The overacting award is renamed for Vincent Hanna ("Give me all you got") after earlier names including Mark Ruffalo and Linda Partridge. — Bill Simmons
Nominees: the actor playing Bruce Lee for dialing it up, or the Manson family woman after her face is smashed. — Bill Simmons
A counterpoint says her flamethrower scene did not read as overacting. — Chris Ryan
Her real overacting is said to be in the car rant; it is then suggested to give it to her anyway. — Sean Fennessey
DiCaprio's trailer scene is ruled out; Zoe's character screaming at Pitt is called a little hard, with shades of Robert Shaw in Jaws.
Pacino at Muso and Franks telling Rick his career is basically over is offered first; Pacino is called a sequel to his Heat performance. — Bill Simmons
Marvin's night of brandy and watching movies alone is described as a host's idea of heaven.
Pacino's character is said to be based on Dino De Laurentis, who brought actors like Bert Reynolds to Italy; his pitch speech is called pure Tarantino, like Tarantino's Top Gun speech in Sleep With Me.
Rick crying in the parking lot after the meeting ("It's official, old buddy") is a favorite; with Cliff driving and Mrs. Robinson on the radio it sets up the whole crisis within five minutes. — Bill Simmons
Cliff's return to his trailer at the Van Nuys drive-in with his dog, TV Guide and dog food is praised as a scene that should not work but does on Pitt's charisma, including him talking back to the TV. — Bill Simmons
Asked whether he would be okay with that dog on a plane, the answer is no. — Bill Simmons
The Bruce Lee scene: Cliff climbs onto the roof, takes his shirt off to fix the antenna, drawing a reaction in the theater, and flashes back to the fight.
The fight is read as an exaggerated false memory: the onlookers vanish from the frame, so Cliff is an unreliable narrator, and the outrage over disrespect to Bruce Lee misses that point. — Sean Fennessey
Showing Bruce Lee as overconfident is not considered an insult, since that confidence was part of his greatness. — Bill Simmons
Sharon watching herself in a movie theater, after picking up a hitchhiker, is a favorite; every driving scene is rewatchable, one of two favorite driving-around movies. — Bill Simmons
Using the real Sharon Tate on screen is praised; the idea is said to come from Tarantino's own experience at a theater after True Romance. — Bill Simmons
Margot Robbie is called phenomenal here, more than in Bombshell; in a Golden Globes speech Tarantino is quoted as saying she brought the most goodness to any of his movies, a pure essence in an indecent body of work. — Bill Simmons
A skipped scene: Rick floating in his pool running lines from a tape recorder while making whiskey sours. — Sean Fennessey
Cliff picking up the hitchhiker is an amazing five minutes, with a Neil Diamond song; the soundtrack may be Tarantino's best.
Rick's trailer freakout after blowing his lines is said to be going to win the category, and is described as improvised from DiCaprio's idea.
Cliff's visit to Spahn Ranch is meant to evoke Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with the dogs playing the role of the Apocalypse Now helicopters; it loses some effect on rewatch. — Bill Simmons
Lena Dunham's casting among the Manson family is distracting, and the stunt casting throws the viewer off. — Bill Simmons
In the finale Cliff, high on an acid-laced cigarette, does all the work but Rick gets the credit, just like a movie. — Bill Simmons
Rick's scenes with the child actor Trudi and the Rolling Stones "Out of Time" sequence with the lights coming on are added. — Chris Ryan
One pick is Leo blowing his lines and freaking out in his trailer, including the Oliphon "line!" sequence. — Chris Ryan
Another pick is Cliff on the roof and the Bruce Lee scene, the one most looked forward to on a third rewatch. — Bill Simmons
Three different answers come back at once, Leo, McConaughey and Scorsese; the Scorsese case is that the director is the author of the whole project and that this was a reminder he was not done yet, which gets mocked as auteur theory delivered like John Wayne.
Hugo, the film before this, is probably the host's least favorite Scorsese, him trying something different late in life, whereas this is him being who he is and firing the shotgun at the biggest caliber, every move in his book purposefully overdone to show people pushing limits without realizing it; McConaughey and Leo are nonetheless called incredible.
A closing joke asks whether the Malaysian financier won the movie, with a shout-out to Red Granite; the firm answer is that they did not.
"I myself jerk off at least twice a day"; "There's no nobility in poverty"; "Sell me this pen"; "Pick up the phone and start dialing"; "Fun coupons"; "I ask them to judge me on my losers because I have so few"; "I'm never eating at Benny Hanna again"; "You had to deal with the golf course people too"; "Risk is what keeps us young"; "Telephone fucking terrorists"
About 1200 words of quotes were pasted but it will not go on too long; the entire McConaughey jerking-off speech is the quote, played as a clip, 'feed the geese' and 'mustard shit' included; it is loved because it is a fake Robert Downey Jr. performance, free-associative, hyper-intelligent but completely illogical word vomit.
Not every scumbag line needs repeating, but 'there's no nobility in poverty', a pull from Wall Street, and 'I have been a rich man and I have been a poor man and I choose rich every fucking time' are the kind of lines weaponized by the movie; the opening lines about the middle class, two accountants in Bayside and $49 million being three shy of a million a week are read.
'Sell me this pen' is the famous one; the 'are you behind on your credit card bills, good, pick up the phone and start dialing' speech and 'deal with your problems by becoming rich'.
Leo's 'lions and tigers and bears' after the hit of crack; 'fun coupons' thrown at Kyle Chandler, who has not been repped much; that scene has the moment where you want him to stop making it worse, and fun coupons itself is a little over the top.
The AeroTine (as transcribed) pitch in the Long Island office, 'I never ask my clients to judge me on my winners, I ask them to judge me on my losers because I have so few', is a favorite because it finally shows the character being great at the thing he is supposedly great at, the kid with the lemonade stand marking up candy, with the hand gestures and everyone in the background mattering as much as DiCaprio.
'I'm never eating at Benny Hanna again' (as transcribed), the golf-course-people and Greek-tragedy rant with 'you had to pay them in cash with your hands' and the wine connoisseur turned landscape architect played as a clip; 'show me a pay stub for $72,000'; Aunt Emma's 'risk is what keeps us young' as a tidy tagline for the movie; 'you'd be telephone fucking terrorists'.
Asked for more, the addressed host adds the massive heart attack at 35, same age Mozart died, the Sea Otter who sold meat and weed introduction, 'you're free now, run free', 'I'm not gonna let someone else fuck my cousin', and the O'Doul's and baking-powder exchange that ends with 'it sucks, man'. — Chris Ryan
Is it Leo's: Django is a hell of a lot darker than being a shithead on Wall Street and arguably more impressive; The Revenant was a make-good after people were angry he had no Oscar, great for its natural-light shooting as much as for him; there is not enough separation between the roles to call this his peak, and Titanic is arguably the apex since he was the most popular person in the world, though one host has still never seen it.
The Aviator is incredible, but apex is also about what he can do in the business; the run is listed, Body of Lies, Catch Me If You Can, Gangs of New York, which one host would fight for every day while wishing for a version without Cameron Diaz, a take judged too hot, then The Departed, Blood Diamond, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, Inception, J. Edgar as the only true dud in an old-man suit, Django and Gatsby, with every performance preferable to The Revenant, the classic Oscar thing.
So it is not Leo's and not Scorsese's; Bernthal gets a personal yes from one host, and it only might be Jonah's, which stops short of a yes.
The list: Bo Dietl, Ethan Supley (as transcribed), Stephanie Kurtzuba as Kimmy Belzer, Christine Ebersole as Leah Belfort with little screen time, Kenneth Choi as Chester Ming, who is great, PJ Byrne as Rugrat, Shea Wiggum (as transcribed) as the captain, Aya Cash as Janet, close to being known but still in contention, Thomas Middleditch as the Stratton broker with the fishbowl, Fran Leibovitz (as transcribed) as the judge, the real Jordan Belfort introducing Jordan Belfort, and Stephen Kunkin (as transcribed), Ari from Billions, as the man under Mark Hanna.
Belfort had a weird time with his cameo: unique energy, like someone off the street trying to act or an emcee at a bad comedy club, while Leo is weird with the pen; maybe all the drugs changed his brain chemistry or he was just nervous with Marty, Leo and possibly Spielberg; it is choppy and takes you out of it at the end, though he acted every day of his life for his telephone terrorists.
Selections: one host goes Middleditch, from the very beginning of Silicon Valley; another was going to go Belfort, a pick retracted shortly after, and adds that Ethan Supley (as transcribed) is doing good work.
A Kevin Smith tangent: not a big Kevin Smith guy, liked Clerks and Mallrats but Dogma bummed him out, which gets him thrown off the Dogma rewatchables.
The Joey Pants award is clarified as more of a list of people who wound up in lots of other stuff, so the Belfort pick, a man in nothing else, is conceded as wrong and withdrawn; still, the guy in the back is Belfort, who has spent ten years getting rich training salespeople, prompting a life-coaching joke.
McConaughey's scenes were shot in the second week and his chest-beating was his warm-up; the film was financed with money allegedly stolen from Malaysia's 1MDB fund and Red Granite paid $60 million to settle; 400 to 450 VFX shots, shot digitally; a Guinness record 506 F-words; the actors snorted crushed B vitamins; Christina McDowell's open letter about the victims; Robbie's paper cuts on the bed of cash; Spielberg spent a day on set during the Steve Madden speech; Belfort coached DiCaprio on quaaludes; 27 takes for the Joanna Lumley kiss; the drug scenes are edited oddly on purpose
McConaughey's scenes were shot in the second week of filming; the chest-beating and humming were improvised from his pre-acting warm-up; the brief shot of Leo looking uneasily away from the camera was him looking to Scorsese for approval, and DiCaprio pushed to keep it in and later said it set the tone for the film, a pretty good sliding-doors moment.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission alleged the film was financed with money stolen from the One Malaysia Development Berhad sovereign wealth fund by producer Riza Aziz, who pled not guilty to charges in July 2019; 2016 Department of Justice civil complaints named it as having provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions were siphoned; Red Granite Pictures paid $60 million to settle with no admission of wrongdoing.
The story is part of Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope and Tom Right (as transcribed): Joe Low (as transcribed), a well-off Malaysian kid at Pen among generational wealth, became a networker who threw parties without paying, went home to start a fund with Aziz, the prime minister's stepson, pulled in Middle East money and Goldman Sachs, took Paris Hilton on ski trips, bought Lindsay Lohan 23 bottles of champagne, bought part of EMI, sent Marlon Brando's Oscar to DiCaprio, who gave it back, and made a $43 million art purchase.
DiCaprio and Scorsese saw guys offering total control and endless money after Scorsese had wasted half a year in development; in a poetic twist the financing is a testament to the reality the film depicts, money at your fingertips making you throw away principles; the money is still being chased, Low is thought to be under Chinese protection, DiCaprio and others gave back everything gifted, and whether anyone actually liked the guy is an open question; the movie is a lot different without a kid from Malaysia stealing money.
The budget was needed partly for 400 to 450 VFX shots, uncommon for Scorsese outside Hugo; the film was shot digitally after he had been one of the last bastions of film, and without it there is probably no Irishman.
The film set a Guinness World Record with 506 uses of the F word, 2.81 per minute, beating Casino at 422 and the 1997 British film Null by Mouth (as transcribed) at 428; CinemaScore audiences gave it a C, the lowest of anything in theaters that week, which is why America is not to be trusted.
The actors snorted crushed B vitamins for the cocaine scenes and Jonah Hill ended up hospitalized with bronchitis; the film also commits the consistent Scorsese error of a character throwing the head back after a line as if hooked by the neck, which nobody does in real life.
Christina McDowell, daughter of Tom Prusalis, who worked with Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter criticizing the film for not portraying the victims; the response is that Boiler Room did have the family-guy victim, that this is like replying to a tweet with the seven things it left out, and that nobody would have seen a movie about the victims, which they made as 99 Homes with Andrew Garfield; the popularity of a movie like this is itself the point, which is where the final shot out into the audience lands: you thought this was fun, think about it.
Margot Robbie reported the sex scene on a bed of fake cash was uncomfortable because the sharp paper bills gave her multiple paper cuts on her back.
Asked for takes on the sex scenes, the addressed host declines to vamp for twenty minutes about them. — Chris Ryan
The last sex scene is disturbing and awesome, such a fuck you and the ultimate turn; she deserves exactly what he has done to everyone else, and it should be an awful heartbreaking moment for him, the rock-bottom guy finally seeing the woman who had his back and not deserving to get her back; the sequence up to the freak-out and the kidnapping is the Scorsese of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, dread, fear and violence, the eggs out of her hands.
On a routine visit Steven Spielberg spent a day on set watching the Steve Madden speech and, per Scorsese, essentially co-directed it, advising actors and suggesting angles; that shows Scorsese's confidence, where anyone a tier below would say scram, like a host in the background wanting quicker questions when Simmons had Damon in studio; two cinematic geniuses might just agree there is a right way to tell a scene.
Belfort coached DiCaprio's behavior, especially how he reacted to quaaludes and the dope-induced confrontation with Danny Porish (as transcribed), the character Jonah plays; a weird conversation that nonetheless makes sense since we are out of ludes and cannot know, something like trying to stay up on Ambien but much harder.
DiCaprio was so nervous about the kissing scene with Joanna Lumley that it took a reported 27 takes; Scorsese has confirmed the editing is odd on purpose, with continuity issues after every scene where Jordan takes drugs; DiCaprio's dance was done on the spot but learned over decades, a real bar mitzvah robot he presumably did after a few sarsaparillas, in another smashed-up sequence with three songs in a minute and a half.
In 2007 Leonardo DiCaprio and Warner Brothers won a bidding war against Brad Pitt and Paramount for the rights to Belfort's memoir, and Belfort made a million dollars on the rights.
Does it work with Pitt: absolutely for some, since Pitt is better at the darker thing and a less attractive, rougher guy might let you hate Jordan more, there being moments when DiCaprio looks too great on screen; the counter is that DiCaprio uses his handsomeness as a tool to push further, as in Django, while Damon plays relatable, and Jordan's looks explain why anyone would let him sell them anything; the telephone-terrorists speech, banging the microphone on his head, is a place Pitt may not be able to go.
Many Pitt and DiCaprio roles would be interchangeable, though The Aviator is hard to see with Pitt for one host while another could see Pitt there more than in this; both were circling The Departed at the same time; Pitt in California, twenty years earlier, and Fight Club show a weird dark gear.
Chris Evans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt auditioned for an unspecified role, presumably Donnie, which does not seem right for Evans; Jonah took about sixty grand per his Howard Stern interview, while Leo had box-office points; he was already Moneyball-nominated and in Superbad, flew to see DiCaprio, joked that Leo should kill anyone else cast, and practiced with the capped teeth and phone calls.
Moneyball was essentially playing Paul De Podesta (as transcribed), so it is hard to believe he was nominated for that and did not win for this, strong, unique and weird even if some scenes are too much; the cousin exchange, she grew up hot and if anyone is going to fuck my cousin it's going to be me out of respect, and the 'you're free' scene are things only Jonah could have done.
Asked for his Blake Lively thoughts, the addressed host would have been fine with her as Naomi. — Ryen Russillo
Blake Lively and Rosie Huntington-Whitley were considered and Teresa Palmer and Amber Heard auditioned for Naomi before Robbie; her being unknown helped, and Lively at the height of her post-Town moment could have nailed it but could not have reached the Robbie phenomenon; Robbie is doing Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, the voice and Buick Skylock (as transcribed), and the daughter is even named Skylar.
Olivia Wilde auditioned for Naomi but was deemed too old to play DiCaprio's wife even though he is ten years older, a tough beat; Julie Andrews was considered for Aunt Emma before Joanna Lumley but was convalescing from a titanium ankle implant, probably for the best given the Mary Poppins crowd; the Emma scene is sneaky extra evidence that Belfort is a bad guy.
People wanted Ridley Scott to direct for a time: his version is forty minutes shorter with a four-and-a-half-hour director's cut and less chaotic; Scorsese related to the addiction and throwing-your-life-away-for-cocaine material, which he discussed on the promo circuit, whereas Scott would bring less dialogue, longer driving scenes and a lude scene more like Kingdom of Heaven.
The theme of wealth as an incurable pox; the narrated asides; the idea that not having wealth is also unacceptable; the soundtrack (disputed); the unreliable narration and fourth-wall breaking; Margot Robbie
The serious opener: the theme of wealth as an incurable pox that destroys life from the inside out, or at least that being motivated only by money is aging well.
The asides age best: the man who married the girl they had all had their way with and then killed himself; Brad's heart attack at 35, just like Mozart; the financial explanations Jordan yada-yadas because you don't give a shit, which recalls the way Trump talks, with a bragging flourish at the end telling you that you are too stupid to need to know, an attitude that has clearly resonated.
Related is the idea that not having wealth is also unacceptable, seen when Kyle Chandler sits on the subway at the end after getting his man; Scorsese and DiCaprio are wealthy and know life is easier with money, so the theme is how you get it and whether you are happy with what you chose, more nuanced than these guys suck.
The film feeds the appetite for lots of characters and actors; Favreau is good at these side roles; the investigation took ten years and Belfort could have just paid a fine and stepped down from Stratton Oakmont, the Favreau and Reiner scene where he tells them what they want to hear while clearly not caring, and when a rich man goes to prison he does not really go to prison.
The last scenes with Robbie's character are played starker to show how evil he is, he beats up his wife, and he still gets white-collar jail, tennis and speaking fees; there is an amazing dissonance between Belfort being all about this movie, even cropping up in the cameo, and the conclusion portraying him as an awful violent person.
What is real is debated since he has denied things; Belfort and the ex-wife both live in Manhattan Beach, where a host jogged past his house; the fines he was supposed to pay are debatable; the ending may be a way to remind you this guy did awful shit, whereas the international flight where he wakes up seatbelted is played as a carnival montage; the end is the crash, with a stock metaphor about risk, bad decisions and hurting people, precise while feeling loose.
The soundtrack is written down as aging best but the dissenter, named on air, holds that it never aged for him; the unreliable narrator and talking-to-camera device, usually considered a crutch, is essential here to be inside his brain, like Rounders without Matt Damon; The Office comparison is floated and doubted; the Lamborghini and the head-on-the-Expressway sell of the rule-breaking early is impressive writing.
'Did you guys see that?' after the plane crash brings the audience in and questions his perception without making a show of it, and the film moves on immediately.
Margot Robbie's discovery and where she now sits in the Hollywood firmament; the 'we're not going to be friends' line puts her in control of the courtship; she handles emotional desperation and goes toe to toe, 'who are you, a fucking owl'; the Venice fight with the water thrown in his face while he shimmies about his body is forgotten for the scene category, and the 'stop flexing your muscles' clip is played.
The tryout story: an unknown reading with DiCaprio, told to kiss him after the screaming, she slapped him and screamed fuck you instead, and Scorsese's reaction was that's the one; she wanted to take a risk, though the story may not be true.
Before the category begins, the McConaughey sequence meeting Mark Hanna is flagged as the thesis statement of the movie: you are here to rob people and do cocaine while you do it; the body is a vessel for making money, jerking off and coke, and a wide-eyed 22-year-old from Queens with two accountant parents watching Hanna hoover martinis on a Monday morning could decide that is the lifestyle he wants.
The purpose of the Hanna sequence is pinned to the moment Leo's character offers that everybody wins if the clients make money and Hanna's answer is simply no: every warrior for himself, the thesis in the second paragraph.
The opening, the life of Jordan Belfort with the unreliable narrator, the $49 million a year line and the car flipping from red to white in real time, shows a character at the prime of his life right as the fall is about to come, with Scorsese breaking his own rules; the fourth-wall breaks are never used in a moral way and the film never slows down to judge the characters or let the audience feel better than them.
The Mark Hanna lunch clip is played; McConaughey's four minutes are called the reconnaissance for his comeback between Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective, with the Hanna character and the hair having as much to do with it as the dialogue, which is so eighties and unbelievably bad; an ESPN-era interview anecdote recalls him answering a question about Interstellar by saying he needs a little freedom to do what needs to be done; the chest-beating was his warm-up that Scorsese and DiCaprio told him to keep, and it is good that the character never returns because it is unsustainable.
McConaughey is an amazing physical actor here, throwing his arms down in a thrust before lunch and peering in like a college football coach racing down the sideline; you can imagine him giving the masturbation speech at a bar in real life, and the 'all mustard up here' line gets quoted.
Donnie Azoff in the diner, 'show me a pay stub for $72,000' and quitting his job on the phone, reads as very Long Island, a wealthy guy weirdly having breakfast at a diner; the early run of back-to-back scenes, Donnie, Hanna, Spike Jonze, is remarkable in itself.
Jonah introduces the grotesque with the capped teeth and the shirt patterns, trading his life for a pay stub; the character should not work, marrying his cousin, selling children's furniture, smoking crack days after meeting someone, yet the bond between two weird animals is bought; the objection that DiCaprio would never hang out with him is answered with the cousin Greg Succession theory, that he should not be in the room but every Greg scene is funny, and these are guys who make bad decisions, like Charles Schwab needing a guy for the garage.
Meeting the Duchess of Bay Ridge: Margot Robbie was a lightning bolt, an Australian reportedly 23 at the time with some dispute about her real age, introduced as Jordan's dream girl coming out of the beach-house party with the douchebag boyfriend Blair and the jet-ski comeback.
The smokestack lightning bacchanalia, the office party with the marching band, throwing the little people, the head shaving and the strippers, is one of the most ecstatic pieces of filmmaking ever; then an old blues song with echo comes in, the lighting goes dark and strobe, and you realize they have created hell on earth and are demons who love it; the camera moves in on a despairing DiCaprio walking off the stage, a subtle moment beside the later aside about the man who married the woman they double-teamed and killed himself; the first impression was that it was too much, Braveheart lines of strippers advancing.
The research indicates the party combines things that did not all happen at once, and the absurdity is the point; a nitpick is raised that the film is over-scored, with too much music and a blues-to-eighties-to-Foo-Fighters run whose years do not add up; the defense is that the soundtrack runs the whole arc of pop music out of chronological order, with Robbie Robertson in Scorsese's ear, so that the music is about overconsumption like the movie, and its radio-dial flipping feels true to a coked-out perception, as opposed to the perfectly aligned Talking Heads cue in Wall Street.
The Steve Madden IPO speech, 'my killers, my warriors, my telephone terrorists', with Madden bombing and being thrown out; Madden is played by Jake Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman's son; the bachelor party and wedding dance is now a famous GIF and Leo is a genuinely impressive dancer, which drifts into public Leo with the dad bod, super soakers, the Vans and calf socks and the choice of college hat.
'Daddy doesn't get to touch mommy' is a good scene nobody puts on YouTube, and it apparently really happened, including Rocco watching; after the movie came out every NBA player followed Robbie on Instagram, the entire Central Division, with Hibbert still in the game, a pivot from the Christina Hendricks era.
Jordan invites the FBI onto his yacht, then 'I'm not leaving' is the clubhouse favorite, one of the more rewatchable scenes in any movie of the last decade, simultaneously disgusting and beautiful; the mid-speech realization that he cannot leave is the most honest part of the movie; it is the Field of Dreams heartstring moment that is also the most self-aggrandizing garbage of all time, since he forces Kimmy Belzer to tell a room of screaming dudes how much money he gave her; Aya Cash's snapping character is not meant to be liked, like nobody in the film.
The Lemon Quaaludes are still aging and have lost their potency; the hosts wonder whether a thriving lude community exists on the dark web, compare the finite supply to Honus Wagner cards and ask whether Gretzky has one.
The Naomi yacht capsizing is arguably the best scene, really fun and also true, as is the plane crash; 'I will not die sober' and getting the ludes while the boat goes down; the ultimate wake-up call compared to a country-club DUI; then the sober-at-the-pool scene with Donnie and the ankle bracelet and the O'Doul's exchange, some of the funniest writing in the movie, with 'it sucks, man' played as a clip.
Spike Jonze at the investor center selling AeroTine (as transcribed), two brothers making radar detectors or maybe microwaves out of a garage in Dubuque with their mom Dorothy answering the main line, six cents a share, and the cutaway to the shed.
The Stratton Oakmont cold-call script with Moby Dick and the harpoon, and everyone yelling about who Captain Ahab is, played as a clip; right before the boat leaves, finding out Aunt Emma is dead while freaking out about his money is loved too.
The Spike Jonze scene is perfectly executed: he gets the company name wrong, does not know whether it is microwaves or radar, knows what a clown he is, and the 'if you sell ten thousand dollars of stock I'll blow you' line; DiCaprio's reaction shows the difference between a good and a great actor; dudes eat pizza, a guy screams in a sweatsuit and the bathroom opens straight into the office; the cross-cutting between brokers delivering Jordan's script, his gestures on the answering machine, the 'vice president of Stratton Oakmont' walk-throughs and the later SEC interrogation montage are also singled out.
A correction for the sticklers: the plane that came to pick him up exploded a couple of days later, not in the same moment, and the real sinking is even crazier than the movie; listeners should tweet thanks to Russillo for getting it right.
The final pick: one host argues McConaughey should be ineligible like Shack (as transcribed) in early fantasy basketball because the Hanna lunch is the clear runaway; another narrows it to the lunch, the Lemon Ludes and 'I'm not leaving' and goes with 'I'm not leaving'; a third goes with McConaughey after watching the scene fifteen times that week, so the Hanna lunch takes it two to one.
Leonardo DiCaprio was supposed to play Hans Landa, which would have meant doing the movie in English since he could not have learned German and French in time, though the joke is that a guy who slept in a carved-out bear might have taught himself.
Michael Fassbender tried out for Landa a couple of times and was heartbroken, then got the call that he had Hickox at the expense of Simon Pegg, who chose Tintin instead, a sliding-doors moment the hosts call very tough since they love Pegg.
Adam Sandler was rumored to play the Bear Jew and would have nailed the Teddy Williams thing; Nastasha Kinski (as transcribed) was initially going to play Bridget but turned it down, so Kruger got the role, and Kinski, 10 or 15 years older, would have been more a Marlene Dietrich aging starlet; Kruger is so good in the movie.
This is a generation of actors who grew up on Tarantino: Fassbender and friends put on a stage version of Reservoir Dogs in Dublin, and Simon Pegg sat alone in a hotel room anguished over choosing between Spielberg's obvious blockbuster and Tarantino's World War II movie.
Tarantino struggled over casting Melanie Laurent because he thought she was too famous and wanted to discover someone new; she insisted she was not famous and convinced him.
Tarantino met Pitt at Chateau Miraval, where Pitt lived with Angelina Jolie, and they discussed Aldo over a night and five bottles of the estate's own Pink Floyd rose before he accepted, so the rose was a critical factor.
This was the first time Tarantino worked with an in-his-prime movie star rather than rediscovering an underappreciated asset, and everything since, Django, Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has used stars in their sweet spot, so it may have been more of a risk for Tarantino than for Pitt; complicating things, the Weinstein Company produced and distributed the film, and Pitt, who had refused to work with Weinstein for years over Gwyneth Paltrow, did so because he wanted to work with Tarantino.
Possibly half-assed research rather than a casting what-if: an early iteration when Tarantino first conceived the project was rumored to include Sylvester Stallone as Aldo, Bruce Willis as Donnie Donowitz and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Hugo Stiglitz, which would make sense for a late-90s script.
Earlier, during the tavern discussion, Fassbender is said to have tried out for Landa five times, and a host wants to discuss in Casting What-Ifs how both careers would have gone with him as Landa.
