of like, there's not a whole lot going on with it. And so, you know, I went and saw my son was so excited. He plays every once in a while, I'll pull up my phone, the Mario Kart app, and like he'll watch me do a race. He's four, so, you know, he's not like doing it himself or anything, but he like...

Jacob Phillips (01:27:37.398)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:27:49.718)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:27:56.815)
He's like, Daddy, can we watch a race? Can I watch you race or whatever? And so like, he knows all the characters. That's what he knows the Mario characters from. And so he was just so excited to see this movie and like eat some popcorn and yeah. Yeah, he was, man, he was excited. We might hear from him in a minute if I can get him in here and record his little movie review.

Jacob Phillips (01:28:00.587)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:28:12.621)
Oh yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:28:20.75)
That'd be awesome.

Jacob Phillips (01:28:26.583)
Definitely.

Eli Price (01:28:27.355)
But we'll have to see how that goes. But yeah, I think the thing I wanted to bring up though is just like, man, this is like doing incredible in the box office. Like I have some stats pulled up here. It's the highest grossing debut of 2023 so far. Like it passed Ant-Man and Wasp, Quantumania.

Jacob Phillips (01:28:39.883)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:28:53.783)
It's the biggest five day opening of all time. Yeah, so there's there. It opened Easter weekend, so it released actually on Wednesday. So there's movies that have like a bigger opening weekend that weren't five day opening weekends, obviously. But yeah, it's the it's the biggest one that's ever opened as like a five day weekend. And so like it.

Jacob Phillips (01:28:57.272)
Oh wow.

Jacob Phillips (01:29:10.54)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:29:22.851)
You know, it's nowhere near like Avengers in game or anything like that. But those didn't have five day weekends. Um, yeah, it's, um, it's the second biggest debut for an animated movie, uh, above finding Dory and just behind Incredibles two, which is really incredible. And it's the highest grossing debut for video game adaptation ever. Um,

Jacob Phillips (01:29:28.587)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (01:29:40.323)
Mm. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:29:49.074)
Yeah. And that's one of the things I was pretty happy with that. One, it's gotten a lot of really good reviews. And I feel like we've been on a run of either remakes or different IP coming to the screen for the first time or for another time. And it's just been a flop or it's just not been done well. And so I was happy to see that this is like, because it's an IP that so many people.

Eli Price (01:30:05.34)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:30:13.499)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:30:18.118)
love and adore and so like for them to make like an actually good movie with it, it's pretty exciting.

Eli Price (01:30:19.739)
Right.

Eli Price (01:30:25.951)
Yeah, yeah, and it's funny because like, if I didn't have the childhood growing up like playing these games and like having a nostalgic connection to the characters, like honestly, like it's probably not a good movie, but people are enjoying it because there's so many people that have a connection to these characters, you know, and not just like, you know.

Jacob Phillips (01:30:41.57)
Hehehehe

Jacob Phillips (01:30:48.172)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:30:53.191)
Gen Xers and Millennials, but like the next-gen, like they're still making great Mario games. Like everyone knows Mario and like its global releases is just huge. Like internationally it's even, it's doing even better. It's actually, you know, I mentioned that those were the domestic stats. It's actually the second biggest animated opening internationally of all time behind Frozen 2.

Jacob Phillips (01:30:59.5)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:31:21.387)
And I think it's I think it might even be projected to to pass. I don't know. At this point, we might know, like, did it pass it or not? I'm not sure. But yeah, it's projected to hit that one billion mark, which is like a big deal. But yeah, I guess like with all that said, like. I don't know, like, how do you feel about?

Jacob Phillips (01:31:32.896)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:31:48.967)
Because with this movie doing this well, we're going to get some more Mario movies. How do you feel about, I don't know, just the idea of these IPs getting, like, doing so well and kind of the idea of making mediocre movies based on IPs because they make money. Do you have any opinions on that? Or do you just, like, I don't care.

Jacob Phillips (01:31:53.546)
Yeah, for sure.

Jacob Phillips (01:32:17.037)
Yeah.

Like I know, like I do and I don't, because it's like this has just kind of been like the wave for Hollywood for a little bit now. But like my only hope or you know, what I would like for them to do, and I think I've mentioned this to you before, but like if they were able to make, because they are gonna make sequels of course, with this movie doing as well as it has done, if they were to make.

Eli Price (01:32:22.823)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (01:32:41.997)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:32:46.246)
movies like sort of based around some of the games, but also like do it in sort of like a Shrek style of like spoofing some of the tropes for whatever. So like, you know, if they did like a Mario Kart movie, they could, you know, make fun of Fast and Furious and they could, you know, they could figure out a Dr. Mario movie and make fun of like all like the the hospital drama shows and stuff that we've seen.

Eli Price (01:33:02.027)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:33:09.003)
Yeah, I mean you've got Louise Louise's Mansion Stuff to do some horror stuff. Yeah. Yeah, they can do some fun stuff with it. Yeah, I'm I don't know for a lot of these I'm just kind of like man. Can we just like Do something original for once and stuff like all these because we you know, we live in Lafayette, Louisiana Jacob and I and

Jacob Phillips (01:33:12.644)
Yeah, you could do so much.

Jacob Phillips (01:33:27.042)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:33:36.743)
Our theaters will not show... If they show something like... Like I remember TAR showed and I was like, I've got to go this week and go see TAR. Because it did, it lasted a week in theaters and then it was gone and they just don't show like those sorts of movies. Like, but I promise you Mario Brothers movie will be in theaters for like three months here. Um, like we don't have an art house.

Jacob Phillips (01:33:45.463)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:34:00.884)
Yeah, no for sure.

Eli Price (01:34:05.223)
theater to watch some indie films. I remember Top Gun showed here for, I mean, I think it showed all of last year. Like once it hit theaters, it didn't leave. It didn't leave probably until like maybe February or March. Yeah. So yeah, so yeah, that's really all I have. I just wanted to see if you had any opinions. I don't have a strong opinion on it. I'm just kind of like,

Jacob Phillips (01:34:07.388)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (01:34:13.298)
Yeah, no for sure. It didn't leave, no.

Jacob Phillips (01:34:20.992)
It was crazy.

Eli Price (01:34:34.575)
At least it's Mario. I like Mario. It's hard to not like Mario. At least it's something new. Marvel fatigue is a real thing. Star Wars fatigue is becoming a thing for a lot of people, including me, which is terrible to say, because I love Star Wars. But I'm.

Jacob Phillips (01:34:36.235)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:34:51.034)
Oh yeah, 100%.

Jacob Phillips (01:34:57.522)
Yeah, including myself as well.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:03.927)
Yeah, at the very least, at least it's a new IP that's going to start doing something. So maybe we'll get some Mario fatigue in the future. We'll have to wait and see. But yeah, that's all I have for movie news. Yeah, we're going to move into our movie draft. So just a quick... Like I said, me and Jacob love fantasy football, so we like doing...

Drafts of players and whatnot, but I thought it would be a fun segment to do each week some sort of movie draft So, you know, we'll probably do some things like draft some movie years like we'll go back and forth and pick Movies from like I don't know 1999 and or something like that And you know, we'll probably put up polls on all the socials. So that's

Jacob Phillips (01:35:33.706)
Absolutely.

Jacob Phillips (01:35:50.19)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:35:57.979)
You the listener can decide who drafted the best group of movies But I thought we'd start off with something way more general like extremely general and we're gonna draft movie decades And so I don't mean like drafting movies from decades. I mean you're drafting the whole decade So if you pick the 2000s, you're drafting all the movies in the 2000s

And so this will be a fun way to kind of get an idea of our tastes in movies. We'll maybe highlight like two or three movies from that decade that really make it worth taking. So Jacob, you're the guest. I'm gonna let you start off. What decade are you taking? Please don't take the one I want first. I'm gonna be so upset.

Jacob Phillips (01:36:41.858)
So, well, I love many movies from this decade. And again, this is just, you know, I don't know if like, I don't know what's considered like the best movie decade of all time or whatever, but I think it's because it's so close to when I was born. I'm gonna go ahead and draft the 1990s.

Eli Price (01:37:08.263)
Woof. I'm very relieved. Yeah. Yeah. So highlight some of the movies from the nineties.

Jacob Phillips (01:37:11.543)
I love. Yeah, so this is like kind of when like the Coen brothers who are like probably my favorite directors, like they've put out some amazing movies this this decade. You have Fargo, you have the Big Lebowski, which are two phenomenal movies. Shawshank was released in 94 Reservoir Dogs. So the start of Tarantino and Heat is a recent movie that I.

Eli Price (01:37:26.457)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:37:37.686)
recently watched and absolutely blew me away. It's awesome. And then probably my last one that I'll mention is like Goodfellas, which was 1990 when it was released. So there's just a bunch of like really, really fun and good movies. And it's coming out of a decade from the eighties, which is just like so weird and zany. And this seems like a return to like moviemaking, I guess.

Eli Price (01:37:46.221)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:37:56.967)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:00.779)
Yeah, yeah, there's some great I have my letterbox pulled up sorting by, you know, my highest rated like 1999 is considered, you know, one of the best movie years. And you have like, I have some five stars in there, like the Matrix and actually like spoiler alert Rushmore from the Wes Anderson series. I love 90s movie, the Iron Giant Man such an

Jacob Phillips (01:38:07.252)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:38:13.633)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:38:18.335)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:38:28.931)
It's just a great animated movie, but then you have like some stuff like the Thin Red Line From Malik and Pulp Fiction 7 You got you got some of the Disney greats like Lion King Beauty and the Beast There's some great stuff in here So yeah, that's a good. That's a good pick and it but it is not The one that I wanted and so I'm so happy

Jacob Phillips (01:38:30.67)
classic.

Jacob Phillips (01:38:55.554)
Go ahead.

Eli Price (01:38:56.871)
to draft the 1970s. Man, it's just some incredible films in the 70s. Of course, I grew up a huge Star Wars fan, so you have the original Star Wars, or like A New Hope as we know it now. But you have Jaws, what I think is Spielberg's best movie. You've got Rocky, just a great.

Jacob Phillips (01:38:59.116)
Nice.

Jacob Phillips (01:39:02.857)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:39:25.575)
classic Stallone You have the original alien Just alien is just such a good thriller You've got some Coppola and Apocalypse Now Godfather Godfather part two I Mean it's just you can go on and on you've got taxi driver from Scorsese You've got Days of Heaven from Malik

Jacob Phillips (01:39:53.538)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:39:54.311)
And then like two that I've seen kind of in the last year, year and a half from Tarkovsky, Stalker and Solaire's are two just like incredibly poetic and like profound films that I've grown to love. Yeah, it's just a fantastic decade in movies. I think it might be my favorite decade, at least like with what I've seen so far. Yeah, so that's...

Jacob Phillips (01:40:03.574)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:40:21.966)
Sure. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:24.408)
We're going to, I think we're going to draft four decades each. So go ahead and make your next pick. We might need to speed these up.

Jacob Phillips (01:40:30.586)
Yeah, I'll go ahead and draft and again, probably recency bias, but I love the 2010s. 2010, it's just got a bunch of, I mean, just absolute studs of movies. So like in my own personal like top 10, like La La Land, you have Moneyball is one of my favorite movies, Lady Bird, Mad Max Fury Road.

Eli Price (01:40:38.245)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:40:59.234)
just some like really, really iconic already, iconic movies, Dunkirk as well on there, Birdman, we mentioned that earlier, Nightcrawler, Ex Machina. There's just a bunch of like really, really fun and good movies throughout that. And I think part of why I love this decade so much is that this is kind of like right when, the middle of this decade is when I really started becoming like a real like cinephile. And so, a lot of these movies shape

Eli Price (01:41:13.391)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:27.769)
Right.

Jacob Phillips (01:41:29.948)
you know, kind of how I view cinema and stuff like that.

Eli Price (01:41:33.783)
Yeah, this would have definitely been my next choice. So I'm a little upset. I got the 70s, but this would have been my next choice. And it's similar. It's not, there probably are some better decades, like objectively, but this was like when I really started growing a passion for movies. And I have some like just all time favorites in here, like the tree of life. It's not for everyone, but man, that's, it's just.

Jacob Phillips (01:41:38.35)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:41:45.806)
Sure. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:41:58.007)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:42:03.267)
When I watched The Tree of Life, I was like, I've never seen anything like this before. And so, but then, you know, you've got Grand Budapest, you know, we're doing our West series, Mad Max Fury Road. I mean, just an incredible, maybe the best action film ever made. Parasite, you know, one of the Academy Finally Got It Right examples, you know.

Jacob Phillips (01:42:12.824)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:42:28.575)
Definitely.

Eli Price (01:42:30.999)
Interstellar which is probably my favorite Chris Nolan movie Yeah, it's some good ones The wind rises is a Miyazaki that I love Silence by Scorsese one of my favorite Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I'm gonna go next with This is really hard

Jacob Phillips (01:42:43.22)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:42:54.935)
I think I'm gonna go 80s. You know, you talked about it being a zany decade, but man, I've got some movies that I really like from this decade. I mean, you have a lot of like, I think the 80s, the blockbusters really started getting going. But man, there's some good ones like, you know, I love My Neighbor Totoro. Like, I will...

Jacob Phillips (01:42:57.599)
Nice.

Jacob Phillips (01:43:04.28)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:22.471)
put on My Neighbor Totoro by Miyazaki and just smile the whole time. Like there's some sad parts, but like, man, it just makes me smile. Empire Strikes Back. So I get the two best Star Wars movies, you know. The King of Comedy is one of my favorite Scorsese's. Paris, Texas is a movie I feel like a lot of people don't know about by Wim Wenders, but that's an incredible movie.

Jacob Phillips (01:43:41.644)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:51.683)
Do the Right Thing, 1989, Spike Lee's masterpiece, Raging Bull, another great Scorsese. You get Die Hard. I mean, come on, Die Hard. And then even like one of my favorite documentaries of all time, the concert film Stop Making Sense that covers the talking heads, David Byrne. I love that. That one makes me smile too, if you've never seen.

stop making sense, just go watch it and watch the phenomena that is David Byrne, like do magic on a stage. But yeah, 1980s. So I've got the 70s and 80s. Where are you going next?

Jacob Phillips (01:44:27.644)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:44:31.542)
Yeah, well that was that was gonna be my next pick. Just a couple movies I love from that era of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Top Gun, talking about two blockbusters, you know, The Shining is excellent. The Princess Bride, forever underrated, but I feel like is such a fun movie. But I'll go ahead and I'll take like a...

Eli Price (01:44:44.773)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:44:54.016)
Oh yeah, yeah, that's true.

Jacob Phillips (01:44:59.122)
Even though I haven't seen a lot of movies from this decade, I really respect this decade and I'll go with the 60s.

Eli Price (01:45:07.067)
Hmm, yeah. Yeah, that's a great choice.

Jacob Phillips (01:45:09.986)
There's so many just like iconic movies. The first four that are listed on Letterboxd for the 60s are, it's 2001, A Space Odyssey, Psycho, Dr. Strangelove, and Rosemary's Baby. And so like those are four, the graduates on there as well, Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia, West Side Story, Lolita, Mary Poppins, Fistful Adult, like there's just.

Eli Price (01:45:21.274)
Right.

Eli Price (01:45:36.155)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:45:37.442)
on and on just like these iconic movies that, you know, as you get more into movies, you just hear about over and over that like these are classics that you have to watch. So I'm going to go ahead and pick them.

Eli Price (01:45:47.631)
Yeah. And I mean, you've even got a yes. All right. You've even got on. I mean, those French New Wave were like super influential just to world cinema. You know, I caught up with a lot of 60s movies recently just from film spotting does like a film spotting podcast does a, you know, a tournament, March Madness kind of tournament with movie decades. And they did the 60s this year. And so I caught up with a lot of these a great decade.

Jacob Phillips (01:45:54.687)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:46:02.657)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:46:08.983)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:46:18.019)
Um, yeah, so my, uh, my, we're on the third, our third choice, right? So my third decade, um, it's probably a similar choice, um, to, to where you went with, like, I haven't seen a ton of these, but I respect it as, uh, the fifties. Um, you know, just some that I've seen that are, that are incredible movies, uh, seven samurai by Kurosawa. And then you got singing in the rain.

Jacob Phillips (01:46:23.49)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:46:35.307)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:46:45.087)
Gotta love it. 12 Angry Men is great. You've got some really good Disney and Cinderella, Al's from Wonderland. A lot of really good musicals. Funny Face is one that I love with Hepburn and Fred Astaire. But yeah, well, Godzilla. Man, great movie, Godzilla. The original.

Jacob Phillips (01:46:52.813)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:47:01.172)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:14.927)
But yeah, I think I would pick this decade because there's a lot in this decade that I really wanna get to. There's a lot of great Hitchcock in this decade. Hitchcock is a huge blind spot. I've only seen a couple. And yeah, I would love to catch up with some Hitchcock and some more Ingmar Bergman, some more Kurosawa in the 50s. Yeah, there's a lot of great movies in the 50s that I need to catch up with. So I'll take it, I guess.

Jacob Phillips (01:47:21.463)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:47:28.587)
Yeah, I'm the same way.

Jacob Phillips (01:47:44.542)
Yeah, good choice. So this one is, you know, we talk about, we talk that we love fantasy football. Eli and I, we both know how you can fall in love with a prospect's potential. So I'm gonna go with the 2020s, why not? We're only three years in, but we've got some absolute amazing movies like Morbius, Black, I'm just kidding. No, but there really has been some really good movies that have come out of this.

Eli Price (01:47:45.263)
What's your last pick?

Eli Price (01:48:02.179)
Hehehehehehe

Eli Price (01:48:07.939)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:48:14.306)
though so many movies it seems like are attached to IP, but like the new take on the Batman, you have everything everywhere all at once. The Banshees of Inishearin, which I loved. Bullet Train is a really fun turn your brain off movie if you haven't seen it. Licorice Pizza was really fun. Tick, tick, boom, you got Tar. There's already been some pretty solid movies to come out of this decade already. And then...

Eli Price (01:48:24.003)
Yeah, great movie.

Eli Price (01:48:32.135)
Hehehe

Jacob Phillips (01:48:43.174)
July 21st of this year, we got Barbie, we got Oppenheimer coming out. And so I'm really pumped for those movies especially. And then one of the biggest movies of all time and Top Gun Maverick as well, coming out this decade. You know, so save the movie theaters.

Eli Price (01:48:47.796)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:53.211)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:58.219)
That's true, yeah. Saved the movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love the idea of drafting for the potential, you know, there's there's some upside there to that draft. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:49:10.378)
Yeah, or we can look back and it's just like, oh, it's just all MCU and Mario Brothers movies.

Eli Price (01:49:16.703)
Yeah, it very well could be. Man, my last pick, I'm struggling, man, because there's three decades I'm looking at and they're they're very much so like I have a few that I really like, but also a lot to catch up on. And I think the biggest thing I'm struggling with is between the 20s and 30s. Here's the reason. I love I love.

Jacob Phillips (01:49:31.435)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:49:40.831)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:49:46.515)
Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin movies. I've caught up with a lot of those in the past like couple years and man I love them, but like a lot of the good Keaton is in the 20s and a lot of the good Chaplin is in the early 30s and I'm like, I just don't know what to pick but I think I'm gonna go ahead and just go with the 30s I'm just kind of looking through I mean Chaplin you got modern times and city lights are just like

Jacob Phillips (01:50:07.406)
Do it.

Eli Price (01:50:15.643)
great Chaplin movies. You know, it draft in this decade, you get a little bit of versatility between, you know, I've got 50s, 70s, 80s. And you know, you got movies, movies were pretty trucking by then. But in this in this era, you're still like, it's still like really close to the tone of cinema. And so you have people doing some crazy stuff, you've still got silent films.

Jacob Phillips (01:50:37.847)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:50:43.035)
and that slapstick from Chaplin, but you're also like starting to get like the Wizard of Oz and Movies like M you've got like the monster movies Which like I caught up with Frankenstein last year Frankenstein is just it's so good but you've also got like John Ford coming on the scene with stagecoach and And stuff like that. So yeah, I'll take oh, yeah top hat great movie

Jacob Phillips (01:50:48.359)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:50:54.177)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:51:09.599)
This top hat is so fun. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers. Great movie. So, yeah, I'll take the 30s for my last one. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy. Yeah. So I ended with the 70s, the 80s, the 50s and the 30s. What did you end up with, Jacob?

Jacob Phillips (01:51:18.494)
Nice, nice.

Jacob Phillips (01:51:29.382)
I ended up with the nineties, the 2010s, the sixties and the twenties, the 2020s.

Eli Price (01:51:38.295)
Yeah, the 2020s, the decade of potential. Yeah, so. Yeah, so yeah, we'll probably put a poll out on all the socials after the episode releases so that you can all vote on who has the best four decades, me or Jacob. And, you know, feel free to let us know too, some that we left out that you think was just an atrocity.

Jacob Phillips (01:51:42.562)
The Roaring 20s.

Jacob Phillips (01:52:00.001)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:52:08.847)
Maybe you just love the 20s or 40s or you know, we didn't draft the 2000s. Maybe Yeah, so so maybe you think the 2000s is It's just an atrocity that we left that out. But um, yeah, let us know This that was really fun. I look forward to doing some fun different sorts of movie drafts in the future But yeah, we're gonna close out with some very quick

Jacob Phillips (01:52:14.986)
Yeah, we didn't draft the 2000s.

Eli Price (01:52:38.919)
I think I'm going to hold this up if you're listening to the podcast. You're not going to be able to see it, but Jacob actually looked at it earlier today, we were together. This it's easy for me to pick my recommendation for this week because we're starting the Wes Anderson series. And I picked up this Wes Anderson collection book from Matt Zoller Sites.

Jacob Phillips (01:52:47.604)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:53:06.363)
And he's a good friend of Wes Anderson, and he compiled this book. This one covers Bottle Rocket through Moonrise Kingdom. And it's really cool. It has a ton of just like shots and frames and storyboards and fun stuff to look at in it. But also for each movie he has an essay and then a long interview with Wes Anderson. So you really get some insight into his movies. So.

Jacob Phillips (01:53:09.14)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Phillips (01:53:19.938)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:53:28.235)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:53:31.971)
He has this one, this one covers those movies that I said, but he also, he's been coming out with one as new movies released. So there's one for Grand Budapest, there's one for Isle of Dogs. There's one that I think is releasing later this year for French Dispatch. So yeah, really cool, really cool book. I guess that's my recommendation of the week as we start off this Wes Anderson series. What do you got, Jacob?

Jacob Phillips (01:53:56.587)
Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:53:57.943)
It can be anything. I recommended a book. Maybe you want to recommend a good meal you had. You know, it can, whatever you want to recommend, what you got.

Jacob Phillips (01:54:06.242)
So mine's gonna be sort of an activity, I guess. So I've been in the gym a little bit more recently and there's something that most people should do, which is cardio. I absolutely hate cardio personally. And so the way that I've been able to get through my cardio is I will have some of the streaming services that I'm subscribed to on my phone and I'll just throw on a movie and get through 10.

Eli Price (01:54:10.402)
Okay.

Jacob Phillips (01:54:34.102)
15 minutes on the StairMaster, get a good walk in on the treadmill. And so I've been able to watch a bunch of movies recently just through doing cardio at the gym. So I highly recommend it if you are like me and you hate cardio. Obviously if you're running outside and stuff like that, it's kind of hard to do to run and hold your phone. Yeah, I would agree don't do that. But if you are doing your cardio in the gym, highly recommend watching movies while you do it.

Eli Price (01:54:38.385)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:54:44.878)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:54:53.738)
Yeah, don't run and watch. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:03.927)
Okay, now are you watching new movies that you've never seen before? Or are you watching like old movies that you like?

Jacob Phillips (01:55:07.838)
Yeah, there's kind of a mix. I haven't been watching movies where like, okay, I need to sit down and watch this and pay attention to, but I got through the old Rocky movies. I'd never seen them before. So I'll watch some of that. And then some other, I just recently finished Speed, Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, some action there. So kind of movies like that. Yeah, not like the...

Eli Price (01:55:18.407)
Sure, okay.

Eli Price (01:55:24.192)
Okay, yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:30.791)
I gotcha. Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:55:37.354)
Not like the movies that I'm like, oh, I really need to like sit down and watch with like a notebook.

Eli Price (01:55:43.959)
Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, well, yeah, as we close out, Jacob, why don't you let us know where we can find you on social media and maybe anything else you wanted to plug real quick before we end the show.

Jacob Phillips (01:56:06.294)
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at Philly Tweetin. So that's tweeting, but without the G, P-H-I-L-L-Y-T-W-E-E-T-I-N. And you can follow our podcast, the Committed Football Guys podcast on there as well, at CFGpod. We're both pretty active on there, as far as with fantasy football content, but I'll probably gonna be doing some more movie.

content as well with more updates and movies like, you know, I mentioned Barbie, Oppenheimer, and then Bo is afraid coming out. So yeah, you can find me on there and you can find if you're interested in some dynasty fantasy football talk. Yeah. Check out our podcast.

Eli Price (01:56:42.203)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:56:48.567)
Yeah. And you're on Letterboxd too. Letterboxd is a great app for kind of, it's like a movie social media. It's great. You can have a diary, log your movies, write reviews, read other people's reviews, make lists.

Jacob Phillips (01:56:52.224)
Yes.

Jacob Phillips (01:56:57.762)
Yeah.

Jacob Phillips (01:57:04.49)
Yeah, so you can find me on there. Yeah, I do all of that. I like to log my movies and write either a full review or sometimes if the movie's just too good, I'll just write like a one sentence sort of thing. But it's sentence.

Eli Price (01:57:19.211)
Or one word, I just saw you wrote sheesh for heat. You watched heat and your reaction, your review was sheesh. Yeah. Ha ha.

Jacob Phillips (01:57:22.675)
Yeah, yeah, he-

Yeah, it was that. Like if you watch it, you'll understand. So yeah, it's Cinephil, someone last name Philips. My nickname is Philly. So yeah, C-I-N-E-P-H-I-L-L, Cinephil on letterbox.

Eli Price (01:57:44.279)
Awesome. Well, it's been great having you on and spoiler alert, Jacob will be joining us for episode two when we cover bottle rocket. So you can look forward to hearing his voice again. But we have gone on for way too long. I didn't envision this podcast being this long, but I really think we had some great content. It was good to do a big overview of Wes Anderson.

Jacob Phillips (01:57:54.422)
Yes.

Jacob Phillips (01:58:02.402)
Hehehe

Jacob Phillips (01:58:12.49)
Yeah, he deserves it.

Eli Price (01:58:14.515)
and have a little fun after the fact. So I had some fun drafting those movie decades. So we are going to leave you here and I hope you enjoy the show and we will see you next week for a Bottle Rocket.