Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
77:47 – 84:02… Northwest in MacGyver. It's happened in other places. The last episode of the Rewatchables, I'm going to shoot Craig, but not kill him. Just as a plot twist. Apex Mountain. Will Smith, no. Margot Robbie, no. No. But I don't feel like she's had her Apex Mountain yet. I think it's coming. I'm going to say it's nothing yet. Can I just say something, though? Might not happen. She better hurry up. Yeah. I mean, it's not anything to do with her. It's just everything is changing. And I will save this for some future conversation we can have about a very sad fact about the way movie acting is changing in terms of what …
The whole segment, as transcribed
And probably in some other stuff, but I like the Toledo Twist. We've... I mean, we've definitely seen it more than North by Northwest in MacGyver. It's happened in other places. The last episode of the Rewatchables, I'm going to shoot Craig, but not kill him. Just as a plot twist. Apex Mountain. Will Smith, no. Margot Robbie, no. No. But I don't feel like she's had her Apex Mountain yet. I think it's coming. I'm going to say it's nothing yet. Can I just say something, though? Might not happen. She better hurry up. Yeah. I mean, it's not anything to do with her. It's just everything is changing. And I will save this for some future conversation we can have about a very sad fact about the way movie acting is changing in terms of what our great performances are. Yeah. But, you know, when she played Tonya Harding, she kind of, you know, she's already played... Well, I guess the woman in that Roger Ailes movie, the character she played was a composite character. But... Yeah, bombshell. I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag here. I'm out on playing real people. I'm out. I don't want to see any more. Like, everybody who wins an Oscar now is winning an Oscar for playing a real person. I love Richard Williams. I love Will Smith. I don't... I don't know. I don't want to begrudge anybody any success. I don't want to take any roles away from people. But, like, the idea that, like, what we now think of as great acting is actors playing people who already exist. Just to, like... Impersonation. To... It's like we don't trust original performances or something like that. There's something about... There's just something really depressing to me about our great acting now being done in service of people who have lived or are living. Well, it's interesting. For screenplay, they have two categories. Original screenplay and best adapted screenplay. Right? Maybe they just need best adapted performance for the Oscars. Yes. Best original performance. I'm with you. Because it does seem like half the time it's somebody playing somebody that we already have a history with and that's who wins the Oscar. It just bums me out. I mean, Kristen Stewart, like, so good in that movie. It's not, like, the end to a performance, it's not my issue. Like, it's the sort of cultural... It's the predominance of this way of thinking of thinking about what great acting is. Meryl Streep. The first Oscar she wins since, you know, the 80s is for playing Margaret Thatcher. Not even a... Right. I mean, I love you, Meryl Streep. Not a great performance. I mean, I just... It just kind of bums me out. Well, it's like Saturday Night Live is like that. Saturday Night Live is like that, too. Like, most of the stuff they do is celebrity impressions. For better and worse, it is what it is. Yeah, I'm with you. Like, Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, like, he's creating a character from scratch that has a backstory and... I agree. It's more interesting. Margot Robbie. I'm going to say Apex Mountain for her right now is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because she's great in that movie and that was an important movie. But I don't feel like it's happened yet. New Orleans... She's not there yet. New Orleans movies, no. B.D. Wong? I don't know. No, because... He was on Law and Order forever. Yeah, I mean, also... Kiko the houseboy and in the band played on? No, um... No, it's not his Apex Mountain. Okay. Super Bowl movie scenes, definitely not. Gambling scenes, it's up there. It's in the conversation. That as a 10-minute... You would put this up there? I think... I don't know what that... How many movies... Like, The Sting, obviously, the last 20 minutes of that. And there's been a lot of good gambling stuff over the years. Maverick. Maverick's got good stuff. I don't know... Maverick's got great... Is Maverick a caper movie? Yes, for sure. 100%. That movie taps into some Jodie Foster that I actually... We didn't see a lot of over the years. Yeah. For you, Bill Simmons, I wrote a Maverick piece. Yeah. Where I went and re-watched that movie on its anniversary. Yeah. I think we did 94... We did the year 1994. I think I wanted you to do it. Because I was like, this is a really interesting Jodie Foster movie. Special request from you. And I was shocked by all of the things that were not terrible about that movie. Yeah. That's good. Picky Nitz. Is Margot Robbie too attractive and too memorable just to see in person to be an under-the-radar thief? I feel like she's somebody that if you met once, you would probably remember this person. I don't know if you can slide under the radar in the right ways as a heist thief person. But how... I'm just... It's just a nitpick. But I guess I'm just wondering how in this movie that would matter, right? Because, I mean, by her own estimation, she's a petty con artist, right? She just likes... She wants watches. Yeah. And all she has to do... I mean, her beauty is probably what creates the sort of spatial violation in order for her to get the watch. It's like Miami Vice when Crockett and Tubbs were undercover for five years in that show. And these two handsome guys could just stay undercover in Miami for five years and nobody could remember them. Fill up Michael Thomas. You ain't fooling me. Something's up. We're picking Nitz. A lot of people work in the heist in New Orleans. They have that party. There's 30 people. How is there not an undercover agent in there? I'm like, when they have that party, I'm like, wait, what? What is this? Is this happy hour? Yeah. Is this... I would have thought it was a crew of six people. They have 30. And then they're splitting up 1.2 million. It's like, all right, well, that's not nearly as much as I thought they were everybody who's going to make. Was this worth it?
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