Do Standing Ovations at Film Festivals Mean Anything? The Town Investigates.

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by film data analyst Stephen Follows to dig into one of Hollywood’s most ridiculous phenomenons, the film festival standing ovation. Stephen gathered over 500 reported standing ovations across five of the world’s biggest film festivals to see whether the length of applause tells us anything meaningful about a film’s future (02:26). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about the 25 shows eligible for Best Podcast at the Golden Globes (25:53). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetown@spotify.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Stephen Follows Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:48.2	It is Thursday, October 23rd.
0:51.3	I was at the opening night of the AFI Festival at the Chinese last night, the Bruce Springsteen movie.
0:56.7	When the credits rolled, there was applause, but no standing ovation.
1:00.1	That only happened when Bruce came out and played a couple songs, which was excellent.
1:04.1	AFI is in stark contrast to what I've been railing against for the past couple of years,
1:08.6	not just the proliferation of these performative standing
1:11.8	ovations at film festivals, some of them lasting 10, 15, 20 minutes at a time, but the breathless
1:18.0	media coverage of these ovations, as if they somehow matter and give some indication of the
1:22.8	quality or popularity of the films. The overzealous response to a film at Cannes or Venice,
	...

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