We Are So Back (at the Movies) with Sean Fennessey (‘The Big Picture’)

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2024

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re so back at the movies… with head of content at The Ringer and co-host of The Big Picture, Sean Fennessey!

At the top, Sam and Sean discuss Sean Wang’s Dìdi (8:52), the father-daughter story at the heart of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (15:52), and why the documentaries Brats (19:39) and Faye (22:35) make the perfect weekend watch.

Then, they talk about the real-life story behind A24’s Sing Sing (27:45), what Borderlands reveals about post-strike Hollywood (29:57), the anticipation building around Sean Baker’s triumphant upcoming feature Anora (32:13), Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night (33:17), Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic musical film The End (35:49), and James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (37:17).

On the back-half, we dive into Sean’s childhood in Long Island (43:37), his early writing at Ithaca College (44:15), working at Complex Magazine in the mid-aughts (53:00), his pivot to Grantland (1:02:10), launching The Ringer (1:15:50), his on-mic personality on The Big Picture (1:11:50), the future of his podcast(s) (1:18:31), and why he remains optimistic about the film industry (1:27:09).

This conversation was recorded at Spotify Studios. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected].

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Samforgo, editor, and podcast host, Sean Fantasy.
0:47.0	Fantasy is the head of content at The Ringer, where he also co-hosts the very popular movie
0:51.8	podcast, The Big Picture.
0:54.4	Each week on the show, he and his co-host, Amanda Dobins,
0:57.1	break down what's happening in movies.
0:59.2	What's playing in theaters, what you should check out on streaming,
1:02.0	the most exciting film soon coming
1:03.6	to a theater near you. They also do movie drafts and Oscar analysis with a
1:08.8	rotating cast of Ringer colleagues including Chris Ryan and Bill Simmons. Prior to the
1:14.8	Ringer, Sean first worked for Simmons at Grantland, a beloved digital daily
1:19.3	magazine that covered all things, sports sports and pop culture.
1:23.0	It featured writing from many past guests of this program,
1:27.0	Jay Caspian Kang, Andy Greenwald, and Wesley Morris.
1:31.0	The site was owned and operated by ESPN from 2011 till October of 2015, when Disney,
1:38.1	their parent company, decided to shut it all down.
1:41.7	The legacy and end of Grantland, and in turn the creation of the
1:45.7	ringer is something we get into on the back half of today's episode. But to start,
1:51.0	I want to talk to Sean about some of the films of the summer, along with what he's most anticipating this fall.
1:57.5	This is in no way an exhaustive list of either, so if you have movies to recommend that you've recently seen or want to share some of the films you're looking forward to this fall, you can always drop us a line at SF at talk easy pod.com. That's SF at talk easy pod.com. If you're listening to this on
2:17.4	Spotify they've actually added a new feature to the app where you can comment.
2:22.9	So if you want to do that you can comment on the individual page for this episode and we will
2:28.5	share some of those selections, both in the movies you've liked this summer and the ones you're looking forward to in the months ahead.
	...

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