This Slate Spoiler Special is brought to you by Shutterstock.com. With over 700,000 high-quality

video clips, Shutterstock helps you take your creative projects to the next level. For 30% off your new

account, go to Shutterstock.com and use offer code Spoiler 5. Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's

movie critic, here with the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on Before Midnight, the new Richard Linklater film starring Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy.

Joining me here in the Slate, New York office, is David Hagland. Hi, David. Hi, Dana. You are the editor of Browbeat, Slate's culture blog.

That's right. And a frequent co-spoiler? Yes, happy to be here again. And we're also joined being patched in from the D.C. Slate Bureau by an infrequent co-spoiler, David Plotz. Hi, David.

Hi, guys. You are the editor of Slate, and you specifically requested to get in on this conversation.

And we're going to talk about why that is in just a minute. But first, I always like to get just a very quick reaction.

Recommend this movie? See the first two first, but then go see this one.

Agreed, David?

Oh, absolutely. Completely. Yes.

So I want to hear also about both of your histories with these. I think more than I do, you guys have some intense personal autobiographical identification with this whole before series, which to recap, if people aren't familiar with the series, is before sunrise from 1994, before sunset from nine years ago, 2004, and now before midnight.

So let's start with you, Hagland.

What's your history of the series?

Well, the first one came out the year that I met my girlfriend back in high school.

And the second one came out about a year after we had moved in together.

So somehow they have assumed this deeply personal kind of place in our lives so that when this one came out, it was not an option for me to see this one by myself.

The two of us were going.

I would wait until it came out in theaters if I had to so we could see this one by myself. The two of us were going, and I would wait

until it came out in theaters if I had to so we could see it together. I probably will

write about that for Slate this week. I think there's a way in which these movies, you know,

they both speak to us kind of personally because of certain details about our relationship,

...