Sinners w/ Briahna Joy Gray and Josh Olson [Extended Preview]

[00:00:00] Okay, welcome to a very special crossover episode of Bad Faith Podcast and Struggle Session. You know, your host of Struggle Session, Leslie Lee III, who of course is with us for this crossover episode. It's good to see you as always, Leslie. Good to see you, Bri. And Josh Olson. It's always nice to have a real life screenwriter, a native of the Hollywood landscape when we're doing some pop culture movie criticism.

[00:00:28] Welcome back to Bad Faith and Struggle Session. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's nice to be, if I can plug my new podcast, The White Canon, it's nice to be talking about a movie that's not white canon. That's a good question. So like, do we think that this is a movie that's going to end up being black canon? Is it already? Oh, the movie, sorry. The movie that we're talking about, my apologies, is of course Ryan Coogler's latest Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan.

[00:00:56] It is a cross-genre vampire movie set in the Jim Crow South. And it has been doing very, very well at the box office, especially for an original feature. Josh. And something you know is that vampire musical, let's be clear. Yes, absolutely. It's got a lot of music in it. I was thinking in theaters like, yeah, this is a half step away from a full-on musical. But that was not a problem. That's not an insult. Yeah, no, no, not at all.

[00:01:25] Not at all. Okay. So I don't want people to, I mean, there's some people going to hear that, you know, and be like, okay, I tolerated Wicked. But I don't know. It's good music. It's good music. Okay. I just got no offense to anybody here. If you're sitting around and haven't decided whether or not you want to see Sinners and are waiting until these three chuckleheads chime in. Yeah, you're doomed. So let's set it up a little bit.

[00:01:53] For those who are like, how on earth is music fitting into what I thought was a sort of action-packed vampire romp? Who wants to take the lead on giving people a sense of what this film is about? And I think we should go ahead and say there's going to be spoilers. I think we'll avoid maybe super egregious spoilers. But you're going to know what this – what do you think? Do you think we should try to avoid it? I mean, at this point, they literally have the spoilers in the trailer. That's how – like you asked the question, is it part of the canon? Yes. It's a certified hood classic, day one.

[00:02:23] Everybody knows it. Everybody – people don't even get mad if you post spoilers because everybody's seen it twice. I guarantee you the first tattoos have already been dropped on people. Oh, yes. People are obsessed with this movie in a way culturally that they haven't been obsessed with a film or any real cultural product except for maybe not like us.

[00:02:45] But I feel like that was a lot – a different sort of vibe than, you know, this movie, which has just, you know, taken the world by storm. Even – I was shocked, actually. I will talk about this. That the white right didn't seem to be mad about this movie when, like, the first 45 minutes of this movie is, I hate these craggers. White people are stupid as fuck these craggers. But, like, it's such a good movie. It brings everybody in.

[00:03:12] Okay, so my hot take is that perhaps maybe the lack of pushback from kind of the conservative white right is because there is a little bit – I also love the movie, I should say first. But I think there is a little bit of confusion around the messaging that resists maybe its easy categorization as a film that says don't trust white people or white people are evil. White people are basically vampires, culture vultures, however you want to characterize it.

[00:03:42] So before we get into this, Leslie, you say it's already canon that people are responding very positively to this movie. Why do you think that is? And maybe that's a good opportunity for us to just kind of sketch out what the plot of this thing is. Well, I think the main thing that it gets down to is, like, it's a good-ass story. Ryan Coogler was talking about how he was pitching the movie, and it's how all the great, you know, directors pitch their – you know, filmmakers really pitch their films. It's like they sit down and tell someone a story.

[00:04:11] If they get you hooked and you have to hear the ending, that's a real movie. That's a real movie. And this is a real movie. You can imagine him sitting down and telling someone about all these characters. And the character is really what holds this film together because every single character in the film has their own life. Even, like, the villainous Klansman. You want to know more about all of these people. All of them are complex.

[00:04:35] All of them have good and bad sides, and all of them are interesting every minute they're on the screen, which, by the way, looks beautiful. Looks gorgeous. It looks like a real movie. I think people are responding to it because this is how movies are supposed to be. This is how films used to be all the time. It looks great. It's filled with stars, but it introduces new stars, you know?

[00:05:01] It has an interesting concept, a very fun plot. You want to watch it again after you're done watching it. It mixes up genres in a way that most films don't. It breaks the formula. I was actually reading a blog by a screenwriter who was furious at the movie because, like, the first act is about 15 pages too long. Oh, no! But I saw that was one of the things that black people most responded to.

[00:05:30] Like, that part, that part where the film, and I'm sorry for not getting too much into the detail for people who haven't seen it, but the first four or five minutes of the movie is this, for lack of a better term, world-building. It feels like it could be its own movie just about this black community putting together a juke joint in one day, right? And it could be, you didn't need to have the vampires in it at all, and people were still hooked, sucked in, laughing in the theater.

[00:06:00] They loved the characters and the world, and it felt like the world that they live in, obviously. You know, the world of, you know, black people in the modern day with ties to the past and the future as well, which we see in, you know, I'm all over the place because there's so much in this film that people responded to, like the dance scene specifically, which has, you know, hip-hop and blues and jazz all mixed together.

[00:06:26] So let's stay with this point that you opened with, which is that we've got like an hour of narrative building before a vampire ever graces the screen. So you're a screenwriter, Josh. What did you make of this setup? Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's like, yeah, I was just talking to a friend the other day about how, like, you know, I'd love to talk to the screenwriter you were reading because, you know, let's talk about one of the, like, most mediocre films ever made, Die Hard. It, I mean, what does it take, 40 minutes before anything happens?

[00:06:53] Lindsay lands in the airplane. You see all this stuff happen. They build your character. So you're invested in them. And it's not, you know, and I don't even mean to compare it to Die Hard because it's doing all kinds of other things. And, you know, or how about Titanic? My God, what is that? An hour and a half before they hit the iceberg? Like what's going on with this idiot? What's he thinking? It's, it's, I hate criticisms like that. The first act is as long as it needs to be. That's why the movie works. So is the second act and the third act and all the endings. Yes.

[00:07:23] It's just, you know, if you're sitting there counting pages or minutes, you're doing it wrong. And if you're sitting there and you're, you're swept up at it, who cares? I mean, it, it, um, I was boggled by the film. I will admit, can, can, can, can, um, can I talk about my, my experience seeing it? Please. Because I got to see it about a month ago or, or even a little longer as a screening in IMAX, this incredible IMAX screening room. There were about 10 other people there. I can't think of the last time.

[00:07:52] I mean, we see a lot of movies where they come out and usually my response is like, oh, I can't wait for people to see this. They're going to like it. If it's good. But this one was like, I can't wait to check myself against the, like, am I nuts? Cause there's so many things about this film that I was a little anxious going into. Cause there's a long history of really successful directors who've kind of built their names doing stuff, finally getting complete creative control, doing something completely original.

[00:08:18] And then just going insane and making something like, you know, Spielberg's famous one is 1941, which is fascinating artifact. One of the worst movies ever made. And there are so many moments in Sinner. So much of it just feels like it's just barreling towards flying off the rails into just complete self-indulgent insanity. And it never does. Everything works. I'm constantly sitting there the first time I'm seeing it going like, oh God, please, please don't, don't screw this up.

[00:08:48] And you get to the end of the scene. You're like, oh, he did it right. And you get to another scene. You're like, oh, don't, don't, you're going to, oh God, no. And, and then it works. And, and, you know, the, the, the perfect example being that, that dance scene where like one of the things that drives me crazy about a lot of period films being made. You know, today is filmmakers all have a tendency to like not trust the audience to enjoy music from that period. So I'll try to juice it up. And I was really thrilled when they started playing music in the film.

[00:09:17] And it's like, it sounded right for the era. And then he goes and he does the thing I'm talking about, but he figures out a way to make it contextual and to make it work. And that dance scene is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. It's just absolutely incredible. And again, you're like, please God, make it work. Please God, stick the landing. And then he sticks the landing and you're like, I need to see this again. Cause yeah. Oh, okay. So conscious of people who haven't seen the movie, I'll go ahead and set it up. I'll be quick. Oh yeah.

[00:09:45] You guys are desperate to talk about this dance scene and I hear you, but I really need us to say very basically what the plot of this movie is. Well, it is about the blues. Okay. Well, we're, we're, we're introduced to these two twin brothers. The Stackhouse brother, Smoke Stack brothers, excuse me. Smoke and Stack were both played by Michael B. Jordan. We're told that they had been living up North in Chicago for some period of years doing illegal shenanigans with Al Capone. And they've come back to their home hometown in Mississippi with a bunch of money and a dream of setting up a juke joint.

[00:10:15] They go and visit a, uh, some kind of old barn type building, which they buy off of this, uh, slimy white man, um, who, uh, denies that there's any clan around, that there'll be any problems with this transaction.

[00:10:31] And then they go back into town and reconnect with a number of folks that they clearly had positive relationships in the past, including, um, Chinese American grocers family, uh, who agrees to paint a sign for the establishment, help out in various ways. Uh, he has liquor down from up North. Uh, he, uh, taught, uh, one of the twins reconnects with an ex partner who agrees to fry the food. So basically they're reconnecting ties with all the family and we get a sense of what the broader community is.

[00:10:58] In addition, they reconnect with their little cousin preacher boy, who is the son of a local preacher makes a lot of sense who they had given a guitar, uh, as a kid before they left for Chicago. And he has now grown up and become not only very good at playing this guitar, playing the blues, but also has a gorgeous voice that is sort of revealed after some restraint. And you know, the movie is telling you that this guy is going to be talent, like foregrounding this guy is going to have a lot of talent.

[00:11:24] But honestly, when you hear this young man saying, uh, it really did feel mystical and magical in the way that the movie demands. Because what we discover is that this, uh, young man's voice sort of not explicitly tacitly, a little bit explicitly summons, um, these vampires that have come to the town.

[00:11:46] Uh, and then there is a showdown of sorts, uh, at the jukebox, jukebox at night, sorry, juke joint at night, uh, in which the vampires are obviously trying to suck all the blood. Okay. Do you think I give away too much in that description? I just, I don't think we can talk about this movie without just completely spoiling it. I think so too. I think it's my group chat. I'm in a group.

[00:12:06] I'm in many group chats, obviously, but my group chat, my, my, my black group chat was like, Brianna, you have two days to see this movie before we stopped doing the thing where we blur the text. So you can't see the spoilers. And so I, I hopped to, and I saw the movie and that was like a week ago. So everyone else just has to girth their loins and get over it. Okay. All right. So we keep alluding to this idea that this movie is like a musical.

[00:12:31] Now I want to invite you both to talk about this scene in the juke joint that maybe shouldn't work. It should not. Maybe, maybe it should be, I was listening to a New York, a New Yorker podcast where they were discussing it and they described it as corny, but that it worked. Like they were very positive about it. Who wants to take this? Because both of you have independently brought this up. So I want to, I want to get a chance to get into it. It's the key to the whole movie.

[00:13:01] And it's, it's why, you know, so I spent a couple of weeks where I'm going, this movie just slaughtered me in the best way possible. And I am fully prepared for everybody to see it and go, what the hell was that mess? Are you out of your mind? Cause I'm like, maybe it's just, sometimes we would just tap you in exactly the right way. And it was so gratifying. It's been so gratifying to see people just like, everyone's just, just taken by this thing.

[00:13:27] And, and that scene is, it's just, it's literally transcendent. It transcends its space and its time. And there's a question as to whether or not, you know, is it, you know, is it happening? Is it not happening? It's like, who cares? It's a movie. But, but it's tapping into the notion that the music this kid's playing is like music for the ages, that it's coming from this longstanding musical tradition, not just African, you know, with the Asian and Native American and Irish, everything.

[00:13:54] And that it's all part of this continuum leading into the future. And I think, I mean, I'll, I will absolutely see it again. It is the first time you get a sense something's going wacky is when that guy in the Bootsy Collins get up, just steps into the scene. Is that kind of like, I don't remember seeing anybody else. And, you know, it is electric guitar, full on seventies funk master. And you're going, what?

[00:14:19] So, so, so in the, in the film, it's all been leading up to this big party, this one night of freedom, the kind of freedom and exclusivity of this juke joint off some ways away from town is sort of framed as an escape from the oppressiveness of the Jim Crow South. And so there's this kind of catharsis in this scene where we've been waiting. We've seen all the planning again.

[00:14:45] The movie is like an hour with just the planning of this night. And you finally get these, this big performance where in a kind of magical surrealist moment, you get a visual representation of the musical traditions that led up to the blues, including like an African dancer. And then also the lineage of the blues extending into the future with this Afro futurist Bootsy Collins type performer.

[00:15:13] And then also in a nod to the Chinese American couple who is friends with this community and helping out in the kind of like tending bar and stuff in the juke joint, a kind of traditional Chinese dancer. And it feels very much like a, you know, again, it should be a kind of corny, it feels like a kind of corny, we are the world all holding hands. Look at the synthesis of the melting pot and how beautiful America is moment.

[00:15:41] But there's something about the score, the intensity of it. That that doesn't feel cheap in the least. And I was sort of looking around in the music theater and the movie theater, like, is everyone else buying this? It's like, am I the only one who's kind of into this because I'm a corn dog? No, it really. I have not heard a single person say anything negative about this scene. Yeah. You know, I'm right with you, both of you.

[00:16:05] It's like when it first started, I was like, oh, my God, because I love the movie up everything up until that point. That was the first time I was like, oh, this is where it happens. He directed those. He directed those. Yeah. He directed those those Black Panther movies. This is where it happens. But then above, you know, as it keeps going and you start seeing the people from the past, like the more.

[00:16:28] And when the Bootsy Gollins guy shows up, that was kind of like when I was like, OK, because like you said, that electric guitar cutting through. It's like Kugler. The reason why the scene works, we're never going to get to the bottom of it because it is the sort of alchemy that the film is talking about that music can do. This scene does not make any sense. It does not fit in the movie. It does not fit even in the genre of horror at all. But it's the best scene in the film.

[00:16:55] Everyone loves it because it brings together so many different things in a perfect way in the way it's shot and paced. And I know if a lot of people notice, it's like it feels it's not obviously it's not actually one take, but it has that style of it. I didn't even notice it until when I was watching it because of how it's shot. It keeps just this energy going and going and just moves you along with it. And that's the magic of film. It should not work. This scene should not work. This should be corny.

[00:17:26] This is people have tried to do this type of scene many, many times or try to make points like this many, many times. And like Josh was talking about, like what's the Netflix show? Is it Bridgerton that uses contemporary music in a discordant way? It's like none of it works as well. And maybe it's not fair to any of these creators, but he just hit it just right.

[00:17:49] And all the maybe even when the people show up in the order, in the space, when they show the turntable, everything is very carefully crafted how this scene is shot. And maybe it's just the how he did it and he did it so carefully that it works. And the joy we see from all the characters, too, that we've met up into this point that we know are about to die. That's also like a really like that helps bring it along.

[00:18:17] Like when you see the Asian, the Chinese waitress, like when she's dancing while she's serving, like that's joyful. That makes you, that brings you up in a way that's just interesting and just that is really unique to film and cinema. And then he's so good is the thing. I'm always like there's a few movies that do this where, you know, because he's making this movie and he's knowing that so much of it is going to hinge on being to pull up.

[00:18:47] But, you know, and then I have to pull off this incredible scene that's almost impossible and then everything will be great. And he's just going about his business and doing that. I think that the two that always come to my mind are there's a scene in Mulholland Drive where Naomi Watts is an actress has to go give an audition. And the entire film hinges on it being the best audition you've ever seen. You're like, how do you, that's like, that takes just incredible, just confidence to go in. Yeah, just like I see The Last Dance.

[00:19:16] Perfectly executed. Or there's a great line in the Princess Bride script where we go with the writer writes, what follows is the greatest sword fight you've ever seen in a movie. And then what follows is the greatest sword fight you've ever seen in a movie. They're going into this. They're not going, hey, we're going to be, you know, we're great. We know what we're doing. We're going to kick it. We're like, we're going to conceive and film and direct and everything. I'm going to make a scene that's so fucking good it blows people's minds that almost nobody on the planet can pull off.

[00:19:46] Cool. What day are we shooting that? Thursday? Great. What's Friday? It's incredible. It's, oh my God. So Leslie, you sort of said the music isn't necessarily for the genre of horror. I do want to say counterpoint, Little Shop of Horrors, movie musical. Sweeney Todd, movie musical. There are horror movies. That's horror. But like, if it was like, I feel like it's not actually a musical. It just gets to that point. No, no, no. Of course. That's what I meant.

[00:20:12] But I do think it's interesting because years and years ago, I dated this guy who was in a musical theater program at NYU. There's just a whole cast of characters in my past. But one thing that he was saying as he was taking this musical writing class was that a music, like, people don't like musicals. Some people don't like musicals because they feel like the music interrupts the scene and it's artificial and yada, yada, yada.

[00:20:33] But this is a sign of a good musical is that the song should be able to do something narratively that would be very difficult to accomplish with words, with dialogue. It can do it more efficiently. It can make time pass, time travel happen. It can make sort of achieve an emotional connection that would be difficult to demonstrate in like a very short period of time on film. It should be additive, not just a filler that is duplicative of what's happening in the narrative. And I think that this scene sort of accomplished that.

[00:21:04] That being said, I think now we have to get to the nitty gritty of what this movie was actually trying to say and do. And to do that, I think we need to say a little bit more about what happens plot wise. So here are some more spoilers. Hear the full episode by subscribing at patreon.com slash. Strong Session. Strong Session.