Lincoln (w/ Jean-Pierre Boudreaux)

Eli (00:05.433)
said something about a live stream. I don't know why I had said that.

Jean-Pierre (00:11.624)
Check your socials,

Eli (00:11.831)
Okay.

It doesn't seem to be live streaming so I guess we're good. Alright, I'm gonna just start then.

Eli (00:26.059)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmographies I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 103 of the podcast rolling along in our Spielberg series Yeah, I'm excited to jump into this. We've got got some real like a real I guess mini series here on like

Historical movies with warhorse Lincoln bridge of spies a little break with a little break with BFG and then the post I mean another kind of like very political Historic history interested movie. Yeah, so yeah this This is a yeah, we're gonna be talking about Lincoln today. So The man himself the the man the myth the silhouette you might say

Jean-Pierre (00:56.216)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:00.184)
What a run.

Jean-Pierre (01:10.424)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:24.505)
and yeah, i've got a returning guest. a a favorite you might say he is definitely not more lizard than man And he is he is jan pierre boudreau and yeah, aka jp You know, You can't if you if you don't know him that well, you can't you're not allowed to call him jp. Just mr

Jean-Pierre (01:53.391)
Please Mr. Boudreaux is my father. Okay No, I was telling you before we recorded I you know, I read that in your outline I was like I have no idea why he's saying that and then now I've actually seen the film and I have context for That as you said one of the best lines of the movie that I'm sure we'll we'll get to

Eli (01:53.717)
Mr.

Eli (02:10.669)
Yeah, not-

Yeah, yeah, JP is not more lizard than man. Unlike George Pendleton, I think is the... Is it wood? I think it is George Pendleton. Yeah, George. He says George. I'm just trying to remember his last name. Pendleton, I think. Yeah, this, the cast list, putting the cast list into my Google Doc for this was quite the task.

Jean-Pierre (02:21.326)
I think it's Mr. Wood. No, no, no, it wasn't wood. It was the other guy. I don't know. All these names... There's so many names. So many names.

Eli (02:40.697)
Wikipedia came through for me though. was, Whoever did that Wikipedia page and organized it by like, yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:46.037)
Hey, listen.

It is very impressively organized by like the different associations. did see that. Yeah.

Eli (02:54.457)
Uh-huh. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah, JP, um, he's been on, um, a bunch of times before. You're probably my most decorated guest. I mean, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (03:06.414)
Hey, you, you, like, you know, the thing with you, Eli, is, you know, you say, do you want to talk about this movie? And I come, I come running, you know? I mean, I'm here. Hey, you know, you want to make me permanent co-host? I wouldn't be opposed, you know, we'll figure it out. But I feel like I need a jacket, like the five timers club from SNL, you know? I don't even know how many times I've now, but always a pleasure being here with you,

Eli (03:14.905)
Yeah, I mean you're basically like honorary co-host at this point

Eli (03:28.717)
Yeah, something like that, yeah.

Eli (03:33.859)
Yeah, definitely. But yeah, JP, JP's always up to something filming. And I know you've been working on some documentary projects and stuff like that. Do you want to share anything you have that you're working on or that you've finished or anything like that?

Jean-Pierre (03:52.335)
Yeah, you know, I'm just always looking for new projects to kind of expand my portfolio, my repertoire. I'm just always looking for new ways to kind of express myself creatively. I'm really excited. I've got a project I shot with some missionaries in Chile. I'll be wrapping up soon. You know, it was really kind of a dream come true being able to do a documentary in the missions field.

Learned a lot, learned so so much and I'll probably once everything's done I plan on doing a YouTube video just about the lessons I've learned because I wish someone would have done that for me and given me more insight into like the challenges you actually face but yeah and then you know I got some other stuff I'm working on locally with like a local MMA fighter and some other things and yeah just I'm always always looking for some other you know more opportunities to tell stories. I love doing it.

Eli (04:48.929)
Yeah, yeah, very cool. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw like a little snippet of the MMA fighter one that you're working on. Didn't you release like a little snippet of it or something?

Jean-Pierre (05:02.734)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did a little edit of the first kind of like sparring session I filmed with him and then filmed some workout stuff with him and his first professional debut fight was supposed to be last month but it got postponed. But it's actually this coming weekend, Saturday. So I'm sure he's excited. I need to text him this week actually and see if we need to work on some stuff. But excited to kind of maybe capture some of that.

Eli (05:07.842)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (05:19.513)
Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Jean-Pierre (05:31.724)
kind of see where this story continues to go.

Eli (05:31.917)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Fun. Those are, I mean, they sound like fun projects. like, yeah, good challenges probably too, huh?

Jean-Pierre (05:44.055)
Yeah, well, and then also, you know, I got to shoot something leaving Chile. I visited Guatemala for a few days to see my girlfriend for her birthday, be with her and her family. And we got to shoot something together there for a friend of hers, just kind of capturing the life story of his grandpa. And it was a lot of fun, man. And it's kind of really inspiring me to kind of pursue these kind of like time capsule projects, if you will.

Eli (05:56.407)
Yeah.

Eli (06:11.917)
Hmm, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (06:12.686)
and just give people an opportunity to have this kind of living, breathing memorial for aging family members that, you know...

Eli (06:23.768)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (06:25.634)
You know, sometimes they're there one day and then they're not there the next day. And I was very blessed to be able to do something kind of for my grandpa a few years ago and get the story of like how he and my grandmother met and then either passing away later that same year. And so I got another one of those kind of in the works with a friend of mine, possibly. But it's something I'm kind of interested in maybe exploring more is kind of working specifically with capturing the story of like elderly people.

Eli (06:38.734)
Yeah.

Eli (06:54.081)
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I guess the Spielberg parallel would be like his Shoah Foundation, you know, where they captured archive. Like, I mean, it's different because they're archiving, you know, people that have been through the Holocaust. yeah, just like, you know, putting together an archive of like similar kinds of stories, but that are, you know, expressed in different ways and different perspectives that

Jean-Pierre (07:10.222)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (07:23.021)
That sounds really cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I guess before we jump into Lincoln Talk, is there anything else you've been watching recently that you want to share?

Jean-Pierre (07:36.879)
Yeah, man, a lot of things, you know, with my girlfriend and I being long distance, we do a movie pretty much every week. At least if there's nothing else we can do during the week, we have a dedicated movie night every week. So we watch all kinds of stuff, know, new stuff, old stuff. But as far as what I've been watching recently, man, I just saw 28 years later on Thursday night.

Eli (07:59.894)
Okay

Jean-Pierre (08:03.424)
So release night. Firstly, the theater was actually pretty full, which I know you probably feel the same way. Like anytime I go to see a movie that's not like a big blockbuster movie, like an MCU film and the theater is packed, it like makes me happy. It really does. Like it makes me happy to see people out there. Like, like I remember when I went and saw the menu, like what's it two, three years ago now, I was like, dude, the theater was packed.

Eli (08:08.92)
Yeah.

Eli (08:18.798)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (08:22.232)
Yeah, same.

Eli (08:31.481)
Sure, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (08:33.488)
when I went to go see that movie and it was just so nice watching it with a theater full of people and everyone's laughing at the same parts or jumping at the same parts and things like that.

Eli (08:44.383)
Mm-hmm. Do people show up for the horror flicks?

Jean-Pierre (08:48.714)
Yeah, it's true. That's true. And it's interesting. I've been doing a lot of re- I've been watching some kind of video essays about it on the back end and realizing that, you know, I guess I never realized how big the legacy of 28 Days Later is. But in a lot of ways, it kind of revitalized the zombie genre. Like, especially there's- especially like-

Eli (09:05.624)
Yeah.

Eli (09:10.947)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (09:15.916)
Man, without 28 Days Later, there's no The Last of Us, there's no World War Z. There's a lot of other projects that came out afterwards that The Walking Dead, literally, The Walking Dead's first episode is almost...

Eli (09:25.495)
Walking dead probably.

Jean-Pierre (09:32.143)
a shot for shot, so to speak, of the opening of 20 Days Later where Rick wakes up in the hospital a month after the outbreak from a coma, known memory, what's going on. I think it's a very obvious homage, right? But I will say this, like, you know...

Eli (09:36.771)
Hmm. Yeah, yeah.

That's true, I forgot about that, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (09:52.247)
I love 28 Days Later, you know, even if the cinematography is kind of really looks gross looking to be honest, like because of how they shot it. And I've seen 28 Weeks Later maybe once or twice and I don't hate it. I think it's fine. But I gotta say 28 years later, I was expecting it to be good. But my dude, it was amazing. I loved it. I know.

Eli (09:58.265)
Yeah.

Eli (10:15.693)
I'm excited, I haven't seen it yet.

Jean-Pierre (10:19.854)
It's got a really high critical score. But I will say this, I know it's gonna be a movie that you're either gonna love it or you're gonna hate it.

I've already seen some like I was watching a review earlier from some random YouTube channel that popped up on my my suggestion page and the guy was ripping the movie apart, but I'm like I think he just kind of missed the point. I loved it. I thought it was a great time. Highly recommend that. And also I think maybe more on the TV side of things man if anyone listening to this if you have not watched Severance, I'm telling you right now Apple TV is like $10 a month.

Eli (10:36.633)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (11:00.094)
Severance alone is worth the cost. Just buy a month of Apple TV, watch season one, watch season two. It is the best show that there is right now. Hands down.

Eli (11:11.607)
Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it, but I don't watch a lot of TV, at all, but yeah.

Jean-Pierre (11:16.844)
dude, Severance is worth it. And it's interesting because there's actually some things, this is not really a huge spoiler, but it's a little bit intriguing. There's some things about Severance that actually reference the time period in which we're talking about with this movie, Lincoln, and the Civil War. In fact, literally, I think at one point,

you know, Molly, Mary Todd Lincoln, she mentions Cold Harbor, which is something that comes into play in Severance. Like there's something that's like, cold name Cold Harbor. So there's a lot of this interesting cross imagery with the Civil War era that happens in Severance. So highly, highly recommend for you and your audience to give that show a chance. And I guarantee you, you will not be disappointed. But going blind, going blind. If you don't know anything about it, go in blind.

Eli (11:53.251)
Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

Eli (12:02.007)
Yeah, yeah, it sounds I've I've heard Yeah, yeah, I've heard great things about the show, but you know, just never seen it and while you have Apple TV You know if you if you get the month to binge it go ahead and watch one of my top movies of the year so far and deaf president now great documentary It's yeah if you haven't seen that you have I'm assuming you have Apple TV You should definitely pop on deaf press

I mean you're a documentary man so I think you'll enjoy it. Really cool story that I had no idea anything about so. But yeah I so I had never seen 28 days and weeks later until the last few days when I caught up with them so I liked 28 days. I did pause it and Google why does this look so terrible and I was like okay it's not me it's not

Jean-Pierre (12:33.741)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (12:39.33)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (12:49.568)
Mm-hmm. What'd you

Jean-Pierre (12:56.994)
Ha

Eli (13:00.225)
my device, it's not my internet. it's, and yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (13:04.142)
They shot it on prosumer cameras that your dad could have got and bought at Radio Shack or whatever at the time.

Eli (13:10.493)
Yeah Yeah, which I think I think the like the Google whatever the Google AI was like it makes it feel kind of like the CCTV and I was like I mean that's fair I don't I don't know that I want to watch CCTV footage as a movie, but but sure. Okay and This I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I liked 28 weeks a Good bit more than 28 days later. Just I don't know

Jean-Pierre (13:39.028)
I think that is a slight hot take, but you know, I can understand that.

Eli (13:41.881)
I think I rated days like three and a half and weeks four. So I'm hoping years goes to four and a half. The longer the time elapsed, the better the movie is what I'm hoping.

Jean-Pierre (13:55.791)
Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I don't want to deep dive too much into the 28 franchise while we're got all this discussion about Lincoln ahead of us. But I will say, I think after seeing 28 years later, and then I've just watching all these like video essays breaking down the whole franchise, I have such a higher appreciation for

Eli (14:04.334)
Yeah.

Eli (14:17.689)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (14:22.584)
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland and all the crew and the cast behind it and there's so many interesting things, know, like the prosumer camera thing about the first film. But a lot of that was to do with the budget because it was just, it was shot so cheaply that it's like, we can get one proper cinema camera or we can buy like 10 of these, you know, and so.

Eli (14:27.235)
Yeah.

Eli (14:37.357)
Right. No budget, yeah.

Eli (14:45.239)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (14:46.828)
But, and I think a lot of that carries over to, you know, 28 weeks was shot on more traditional cameras, but they still did use some digital stuff. then, but then, you know, there's all this talk about the iPhones they used for 28 years later. And they do some really interesting things with it.

Eli (15:01.924)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I saw the one picture of the rig with like 20 iPhones on it. I was like, that's a bit much, but.

Jean-Pierre (15:08.17)
Yeah, yeah, they do like some poor man's bullet time in the movie and it looks sick. yeah, I would just say to those listening, I highly recommend giving those films a watch, especially if you're a fan of anything zombie related. But also just like, it is really fascinating even if you're not normally a person that's really into how movies are made. I do think...

Eli (15:16.419)
Cool.

Eli (15:25.335)
Yeah, me too.

Jean-Pierre (15:36.14)
Watching there's this channel called frame Voyager that has this they have a video on each of them about the background and the making of Highly recommend giving those a watch just really fascinating just hearing all this background information about how these movies were made specifically

Eli (15:52.633)
Cool. Yeah, yeah, I'll have to check that out. Yeah, I definitely recommend at least the first two. I haven't seen the third one yet, but I've heard nothing but good things. So, yeah, yeah. mean, my expectation is that it will be, because I've liked the second more than the first. So surely, know, years, I mean, you've got years of stuff to work with. Before you just had weeks and days. So, you know.

Jean-Pierre (16:01.23)
I think it's the best one of the three. Which is crazy to think of, but...

Eli (16:22.231)
It's gotta be better, Yeah. They are, they do have like more lined up. Yeah. Which I saw. Okay. I didn't realize that it was that, that soon. but I did see that Nia, Nia da Costa was attached to it.

Jean-Pierre (16:24.142)
28 decades later next, I guess. I don't know.

It's first part of a trilogy, yeah. So part two is already set for January.

Jean-Pierre (16:38.978)
They were shot back to back.

Yeah, yeah, she shot 28 years later, The Bone Temple, I believe is the name of it. So they shot those two back to back. Yes. Yeah. So it's going to be a direct sequel. yeah. I don't know what they're doing with part three yet.

Eli (16:48.311)
Okay, and is that, do you know if that's the next one? Okay.

Eli (16:58.987)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm excited. I I thought her I haven't seen the marvels. It's like the one MCU movie I haven't seen but I really liked her kind of updated Candyman I thought it was pretty good. I don't know if you've seen that but it's like a remake of the Classic Candyman film, but yeah, it was it was pretty good. I didn't love it. But I you know, I was like this girl she's got something, you know one of those kind of movies

Jean-Pierre (17:05.751)
Ahem.

Jean-Pierre (17:11.31)
Mmm.

Eli (17:28.785)
but yeah Speaking of someone that has something, you know the spillberg guy pretty good pretty good director. Yeah He's

Jean-Pierre (17:37.646)
Objectively, think, you know, yeah, some might say he might be the goat, but...

Eli (17:44.097)
Yeah, you know, got 50th anniversary of Jaws this summer. Pretty exciting.

Jean-Pierre (17:52.184)
hoping to catch the, did the re-release of it come out yet or no?

Eli (17:56.483)
I don't know. It seems like it comes out like once a summer.

Jean-Pierre (18:00.15)
I hate when they do these re-releases or they do like an old film just in general and they only do it for like a day or two. I'm like, no, like come on, give me some more time. Like when they did the 20th anniversary re-releases of the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings and each one was like only one day. I'm like, come on bro.

Eli (18:07.789)
Yeah, like give it at least a week, you know?

Eli (18:18.841)
Yeah. Yeah. I can't take off work for this. You gotta give me some time, some options, you know? But no, let's, yeah, let's jump into into Lincoln talk. Lincoln, you know, it's okay. So usually we start at the beginning of the movie, but I think we should also for this one.

Jean-Pierre (18:24.512)
Yeah, I'm call it sick.

Eli (18:46.945)
give a little bit of Spielberg life context. Cause it's been a while since we've kind of touched in on like where he is in his life. It's interesting, you know, I've already recorded the Bridge of Spies episode. So that'll be coming out in a couple of weeks. And we touched on this a little bit, but Spielberg is at an interesting point in his life because as kids you're getting older and he's built this like interesting balance, which I think is like,

pretty admirable of producing and directing like a madman, but also feeling like a legit family man, spending obviously a decent amount of time with his family. And I think part of it is the way he's structured when he's filming movies. it's like since, really ever since I would say,

Like hook Jurassic Park Schindler's List that run of three ever like that was like the first run of three and then he'll take like a couple years off and then do another like run of three and so Lincoln is really like the last of this most recent run of three with 10 10 warhorse and in this movie and so he it's it's it's just interesting to me and and I guess kind of cool to see like he's really like

He's, he's taken on his like manly adult responsibilities pretty well for someone that like started so young in the, in the industry and like is a movie mogul basically. yeah, I just appreciate that. But at the same time, DreamWorks is like kind of on its last leg. at this point, they're really like starting in 2008 with like the financial crisis.

They kind of like were became kind of screwed for money. And so they're starting they're like Okay, we have maybe a few more that they had already like Started at least pre-production on like Lincoln had been in pre-production for a while as we'll talk about but Yeah, they they eventually like have to turn to overseas financial help and And you know releasing things through Disney with touchstone

Eli (21:14.873)
And yeah, really I think bridge of spies might be like the last proper DreamWorks Which I can't I think we talked about that in that episode but yeah, it's just interesting like he's he's coming out of So many this is like the culmination of so many different parts of his life his kids are I think by the time bridge of spies comes around his like he's starting to become an empty nester and

And so, it feels like in Spielberg's life, he's kind of in that, you know, as far as his career goes, like his career and personal life goes, he's in that like last four hours of this part of his career and private life, last four, I guess, months, I should say. you know, kind of like Lincoln is in the movie. This is really

Jean-Pierre (21:57.678)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (22:13.837)
the movie set in the last four or so months of his life. And so I just thought that was an interesting parallel between where Spielberg is in his life and where the movie Lincoln is in Lincoln's life. Yeah, let's jump back to the beginning because this movie starts where most Spielberg movies starts in his childhood. He talks about it.

Jean-Pierre (22:17.933)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (22:42.891)
Going to DC with his dad when he was like four or five years old Sees the Lincoln Memorial He talks about like it's it's always interesting to me here Spielberg talk about his childhood because he has such like vivid memories of his emotions from his childhood and I don't I don't personally like have that sort of memory of my childhood and so it's just I find it fascinating how

You know, I don't think he's like making it up. I think he generally like has these vivid at least like emotional memories of his experiences Which you know comes through in the movies obviously but yeah just this he talked about like having fear at first looking up at the Lincoln Memorial and then like Really like looking at Lincoln's face and finding like I don't know kind of courage and peace in his face

and really just becoming fascinated with Lincoln from then on.

Jean-Pierre (23:45.999)
I could definitely understand because Lincoln, I mean, I don't think it would be too hot of a take to say he probably has one of the most iconic faces of all time. was just a very intriguing looking guy, know, by all accounts.

Eli (23:57.847)
Yeah.

Eli (24:02.103)
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. One of the things Spielberg said is that he liked the fact that Lincoln was a bit of an outsider who wasn't really destined for his job and then managed to get to the top. And so like he it's definitely like he sees a bit of like himself and and not like I don't think Spielberg at all is like

I'm like Lincoln. That's not really what he's trying to say but just like that's like his in route like that's that's something he relates to person on a personal level is like being a bit of an outsider and Somehow like finding your way to the top Which I mean he has he was a bit of an outsider and he's at the top of the the film industry really so But yeah, he so

In this kind of section of his career, he does a couple of shorts. I meant to try to go find them and watch them, but I didn't, unfortunately, before this. One of them is a 2008 short film called A Timeless Call. He made it for the Democratic National Convention, and it was kind of an ode to veterans, and there has like some of their testimonies.

The other is was back in 99. It was commissioned by Bill Clinton. It was called the unfinished journey. And it's a 20 minute film of US history. And like the basically covering the US history in the 20th century to celebrate the turn of the millennium music by John Williams, of course. And they actually on.

on December 31st, 1999, they projected it on a wall at the Lincoln Memorial in DC. It begins with words from Lincoln and it ends with the memorial statue in the film and it wasn't ever screened again, really, not officially anyway. And it's interesting, but where that ties into our story is that for that short film,

Eli (26:20.761)
He assembled a team of historians and there is where he met Doris Kearns Goodwin. She was in the process of writing her book, Team of Rivals, which released in 2005, I believe. But she was, yeah, she was kind of in the rough draft stages of that book and Spielberg went ahead and optioned it before it was even done. He got to talking to her about the book and...

I like, yeah, I want to option this to make a Lincoln movie. So this was all the way back in 1999. So this is like, I think this rivals probably Schindler's List for the longest time in production for.

Jean-Pierre (27:07.278)
I mean, maybe for Spielberg, but I'm thinking of something like Martin Scorsese's silence was like 30, 40 years. wanted to make it,

Eli (27:10.103)
yeah, for Spielberg. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah, I don't mean in overall. I just mean for Spielberg for sure. But yeah, I don't remember how long Schindler's was. I would have to go back and listen to that episode, I guess. But yeah, this one was pretty long. by the time the book was published in 05, the movie was already in the works and

2001 John Logan took a pass at the script He's was he's been a writer on movies like any given Sunday gladiator skyfall So he's got some good good movies under his belt that didn't work out. They replaced him with a playwright named Paul Webb he didn't work out either and Finally they bring in Tony Kushner who takes it over and finishes it and they they actually were already, you know working on

this movie when they hired him on for Munich. And yeah, so he already knew like, they have this Lincoln movie. And so I guess when they called him up, he was like, yeah, yeah, I'd like to take a try at that one too. So get this though. The first Tony Kushner script was 550 pages, which for, you know, if you're like, okay,

Jean-Pierre (28:26.73)
Ahem.

Eli (28:39.897)
That's long book already, but what does that equate to for a movie? Well, that would have been like an eight to nine hour film for a 550 page script.

Jean-Pierre (28:51.458)
Yeah, typically one page is like five minutes of screen time. But that doesn't include, that, that excludes things like, you know, a paragraph of action and then the director can come in and decide like, okay, I have this paragraph of action, but then it's going to take like 10, 15 minutes for me to play all this out, you know? So that's, that's pretty intense.

Eli (28:56.503)
Yeah, something like that.

Eli (29:14.133)
Right. Yep. Yep. And you could have a paragraph of action that the director's like, I can get this, I can communicate this in, you know, 20 seconds of footage, you know, so you never know. But yeah, in general, that amount of pages equates to about eight to nine hours, like, which, you know, would be crazy. But yeah, there's even like a picture.

Spielberg shared a picture of himself holding like this huge binder and the behind-the-scenes stuff of it like kind of smirking at the camera like come on Tony like this is this is crazy but they did they did actually initially talk about an HBO series I don't think talks on that lasted very long it would have been for sure interesting

Jean-Pierre (29:59.151)
That would have been interesting.

Something like HBO's John Adams with Paul Giamatti, which I need to finish it, but I watched maybe the first half and fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Paul Giamatti I think is very underrated as an actor, but he's phenomenal.

Eli (30:06.391)
John Adams, yeah.

Eli (30:18.795)
yeah, he's great. I always love him in movies. Yeah. I mean, they, so yeah, obviously they can't make a eight to nine hour movie. They're not really going to do an HBO series, even though they talked about it for a minute. and Spielberg felt like for a Lincoln movie, needs to be on the big screen because Lincoln was a monumental president.

and monumental things and he needs to be on the big epic screen. So, which, you know, I kind of agree, you know, let's put the man in his top hat. You know, you can't fit that top hat onto a little TV screen. You got to have a big screen. But yeah, so they tighten up the script and they focus on 70 pages around the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

And so Kushner does revisions for about three years. And yeah, they focus on those last four months of Lincoln's life. The author of the book, Doris Kearns Goodwin, kind of like, she was like, man, when they told me that they were gonna do, they were gonna focus on that, I was just like, that's genius because that period of his life has like,

such a perfect beginning, middle, end kind of story, like complete story. And yeah, I agree. But yeah, they initially plans to release it in 2009 for the bicentennial year of Lincoln's birth, but yeah, that didn't happen. I guess it took a while to work down from 550 pages to what they ended up with. But yeah, I mean,

Jean-Pierre (31:59.715)
Yeah.

Eli (32:12.299)
As far as the crew goes for this one that they assembled, kind of a lot of typical names. Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy producing. We already talked about it. It's kind of based in part on the book. The book covers his whole life. I actually listened to an abridged version of it, which was like nine and a half hours or so on the audiobook.

Jean-Pierre (32:27.918)
Ahem.

Jean-Pierre (32:33.277)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (32:40.216)
That was the abridged version.

Eli (32:41.677)
That was the Abridged version. The full version is 41 hours and I didn't have time to listen to that. So I listened to the... Yeah. Which when you hear that, it makes sense that the first draft of the screenplay was that long. Yeah. But yeah, Tony Kushner with the screenplay, you know, he worked with Spielberg on Munich.

Jean-Pierre (32:45.678)
Just wanna just wanna clock in real quick guys, that's a whole working week right there

Jean-Pierre (32:59.342)
550 pages, yeah, dang.

Eli (33:10.265)
Which was I loved Munich. I was very surprised That's that might be like my most surprising like of the series like of this series so far It was because it was a blind spot I had never seen it before

Jean-Pierre (33:27.502)
It's always been a movie I've wanted to see and I still haven't gotten around to it.

Eli (33:30.137)
Man and it's so very relevant to Like I think when you if you if you sit down and watch it today, you're you'll be like, wow, this is like incredibly relevant who knew But yeah Janusz Kaminski cinematography, of course Mitch Dubin doing some camera operation that Dubin's always operating some cameras for Spielberg Yeah doing he's Dubin

Jean-Pierre (33:41.502)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (33:56.524)
He's always dubin' man.

Eli (33:59.991)
Dubin the camera. Michael Kahn editing. Michael Kahn, the unsung hero of Spielberg's career. John Williams with the music, of course. For sound, it's like the... I don't know, the first thing that comes to mind is like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but I don't know that it's a good thing. What's a group of four? It's like...

Jean-Pierre (34:00.322)
Doobin be doobin. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (34:30.072)
the Ninja Turtles.

Eli (34:30.455)
I don't know, they're the, here we go, they're the, man, I'm gonna have to edit this down. The four presidents on the mountain, my mind is like totally blank. Mount Rushmore, okay. Yeah, they're the Mount Rushmore of Spielberg sound guys. Andy Nelson, Ben Burt, Ron Judkins, and Gary Reidstrom. It's funny because,

Jean-Pierre (34:44.706)
Now rest more.

Eli (34:58.233)
Those are all the major sound players in Spielberg's career all working on this movie. But it's not like a movie you watch and you're like, man, the sound is incredible. It's pretty subtle in how it uses sound. But yeah.

Jean-Pierre (35:14.602)
Mm-hmm, even with like the music I was gonna say like John Williams to the score. I noticed there's barely music in this movie

Eli (35:19.309)
Yeah. Yeah, it's a very subtle score. Very subtle score, subtle sound, but very well executed. I think there's a degree to which you really have to have the best of the best to pull off those subtle executions of stuff like sound. Ben Morris does the VFX. I don't...

Jean-Pierre (35:37.038)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (35:47.777)
I recognize his name but he's not as familiar. And there's not a ton of visual effects in this movie. There's like all but what 30 seconds of war footage and other than that it's just like having people on carriages and stuff. Yeah I don't know.

Jean-Pierre (36:03.064)
people in rooms talking, yeah. There's like, I mean, we'll get into the plot, but there's like the dream sequence and then there's the ending, but for the most part, it's a very practically shot project for sure.

Eli (36:10.435)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (36:17.409)
Yeah, very much so, yeah. Which speaking of practically shot, the production design with Rick Carter is so good with production design. Jim Erickson does the set decoration. Lois Burwell does makeup. She's another Spielberg makeup person. Joanna Johnston's been working with Spielberg on costumes for a while now. Adam Somner.

Working as assistant director. He's he's a recurring guy And then avy kaufman or avy kaufman does the casting? Yeah, yeah, I mean a pretty typical spillberg crew for this one is I Mean, what are you gonna do? This is where the cast is where that wiki that wikipedia page man came I was like, how am I gonna talk about this cast because there's so many names

Jean-Pierre (37:05.731)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (37:15.555)
There's so many like people to hit on or mention. cause I think they're all so like, they're all very good. This is like a master class of like, just having tons of like big names in your cast and giving them all just enough to where like you can see like where they, can like, yeah, yeah. But they're, but they're like powerful, like while they're on screen.

Jean-Pierre (37:37.792)
Most of them are on screen for like two minutes.

Eli (37:46.263)
Yeah, yeah, let's let's roll through these this might this might be a good little section the cast for this one So I have these sectioned off. Thanks to the Wikipedia page I had started actually doing this before I found the Wikipedia page And was like thank god they already did it for me because I was like I'm gonna have to google every single one of these names to figure out were they on the cabinet or You know the house. I don't know

So first we have the Lincoln family and household of course, I guess I guess we'll just start off with a bang and Daniel Day Lewis, I This dude is incredible But like I don't know if you can call him a working actor Because he he he may never act in a movie again, who knows he's you know, he's one of those guys that's like Yeah

Jean-Pierre (38:41.366)
Yeah, he's like kinda sorta retired.

Eli (38:45.695)
He I feel like i've heard like people talk about the way he the way he kind of approaches it is that like If he doesn't feel the need to do another movie He just won't so it's kind one those things where like he's Semi-retired and if he ever feels like doing a movie again, he will I guess. Yeah

Jean-Pierre (39:06.584)
kind of respected. he's put in some of the, I think including, I think as far as his performances go, I don't think this is necessarily like the best he's ever done, but overall, over his career, I mean the man has put in some of the greatest performances of all time. There will be Blood, Gangs of New York, I mean just phenomenal.

Eli (39:24.599)
Yeah, I mean you could argue, yeah, Bill the Butcher, man. That's quite the character. The anti Abraham Lincoln in a lot of ways, I guess. I guess you could say the same about There Will Be Blood.

Jean-Pierre (39:42.082)
Yes. Basically.

Yo, definitely there will be blood. I also love him in, uh, I haven't seen him in a long time, but I've always loved him in the last of the Mohicans. Where he, yeah, supposedly for that one he actually lived out of a tent in the woods for like six months. To prepare.

Eli (39:49.177)
The anti Abraham Lincoln.

Eli (39:56.217)
See, that's one I haven't seen.

Eli (40:03.513)
I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. But yeah, he's a cobbler, doesn't he? Doesn't he do like shoes, make shoes? I'm pretty sure. If you're listening, you can just Google it real quick and then you can email me or whatever and tell me if I'm right or wrong.

Jean-Pierre (40:15.736)
something like that.

Jean-Pierre (40:27.042)
Do you know what some DDL shoes?

Eli (40:29.641)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure he does or at least he has in the past But he's he's a man of many talents we'll just say that But yeah, so Spielberg had been after Daniel Day-Lewis for a while now. I mean why why wouldn't he be? And yes, but he sent Spielberg a letter and was like no, you know, not really not really interested and doing doing the movie and so Yeah, he

Neeson then signs on Liam Neeson signs on he was I guess like the second choice Spielberg I guess was thinking Yeah, yeah, I guess he's thinking like he he was so good in Schindler's List I Can I can work with him here for Lincoln would have been interesting he signed on in 2004 and starts prepping and so all through this like period of like

Jean-Pierre (41:06.754)
That actually would have been wild.

Eli (41:29.015)
especially starting probably in like 2006 to 2011, they are doing like all these table reads with all these like potential cast members. But then they're also like reworking the script. And so a lot of time passes, they have potential. It's one of those movies that's like, this person's gonna be in the movie, but then, know, like five years pass and that person is just not available to be in the movie anymore sort of thing.

And so in 2009, Liam Neeson's life turned upside down. His wife and the actress Natasha Richardson died of complications in a skiing accident. And so he was really like, going with a lot with that, obviously. And they had a new script, a new Kushner script to work with. And so they did a table read for that. yeah, Neeson said that it just hit him that he,

He couldn't do this anymore. wrote down this quote. He said quote and there was an intro and then I see Lincoln where I have to start speaking and Had a thunderbolt moment. I thought I'm not supposed to be here. This is gone. I've passed my sell-by date I don't want to play this Lincoln. I can't be him unquote and yeah, just I think for obvious reasons when you when you watch the movie and think about a man dealing with like

the death of his wife and just seeing this Lincoln and where he is in his career, it's like, man, you have to be in the right spot to be able to access that and not be too personal probably. But.

Jean-Pierre (43:12.352)
Yeah, yeah, Lincoln's, Lincoln's dealing with the weight of a lot of things, the weight of

I think most estimates for the Civil War, it's like 600,000 American soldiers between both sides passed away. So he's dealing with the weight of all of that. And so to think of an actor trying to pretend that while dealing with the weight of actual very real grief and loss. A lot of times actors will say that they pull on real experiences to make their performances believable. But when something's that fresh,

Eli (43:23.427)
Yeah.

Eli (43:34.478)
Yeah.

Eli (43:45.729)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Jean-Pierre (43:49.875)
and in a relationship as intimate as your wife. mean, yeah, I'm not surprised that he walked away. I am surprised that he still did two other taken movies though after this.

Eli (43:55.425)
Right? Yeah.

Eli (44:03.053)
Yeah, he was, I think he was already like, on set on board for like a Taken movie around that time. But that's a little bit different, I think, than playing Abraham Lincoln at the end of his life. But yeah, yeah, he, so he called up Spielberg and his excuse to Spielberg was that he was too old for the part now and he didn't think he could do it anymore. And Spielberg, of course, know, tries to,

Jean-Pierre (44:18.082)
Yeah, fair enough.

Eli (44:33.289)
Plead with them like, know, no you should do it and he's just like no, I'm I can't do it. So I don't know. It's hard for me to imagine a Liam Neeson Abraham Lincoln. I Don't know like do you think that would have worked obviously, I don't think it would have been good as good as Daniel Day-Lewis

Jean-Pierre (44:57.112)
I don't know, think, look, Liam Neeson can act.

Okay, like let's let's not I think he's he's a bit of he's a bit of a joke now I'm so excited for him to be the naked gun remake low-key like very excited for that I think it's the perfect kind of movie for him to be doing right now at this point in his career But I do know that he is a bit of a meme these days as like the go-to like old man in an action movie But let's not forget Schindler's List Qui-Gon Jinn like he he's put in Aslan, you know from from the Chronicles of Narnia like

Eli (45:01.402)
yeah, absolutely. He's great in Schindler's List.

Eli (45:09.955)
Ha ha ha ha.

Eli (45:23.619)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli (45:30.201)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (45:31.144)
He's put in these great roles. just, I feel like his actual rush, brogish accent would have come out at some point in the movie and he would have just started sounding like Liam Neeson. So I don't know, I don't know. I think there's a version of it where it could have happened, but I just, I don't know if I can see it, you know?

Eli (45:43.414)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (45:56.141)
Yeah, yeah, I don't I definitely don't think you would have done the same like choice for the voice as Daniel Day-Lewis did Which apparently is like historically accurate when you look at records Lincoln did have like a higher like a more tenor higher registered voice Yeah Yeah, but yeah, like a lot of past roles of Lincoln have had like very like, you know Quote-unquote manly deep, you know, yeah

Jean-Pierre (46:11.51)
He was just an awkward guy, you know?

Jean-Pierre (46:21.998)
score and seven years ago our fathers I want to sound very yeah

Eli (46:26.169)
Like the Henry Fonda from the John Ford Young Mr. Lincoln like that sort of thing like very like But yeah, apparently the the higher pitched voice was not like high pitched. It's just like a more tenor voices more accurate Yeah But yeah, so Neeson is out Spielberg writes another desperate letter to Daniel Day Lewis just on a whim We'll see

Jean-Pierre (46:42.464)
Yeah, I mean he's a midwesterner, you know.

Eli (46:56.293)
And you know, lo and behold Daniel Day-Lewis accepts Why you may ask it's probably just good timing I wrote down this quote from Daniel Day-Lewis that I came across That kind of plays into what we've been talking about with him. He said quote when I was very young I made a promise to myself that would only work when I felt compelling need to

The work I do must be of great value to me. If it is not, it is not worth it, and I can do something else. For that reason, I can spend a year without working, then two others to invest myself completely on a project. If I worked all the time, I would exhaust my creativity, my desire." Unquote. So yeah, he's just like, when I work, I'm going to be all in, and then when I don't feel like I can be all in, I'm not going to work.

you know, respect, you I wish I could do that, but alas, I have to keep working. Yeah, and then he has like a year really to prep for this, and he talks about like immersing himself in the role, and yeah, this is...

Jean-Pierre (48:08.28)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (48:20.041)
He said that like a lot of the roles he plays are like the antithesis of who he just is in his daily life. And then like when he started studying for Lincoln, it was like the first time he was like hitting a wall. He said this quote, I was faced with a man whose life seemed entirely determined by politics. It was much later that I was able to grasp the human being behind the politician, a simple, accessible guy. So

Jean-Pierre (48:43.832)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (48:49.849)
He's really like, mean, Spielberg said like Daniel Day-Lewis read like a ton of books, ton of Lincoln books to prep for this. Yeah, he's just like, I mean, he's known for this. He's known for the total immersion in a character, taking in every detail of this guy and yeah.

Jean-Pierre (49:14.19)
Hmm. Yeah, I think, and I think the end of that quote where he says, was able to grasp the human behind the politician, a simple, guy. I think it really comes across in this movie. I was, I found myself fascinated every time his Lincoln like had a little...

anecdote or a little story or a little joke, you know, and even even when there's like moments where people He there's that one scene where they're on a telegraph and the guy's like I don't have time for one of your stories right now or or or he sometimes he tells a joke and no one else laughs except for himself and like These little things of like they're like kind of kind of awkward Social things but or or I mean obviously, you know spoilers for history American history,

Eli (49:51.245)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (50:07.214)
obviously his assassination is what prompts the creation of the Secret Service. So prior to that, you know, the president was a much more accessible person. So just the scenes, some of my favorite scenes of him, I was fascinated by like he's just walking around the military hospital, like visiting with soldiers. And so I think that that's what he was grasping onto, that humanity of the character, I think really comes through in his performance.

Eli (50:16.494)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (50:23.225)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (50:36.174)
demythologizes Lincoln, think, for us in a really wit way.

Eli (50:39.883)
Yeah Yeah, I think so and it's it's definitely like What I think what he tapped into I mean really like it's it's the it's like the trifecta of Him tapping into who Lincoln was Kushner's like scripts the way he like wrote this story out and then the way like obviously Spielberg with the master with the camera like

You know, you're talking about being captivated. It's like, it's a combination of those three things. It's like Daniel Day-Lewis is tapped into this guy. Kushner's script is really like well written. And then Spielberg knows how to just like move the camera just so just subtly so, so that you are like leaning into his story with the camera, that sort of stuff.

Jean-Pierre (51:24.446)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like there's some really great dolly work in this film when there's like two or three scenes I can remember where he's like in an office surrounded by his cabinet and everyone's arguing and all of sudden he...

Eli (51:34.21)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (51:46.575)
Gets everyone's attention and starts monologuing and like you're drawn in by his words and his performance as The camera like slowly pushes towards him and like you feel that as an audience member Like like I don't it's almost like even if the camera wasn't moving I think I still would have felt drawn in but that that's subtle just leaning It helps you feel more connected and drawn more to the words that you say for sure

Eli (51:49.401)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (52:06.467)
Right.

Eli (52:13.389)
Yeah Yeah, it's it's incredible. and you know from from what I can tell what what i've seen, you know in the behind the scenes him and spill work worked really well together spillberg was like I didn't question his method. I just was like happy to have it, you know Yeah No, yeah, I mean he did he was like I didn't really give him anything unless he was asking my opinion like himself

Jean-Pierre (52:28.174)
Hey look, you get DDL in your production, you don't ask questions. You just let the man do his thing, okay?

Jean-Pierre (52:42.37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Eli (52:43.721)
And yeah, he, he's just like a commanding actor. one of the other actors, it's the guy that plays, costable the, he's one of the, like the writers of the amendment. think, one of the Republican writers and, he, that actor was like, yeah, I showed up on set and I was talking to Spielberg and

He was like, Oh, let me introduce you to, uh, to the president. he said, Daniel Day Lewis walked in. It was like, he's like talking to him, you know, as Lincoln. He's like, it was like, he's, he was just caught off guard. He was like, this is incredible. And then, um, someone else was talking about how like, he would show up on set at like 8 45, um, you know, greet, walk around and greet everyone in character and, um,

Jean-Pierre (53:36.59)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (53:37.463)
Then he would just like sit. I think that specific day he was talking about in particular was, I think it's that scene you're talking about where he's there all at the cabinet table and he has like that three minute monologue right about and he said he just like sits down, you know, after greeting everyone, they're ready to shoot and just like nails it. like kind of one of those things where all the other actors have to be like on their like.

100 % A game because he's gonna nail it so

Jean-Pierre (54:05.198)
He's good. He's so good that if you're not keeping in step with him, they're gonna know the audience is gonna see it

Eli (54:11.929)
Yeah, exactly Yeah, and they they talked about like some of the other actors talked about that like I had to like make sure I was like doing it and doing it 100 because Yeah, because I mean if you if you screw up the scene like it's it's not him. He just nailed it and like it's that's on you. Um, yeah, just daniel a. is just an incredible actor excited that I

Jean-Pierre (54:21.304)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (54:36.675)
that I got to cover him. I don't know what all series I'll do in the future. He's not in a ton of movies. excited I got to cover him in this series for sure. And we'll talk more about him as we go. But yeah, just moving on down the list, Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. Really great. Yeah. Yeah, what did you think of her in this movie?

Jean-Pierre (54:56.526)
She's great.

Jean-Pierre (55:03.854)
I really liked her performance. And also, guess there was almost some nostalgia for me, guess, because I realized I have so many fond memories of seeing her in some of the movies I used to watch when I was a kid, like Mrs. Doubtfire. I think she's a Jumanji, right?

Eli (55:23.299)
Sure. Yeah.

Is she? Maybe. I don't know.

Jean-Pierre (55:27.726)
I don't know, but I just remember a lot of like kind of like mid to late 80s and 90s movies, you know, she kind of was kind of maybe her heyday so to speak and so seeing her pop up in a movie like this I was like, oh wow, yeah Sally Field like I feel like I don't see her in as many things. But I thought she did great. I thought she did great. She doesn't necessarily have the most to do, you know, but

you know and and as much as was trying to follow along there were a few moments where I was like like I remember the scene where they're having the um after he I guess I think it's after he gets reelected and there's a scene in the house where everyone's coming and she kind of gets into it with uh with with um another character we'll talk about here in a minute because I I want to get to it later because I have some some thoughts about that but I was a little confused by what the what the antagonism was there but but uh you know

Eli (56:14.211)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (56:22.723)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (56:23.862)
You know, I guess I just don't know what the context there was, but I thought she was great. She did great job.

Eli (56:30.029)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was set up a little bit because you get the feeling that like, Stevens is the House representative you're talking about and him and his like a little crew of like radical Republicans kind of have like, they'll like call Lincoln out for not being radical enough on, you know, ending slavery and stuff like that. And I think that's probably what she was getting at with him. But yeah.

Jean-Pierre (56:54.572)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (56:58.382)
And she's just like, why are you talking about my man like that? You know?

Eli (57:01.005)
Yeah, exactly. Dude. And what's funny is like the vibe he's giving off is like he's kind of enjoying her ripping into him. He's like, I like this lady. But yes, Sally Field, she was connected really early on in the early stages of development. And yeah, once it came around, she really had to fight for the role. She, she, you know, was in

Jean-Pierre (57:10.765)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (57:30.337)
She her and Spielberg were from what I can understand are pretty good friends And so she was in constant like communication with him. Like I really really want to do this the the problem was like whenever By the time the film is actually like going into production She is 10 years older than Daniel Day-Lewis when in real life Mary Todd Lincoln was nine years younger than Lincoln. So

There was like that discrepancy. yeah, eventually, mean, Sally Field has two Oscars at this point. So it's not about like, I don't know if you're gonna be good in the role. It's just about like the, I guess the visual, like, are you just too old? It's just one of those things that's.

Jean-Pierre (58:10.505)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (58:19.138)
Yeah.

It's just whether it's because things over it's like 99.9 % of people that watch this movie are not gonna know that I didn't know that Mary Todd Lincoln was What was was younger than Lincoln by that much anyway, and I will say this in the movie You don't notice it at all They they look perfectly fine together. There's it's not distracting at all

Eli (58:27.075)
Yeah. Right.

Eli (58:36.963)
Yeah. No, you don't. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But yeah. So eventually, Daniel Day-Lewis flies out to LA and they auditions with her. And they're like, yep, all right. Well, you got it, Sally. And she also, along with Daniel Day-Lewis, stayed in character on set. Yeah.

really awesome. In fact, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who we're going to talk about next, talked about even to the day of whenever they recorded the behind the scenes, when he thinks of Sally Field, he thinks of her in that Mary Todd Lincoln accent and stuff, just because when he met her, that's who she was being. So I thought that was funny.

Jean-Pierre (59:24.216)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (59:28.438)
Yeah, wonder if that was, I don't know, part of me is like, I wonder if she was like, well, if DDL is going to do it, then I guess it will too, you know, kind of thing. don't know.

Eli (59:37.913)
I, you know, maybe so. I did read somewhere that like, before their first like, film, like their first like day on set together, they like took, they like, I don't, they took some, a carriage or a ride or something, I don't know if it was a carriage actually, but a ride of some sort into, into like Richmond and like went for like a two hour walk together. And before, and then they

We're like, right, we got to go back, know, shooting starts soon. So, yeah, I think they were they were kind of like trying to get in sync in that way. So she was probably just like, yeah, I'll play along with this to stay in sync, which I think is cool. Yeah. But yeah, Joseph Gordon Levitt, JGL himself, get this.

Jean-Pierre (01:00:15.374)
Mmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:00:19.362)
Yeah, I get that.

Jean-Pierre (01:00:27.714)
What, another one, this is like, he's in this movie, I'm like, dude, what is he doing these days? I love JGL.

Eli (01:00:30.317)
Yeah.

Yeah Yeah, I do too. I love me some JGL playing Robert Lincoln the eldest son of of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. yeah, so the the crazy thing is Daniel Day Lewis suggested JGL Yeah, I mean that's gotta feel real good Spielberg said that he was like, yeah, what about this?

Jean-Pierre (01:00:53.496)
That's gotta feel good.

Jean-Pierre (01:00:59.502)
Amen.

Eli (01:01:02.945)
you know, Joe Gordon, he said Joe Gordon love it. I was like, that sounds weird, but okay.

Jean-Pierre (01:01:07.938)
What a... because this would have been... I mean, he would have been coming off of 500 days of summer and probably looper by this point, I would say.

Eli (01:01:13.441)
Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, Dark Knight Rises too, I think.

Jean-Pierre (01:01:20.504)
Well, that's true, but I'm just thinking of like when this movie was in production Dark Knight Rises probably wouldn't have been out yet This movie came out 2012 Dark Knight Rises was 2012 or 2013

Eli (01:01:27.225)
yeah, I mean I mean it was it was like it was Like later in 2011 when they shot it so yeah but yeah, mean he's he's definitely like I mean he I he's been good enough to like get the attention of daniel day louis, guess he's a young guy and

Jean-Pierre (01:01:40.0)
Okay, yeah, maybe so.

Jean-Pierre (01:01:53.39)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:01:56.067)
I guess he wanted to work with him. that's, yeah, that's gotta feel real good. And then of course, JGL was just like, yeah, I was working with an absolute legend. did, you know, kind of beside yourself on set every day, of course. But yeah, I mean, the rest of the household, you've got Gulliver, McGrath, Aztec, Lincoln. He doesn't really go on to do anything, but his...

Jean-Pierre (01:02:11.244)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:02:25.249)
He's good here. He's fine. Good little kid actor. Not much to do, but does really good. Gloria Rubin plays Elizabeth Keckley, kind of the maid of the house, I guess you would say. The... the... housekeeper.

Jean-Pierre (01:02:40.87)
She kind of gave me the vibe of like, Mary Todd's confidant and assistant kind of thing.

Eli (01:02:46.327)
Yeah, I mean, she's like the housekeeper that like is also like has a close relationship with With you know, Mary Todd Lincoln the the lady of the house, I guess you would say but yeah, yeah, she did a lot of like reading up on Keckley and there's there's even like books specifically about Elizabeth Keckley's relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln that she read and

She talked about doing like a road trip through North Carolina and Virginia where Keckley was from and stuff. So I thought that was cool. I think her along with Stephen McKinley Henderson's character, William Slade, who's kind of like the, I guess, butler of sorts for the Lincoln household. They were actually both like really

involved in different ways in kind of like the freedom movement. There in DC, Keckley did a lot of stuff like raising money and fundraising and Slade was like one of the leaders of like a local, like the local DC just, know, group of black men working to like get stuff

Jean-Pierre (01:04:05.581)
Yeah.

Eli (01:04:05.783)
going and it's kind of sad they didn't show much of that sort of thing in the movie but also it just wasn't that movie so

Jean-Pierre (01:04:13.238)
Yeah, it was a purely Lincoln-focused movie. I love the scene when Tad asks Slade, he's like, were you ever whipped? He's like, I was born free, so ain't nobody ever beat me unless they wanted to get a beating back. Why don't you ask Miss Keckley? She was born into Slade.

Eli (01:04:16.579)
Yeah.

Eli (01:04:21.591)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she just likes like, yeah, I was smacked with a shovel before I was your age. And then she moves on and like, I don't know if that's not exactly what she said, but that's what came to me in the moment.

Jean-Pierre (01:04:36.066)
B

Jean-Pierre (01:04:41.934)
But I will say Stephen Kinley Henderson, think he's someone that I've probably seen other movies before, but I've only recently kind of recognized him because, I mean, he's in Dune, part one, and he was great in that, and his little brief role that he had, and also Civil War, that came out last year, and he's great.

Eli (01:04:54.393)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:04:58.563)
Civil War, He's really good in Devs. If you wanna go back to the Alex Garland well, really good little show. He's in that, he's really good in that too. Yeah, have you seen Devs? yeah, you gotta see it, really good. Yeah, anytime Stephen McKinley Henderson pops up, I really, really enjoy him.

Jean-Pierre (01:05:13.614)
Anything Alex Garland does I'm there, you know I've not but it's on my list

Eli (01:05:28.205)
He, yeah, I'd be happy to, yeah, he's got a great vibe. He's really, yeah, it doesn't come through in this movie, but he's got this way of turning on emotion that's really incredible. You can see it in, I mean, there's like, have you seen Lady Bird?

Jean-Pierre (01:05:31.054)
It's just got a great vibe.

Jean-Pierre (01:05:35.342)
He's like a Black Santa Claus kind of vibe, you know?

Eli (01:05:56.279)
He's like briefly in Lady Bird. He's like a theater teacher. And there's like a scene in that movie where he just like, he's teaching them about like, just, you know, acting in theater. And he just like tells them to go into this moment and it like focuses in on him and he just like starts crying. Cause he like goes somewhere as an actor and like, like the emotion, like

lives in the emotion and starts crying and it's like, man, this dude is so good. But yeah, I love that guy. He's great. I could have used some more Stephen McKinley Henderson in this movie, but what we got was good.

Jean-Pierre (01:06:28.963)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:06:39.842)
Hmm. Well, I will say there's, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about the plot a little bit later, but you know, there is the scene right at the end when Lincoln's leaving to go to the theater, where I feel like Stephen kind of plays Slade as like, he almost has this feeling of like,

Eli (01:06:52.173)
Uh-huh. Yep.

Jean-Pierre (01:07:05.176)
This is last time I'm gonna see him. Like there's just something in that look that he gives him, you know?

Eli (01:07:05.217)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's one of the parts of the movie that that I kind of feel like is a Like one of the few parts of the movie that I feel like is a little bit over baked but but yeah, I mean it's not on the fault of henderson like he's He's great. He's great showing the emotion that he's supposed to show and in that scene for sure yeah, that's that's lincoln's household. part of the cast Now we have the cabinet and white house crew. so you have

Jean-Pierre (01:07:23.886)
You just say what you have to do. Yeah.

Eli (01:07:39.193)
David Straithan as William Seward, the Secretary of State. He's great. Yeah, just I don't have a whole lot to say about most of these guys. They're just all really good. I guess Seward is, Seward is definitely like the most prominent of them. And one of the more prominent like figures in kind of like the history of looking at Lincoln and his cabinet.

the yeah, I'll roll through these and then we'll kind of talk about them all in general. Bruce McGill plays Edward Stanton, the Secretary of War. Granger Hines plays Gideon Wells, the Secretary of the Navy. Deakin Matthews plays John Palmer Usher, the Secretary of the Interior. Richard Topol as James Speed, Attorney General. Walt Smith plays William P. Fessenden, the Secretary of the Treasury.

James Eichling plays William Dennison Jr., the postmaster general. Joseph Cross plays Major John Hay, which is Lincoln's military secretary. And then Jeremy Strong plays John George Nicolai, who is Lincoln's private secretary. So that's kind of like the cabinet and White House crew. Were there any like standouts there for you or?

Jean-Pierre (01:09:08.71)
Other than David Strahm, I think he's also the only one that you really understand his name, everybody else, I don't think they even name any of these other guys, maybe on occasion, so it's like, you don't really get a sense of who's who necessarily, except for this is the group that's around him.

Eli (01:09:18.669)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:09:28.257)
Right. Yeah. And it's tough. it's something that there's another really, really interesting movie to be made from, like, the idea of what Lincoln did with his cabinet. That's one of the things the book focuses on is, like, when Doris Kearns Goodwin was writing the book, she wanted to do a Lincoln book and what she

what she kind of, she was like, I've got to have a different angle. You know, there's so many books about Lincoln. What angle do I have? Do I have anything? She originally thought she was going to focus on like Lincoln and Abraham and Mary's relationship. and, but she ended up finding that there's all, there's tons and tons of archived letters from, people in Lincoln's cabinet and people that worked closely with Lincoln. like,

to Lincoln, also like to their spouses about Lincoln and to like just talking about what's going on to friends. There's just all these letters. And so that's how she like came up with the concept of the team of rivals because what I learned that I didn't, I didn't really know a ton of this history when I, before I listened to the abridged version of the book, but the

The whole idea of the team of rivals, which is what Lincoln and his cabinet was called, is that he basically hired on Republicans and Democrats that saw him as rivals. He was never supposed to have won the election. Seward was actually supposed to win. He was like the favorite to win. Everyone just kind of assumed Seward was going to win the Republican election, that is.

Jean-Pierre (01:11:06.926)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:11:24.245)
you know, to run for president. And yeah, Lincoln was kind of like a dark horse that like split some vote, like split some voting and by the time, by the like the third or fourth vote came around, he ended up winning. And so, but then he goes and he, he, there was four major guys that were up for that Republican nomination that year and he ended up putting all of those guys in his cabinet.

And they all were like kind of pissed that he won, you know in their own ways, of course, but It's crazy like by the time you get to his assassination And the way she you know presents it in the book you know, these guys are like crying and like Talking about how like, know Seward especially because there was an attempt on on Seward's life as well

Jean-Pierre (01:11:58.062)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:12:22.553)
because people kind of saw him as the Marcus Aurelius to Lincoln Caesar. And so if we're going to kill Lincoln, we need to kill the person that's going to make him live on in history. And so Seward had an attempt on his life as well that failed. And Seward put together, they weren't kind of

telling him that because he was in bad shape and he kind of put it put the put together like Lincoln would have been the first one here like he's he must be dead he must have gotten killed and so he you know the way like the that section of the book I was actually like tearing up hearing like how they were talking about and reflecting on Lincoln and what he meant to them after like kind of like hating him for a bit you know because he he

came around and stole this election. Just really interesting. There's a whole, like, I think a whole other movie to be made about that. That would be really cool. But yeah, yeah, not even really like a lot of names I'm very familiar with. Like I'm familiar with Jeremy Strong and that's really about it. and that list of names, David Streisand, of course, but, Strong is really the only other name that stands out.

Jean-Pierre (01:13:26.51)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:13:48.409)
And I haven't even like seen him in a ton of stuff, I guess like He kind of pops up here and there and a few things I've seen but not in any way that like I'm like, yeah Jeremy strong, you know Yeah, the so let's move on this is this is one of the more fun groups I think the lobbyists and other like Republicans that pop up

Jean-Pierre (01:13:48.43)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:14:10.509)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:14:14.39)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:14:15.319)
So in this group you have James Spader as WN Bilbo, who's... man, I love it. This character apparently is like a combination of several real life people, which is typical to do for screenplay. Makes sense. But yeah, let's...

Jean-Pierre (01:14:20.046)
So funny.

Jean-Pierre (01:14:33.718)
My head can is that he's just Robert California playing a bit. Just hearing a Southern accent come out of James Bader's mouth was very funny.

Eli (01:14:37.657)
Yeah, Robert, California. Yeah.

It was it's funny and he's he's playing a funny guy a funny role It's real. So there's the trio of him a James Spader as Bilbo John Hawks as Robert Latham and Tim Blake Nelson as Richard Shell They're kind of like the Yeah, love Tim Blake Nelson to you Yeah, they're they're like this trio of you know

Jean-Pierre (01:14:50.465)
Yes.

Jean-Pierre (01:15:01.9)
Love a good Tim Blake Nelson like role. He's so good

Eli (01:15:11.267)
They're not called lobbyists, but they're basically lobbyists going around trying to get votes for, yeah, for the operatives, lobbyists, whatever you wanna call them. They're behind the scenes. Lincoln never actually like directly addresses these guys until towards the end when he gets real desperate to get these votes for the 13th Amendment, but yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:15:16.216)
They're operatives.

Jean-Pierre (01:15:24.045)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:15:35.756)
I like when Bilbo says, man, he won't even let us use a 50 cent piece because it's got your face on it.

Eli (01:15:39.833)
Yeah, man Bilbo he's all of like all the things that made me like laugh out loud And not just like chuckle were probably related to to him like the scene where? Where like the guys pulling the gun on him is just that's hilarious He's like runs back and tries to like take the gun from him and then runs off again great

Jean-Pierre (01:15:58.415)
Yeah.

Eli (01:16:08.301)
Who knew James Spader had such like physical comedic chops? I didn't know, but now I know. Man, yeah, and John Hawks and Tim Blake Nelson are also good. I don't know that they're like standouts necessarily, but yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:16:12.942)
Hmm, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:16:27.054)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:16:30.828)
Yeah, of the trio, James Pander's definitely the standout for sure.

Eli (01:16:34.797)
I mean, like, there's the race scene where they're all racing to Lincoln's room when the voting gets held up. That's pretty funny as well.

Jean-Pierre (01:16:39.554)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:16:48.204)
Well, that's Bilbo and his two secretaries, right?

Eli (01:16:53.687)
Yeah, well, John Hawkes is the one that like has the letter at first that Lincoln takes it from him. Yeah, yeah. He like takes it from Latham and gives it to Bilbo and that's, yeah. I'm pretty sure if I'm, unless I'm mixing something up.

Jean-Pierre (01:16:58.658)
I'll give it to the note, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:17:09.164)
No, no, no, it was just two secretaries, I think.

Eli (01:17:12.087)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those, those guys are great. They, yeah, some good, like good little montage sequences with those guys too, as they're, they're going around trying to get some votes. Yeah. And then you have Hal Holbrook, great actor playing Francis Preston Blair. Cool thing about Holbrook is he had played Lincoln four times before and actually had an Emmy for, for one of those performances.

So I thought that was that was pretty cool. So he's he's like he's got some investment in in this character in this movie. So Yeah, I thought he was very good when whenever he would pop up and then you know his Blair son Montgomery Blair by played by Byron Jennings and his daughter Julie white plays Elizabeth Blair Lee

Jean-Pierre (01:17:49.987)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:18:06.393)
And then yeah a few other names you have Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel playing Mr. And Mrs. Jolly that come into the office and kind of early on You know, they're fun and then Epatha Merkerson plays Lydia Smith who is Stevens housekeeper Later on in the movie very late in the movie is revealed to be Yeah, that's a fun little group

Jean-Pierre (01:18:30.776)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:18:36.493)
We should definitely talk about the state representatives. There's a lot of these names here too. First and foremost, let's talk about like the main Republican guys, but above all, mean, Tommy Lee Jones playing Thaddeus Stevens. man, so good. What'd you think about old Tommy Lee in this one?

Jean-Pierre (01:18:53.23)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:18:58.06)
Yes, I-

I gotta say...

So I'm thinking back to the scene where he's first introduced. And the way it's shot, it's shot in a way that you're like, okay, whoever's sitting at this desk, this is gonna be like a big reveal of who this person is. And then all of a sudden the camera like turns your pants or whatever and it's Tommy Lee Jones. And let me say this, Tommy Lee Jones, iconic actor, phenomenal actor. Love him in movies like The Fugitive.

Eli (01:19:09.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:19:34.475)
Mm-hmm. Want an Oscar for that?

Jean-Pierre (01:19:34.509)
you know, men in black. Just such, so good. No country for old men, right? I'm be honest with you. I think he was a little distracting in this movie. He does a great job, but I don't know, it's just so hard for me because he has such an iconic voice that I just, it took me out of the movie a little bit.

Eli (01:19:48.609)
Really? Really? Okay. Interesting.

Eli (01:19:56.002)
Yeah, sure.

Jean-Pierre (01:20:01.27)
And he does great! All of his scenes are so good. But I'm just like, it's it's Tommy Lee Jones. You know? I don't know. I do think that was the one... I'd love to know, you know, maybe I'll have to do some research on my own, like what was the story behind him getting cast in this role, because I don't know if he had like a physical kind of appearance similar to person he's...to Thaddeus Stevens or...

Eli (01:20:08.343)
Yeah, sure.

get that,

Eli (01:20:21.145)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:20:29.972)
or what it was, but it's just like one of those roles where I'm just like, I think he does a great job in the movie, but I'm just like, I think I would have preferred someone that disappeared into the role a little bit. Not saying that he doesn't, but it's like, it's like right on the line of like The Rock, right? Where it's like The Rock in his early movies, it's still Dwayne Johnson, but he's not necessarily playing himself, you know?

as opposed to what he's done more recently, where he's just the rock of the movie. I think also it might be because Thaddeus Stevens, the way he's written in this movie anyway, he's very sarcastic, he's very quippy, he's got all these reactions, responses to everything. And I feel like maybe I've just seen Tommy Lee Jones play that kind of character in other movies that it didn't necessarily feel like...

Eli (01:21:13.817)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Eli (01:21:24.377)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:21:29.192)
kind of like Tommy Lee Jones is just in this Lincoln movie. Okay for me anyway personally I do think he did a great job I loved his character I just did find him a little bit distracting if I'm honest.

Eli (01:21:32.557)
Yeah.

Yeah, I...

Yeah, I I don't feel the same way you feel about it, but I definitely understand I Understand where you're coming from I mean, it's it's kind of like I was thinking about okay What's a parallel for me and the thing so we can reach back into this same series? and There's a degree to which Tom Cruise

Jean-Pierre (01:22:10.956)
I do want to say real quick, I just looked up a picture of Thaddeus Stevens and Loki, he does kind of look like Tommy Lee Jones. So I see why.

Eli (01:22:11.349)
is

Eli (01:22:17.049)
Well, there you go, there you go, but yeah, I mean so Tom Cruise He You know, he's Tom Cruise there's a degree to which It's hard to believe Tom Cruise as an Everyman kind of figure and that's what he's supposed to be in War of the Worlds

And it's just kind of hard to buy, you know? It's like you're watching the movie and you're like, I mean, come on, it's Tom Cruise. He's going to save the day. Like you never really kind of, it's hard to buy into like, this guy's going to like get screwed over by the aliens. Cause you're watching it you're like, it's Tom Cruise. Like he's going to beat the aliens. Like, come on. yeah. I mean, that's fair.

Jean-Pierre (01:23:06.336)
Yeah, I actually don't necessarily agree with that take either. I think he kind of plays against type a little bit in that film, but I understand where you're coming from.

Eli (01:23:12.493)
But I'm making like the something that an opinion that I had that about like not being able to see past the actor. Yeah, it's I've experienced it before. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:23:21.664)
Yeah. That's what I'm saying is I think we both, yeah, I think we can, I think we're both like, you don't necessarily fully agree with my take, but you understand it. And I feel the same way about that where it's like, I understand what you're saying, even if I'm like, I kind of see a little bit differently, but yeah, I don't know. It was just like.

I was just like, it's Tommy Lee Jones. I also thought he was wearing a really bad wig the whole movie, and then you find out the end of the movie actually is a wig. So it's like, OK.

Eli (01:23:47.479)
And then he was. Yeah. man. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, there's a degree to which like Tommy Lee Jones is like iconic and like you're thinking about like all of his other roles and you you mentioned some good ones that actually like the role, one of his lesser roles has like the Tommy Lee Jones quote that like I probably think about the most.

It's in that movie, Man of the House, where he's like having to watch cheerleaders. He's like an agent and he has to like pretend to be their, I don't know, their coach or something. And they tell him to put on a happy face and he goes, this is my happy face. You know, with his iconic Tommy Lee Jones straight face. Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:24:33.868)
Yeah, just got that iconic Tommy Lee Jones monotone, you know. I love him as an actor. He's played so many iconic roles. I love in the fugitive scene where they're in that tunnel right before Harrison Ford jumps and he's like, I didn't kill my wife. And he goes, I don't care.

Eli (01:24:51.769)
Yeah.

Eli (01:24:55.255)
Yeah Yeah, and the the speech the speech of like when he's sending out everybody to on the hunt like man iconic so good but yeah, tommy lee jones like I I respect your opinion. I see where you're coming from. I didn't I didn't get that I loved tommy lee jones in this and I think it's because it's it's actually like I think we think the same thing but just have like we're we're coming out on different ends on it like

You know, you're like, it's just another Tommy Jones role. Like he's doing the same thing he does in a lot of other stuff. And you're like, so, you know, it kind of took me out. And for me, I'm like, and so I was all then, you know, when he's like going on tirades against other members of the house, which apparently like, from what, from what I could tell from my research is like a lot of that stuff is like historically accurate.

the one hand that's how they would talk to each other on the how on the floor of the house and then on the other like on the other hand too like those some of those things like are actually like recorded that he actually said I don't know like what percentage necessarily are things he actually said but I like to think that he called someone let more lizard than man on the the floor of the house and you know honestly like we could probably use a little bit more of that that fire enos in our

Jean-Pierre (01:25:54.348)
Yes.

Jean-Pierre (01:26:06.274)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:26:13.208)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:26:20.761)
On the floor of the house today,

Jean-Pierre (01:26:22.55)
Certainly the eloquence for sure.

Eli (01:26:25.461)
Yeah, yeah that it's like it's like the most eloquent like insults like so it's it's hard to be like, this guy like Doesn't have it all together because you're like man. He's really like Leaning into his his anger and tirading but man, he sounds good while he's doing it. So It's it's not it's not someone calling, you know

Jean-Pierre (01:26:47.51)
You are more lizard than man.

Eli (01:26:53.155)
know this guy's got little hands you know which is unfortunately became a big thing not that long ago on debate floors in front of the whole country yeah if you know you know David Kostable we talked about him plays James Ashley so Stevens

Stevens, Ashley, and think some others are the ones that like drafted the 13th Amendment. But those are the two main guys that you kind of see the most of. Some other ones, Bill Raymond plays Schuyler Colfax, who's the Speaker of the House. And then Steven Spinella plays Asa Vinter Lytton, who pops up a few times. He's kind of like, he's got like the little goatee and

He's the other radical Republican that like confronts Tommy Lee, Jones, Stevens after he like doesn't stand on equal, he's trying to get the bill passed and he comes in and he's like, you're a phony and all that. It's that guy.

Jean-Pierre (01:28:08.098)
Yeah, because Ashley asked him to say that he only sees African Americans as equal under the law, not equal to white men.

Eli (01:28:15.915)
under the law or whatever. And not equal in all things, I think is the way it's phrased. And he says that even though he doesn't believe it, because that's the only way they're going to get the bill passed. But yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:28:31.982)
Right, because I believe him and Asa are like the two like super staunch like radical abolitionists.

Eli (01:28:36.087)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they are. And there's another like little, there's a little scene where we get to see like the whole crew of radical abolitionists all together, but yeah. The Maine Democrats, you have Lee Pace playing Fernando Wood and Peter McRobbie playing George Pendleton. Yeah, both of those guys are great.

Jean-Pierre (01:28:55.16)
He's so good. But yeah, like the way they play out of each other, but especially Lee Pace, like that guy, he just...

Man, plays a great bad guy in general. mean, this Ronan the Accuser, he's in Foundation, the show on Apple TV. He's kind of a villainy kind of character in that show. I don't know, he's just got a presence about him. I think that really works really

Eli (01:29:17.538)
Okay.

Eli (01:29:25.197)
He's in Guardians. Guardians of the Galaxy. Yep. Yep. yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot the character's name, so I didn't click with me when you said it, but yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:29:28.066)
You guys want to see Ronan the Accuser in the first Guardians film?

Jean-Pierre (01:29:37.474)
He's also in the Hobbit films, he plays the elf king, but I can't remember his name. The Lord of the Rings fans are gonna rip us a new one for that, but sorry guys.

Eli (01:29:42.347)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Eli (01:29:47.801)
I mean, maybe not, because Lord of the Rings fans don't necessarily like those movies. So think you're good. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:29:56.911)
It's like fan-fan-fan-drial or something, I think.

Eli (01:29:59.801)
Something like that. I don't know. It's hard. You know, who can blame anyone for not keeping up with all the Tolkien names? I don't know. Yeah, him and Peter McRobbie as Pendleton are both great. And then the other, like, I think, guy that pops up the most of the Democrats is Michael Stolbarg as George Yeaman. He's kind of like the, he's the...

Jean-Pierre (01:30:06.062)
Yeah.

Eli (01:30:27.073)
He's a guy that he's like a Democrat that leans abolitionist, but like doesn't actually like want to vote for it. He does. He thinks it's just getting in the way of more important things, I guess, like ending the war. So he's the guy that yells, yay.

Jean-Pierre (01:30:40.492)
Which, yeah, I loved that scene. I thought my audio cut out because it gets, like it goes silent for a second. He mouths, my vote ties us. I thought my audio stopped working, but I just did that. I will say, I do think, know, not that I necessarily agree with him originally not wanting to say.

Eli (01:30:50.946)
Uh-huh.

Eli (01:30:55.404)
Yeah, he did.

Jean-Pierre (01:31:05.802)
originally wanted to say nay, but it is interesting when he brings up the idea of like the country's not ready for emancipation. Like what do think are going to happen to these people afterwards? Because when you, speaking, the, he almost kind of had a, a bit of a kind of foresaw the lack of

Eli (01:31:12.707)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:31:26.297)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:31:26.452)
structure that needs to be put in place for sure. But I do think that that definitely is one of the most memorable scenes. And I love him also like singing with all the union guys, the union boys right after it passes. I think that was really good.

Eli (01:31:30.157)
Yeah.

Eli (01:31:37.83)
yeah.

Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, it was good and I like to he I thought he was really good and his like, you know Most of these are very sparse roles. They're on like screen all of like what ten minutes at the most But they're like really Yeah, they're they're they're knocking it out really and Yeah, and you know Yeah, he definitely has a point

Jean-Pierre (01:31:55.437)
Most of these guys are literally a face in the crowd, almost literally, but he definitely is a standout.

Eli (01:32:09.429)
a good like question asked. But you know, I think Lincoln's assassination really screwed up reconstruction. I think it would have been very different if with Lincoln still at the helm. But yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:32:23.362)
Well, especially because at the time, you know, the person you lost against in the race automatically became your vice president still. And so then Andrew Johnson comes in. No? Okay. Well, I thought it was, but I do know that Andrew Johnson was his vice president and he was probably one of the worst presidents we've ever had. And just completely tried to undo everything that Lincoln put into place.

Eli (01:32:34.347)
No, not at this point.

Eli (01:32:44.087)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:32:50.362)
So it does often make you wonder, one of the biggest questions of American history is if Lincoln had survived and being able to live through his full second term, what would have happened during Reconstruction?

Eli (01:33:02.615)
Yeah, yeah, and and it just like it goes back to what I was talking about earlier of like the team of rival stuff like a lot of those guys on the cabinets like Highly disagreed with what you know, Lincoln was trying to do but like at the end of the day What's what's fascinating is at the end of the day those guys? After they came out of the cabinet room and let Lincoln have his piece like, you know Telling them what he wanted to do. They all like backed him

Jean-Pierre (01:33:31.02)
He, Lincoln was, yeah, it seems like Lincoln was really the type of man that was able to bring people to his side of things through however he managed to do it, but definitely seems like the type of guy who just had the kind of mannerism that people are like, you know what, I don't like the man, but dang gummit, I'm gonna do what he asked me to.

Eli (01:33:31.193)
It's fascinating.

Eli (01:33:54.489)
Yeah, yeah, yeah speaking of Voting the way Lincoln wants you to there's also some swing voters and others that we should mention more just guys that are like on screen for like all of one or two minutes, but you know really solid Boris MacGyver as Alexander Koffroth One of the swing voters. Yeah Yeah

Jean-Pierre (01:34:18.094)
great scene where he goes to the meet with Stevens and just is obviously terrified of the man.

Eli (01:34:24.343)
Yeah, yeah, it's great. man. Walter Goggins plays Clay Hawkins. David. Yeah, David Warszawski, William Hutton, Michael Stanton Kennedy as Hiram Price. Rainer Skeen as Josiah S. Beanpole Burton, who has like one line in the movie and nails it. Beanpole Burton. It's great.

Jean-Pierre (01:34:30.998)
Love Walter Goggins.

Jean-Pierre (01:34:48.236)
Beanpole Burton says aye.

Eli (01:34:54.201)
Wayne Duvall plays Bluff Wade and then Christopher Evan Welch plays Edward McPherson, the clerk of the house who somehow pulls off like the performance of stating people's names of the century I think.

Jean-Pierre (01:35:12.706)
What was it the the one guy who says? Who says nay, and then he says I he's like no no abstain abstain I say I love that little shot the reaction shot where he just kind of like Stairs and he holds it and like they he holds it for the perfect amount of time just a few seconds And then he like you see him like crossing out and like rewriting. It was perfect Just just the perfect amount of annoyance in his face not too much

Eli (01:35:18.861)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli (01:35:33.963)
Yeah, just kind of like this look of disdain.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, shout out to old Christopher Evan Welch, nailed the clerk of the house, you know. Yeah, that's all the main house people. Union Army guys, Jared Harris plays Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Yeah, he was great. Yeah. And I didn't know this actor was in this movie, but

Jean-Pierre (01:35:41.869)
do script.

Jean-Pierre (01:36:00.578)
love Jared Harris. It's always nice seeing him pop up in something.

Eli (01:36:09.289)
Sure enough, like, he pops up and I'm like, Adam Driver. Yeah, Samuel Beckwith.

Jean-Pierre (01:36:14.082)
Yeah, I think this is before he was kind of big. mean, mean, Star Wars really did numbers for his career for sure, but I knew he did stuff before.

Eli (01:36:17.933)
Yeah.

Eli (01:36:22.807)
Yeah, I mean he really like, I mean he had stuff before this, but not really anything. He was more like, I think in his stage acting career at this point. But yeah, he plays Lincoln's, yeah, maybe so, yeah. Yeah, he plays Lincoln's telegraph operator Samuel Beckwith, who actually historically was Grant's telegraph operator, but for the Sigmund movie I guess, say.

Jean-Pierre (01:36:37.646)
I think he maybe done some stuff on TV, but.

Eli (01:36:53.401)
moved him over to the White House. Yeah, Clarence Key plays, I mean, Driver, before I move on, he does have a little back and forth with Lincoln that shows, oh man, this Adam Driver guy, pretty good. Yeah, so I thought I'd mention that. Clarence Key plays Seth Williams, the Inspector General. Most of these guys just kind of pop up. Asa Luke.

Jean-Pierre (01:37:09.046)
is going places.

Eli (01:37:20.973)
Two Crow plays Lieutenant Colonel Eli S. Parker. We can talk about these two guys, Coleman Domingo and David Oyelowo playing a couple of Black Union soldiers there at the beginning. Really good. Who would? Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:37:39.777)
It was great, but it was like one of those things where, well, think Coleman Domingo is kind of more recently kind of become more of a publicly known name. But David Oyelowo, I always forget his last name, Oyelowo, like, you know, I've seen him around a lot of different stuff and I think he's pretty notable. So it was really interesting to see him really only in like the first five minutes of the movie that he hasn't come back to do anything.

Eli (01:37:48.483)
Yeah.

Eli (01:37:55.181)
Her yellow, yeah.

Eli (01:38:00.15)
yeah.

Eli (01:38:07.405)
Yeah Yeah, and I think that is like one of the There there wasn't like a ton of like major criticism against this movie but one of the like the things that did like if there was a criticism it was just like the lack of The lack of like focus on black characters in the movie Yeah Yeah, and so which is

Jean-Pierre (01:38:30.422)
Yeah, there's not a really strong black voice in this movie for the most part. There's like one scene between Lincoln and... Yeah.

Eli (01:38:39.763)
Keckley Yep Yeah, there's that scene and there's this scene and that's really it and you know, it's what I do appreciate is that like This what one thing that this so first I'll say it's a fair criticism like, you know It's one of those things where like my defense would be it's just not that movie. It's about

because like at the end of the day, it's not even really like a Lincoln biopic. It's like a it's it's like a political thriller, you know kind of courthouse drama with like Lincoln as like the folk like the fulcrum, you know and Because I don't know it doesn't really feel like a traditional biopic at all

Jean-Pierre (01:39:28.194)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:39:35.406)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:39:36.281)
because it's focusing on one part of his life. It's focusing on a particular like event really. Um, cause really the movie is about passing the 13th amendment. You, you get a feel of who Lincoln was, but like at the end of the day, the movie like rises and falls on the 13th amendment getting passed, not like learning about who Lincoln is. Um, if that makes sense. Um, and so like there's a degree like that would be like,

my my defense and probably like Steven Spielberg's defense and all the people that made it is like well we just weren't making that movie and that's fair but i also think it is fair to say like okay you know maybe we could have had a little bit more of this but i will say what i do like about that that one scene with yellow is that it doesn't like

You know when it starts and it's like Lincoln sitting up there all folksy looking, you know, it's like here we go, you know, you could you could Supposedly think like here we go, you know, white savior kind of thing going on But like it doesn't really set it up that way it sets it up as like yellow will go in like hey, like do you actually care like, know, and Lincoln's kind of like backpedaling a little bit and being like, well, you know

Jean-Pierre (01:40:54.818)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:40:59.449)
telling the story, not really answering necessarily. And so I guess I appreciated that like the, you know, at least the the one or two, the two times that you have a black character talking directly with Lincoln, they're really like kind of questioning him and pushing back on like, are you doing enough? Like, so I did appreciate that, I guess, aspect of it. I don't know.

Jean-Pierre (01:41:02.072)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:41:14.478)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:41:26.466)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:41:28.695)
I don't know if you had any thoughts on that, that whole idea.

Jean-Pierre (01:41:31.756)
Yeah, I do think it was interesting to kind of see they both kind of challenge him a little bit.

Eli (01:41:40.419)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (01:41:41.518)
And it kind of sets a it was it was interesting. I don't know that that whole scene to me Was a bit felt a bit off. I feel like it was I don't know what it was about it, but just Like you start you see Coleman Domingo and David and then you know these other two guys these two white soldiers come in We'll talk, you know Lucas Haas and and Dane Don

Eli (01:41:50.617)
Hmm.

Eli (01:42:00.833)
Yeah, Lucas Haas and Dane DeHaan. Yeah, two recognizable names actually.

Jean-Pierre (01:42:07.576)
definitely recognizable faces for sure and but also I think this is like I want to say Dane DeHaan's like big break was Chronicle and this is like a few years before that and he's so good in that movie but but it was so it's nice to kind of see see it's always interesting watching a movie like this and you're like wow like some of these

Eli (01:42:09.753)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:42:26.53)
these people are like kind of bigger, big names now that at the time like weren't as much, you know? It's kind of like seeing like, like I think of like someone like, every time I see like Paul Dano, you know, pop up in a bit part in an older film from like the, you know, mid 2010s, I'm like, wow.

That's kind of crazy. yeah, I don't know. There was just something about the way it was edited or something that I was just like, wait, what? What's going on? So yeah.

Eli (01:42:55.801)
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah Yeah, I mean or we can round out the cast. There's a few Confederates to mention I'll actually start with the last one Christopher Boyer plays Robert E Lee who you see for like two seconds like No, he just kind of like gets on his horse and rides off But then you have the three yeah

Jean-Pierre (01:43:14.094)
It doesn't even say anything.

Jean-Pierre (01:43:21.101)
He dipped his hat.

Eli (01:43:24.281)
The three main ones are Jackie Earl Haley who plays Confederate Vice President Alexander H Stevens Gregory Itzen or I'd send I don't really know how to pronounce that playing our John Archibald Campbell the assistant secretary of war for the Confederates And then Michael Shifflett playing Robert MT Hunter He plays the kind of third Delegate there. Those three guys are kind of like the delegates

from the Confederacy that show up to quote unquote negotiate with Lincoln.

Jean-Pierre (01:43:59.599)
It's really interesting that they are, as far as I remember, even though I just watched the movie, I think they're the only three characters that get like a title card, like naming who they are, which is a really interesting decision.

Eli (01:44:14.969)
Yeah. I think, I think Grant gets one too.

Doesn't he?

Jean-Pierre (01:44:22.252)
Yeah, well I think it's in the same scene too. Or, no, I think it's the, it's them first when they get to the carriage and then the riverboat. When he gets off, he's like there's that shot of the riverboat and then it kind of pans over to him. I think you're right, he does get one.

Eli (01:44:25.175)
Maybe so, yeah.

Eli (01:44:33.965)
Gotcha. Yeah.

Eli (01:44:41.229)
Yeah, I guess they were just like, how are we going to introduce these guys? we'll just throw it on the screen. Yeah, I was fine with it. Yeah. So all that, that was, I mean, just a huge cast of people, you know, obviously like a lot of those names we just kind of like read. We just read a list of names, but you know, how often are these people getting shouted out for playing a great like

seconds on screen so I just wanted to give you know all those names a shout out so

Jean-Pierre (01:45:15.232)
Yeah, I'd imagine a lot of those kind of unknown names to us anyway are probably a lot of like more like theatrical stage actors kind of guys.

Eli (01:45:22.809)
Yeah, and I'm glad you said that because they did someone did mention in the behind the scenes that like You know, I mean there's tons of extras in those House of Representatives You know sequences and a lot of those guys are stage actors That are mostly in the background but probably some of those more prominent ones too I would imagine Yeah Yeah production

We can talk through a little bit of this. It's shot, shoots from October through December, 2011. It's mostly shot, it's pretty much completely shot in Virginia, mostly in Richmond. And the governor there kind of gave them free rein. They had some scheduling with the government. You know, Richmond is the

Think the state capital and you know, they have all this the state government buildings there and they did some scheduling magic where they could use the government buildings and some of the rooms for various scenes So yeah, really cool. They also used Petersburg, Virginia Which has a lot of like historical architecture For some outside scenes and whatnot Yeah, really just

Completely shot there in and around Richmond, Virginia, which is ironic because that was the the seat of the Confederation Confederacy during the war so

Jean-Pierre (01:46:54.894)
Thank

Yeah, this is the area that my...

You know, my grandparents were living in before my grandpa passed away. My grandma still lives in the area. And so, you when I went to go visit them, they live in this little town called King George, which is like, there's like this little part of Virginia that kind of juts out into the Potomac River. And they're like really close to where, like literally like they have like a little road you can walk down and you can actually have like a little dock overlooking the Potomac River. So it's just a really cool, it was really cool just being

Eli (01:47:06.648)
Hmm.

Eli (01:47:19.961)
Hmm.

Eli (01:47:28.835)
That's cool.

Jean-Pierre (01:47:33.279)
in that area, like being like a history nerd of like colonial America, the Civil War. Because dude, you drive around and like there's like a bunch of little farms and some of those farmhouses have been around since the 1700s. You know, it's just crazy. If you love like this era of history, it's definitely worth a trip to some of these kind of like smaller towns in that area because you'll still see a lot of this.

cool architecture everywhere.

Eli (01:48:04.217)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's interesting. Like, um, we, can jump down and talk about that stuff. So one of the cool things just about the design and like the location. Um, well, for one, Rick Carter had been on the project since the beginning, basically since 2002, he was, he was working with Spielberg on it. Um, he had read like Doris Kearns Goodwin's book in detail. She does a lot.

Not in the bridge version because he was talking about it and I was like I didn't get a whole lot of any of that So it must have just been in the full version of her talking about like his off, you know, Lincoln's office and stuff like that But yeah, he was inspired by the the description of the rooms and the architecture in her book but one of the cool things is the Richmond Capitol building has very very similar architecture to the White House and so

they basically built this huge portico off the front of the Richmond, Capitol building, to make it look like the white house. So it's just this huge structure that like, it's not like obviously against the, the state Capitol there, but it's like, it's close enough where you can get the camera angle where it looks like it's the portico is attached. and yeah, they just built it.

Jean-Pierre (01:49:23.512)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:49:32.587)
huge huge portico and yeah looks pretty good it's the the stand-in for the white house

Jean-Pierre (01:49:38.156)
Yeah, facades like that happen much more often than you would think.

Eli (01:49:43.319)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the other, the other like government thing building they use, the Virginia House of Delegates is what they use for the House of Representatives set. So that, that, that is actually like the Virginia House set up. Yeah. And they, didn't change a whole lot to it. They probably added some, a few historical things, but

Jean-Pierre (01:49:58.476)
Mmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:50:05.014)
a great set.

Eli (01:50:12.864)
Yeah, they filmed there for like two weeks in pretty much chronological order for the movie and you know, was one of those things where it just worked out with scheduling. They weren't using it for a couple weeks and they're like, yeah, y'all can film in there. So pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the, the design I think of this movie is one of those things that just like,

Jean-Pierre (01:50:20.717)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:50:39.927)
You don't necessarily like think about it while you're watching the movie, but I think that's like probably because it's done so well that it's not like sticking out. It's just like a ton of small details that add to the feel of the movie. That's just incredible. I mean, Rick Carter had like details down to like the just like maps on the walls and tapestries and the wallpaper design and they did like

Jean-Pierre (01:50:43.854)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:50:56.184)
Yes, I agree.

Eli (01:51:08.621)
They had people like write out replicas, like handwritten letter replicas of tons of letters written to and from Lincoln and that are just scattered about like his office that you see. those are all like, like someone was saying you could just walk around that set and pick up one and just read it. And it's an actual like letter, a replica of a letter that Lincoln wrote or that was written to Lincoln. really cool. Just

Jean-Pierre (01:51:15.618)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:51:37.433)
tons of details like that that I think is really incredible. Yeah, what did you think about the design of the movie?

Jean-Pierre (01:51:46.403)
Yeah, I thought it was great. mean, I definitely had some thoughts kind of more along the lines of like the cinematography and lighting and things like that. But as far as the design itself, yeah, I just, it just feels real. You know, like you feel like you're, you're watching like, like an archival footage of what it was really like. Like, I think, I think you hit the nail on the head where you said, like, it doesn't really

Eli (01:51:55.097)
Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute.

Eli (01:52:03.022)
Yeah.

Eli (01:52:10.519)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:52:16.408)
You don't really notice it because it doesn't stick out because it's just so well done and you just instantly feels like you're transported to the kind of mid-1860s.

Eli (01:52:26.681)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really, you know, Rick Carter talked about the, his office and living quarters. Um, but especially his office being like kind of the heart of the movie as far as design goes. Uh, and just, yeah, just focused a lot of his attention on that. And then like Joanna Johnston with the costumes too. Um, you know, I mean, she always does whenever you, whenever I've seen her.

on like special features, she's like always talking about like all the research she's done on costuming for whatever period it is and she, I love, she said that she focused on when designing like Lincoln's costume, she focused on the silhouette as the foundation, which I love because I feel like Lincoln is the most like silhouettable figure in maybe all of human history.

Jean-Pierre (01:53:25.613)
Yes.

Eli (01:53:26.009)
And so yeah, you know, yeah knows the hat like the the you know Coat jacket, whatever. Yeah, it's it's great she was able to like study the Lincoln hat at the Smithsonian and had one made at this place in Italy that makes hats like that and She was studying like Mary Todd Lincoln's favorite colors and styles from pictures and paintings of her

Jean-Pierre (01:53:28.578)
That nose, man.

Jean-Pierre (01:53:34.734)
the chin strap beard.

Eli (01:53:56.503)
She even like in the, so I remembered this in the book. It talks about Seward wearing this like yellow robe as he's like going around and like he was, he was much more like of a, typical like politician that's like a man of the people, like really knows how to work the crowd and you know, that sort of thing. And

She talked about him being very fashion conscious and it does in the book talk about him wearing this yellow robe, which you see in the movie at one point, which I thought was cool. yeah. And then two, just the makeup. you know, there's a lot of facial hair in this movie, a lot of like a really great facial hair and they're having to do this for, I think there was, like, especially like the house sets. I think I have it written down. Yeah. There was like,

Jean-Pierre (01:54:26.52)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:54:33.048)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:54:40.412)
yeah.

Eli (01:54:48.409)
58 actors and over 230 extras At any point in time for especially those bigger sets like the house stuff so and they can't really give like They can't really sit down and do like 30 minutes to an hour on everybody's face. They're having to like Work through all those facial hairs. I think they said like 65 % of the it was the makeup lady said there was like 65 % of the people in the house

Jean-Pierre (01:54:51.97)
No, I-

Jean-Pierre (01:55:08.248)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:55:17.921)
scenes have facial hair that they had to do.

Jean-Pierre (01:55:21.3)
Yeah, know, stuff like that's always gonna be a mix of some people are, it's like their actual facial hair, they've just cut to look more period. But yeah, yeah, yeah. With a lot of like the major actors, it's probably gonna be more like, it could be more prosthetic facial hair, you know, just to kind of depends.

Eli (01:55:28.729)
Right.

but they still have to like groom those for them. Yeah.

Eli (01:55:40.473)
Yeah, well like the the other thing that's thought was really smart was she talked about the Makeup Lois Bore Burwell. She talked about that Lincoln's face is really just like an interpretation of Lincoln's face to fit Daniel Day-Lewis his face So they didn't really do prosthetics on on his face. It's all like painted makeup And I thought that was really smart, too

adds to the real realness of it all. Yeah, let's... I guess we can talk about a little bit of like what it was like on set because this is a little bit interesting and different for a Spielberg set. Spielberg... I know for sure on the two weeks that they were on the floor of the house and shooting those scenes that Spielberg was in a suit and tie for all of those.

I don't know that he was like that for the whole shoot, but I know for sure those two weeks he was so it's just like one of those things where he he's basically like he announces That you know, hey in between takes we're not doing like idle chit chat, you know You can talk about that when you're offset Just like really taking it seriously and It reminded me of like

Really the only other time he's like this is Schindler's List. It's like when there's this, when there's this like, yeah, this weight of like, I have to like do this story right, you know? Because Spielberg is typically like the shorts and t-shirt and ball cap, you know, director. But yeah, like, yeah. And you know, he's still like Spielberg.

Jean-Pierre (01:57:13.271)
serious subject matter.

Jean-Pierre (01:57:28.502)
Yeah. You know, hey, we're all just here to have a good time.

Eli (01:57:36.813)
but just like in a bit more of a serious mode on set. But yeah, the big thing with Spielberg at this point is, you know, he's like, for one, like I think he's an underrated director of actors. It doesn't really get talked about much, but I think he's like really great at directing actors. And one of the things that like,

Jean-Pierre (01:57:40.343)
Right.

Eli (01:58:06.265)
One of things that stood out to me in the special features was Sally field just talking about You know, there's the scene where her and Lincoln are really like getting into each other and she was having a hard time with that scene and Really like struggling big-time and She said in between takes one time. She was just like feeling really really down about about it and but she like glanced over

Spielberg was looking at her and he just like mouthed I love you to her and she was like that was like all she needed she was like reinvigorated and so just like not just like directing actors where but well but having like emotional intelligence to know like Sally's really struggling she needs she needs me to like give her something I thought that was really cool to hear yeah but yeah

Jean-Pierre (01:58:57.56)
Yeah.

Yeah, thank you.

Eli (01:59:05.377)
Yeah, Spielberg, he's like showing up on sets and walking around and being like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. He's not in the storyboard phase of his career anymore. He's all about filling out the space. And so, yeah, let's talk about on that note, the cinematography and the camera work. This is like...

Jean-Pierre (01:59:22.606)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (01:59:30.762)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:59:34.849)
This is maybe where you're in your bag a little bit more. JP, yeah. What did you think? I'll get your thoughts before I dig into my notes.

Jean-Pierre (01:59:37.881)
A little bit.

Jean-Pierre (01:59:45.439)
Yeah, I really loved it. I don't think, you know, it's really interesting because I think I don't always think of Spielberg movies as like the most like.

all inspiring cinematic films, even though there are plenty of amazing shots, but in Spielberg films, but I always think it's, more of the way in which he utilizes the shots, like the overall production, not like a single frame always. But I do think this is a movie where I just, I love the framing. I loved, I loved the lighting. Um, that just felt very,

lived in. You know, I think sometimes...

Eli (02:00:31.171)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:00:34.946)
I feel like sometimes movies can kind of run into this issue where, especially like, you know, a lot of the modern stuff we do that are very VFX heavy, you have to like completely light someone 360 degrees. And then sometimes they don't fit the scene that you're putting them into because, you know, maybe the sun is obviously behind them, but they're still being facelit, you know, kind of thing. Like there's no shadow on their face because it's a VFX shot and you got to have the fully lit. So it's just so nice to see a movie like this where it's like,

And there's scenes where people are in a dark room and the room is actually dark. And there's scenes where there's a bright light at a window and someone's face is kind of shaded, but they have it exposed properly to where you can still see them. But yeah, and there's a lot of little moments, kind of like I was talking about a while ago, with just some of the nice, those classic Spielberg dolly shots. kind of, I don't really think there was any

Eli (02:01:09.495)
Yeah, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:01:34.85)
like a there wasn't really any specific like Spielberg Warner in here but there were a night of quite a few really nice kind of longer takes where the camera subtly moves and honestly like I think my favorite sequence in this whole movie is the the vote scene I I just love like there was

Eli (02:01:44.953)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:01:54.807)
Mm.

Jean-Pierre (02:02:01.998)
I feel like the way it was shot, the way it was edited, it actually built some tension up for me. Because obviously, you know that this amendment passes, but I couldn't remember if it passed the first time it was voted on. know what I mean? But there's this tension. And honestly, you know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of...

Eli (02:02:07.543)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:02:25.9)
the poker sequence from Casino Royale because I feel like it took something that could have been very boring, just a bunch of, just asking for all these delegates to vote yay or nay on this bill the same way where it takes a game like, I think they're playing, did they play poker? Tex told them in that game, like in the movie, I can't remember. But it takes something like a poker game and it turns it into this like, kind of really invigorating,

Eli (02:02:34.893)
Yeah, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:02:55.824)
sequence. And so that's kind of something I thought I had while watching it. I feel like this is like...

Doing for this scene the same thing that casino I out there for poker where it takes this thing that could have been very boring and mundane and it presents it in a way that it actually It's kind of a little suspenseful and builds you builds ups with some some You know tension, especially with some of the swing, you know Delegates where up until that moment where they're called on like yeoman like you don't know which way they're gonna fall

Eli (02:03:24.921)
Hmm.

Eli (02:03:31.416)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:03:32.918)
But I really loved the lighting because it all felt very natural.

Eli (02:03:38.361)
Yeah, yeah and man that I love that you brought up the voting scene because I think that's another example of just like the the like top level Spielberg work comes into like comes and matches up with like the work that Kushner's been doing with the script because It's one of those things. So Spielberg is already like one of I think his hallmarks that

Maybe he doesn't get discussed a lot is that he's really good at like efficiently setting up a character you can he can like have a one to two minute scene with a character in it and like you just like you get that you get everything you need to know about that character in that scene and they might not pop up For the moot in the movie ever again but like you you like know that character and I think this is one of those cases where like that aspect of like

Jean-Pierre (02:04:14.36)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:04:38.257)
Spielberg like matches up with like Kushner's writing where you have all these guys especially, you know, you mentioned the swing voters. You have all these guys that you've seen for maybe like 30 second to one minute scenes in like montage sequences of like them trying to like get them to switch their votes or vote, you know, yay or whatever and and then so when you get to you know, when you get to the

the that voting sequence like I kind of like was able to track a lot not all of them because there's so many but like I would say the majority of them I was able to be like, yeah, that's that guy that had this this, you know, the guy that's praying that's the guy that his brother died this guy is the like cowardly guy, you know that has to talk to Stevens. yeah, that's that's the beanpole guy from that was connected to

those two, you know, citizens or whatever they were at the beginning, the Bill Pullman character or whatever. yeah, and so like, it's just really incredible. Like, the way it's like cut together and the way, you know, you mentioned like the way he like linkers. There's a lot of like lingering on this in this movie. Spielberg talked about

Jean-Pierre (02:05:50.434)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:06:06.809)
One of the things he was thinking about in this especially even with like the Lincoln scenes is like really leaning into like pregnant pauses and and then also like Leaning into the fact that a lot of the movie is actually not Lincoln talking. It's him listening and

Jean-Pierre (02:06:28.713)
Mmm. Yeah.

Eli (02:06:30.553)
It's something that you don't really notice but then like when I heard Spielberg say that I'm like that's true like he has He has these monologues and speeches that he gives but other than that. It's just him like listening

Jean-Pierre (02:06:45.494)
And a lot of those monologues are like, can think of the two that I can think of that happened in his office. Both times it's after a minute or two or several minutes of like everyone else talking, he's just kind of sitting there. And then finally he's like, yeah. Yeah. And then he finally is like, listen, okay. And I love what you said about pregnant pauses because

Eli (02:06:58.285)
Yeah, like him sharpening his pencil, that was like a choice Daniel Day-Lewis came up with of like...

Eli (02:07:06.893)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:07:12.184)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:07:13.868)
Man, dude, I think the biggest thing that I have noticed in cinema and movies and television as well in the last five years maybe is the art of the pause is lost. I can't tell you how many times I've...

Eli (02:07:27.513)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:07:34.607)
Like I've watched something that's come out more recently and I'm just like two characters talking and it's like, say something, say something, say something, say something, say something. And I'm like, dude, just give it, give it room to breathe, man. It's, well, it's a combination of that and people don't have, have very short attention spans these days. But it's like, I, I, I, dude, there's nothing that'll make me like get fed up with a movie or a TV show quicker than not giving conversations room to

Eli (02:07:43.789)
Well, everybody wants to be Aaron Sworkin.

Eli (02:07:53.848)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:08:04.6)
breathe. And so I love what a movie knows when to do that. I mean, you don't always have to do that, right? But we just live in a world of so many quippy characters with always having something to say these days. And I think it's nice to remember a time in which people appreciated pauses, you know?

Eli (02:08:27.735)
Yeah. And I think too, like, just it being about Lincoln, like it kind of matches who he, how he kind of conducted himself, you know, you know, you think about the couple of scenes where you get him trying to get people to vote, you know, yes on the amendment. and both of them that I can think of, like he, when he leaves, like he doesn't know what, if they're going to, which way they're going to go.

You know, he kind of says his piece and then he's kind of like, okay, you you do with that what you will I can't I've said what I'm I can say and that's all I can do and I'm gonna move on And hope that you do the right thing And you know that's kind of a lot of what Spielberg's doing with the camera, you know with these lingering shots and these pauses and

Jean-Pierre (02:09:01.356)
Moves on.

Jean-Pierre (02:09:10.124)
Yeah.

Eli (02:09:23.671)
You know, the slow and subtle movements, you he talked about really trying to catch the cadence of like a stage play with the camera movements. They're very reduced and slow and, but, you know, and I think, I think still pretty dynamic. you know, it reminded me a little bit of just the, the mastery of Martin Scorsese with camera movement.

Jean-Pierre (02:09:41.976)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:09:52.983)
If you like watch a Scorsese movie, there's hardly any time where a Scorsese camera is sitting still, but it's never like moving where you notice that it's moving. If that makes sense. He's always like, even if it's just like someone giving a monologue, like the camera's doing something, it's pushing in, it's moving, you know, on a dolly or something like that. And Spielberg's doing

Jean-Pierre (02:09:53.101)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:10:19.266)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:10:23.167)
doing the his best like Scorsese in that way in this movie like really dynamic Energize he what he's doing is like he's energetic it goes back to what that kind of like thing we talked out of the beginning like You're leaning in as the camera leads in it's this Energizing of these dialogue scenes because it is a dialogue heavy movie But it's not it doesn't feel like a fast-paced Aaron Sorkin script, you know

Jean-Pierre (02:10:45.774)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:10:52.013)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:10:52.875)
you know, it's a different kind of heavy dialogue. And yeah, really, really incredible, I think, camera work. you know, you mentioned images too. They, you know, they studied actually a ton of still images, period still images, because there's huge archives of still images from back then. And so that really influenced the style of the way they shot things and

Jean-Pierre (02:10:55.746)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:11:21.741)
They were kind of trying to capture that still image quality in some of these shots that I think comes across,

Jean-Pierre (02:11:25.667)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:11:30.991)
Yeah, I think of the phrase, every frame of painting, right? It's what people like to utilize when they reference film. And for a lot of movies, that's true. For even more movies, that's not really true. But I do think this is a movie that feels very painterly. The way that it's framed and shot. There's a lot of scenes where it's like, I'd love to jump on one of these websites that does like a...

Eli (02:11:36.035)
Yeah.

Eli (02:11:44.781)
Right.

Eli (02:11:49.209)
It does.

Jean-Pierre (02:12:00.641)
screenshots from films that you can use for like pitch decks and inspiration stuff. You know, I'd love to, I would really love to just go through and just look at some of the still frames from, from Lincoln because it really is a beautiful, and I also really love the color grade. think it felt, you know, again, that's another thing about Spielberg is I,

I don't think of any movies that a color grade really sticks out too harshly. maybe the only one I can really think of is Minority Report because it kind of has that weird blueish, yeah, that washed out blueish gray look that...

Eli (02:12:29.155)
Yeah.

Eli (02:12:37.933)
Yeah, that washed out. Well, Kominsky did the like whole bleach bypass thing for the film.

Jean-Pierre (02:12:45.358)
Yeah, I think War of the Worlds had the same kind of the same look. know, there's been some, and like also I think Ready Player One kind of had that vibe to you a little bit. But other than that, you know, I've never really thought of...

His movies is like being like, you know, super colorful. I feel like he always likes to keep it pretty natural looking for the most part, or just let the film stock speak for itself. But this is a movie where I feel like you can definitely tell there was some work put into the grade where it's got these really kind of nice like yellowish tones. There's some really nice blues, you know, it just feels great.

Eli (02:13:17.655)
Yeah. Well, so it's funny because Kaminsky specifically talks about this in the behind the scenes stuff. And he says they played around with the film. They did a lot of different tests on like, he had all these ideas of like things he could do with the film to make it like grainier or whatever. And at the end of the day, he's like, he decided to just be really restrained with it.

So they actually didn't do any specific color changes and they didn't do any like Negative manipulation for things like grain or what they didn't manipulate the negatives For the film and so it really comes down to I think The way he chose to light it Which is to really really lean into the natural lighting that you would have had in the period. Yeah, and you know, it's

Jean-Pierre (02:14:11.564)
It looks great.

I think about lot of the indoor scenes with like the really nice lamps and stuff like that.

Eli (02:14:18.935)
Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, and so like whenever you know, he talks about when they're in a room I I I Worked did my best to light everything with whatever the natural lighting in that room would be and so obviously like You know if you've ever been on a movie set before like you can have like a lamp, but then you have like an off-camera source that's maybe like

giving some extra work for the lamp. You know, the lamp isn't doing all the work. There's stuff you're not seeing, but he's trying to like mimic the natural lighting from that lamp with the off-camera stuff. And so, you know, windows, when there's a window, he's got lighting coming in the window. You know, and so he really like, you know, and he said there's sometimes where you have to cheat, where you have to give some skylights where there wouldn't be any skylights or...

And then there's other times you cheat because it adds to the like the thematic resonance of what you're trying to portray like he he talked specifically about When Lincoln and Grant are sitting on the porch And the actual like lighting in that scene wouldn't actually be casting shadows of the soldiers passing by on them It really wouldn't make sense for like

Jean-Pierre (02:15:30.702)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:15:41.709)
the time of day or anything for those shadows to be there, but he was like, screw it. Like, it adds to, like, the weight of seeing the shadows of these soldiers on horses pass over these guys as they talk about their fate. So, like, yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:15:45.294)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:15:51.605)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:15:57.247)
Yeah, well that scene was really interesting because Like I do I do understand the point because it kind of matches the theme of what they're talking about I do I will say this

Eli (02:16:07.927)
huh.

Jean-Pierre (02:16:14.19)
Look, not to say that I could direct this movie better than Spielberg, but I think that particular scene may have toned down the soldiers a little bit. Because I do think that is one of the few things about the movie that really stuck out to me. was like, it's just a constant stream of soldiers going across their faces. Which, if that was the point, is to kind of be a thematic representation of what they're talking about. I totally understand that. It doesn't necessarily come off that way.

Eli (02:16:25.497)
Hahaha.

Eli (02:16:34.829)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:16:44.144)
But I think, know, maybe they could have toned it down a little bit. Because it almost gets to point where you're thinking, it almost looks like they're passing something in front of the light that's like human, like a little cutouts, you know, to look like people, not actual extras. And it's just constant, that whole scene. And so it did kind of get little distracting for me personally. But that's just one of those things that I feel like I'm kind of the type of that picks up on that. But I know most people won't notice.

Eli (02:16:58.541)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:17:07.214)
Gotcha.

Eli (02:17:12.173)
Yeah, I I noticed it but it didn't it didn't like distract me really I was I was pretty like tuned in to like trying to listen to what they were saying but yeah

Jean-Pierre (02:17:24.48)
Yeah, I think what it was is when you get the cross shots, because guess the road is here and then they have the side roads, you don't see anybody passing on the edges of those cross shots. I don't know. I guess it's just one of those things, having worked on film sets and just knowing how something like this would probably have been set up, I just couldn't help but start thinking about like...

Eli (02:17:28.601)
Yeah.

Eli (02:17:42.489)
You

Jean-Pierre (02:17:52.108)
how they would have shot it and I'm just like, are you passing? Why are so many people passing in front of the light? know, but it's just me.

Eli (02:17:57.933)
Yeah, one of the like typical Kaminsky things that sometimes is distracting to me but works in this movie is like the smokiness. He has this like, he has this like fantastical smokiness that he'll like, that he'll add in to like scenes where I'm like, this, don't know, I don't, you know, I don't know why there's so much like smoky fog in this scene.

Jean-Pierre (02:18:08.61)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:18:19.8)
Who's smoking?

Eli (02:18:28.099)
There's a lot of that in like, in...

So this wasn't Kaminsky, but in the color purple, there's a lot of that like fantastical So maybe it's like partly Spielberg at fault, but Kaminsky is a big user of it, too but in this it like totally makes sense because those rooms are like They're they probably are pretty dusty. So and everybody's smoking all the time. And so, you know Yeah, you know it makes sense it feels right I guess like

Jean-Pierre (02:18:51.15)
I'm very smoking. Yeah, that too.

Jean-Pierre (02:19:02.915)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:19:04.715)
in a a world where people are constantly like riding horses and carriages down dusty roads like Yeah, I guess everything would kind of be a little dusty all the time in the air, so It's like one of the one of the times we're like, okay Kaminsky's been doing this for all the movies But now it finally like hits like yeah, this is where it's supposed to be this way It's I like Kaminsky I think he does good work

Jean-Pierre (02:19:15.309)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:19:29.198)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:19:34.745)
You know, sometimes his choices can be distracting to me Minority report is one of those where like the lighting is some people love it But it's to me one of the most the parts of them I love that movie but that's one part that I don't love is all like the Bleached out washed out back lighting in it Yeah But yeah in this I think like

Jean-Pierre (02:19:55.777)
Yeah, it is kind of an ugly movie at times, but I do really like that movie.

Eli (02:20:03.757)
I think Kaminsky really, really, like you said, nails the lighting and the, yeah. I mean, I guess he said they didn't really do any color grading. So it really just must be. He nailed it with the lighting, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:20:10.936)
Just the vibe.

Jean-Pierre (02:20:17.998)
the lamps.

him and the production designer, the set designer really just cooked.

Eli (02:20:25.037)
did man it's incredible yeah we talked a little bit about the sound and the score just being subtle it's it's there when it needs to be and it's not when it's not the most like John John Williams said his first inclination was like to do like period music that Lincoln would have heard and then finally it was like no I need to write you know it doesn't really it won't really like play correctly for what this movie needs I need to write

my own stuff. It was probably a wise choice. And they did like, they used the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which apparently they had wanted to use for years. And the fun facts related to that is that Illinois was the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment. So, yeah, cool. I think the one thing that stands out sound-wise, which we haven't talked about, is the ticking. Every once in while, you get like the ticking of a watch or a clock.

Kind of in the background. Did you notice that? Really? I noticed it big time. Interesting.

Jean-Pierre (02:21:31.606)
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't watching with headphones on. If I was watching with my headphones or AirPods on, I probably would notice it more. But coming through my speakers I used, didn't hear it.

Eli (02:21:34.774)
Okay, I was so.

Yeah.

Interesting. Okay, so there's yeah, so You know, we kind of mentioned there's only one battle scene and it's like not very long It's the very beginning and ben burt when he originally called was like, okay civil war He he needs me to like work on all these battle and then he like read the script and he's like, there's not any of that But the the fun facts with like the ticking stuff so

Gary Reidstrom, who worked on the movie, really wanted to like add in some like ticking, you know, these men all had like, you know, they had real working clocks in their offices and they had real like ticking stopwatches with them and he wanted to try to find a Lincoln watch. And so there were some in the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian was like, I think I don't think we want to risk it using letting you use those.

But he tracked down, apparently there was this watch that was given to Robert Lincoln after Abe was assassinated. And he had given it to a friend and whatever. Eventually it finds its way to the Kentucky Historical Society. And so they called them up and they were like, you know, we don't even know if it works. And so they got it out and wound it and sure enough it works.

Eli (02:23:06.329)
They were like, yeah, y'all can come record it. So they went and recorded the sound of his watch. there's a couple of occasions where it's usually where Lincoln's waiting on something to happen, where you can hear, like the most obvious place it is is when he's sitting there at his desk, like tapping his watch, you can hear like the ticking of it.

Jean-Pierre (02:23:11.788)
well.

Jean-Pierre (02:23:18.551)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:23:34.229)
But there's a couple other occasions. And then there's also the other most prominent ticking sound thing is the clock from his office when he's waiting on the 13th Amendment voting. And that clock that was in his office is actually still in the White House today. And so the White House actually let them go in and record that clock. So that's the actual like clock from his office.

Jean-Pierre (02:23:49.976)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:24:04.265)
that you hear there. And then I guess the other thing attached to that is they, the bells that ring out, you know, when the amendment is ratified, is passed, are at St. John's there in DC, and those would have been the actual bells that Lincoln would have heard in that moment. So a lot of like really cool like little small sound details that I thought would be fun to share.

Jean-Pierre (02:24:20.078)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:24:24.608)
well.

Jean-Pierre (02:24:28.233)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:24:33.485)
But yeah, other than that, there's not really a whole lot to talk about with sound and score. It's just, it's there when it needs to be and it's not when it's not. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:24:43.436)
Yeah, I think the only piece of music I really noticed is, again, during the voting scene. I think right when it first starts, it was when Thaddeus Stevens first walks into the chamber, it's empty, there's music playing. I'd be interested to go back, because I think there's a lot of really interesting similarities, I think, between a movie like this and Spielberg's film Amistad.

Eli (02:24:51.917)
Yeah, yeah, kind of the typical Williams swelling and...

Jean-Pierre (02:25:13.166)
And so I really kind of want to I haven't seen that movie in a long time so I really kind of want to go back and watch that and like maybe compare some of the the musical cues but us also just as well as like the way it's filmed and things like that as well I think be really interesting

Eli (02:25:13.367)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:25:27.457)
Yeah, it would definitely be interesting. I think this movie is like the antithesis of that movie in a lot of ways, especially like the story being told. I think that that movie displays a lot of naivete about how to handle slavery in a movie.

It's it's one of the only movies that I watched and I was like Spielberg should not have directed this movie It just wasn't something it was something that he should have used his power to get someone more like That would have had more to say about that story than he did

Jean-Pierre (02:26:11.744)
Mm-hmm. That's just a I think we I think I've heard you say that in the past. I don't remember when we would have talked about it, but

Eli (02:26:17.219)
Yeah, well I went on a, it was a solo episode and I went on a bit of a tirade about that. A mild one, but.

Jean-Pierre (02:26:23.47)
That's what it was. Yeah, I haven't seen it in years, so I'd be interested to go back and revisit it.

Eli (02:26:30.337)
It's not necessarily like a bad movie, like just considering like where Spielberg was in his career, like you own your own production company. There was all that, like when you made the color purple, it was kind of like this thing where like the studios never would have like, or production companies never, maybe never would have given it to.

a black director to direct like the budget that they would have needed. and you know, people like Spike Lee said as much about that movie. and so, but by the time Amistad comes around, like you, you literally run your own production company. and you could have given it to someone. And that was my whole, that's like my big thing with that is like, I'm not buying that, Spielberg had to make this one or it wouldn't have gotten made anymore because dude, you're

You're literally, you're literally on your own studio. Yeah. so I don't know. I, I have strong feelings about Amistad and the movie it could have been. and the movie turned out to be as, I don't know, very different than, than how this, I think, I think it is actually like, if Spielberg is the one making this movie, I think it's wise that like he stick to

Jean-Pierre (02:27:31.47)
She's the guy making the movie, yeah.

Eli (02:27:59.507)
story that he stuck with and you know yeah we could have used a little bit more like look into like some black representation and what they were up to but honestly like after explore like thinking hard about Amistad I'm like I don't know I don't know that Spielberg is the best person to do that so you know it's probably for the best but yeah

Yeah, so this movie, you know, they finished filming in December of 2011. Spielberg said that at the end of it all, Daniel Day-Lewis called him into his trailer and just started talking to him, you know, for the first time in a long time as Daniel Day-Lewis. And Spielberg said he actually like teared up and cried a little bit, you know, because it was like, you know, whenever these big films like this end, it's kind of, it's pretty emotional, you know, for everyone that's been investing so much in.

of their time and energy into these characters and these sets and whatnot. yeah, and mean, they literally like, I think they finished filming on Lincoln's death. so, yeah, pretty emotional. Yeah. But yeah, it's funny because they finished filming at December 19th and then on the 21st,

Jean-Pierre (02:29:12.236)
Mm, yeah. Pretty heavy stuff.

Eli (02:29:25.451)
Adventures of 1010 releases and then on the 25th warhorse released so you know Spielberg didn't really get a whole lot of rest right after this but Yeah, probably yeah

Jean-Pierre (02:29:34.658)
Just like 93, when you have Jurassic Park and Schiller's List both come out.

Eli (02:29:41.655)
Yeah, at least those were like split up in the year. It was, yeah. Not, I don't think the wisest choice to release 1010 and Warhorse within four days.

Jean-Pierre (02:29:49.762)
Well, especially when you have a... how his movies are playing off of each other, you know?

Eli (02:29:54.785)
Yeah, yeah But yeah, the the US release of this movie is almost a year later on November 9th 2012 it opened limited and like 11 theaters the first weekend And Spielberg actually purposefully has talked about like he purposely held it because 2012 big election year And he purposely held it until after the election

So it wouldn't be like campaign fodder for either side And yeah, it it probably would have had a very different resonance if you know the election had gone the other way But you know Yeah Definitely played well at its at the time of its release It it opened at number 15 on that limited weekend the number one was skyfall that weekend

um yeah 88 million dollars on that but oh skyfall the skyfall is i think the you know i don't know maybe some people that are more uh loyal to the classics would differ but i think it's the best bond movie yeah

Jean-Pierre (02:30:54.222)
I mean no offense to Spielberg and Lincoln but really bad movie to try and open up against. Skyfall is so good.

Jean-Pierre (02:31:15.646)
As a man who is a massive fan of the franchise, I've seen every single Bond film. That is the correct opinion, for sure.

Eli (02:31:20.653)
Hmm. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so the next weekend Lincoln opened wide and it opened at number three in the box office with made 21 million dollars opening weekend. The last, the number one that weekend was the last Twilight movie and it made, get this, it made 141 million dollars on its opening weekend. How crazy is that? That's wild.

Yeah, but yeah this movie Yeah, they're crazy this movie made 182 million domestic 275 worldwide, so it did pretty good. I want to say it probably had around a 40 ish million dollar budget maybe maybe less I don't remember but

Jean-Pierre (02:31:52.076)
Yeah, just those Twilight freaks man. I don't know say.

Jean-Pierre (02:32:20.396)
Makes sense. mean, it's really a pretty tame film as far as period pieces go. So I could definitely see that being possible.

Eli (02:32:23.575)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, yeah, so it gets 12, yeah, 12 nominations, Oscar noms, wins two, and I'm vamping while I pull them up. Yeah, so you get nominations for sound mixing, for the score, John Williams score.

for costume design, film editing, cinematography, adapted screenplay, directing. Sally Field got a nod for actress and supporting role, which she lost to Anne Hathaway, I think, in Les Mis that year, which, I don't know, I think Sally Field, I don't know. I guess it's like she won two already. We'll go with someone else.

Jean-Pierre (02:33:23.65)
Honestly, that is exactly how it works sometimes, believe it or not.

Eli (02:33:26.615)
Yeah. No, I mean, if Sally Field didn't already have two Oscars, they probably would have given that to her. yeah. Tommy Lee Jones for supporting role, actor in a supporting role. And Best Picture got the Best Picture nomination. It won two. It won for production.

Jean-Pierre (02:33:48.64)
No best actor for James Lee Lewis?

Eli (02:33:51.683)
We'll just wait, because it won two. It won for production design, and it won for actor in a leading role for Daniel Day-Lewis. I think it's his third, actually, acting Oscar. And it's the first ever acting Oscar for a Spielberg movie.

Jean-Pierre (02:33:55.15)
Okay, sorry.

Jean-Pierre (02:34:01.198)
There you go.

Eli (02:34:15.161)
Yeah, Spielberg movie had never gotten, it's gotten nominations, but this is the first Oscar win an acting role has ever gotten for a Spielberg movie. So that's pretty cool and makes total sense.

Jean-Pierre (02:34:30.412)
Well yeah, get it. It's one of those things where it's like... I guess when it comes to Spielberg films, it's just the idea of there's these great adventures, these great blockbusters. But I can't think of a single Spielberg movie where I'm like, wow, that was like a mind-blowing...

performance. mean, like, like there's plenty of great characters, Indiana Jones and all these other things, but like not like a cat, like, you know, maybe other than like Schindler's List, you know, for examples. I mean, there's a few in there, but, it's, there's not many Spielberg films I can think of that have these like grandiose monologues where they're obviously like he is an Oscar bait, right? But, but, but, I don't mean that like as any, in any disrespect, like I love Spielberg films. I mean, he is one of the great

Eli (02:35:03.139)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:35:24.04)
ever do it because he knows how to tell a good story in the exciting way. And he invented the blockbuster. He did, you know, and so yeah.

Eli (02:35:32.097)
Yeah, Yep, him and George Lucas. They, and I think it's interesting because I think Lucas, you know, isn't obviously making a lot of movies. He's, I mean, he's doing like the prequels and stuff. Not, not at this point, but you know, earlier in the, in the two thousands and but I think really at this point it feels like Spielberg is like

pushing back against the machine that he, him and Lucas created. He's like, because, well, I mean, you think about like, this was, there was a lot of skepticism around this movie when it was released. Like how well is this going to do? Cause how many people are going to flock to the theaters to see like a historical drama? and they were just wrong. the, the skeptics, I think we saw that again with Oppenheimer, like

Jean-Pierre (02:36:05.752)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:36:29.325)
how many people are gonna go see this three hour long biopic. And it's like everybody, know, everybody is.

Jean-Pierre (02:36:33.194)
Yeah.

What it is kinda it's kinda both there's there's two sides to it to where it's like

I don't think anyone else other than Spielberg could have made a movie like this. like, you're Christopher Nolan, you're not getting $100 million to make a three-hour biopic about a nuclear physicist. because Spielberg, up to this point, now people like Nolan, like Deneva Nov, I would even say like a Matt Reeves,

Eli (02:36:48.151)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:37:13.772)
Edgar Wright like like there's these these these names that you know some of the yeah or Scorsese like some of these names are household names some of them are more like you have to be kind of a cinephile but like there there there are these directors that their name alone like

Eli (02:37:17.977)
Course AZ.

Jean-Pierre (02:37:32.246)
You know, some the, all those guys I just named, like if there's an announcement that they're working on something, I'm already interested. You know, or Wes Anderson's is a good example. so yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's definitely one of them for sure. Or like a Christian Bale, you know, same kind of thing. Christian Bale's got some coming up. I'm already, I'm already in.

Eli (02:37:38.393)
Right, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and Daniel Day-Lewis is the actor version of that. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:37:55.915)
Absolutely. Yeah, and it's interesting because It's funny, you know, you you mentioned like we you know, we're talking about Oppenheimer and you know Who else can get that huge budget to make the nuclear physicist, know movie? And I think this is like almost not the opposite but like the other side of the coin maybe to that idea because like who else are they

You know, Lincoln is obviously like a much more huge figure than Oppenheimer, you know, not necessarily like both very important in their own ways, but just like everyone knows who Abraham Lincoln is. you know, and, you know, it's kind of like, who else could we have given this movie of such great importance to other than Spielberg? You know, it's, it's kind of like,

the other side of that coin in a way.

Jean-Pierre (02:38:56.396)
Yeah, the only person I can think of that could have done something with this is like a Martin Scorsese, you know? But I mean, it's like, really, it's like, for sure, probably lot more F words, for sure. I will say this movie is PG-13, and it kind of went with two of them, which was interesting.

Eli (02:39:03.117)
Yeah. It would have been a different movie, but yeah.

Eli (02:39:10.361)
Maybe, yeah.

Eli (02:39:17.497)
Did it really?

Jean-Pierre (02:39:19.278)
I think one of them is like not fully pronounced. That's probably why even though I watched it with the subtitles on it it was in the subtitles, but But there is definitely two of them. So both from James Bader, which was very funny Yeah, yeah But yeah, but even think of like Christopher Nolan doing a movie like this I'm like, dude

Eli (02:39:22.283)
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:39:33.335)
Makes sense though. I love the, yeah.

Eli (02:39:42.445)
Yeah, I don't know. It's not, it would be structured different.

Jean-Pierre (02:39:46.326)
Yeah, it's like Lincoln from the future visiting with Lincoln from the past or something.

Eli (02:39:51.851)
Yeah, he definitely wouldn't do it straightforward, that's for sure. But I mean, it worked out well for Oppenheimer. So yeah, I did write down this one quote from this French publication, Cahiers du Cinema. They said, quote, never before in historical films has Steven Spielberg achieved a height of vision comparable to that which makes Lincoln a major work, unquote.

So even over in France, they're like, yeah, this is a great movie about an American hero, you

Jean-Pierre (02:40:32.355)
You know what I just realized? Do you know what other movie came out the same year?

Eli (02:40:34.083)
What's that?

Eli (02:40:38.68)
What?

Jean-Pierre (02:40:39.744)
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Eli (02:40:41.625)
Is it the same year?

Jean-Pierre (02:40:43.47)
It's the same year! I was thinking about it I was like, wait, didn't Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter also come out in 2012? sure enough it did. It did. What, when did it? It came out in June, June 22nd. So a couple months before this, but it is interesting that we had two Abraham Lincoln movies that came out in same year.

Eli (02:40:53.433)
That's funny, yeah. I mean, I knew that movie existed and I didn't.

Eli (02:41:03.875)
There you go.

Eli (02:41:08.035)
That is funny.

Oh man, It's, yeah, Spielberg, know, I don't think Spielberg would have made Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, but you know.

Jean-Pierre (02:41:23.957)
I would have loved to see it though.

Eli (02:41:25.165)
Yeah, I would have watched it for sure. He did after this, the next thing he had started on was an American sniper adaptation. Chris Kyle's autobiography, he withdrew in 2013. He didn't really feel like he could make the movie he wanted with like the budget and whatnot. so, but Eastwood is the one that took that over. That movie did pretty well in 2014 released.

Jean-Pierre (02:41:52.814)
Mm-hmm. Want some Oscars, I think,

Eli (02:41:55.043)
But yeah, yeah, another fun fact around this time in his career, I mean a little later, but kind of attached to like the presidential stuff is that Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. So yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, let's just kind of talk through just other stuff about the movie.

Did you have any quibbles with it? When you came out of it, there any... We've touched on a few little things, but were there any big plot points or anything like that that you felt like, this didn't really work for me in the movie?

Jean-Pierre (02:42:43.086)
Yeah, I mean, other than that opening kind of scene we already talked about with the different soldiers, Tommy Lee Jones, and then the shadows of the soldiers walking past him and Grant, I think the only other thing is, I'm going get some of your outline, you kind of wanted to talk about this, the Abraham Robert Lincoln thing, like.

Eli (02:43:09.709)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:43:24.63)
I guess sometimes I'm more interested to learn how...

I'm assuming that was kind of historically accurate how they kind of have this cold relationship, but it's just one of those things that when Robert kind of just pops up in the movie and they have this kind of standoffish relationship, because of the way this movie is structured, it's like, does it really feel earned? Like, I feel like there has to, like, you need some kind of, as an audience, I feel like we need some kind of introduction to why they are that way.

Eli (02:44:00.259)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:44:00.525)
And they kind of try and give us that a little bit later with something that Mary Todd Lincoln says, but I didn't think it really worked. That was the only other thing.

Eli (02:44:05.431)
Yeah, yeah, there is some background stuff going on that like if you don't know the history then like you don't really get the the background you need so one of the things that like You they they don't really like so it's one of those things where like I appreciate that they don't overexp try to over explain things But there is a bit of like it could have used a little bit more of that. But so there was a point

you know, earlier in their life where Robert and Willie, William, I don't know, I can't remember. I think it was, I think they called him Willie, but maybe, I don't know if he was William or what. They were both sick with typhoid, I think, and Willie died. Robert ended up surviving. And so it might even be something like that, something like of the

keeping yourself distant from the sun, not wanting to get too close. It's kind of like that weird grief thing of like, we had both of these suns sick at the same time, we lost one, the other survived. This kind of like subconscious resentment maybe even that like, you would never know how to express that, but it's like somewhere in there. But that's not

Jean-Pierre (02:45:11.682)
Yeah, he does.

Jean-Pierre (02:45:26.667)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:45:32.622)
He does kind of tell Mary, yeah, well he does kind of tell Mary that like he wanted to grieve their son more but he couldn't let himself do it because he has an entire country to worry about where hundreds of thousands of sons have died.

Eli (02:45:33.75)
in the movie.

Eli (02:45:42.157)
Yeah, yeah. Great scene.

Eli (02:45:53.592)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:45:54.146)
You know? And so he kind of has to have this persona that he has to give to the public. And so, yeah, I do think there's maybe, there could be some of that where he's, he's, he just, maybe he feels guilty for not being able to be a better father for them when they're sick. And so that kind of causes some of that tension between him and Robert.

Eli (02:46:22.263)
Yeah, yeah for sure. I I don't like hate the Robert Lincoln stuff. It just kind of feels like it's a bit shoehorned in.

Jean-Pierre (02:46:35.436)
I think they could have cut out some of that stuff for sure and it would have been the same movie. Other than the scene where they go to the military hospital. That's like the only one where it's like you kind of need him to be there, I guess.

Eli (02:46:37.965)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (02:46:47.735)
Yeah Yeah, and you know, it's it's fine. It's like that to me is not like a huge problem It's just like a small quibble and I don't know it doesn't Really affect my opinion on the movie a whole lot The other like thing that I thought would be interesting to hit on is like the ending Like are there too many endings to this movie? This is sometimes a problem with Spielberg movies. Like he has like

Jean-Pierre (02:47:01.646)
you

Eli (02:47:16.691)
One or two too many endings. but yeah, so I do think like Having the respect and whatnot to not show the assassination. I think that's a good choice Like we know what happens. We don't need to see it like it's you know, it's just not necessary. and so I liked that choice, but like I don't know so you have like

Jean-Pierre (02:47:19.79)
Mm.

Eli (02:47:46.137)
the whole like him being like, I'm gonna be late and walking out and you know Henderson like Stephen McKinley Henderson looking at him and Thinking, you know, you can tell on his face like this man's about to die Sort of thing the silhouette as he walks away So you have that that's one ending. I think that really is like one ending the first ending but then you cut to the theater and it's

Jean-Pierre (02:48:01.614)
You

Jean-Pierre (02:48:11.192)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:48:15.703)
You know, it's kind of like a trick, like it's the sun at the Arabian Nights play where they, you know, the guy runs out and is like, Lincoln is dead or whatever.

Jean-Pierre (02:48:22.402)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:48:27.67)
Which, they had a scene a little bit earlier where he and Mary were at a theater. And I was like, wait, are they about to, it's a little too early for him to get the old shot to the head, but okay. So.

Eli (02:48:36.185)
Yeah.

Eli (02:48:41.291)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's funny. I think I for half a second thought the same thing, but then it was like, well, they went to stuff all the time, you know. So, you know, there's that, and you know, that could be an ending. You have Lincoln in his deathbed being pronounced dead and, you know, I'm saying, you know, he, you know, I can't remember the exact quote, but, you know, talking about him being some...

figure for the ages or whatever. That's another ending, but then it like does the crossfade with the flickering light and him giving his, it's like a flashback to his second inaugural address. And that's the actual ending, which is like, to me, the fourth potential ending of the movie, you know? And I'm, you know, it's just one of those things where it kind of drags. I did like,

In the special features, Rick Carter shared why he likes the cutting to the sun. And I thought it was an interesting take. he said like, when you cut from him leaving the house, he said in your mind, you're, you imagine like three potential things you're going to cut to. One would be like seeing the, American cousin play like on the stage that Lincoln and Mary are, are watching.

The other would be just seeing them in the booth. And the third thing you might imagine is cutting to like John Wilkes booth heading to heading to the booth or whatever. But instead you cut to the sun watching this Arabian Nights play. And, you know, he kind of says like our, our expectation is like stolen from us in an unexpected way. And kind of is in a sense like relating that to

Lincoln's death felt. It's like this unexpected, you know, this stolen from us sort of thing. I thought it was an interesting take, but I still feel like, I don't know, I...

Eli (02:50:47.991)
I almost, I don't know if the ending to me did feel like it drags a bit. I'm not sure that we needed to hear Lincoln's death pronounced. I'm not sure that we needed to like crossfade into his second inaugural address. I guess that part is the one that like least bothers me because it's like, it's a Lincoln movie. You know, I guess it makes sense to like.

cut to one of his great speeches at the end of the movie. But yeah, I don't know. Did you have any thoughts on that?

Jean-Pierre (02:51:19.074)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:51:24.088)
Yeah, think, you know, I think kind of just like fading it out as he's kind of walking and we kind of get that back silhouette. Either that or cut from that to...

Eli (02:51:33.507)
silhouette. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:51:38.767)
maybe like a voiceover of his speech and some like, you know, kind of ending title cards pop up, but, or maybe just like a classic, like 1980s, yeah, yeah, or like a classic, like 1980s freeze frame where he suddenly jumps up and does like a fist pump and, you know, cuts out. That would be funny. But no, I guess I definitely do.

Eli (02:51:44.439)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe some like historical pictures.

Eli (02:51:53.473)
Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:52:04.334)
Agree that I think that would have been the best part to end it and then yeah, cuz I think cutting to the play But it's not the play. It's just this other play that his son is that and then the guy comes out the press has been shot I Mean, you know no offense to the kid. He's a kid, you know, he's doing the best he could but

Eli (02:52:14.155)
Yeah, it's a little tricksy.

and you get like the overacting kid. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it probably is what a kid might have done, but.

Jean-Pierre (02:52:31.414)
Yeah, yeah, just hugging the fanster. Yeah, it did feel a little silly, but yeah, yeah, you know. Man, all right.

Eli (02:52:37.687)
Yeah, poor Tad.

Yeah. you know, I, didn't bother me a ton. I still, they'll still think it's a great movie. yeah, Spielberg distinctives, mirrors are back. It's been a while since we've had some good mirror shots in a Spielberg movie, but, like the, the main one is like Mary Todd Lincoln looking in the mirror, Lincoln in the background on the bed, you know, great shots that, in that way, silhouettes.

Lots of silhouettes, you know, the most, I already said the most silhouette worthy figure in history, maybe. Efficient character building, I talked about that. You know, we talked about like little moments of comic relief that aren't like the focus of the movie, but are like thrown in and work really well. Mostly James Spader, yeah. But also like, you know,

Jean-Pierre (02:53:33.614)
through James Bader's Bilbo for sure.

Eli (02:53:39.639)
Some of Lincoln's quips are pretty like chuckle worthy, you And then fun transitions. Like the one I wrote down was going from Spader cracking open the crab with the hammer to the gavel in the House of Representatives. Like what a fun transition, you know? Yeah, let's, I mean, let's dig into any like takeaways from this. What,

Jean-Pierre (02:53:41.901)
Yeah.

Eli (02:54:09.815)
When you walked away from the film, which you, I don't remember if you've mentioned this since we started recording, but you just watched this earlier today, so you're pretty fresh out of it.

Jean-Pierre (02:54:18.998)
Yeah, I watched, yeah, I kind of had to split it half and half into two days. I did finish it today, so yeah.

Eli (02:54:27.255)
Yeah. So what were, when you kind of finished the movie, what were some of the things maybe like thematically or like maybe like relating to where we are today that were maybe rolling around in your head?

Jean-Pierre (02:54:45.224)
Yeah, I think, I really just think...

Jean-Pierre (02:54:53.55)
I did really love the way that it kind of demythologized Lincoln in a lot of ways. kind of like David Day Lewis said, feel like Lincoln is a figure that is so ubiquitous with politics. And you hear so many...

takes on his presidency, the things that he did from people that agree with him, people that don't agree with him. His critics say, well, he only emancipated the saves because it was a war measure. And then this movie being really based on historical accuracy from this book is kind of painting a picture more of

you know, he actually was something that really bothered him on a personal level. There's a lot of other things to that. So, yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, my biggest takeaways were just the demythologizing of Lincoln, but also...

Man, it just, it really makes me wish that we still lived in the days where politicians...

had viewpoints they actually stood by, agree with them or don't agree with them. But it's just, it gets little exhausting when you look at the, and I'm sure they had a problem with this at the time as well, but just it feels like you elect someone who claims I'm gonna go to Washington and represents you, and then they literally don't ever make a decision that you actually support.

Eli (02:56:13.651)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (02:56:32.941)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:56:40.074)
But these are men that had backbones, that had, like, agree with them, disagree with them, love them or hate them. They had an opinion and a viewpoint and they were willing to stand on it, you know? Yeah.

Eli (02:56:49.955)
Yeah.

Eli (02:57:02.617)
Yeah, think it like, one of the things I was just thinking about is like the like complex inner workings of democracy and how there's like all these gears to this machine. And yeah, like really like a lot of the times, one of the things that doesn't like shy away from is like sometimes the gears are a little dirty, like.

You have to do a little bit of lying. You have to do a little bit of paying people off. It doesn't portray Lincoln as this angel with angel wings and a halo that did everything perfectly. No, he had a goal and he did some things. He made some tough decisions and made some

Jean-Pierre (02:57:43.542)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:57:58.445)
had some things he had to get his hands a little dirty with to get this thing done. it's, I mean, if you think about, so you talked about people are like, Lincoln only did this for this. Well, the real thrust of that is the 13th Amendment, he did not have to put all that he did into that. When you just look at it, you have, he's putting like,

Jean-Pierre (02:58:21.55)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:58:27.257)
all, literally like all the weight of his political power, which he kind of talks about in that one monologue behind this thing. And then he like, he kind of like slyly cheats his way into delaying the war, like he didn't have to delay the war. And that's a real serious thing. You know, it's not, it's not like just, I don't know, it's not delaying something of

Jean-Pierre (02:58:33.08)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:58:50.083)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:58:55.745)
You know, not much consequence to get this thing passed. It's delaying like the reunification of the country and the ending of a war that's hundreds of thousands of men's lives in order to like push this thing through and get it done. and that doesn't happen from someone that like doesn't actually care. You know, it doesn't, that just doesn't make sense. I like, I'm not buying that, you know, whatever they're selling with that, that theory.

Jean-Pierre (02:58:57.934)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:59:07.672)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:59:11.374)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (02:59:17.688)
Yeah.

Eli (02:59:25.262)
Jean-Pierre (02:59:25.676)
Yeah, I mean, as he says, like, you know, the Emancipation Proclamation only covers these rebel agitators, right? So the moment that the Union is reunified and they're no longer rebel agitators, that doesn't apply. So that way, that means we have to approach it differently. So yeah. And as Grant says a little bit later, almost towards the end of the film, he's like,

Eli (02:59:46.497)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (02:59:54.082)
You you look 10 years older than you did last year, you know?

Eli (02:59:56.887)
Yeah. Which we see with a lot of presidents, to be honest. But I mean, so one of the other things I was thinking about too was like, one thing this movie shows that like we're doing a lot of questioning of today is just, okay, where are the lines to political powers? What lines should and shouldn't be crossed?

Jean-Pierre (03:00:23.853)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:00:24.645)
Lincoln talks about that he in the movie. He talks about like I don't know where my powers necessarily end and so I'm doing things that like Haven't been explicitly said I can't do just to see if it'll work and pushing those bounds and I it's one of those things were like Yeah, like he's really like doing some testing of the

the bounds of the constitution on what he can and can't do. And like we, there's a lot of discussion about that today. where, what are the bounds of the constitution that our current president should or shouldn't be pushing? avoiding saying names so that they don't end up in my transcript, it's published online, but what, what are the bounds of our

of our current sitting president, what should be binding what he's doing and what shouldn't. Is he just kind of playing this same sort of game that Lincoln played of like just doing things to test and see if it'll stick? And I think that's like somewhat fair, but I think the big difference is like there's pushing of bounds with a moral foundation and

Jean-Pierre (03:01:33.08)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (03:01:40.141)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:01:54.519)
I'm not sure what the moral foundation is. I think the moral foundation of what Lincoln was doing at this time is pretty obvious and pretty apparent and blatant. Whereas like the decisions being made by our, our, our, the current sitting president and his, you know, his party and his backers, like it's just hard to see like, okay, what's the moral foundation here?

What are we doing? Because it seems like there's a lot of just like throwing things at the wall from all kinds of different moral angles and seeing what sticks and hoping that your loyal supporters will just go with whatever you do. And yeah, I just don't know. I think too, there's also like

Jean-Pierre (03:02:31.939)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (03:02:39.118)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:02:53.633)
Lincoln wasn't doing things that like are in blatant disregard to the Constitution. He's like pushing into gray lines. And I think there's a lot of stuff by our current administration that like is blatantly disregarding things like habeas corpus and whatnot. And so, I don't know, I think there's a lot of, I think someone

Jean-Pierre (03:03:09.56)
Yeah.

Eli (03:03:17.633)
that is a supporter of our current administration could watch a movie like this, hear some of the things Lincoln says and is like, that's what our president right now is doing. He's just pushing. And I just think that's a very different thing going on. And Lincoln is just very easy to appropriate for whatever thing you want him to get behind. I just think, I just want to put it out there like,

Jean-Pierre (03:03:36.974)
Yeah.

Eli (03:03:47.563)
I don't think that the balance Lincoln is pushing testing what he can and can't do really is that similar because of the reasons I've stated to our current administration's actions. But I don't know.

Jean-Pierre (03:04:01.355)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, like you said, the context matters, you know? I think the other biggest takeaway, is that, just like the title of the book, Team of Rivals, is that, you know, Lincoln was a man who was comfortable being surrounded by and working alongside people who vehemently disagreed with him and wanted him to take a very different approach.

Eli (03:04:05.547)
Right. Right.

Eli (03:04:23.235)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jean-Pierre (03:04:26.798)
But ultimately through his wisdom and leadership chose to side with him, you know, even if they had to bite their tongue sometimes or if they had to suck it up or whatever as opposed to, you know, the current administration who we see time and time again that when dissension occurs, you're ousted and

That's just not healthy for anyone in any kind of position of authority. To be surrounded by yesmen, it creates a of problems. I don't even think that's just a problem with the president. I think it's a problem with lot of politicians in general. Exactly. And then it feeds over into—

Eli (03:04:51.139)
Mm-mm.

Eli (03:04:59.853)
Yeah, I think that's the big thing with Lincoln.

Eli (03:05:08.269)
Yeah, absolutely, Echo Chambers and.

Jean-Pierre (03:05:16.238)
the extremes of both ends of the political spectrum can be the same way, where it's like, know, if, you know, there's a big thing nowadays where it's like, oh, I got to protect my peace, you know, so one little argument with a friend about something and all of sudden it's like, can't be friends anymore, you know? And I just think like, you know, the founding fathers up through like the politicians of this era would have looked at that and been like, that's kind of crazy actually, you know?

Eli (03:05:43.341)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, absolutely. I don't know. It just, it's, it can be disheartening to watch a movie like this about this man that like had such strong, convictions and stood by those convictions, to the detriment of eventually his life. Really.

Jean-Pierre (03:06:03.256)
conviction.

Eli (03:06:13.496)
and I don't know it's in the in I know in the next episode me and My guest Elijah Davidson kind of talk about this You know the relationship of this movie with bridge of spies and focusing on like You know putting kind of like this ideal in front of you and saying like okay, this is

What we should strive for. Maybe this person that I'm putting on display isn't like super realistic, like, but it's an ideal. And I'm like, I'm going to present you with this ideal that you should, you should aim for and strive for. It's, kind of like, you know, we even talked about on there, like just from our religious background, the kind of like the, what the Christian life is supposed to be. You're supposed to like put Jesus as the image.

of ideal in front of you and like aim for that. Like probably not gonna get there anytime soon, but I think that's kind of like what Spielberg's doing in this small string of movies is kind of taking like, taking a look at like the political and like place culture was just saying, okay, who are some, what are some ideals that I think we need to like see done?

they're supposed to be done on the big screen. And yeah, I don't know, I think this movie does a great job of it while also like just, I don't know, while also keeping Lincoln as like, like you said, kind of demythologizing him at the same time. Bringing him down to a place where he does feel a little bit more reachable, if that makes sense.

Jean-Pierre (03:07:47.512)
Mm-hmm.

Jean-Pierre (03:08:11.819)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:08:13.485)
like, okay, Lincoln, you know, he got, he did get his hands dirty. He did like have, you know, some problems at home, you know, he did like, he wasn't this superhero. but he was an actual man and he just had strong convictions and stuck to them and did what he had to do to like make those convictions come to re come into reality. So I don't know.

Jean-Pierre (03:08:41.294)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:08:43.049)
I really like that aspect of this movie. Yeah, I mean, I guess before we wrap up, final thoughts, were there any other images or sequences or quotes or anything you wanted to point out?

Jean-Pierre (03:09:01.248)
I know that I can really think of man. think it's it's That was good that was pretty good maybe a little higher pitched but But no, I mean, I think yeah, I just think the movie was was super solid, you know

Eli (03:09:02.475)
not link and bang of the table now now now how was my impression was that pretty good thanks

Jean-Pierre (03:09:23.63)
Yeah, I don't know. That's kind of, that's all I got, you know what mean?

Eli (03:09:25.453)
Yeah, no Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's a great movie. I think It's it's not gonna end up like in my upper echelon of Spielberg, know I know I mentioned earlier talked a little bit about this with Elijah next week Not next week, but two weeks out on Bridgespies episode, but he has Lincoln like way up there and his

in his Spielberg movies. This is just like a solid four-star like Spielberg movie for me. And you know, one in which Tommy Lee Jones calls a man more lizard than man, so gotta love that. Yeah, I mean if you don't have any more thoughts, I mean this...

Jean-Pierre (03:10:15.854)
What's not to like?

Eli (03:10:25.299)
a great movie about a great man in history. So I don't know what else to say. Be more like Lincoln, I guess. Or maybe like expect more Lincoln from your representatives and your political backings, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, that's really it. know

Jean-Pierre (03:10:29.164)
I agree.

Jean-Pierre (03:10:44.908)
Yeah? You get behind that?

Eli (03:10:54.573)
I this episode is gonna be, it just like happened to work. I didn't even plan this, but this is releasing on Independence Day on July 4th. So happy July 4th, happy Independence Day to everybody out there. And you know, hope you enjoyed the Lincoln talk for Independence Day.

Jean-Pierre (03:11:14.796)
Hope you guys blew some things up on behalf of Abraham Lincoln. Fireworks, blew up some fireworks.

Eli (03:11:20.429)
Yeah, yeah, shoot some, shoot, if you can find like a top hat shaped explosion, you know, firework, that would be great. You know, send me some videos of that if you find that. I would love to see it. But yeah, that's really all we have for this week. JP, you want to share where people can find you? They want to see more of what you're doing?

Jean-Pierre (03:11:29.486)
There you go.

Jean-Pierre (03:11:45.762)
Yeah, feel free to give me a follow on Instagram. My full name is Jean Pierre Boutreau on Instagram. I'm always over there keeping everybody updated what's going on.

Eli (03:11:53.613)
Yep. I'll link it for sure. Yeah, and I'll link your letterbox. Always enjoy the reviews. Yep.

Jean-Pierre (03:12:01.006)
I love Letterboxd. I think when I first started using it more, I tried to embrace doing serious reviews. 90 % of the people on there, their review is just a joke. So I just try to do that too, like a couple of sentences.

Eli (03:12:15.639)
Yeah. Yeah. I have a little bit of both. for sure. But, but yeah, fun movie draft coming up next week. We're going to do movie presidents. So it'd be fun. look forward to it and then pick back up with Bridges Spies the week after that. So be looking for that. but yeah, that's all we have for this week. I have been Eli Price for JP Boudreaux. You've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We'll see you.

next time.