The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Interview
November 12, 2024/ 98 min/ Sean Fennessy · Adam Nayman
Sean Fennessy and Adam Nayman on Warner Bros. burying Clint Eastwood's 'Juror No. 2' in 38 theaters, then a Mount Rushmore of Clint roles. After that Sean reviews 'Heretic' and talks with its writer-directors, Scott Beck and Brian Woods.
57 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The Curious Case of ‘Juror No. 2’Sean Fennessy & Adam Nayman on Clint's near-buried courtroom drama
A recovering-alcoholic juror realizes he may have caused the death the defendant is on trial for. Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland; a 12 Angry Men riff that ends on Collette at the door and cuts before she speaks. Warner Bros. put it in fewer than 50 theaters with no wide plan, the crime Nayman finds Warner guilty of.
Cited against the studio's logic: a bona fide original hit Eastwood drew audiences to in his late 80s.
The late-Clint Nayman likes, and the closest cousin to Juror No. 2: another man wrongly caught in the machinery of an institution.
Same template: a man put on trial by the institution he served, seeking restitution.
Nayman's least favorite of the run; he'll grant the second unit the battle scenes but not the moral center.
The weird spiritual doppelganger of American Sniper, and to Nayman the better version of the story.
Nayman's dissent on the anointed early-2000s Clint: he thinks it sucks and hasn't held up.
The last time Sean, Nayman, and Chris Ryan gathered to talk Clint, and, at $30 million, wrongly written off as a waste.
Invoked for Judy Davis's cover-up-everything DA, the caricature the Toni Collette prosecutor pointedly is not.
The rival in the room: a papal mystery already past $15 million, chasing the same adult audience Juror No. 2 was denied.
The template: one juror who puts himself in the defendant's box. Still one of Letterboxd's highest-rated films; Hoult reaches Fonda's conclusion for far less noble reasons.
The register Nayman reaches for: a self-contained, entertaining courtroom object, if a Bressonian one.
The other Southern-set Eastwood legal drama Juror No. 2 stands in relationship to.
The staging rhyme for the final scene, except here it's unclear whether Collette, like Matthau, will call the cops.
The Clint Eastwood Mount RushmoreFour roles, eight contenders, spanning a half-century of American cinema
The Man With No Name: an anchor face, contender No. 1.
Dollars trilogy, middle chapter of the No Name run.
The No Name who, the guys agree, grows up to be William Munny, which is why he has to be on the mountain.
William Munny, locked in. 'I used to be a piece of shit. I still am.' The line is the thesis of the career and of Juror No. 2.
Locked in: the problematic fave with more to answer for than the Western characters, because now there are laws in the way.
David Garver, one of the eight contenders.
The Stranger, a contender.
Josey Wales, a contender.
Philo Beddoe, the reminder that Clint is humble enough to need an orangutan's help.
Robert Kincaid, Sean's heart pick for the fourth slot, the one role that shows the romantic, artistic side.
Nayman's fourth-slot pitch: all he wants is to put on a show about America; Sean thinks it's bad.
Walt Kowalski knocking on the door: empty-chair-era, halftime-in-America Clint, and a huge hit.
The best film he's in that he never directed; Nayman would've taken an Oscar nod for it in '93.
Left off the mountain, but readable as a portrait of director-Clint, shepherding a team.
The underrated one Sean pushes: Costner playing a Clint part, iconography built up and then upended.
‘Heretic’Sean's spoiler-free take
A24 thriller: two Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East) knock on the door of Hugh Grant's Mr. Reed and get a philosophy lecture that turns into a trap. Grant in full freak mode, part Jordan Peterson, part professorial dickhead. Sean had a great time; some flaws once it tips toward hard genre.
Where you may remember Sophie Thatcher from.
Chloe East as young Sammy Fabelman's puckish girlfriend.
Scott Beck & Brian Woods on ‘Heretic’
The pair's breakout script, engineered sonically for the theater, born from 'what's the worst thing if you couldn't make a sound.'
The origin story: at 12, both floored that a Zemeckis popcorn movie could hold an adult conversation about religion.
A touchstone: Stanley Kramer's Spencer Tracy film, a discourse of ideas as drama.
Their model for horror as Trojan horse, here for race.
Same idea: genre smuggling in the Red Scare.
A stage-derived Polanski film swirling in the contained-thriller inspiration pot.
Why they hired DP Chung-hoon Chung to keep the two-room movie from feeling small.
Where Grant and Chung had just worked together, about as far from Heretic as a movie gets.
The Grant performance that reminded them he could disappear into a role, once they pictured him as Mr. Reed.
They read the dialogue in that Hugh Grant cadence and it got scarier.
The low-budget first feature that got the door open, step by step.
Sean saw it the day before Heretic, Zemeckis's confined-space experiment, sharing Heretic's first four letters in the listings.
Michael Sarnoski's entry; he came to their theater's opening weekend.
The other Sarnoski film they name-check as a special-guest booking.
Their friendly shot at hero Rian Johnson: selling a theatrical experience to Netflix sends eyeballs away from theaters like theirs.
The genre pickup that drew crowds for weeks, proof the love of genre still anchors.
The James Ivory film Scott was floored by, and a lesson: it grossed $60M because people just showed up.
A thousand-times rewatch and huge favorite, and a movie feeling newly live as they think about AI in filmmaking.
The documentary that destroyed them in the last five minutes.
Produced by David Gale, the ex-MTV Films exec who first cracked the door for them.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Warner Bros.' 2024 slate & the streaming question Coyote vs. AcmeSalem's LotDune: Part TwoBeetlejuice BeetlejuiceFuriosa: A Mad Max SagaHorizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1Trap
Other late-master 'Viking funerals' Killers of the Flower MoonGladiator IIMegalopolis
Clint's war epics & odds and ends Flags of Our FathersLetters from Iwo JimaThe Man Who Shot Liberty ValanceIn the Mouth of MadnessBoogie NightsIshtarSaturday NightHillbilly ElegyPaddington 2
The Michael Keaton Mount Rushmore bit Mr. MomGung Ho
Beck & Woods, growing up on movies MagnoliaBilly MadisonArmageddonOleanna
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Presumed InnocentYellowjacketsI Think You Should Leave
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