Double Doses

Of Devils and Dossiers

IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:

THE BARDI PARTY REPORT

As Woman of Blank Check, I feel it is my duty to report on the boffo box office opening weekend of The Devil Wears Prada 2 - $77M domestic, and a mindboggling $157M overseas, giving us a grand total of $234M for the global weekend.

Let’s unpack this for a second - a female-led, female-targeted, adult-oriented, live-action, romcom-adjacent theatrical release that, according to Sean Fennessey, “looks like an episode of The Morning Show” just had the biggest domestic opening weekend for a comedy since 2015. My theater was sold out, with groups of young women dressed to impress like they were there to be photographed, rather than sit in the dark for two hours. I did not wear my Prada, but I did shove my Loewe puzzle bag under my seat so the servers at Nitehawk could move freely across the aisle with polenta fries.

Why was DWP2 such a success? Well, for starters, they did everything right. Not only did the four most crucial stars return (no Adrian Grenier fan service, THANK GOD), but the director and screenwriter of the original (David Frankel and Aline Brosh McKenna) did, too. The film introduced more mature, satisfying, and ultimately realistic plotlines for our beloved characters - people aren’t still working at places they were working at in 2006 unless it makes sense for them to do so, and characters aren’t in relationships they were in before, because Andy Sachs was in her early twenties living in New York and you do NOT marry your post-college New York boyfriend. It also manages to balance the aspirational fizz and glamour of the first film, while also introducing the very real, very depressing changes that have taken place in the media landscape over the past twenty years. While snobby Andy scoffed at the journalistic cred of Runway Magazine in 2006, now with so many outlets shuttered and turned into AI content farms, she sees it as a last man (or woman) standing.

Speaking of bleak real-world analogs, there are Jeffrey Bezos and Lauren Sanchez-Bezos stand-ins in the film. My friend Chadd compared Justin Theroux as tech mogul “Benji Barnes” to Peter Sarsgaard in The Green Lantern (enormous forehead); a comically evil tech bro with weird fillers who attempts to buy his (and his younger girlfriend’s) way into the cultural elite. Tonight is the 2026 Met Gala, co-chaired by the Bezoses and sponsored by Amazon. It is rumored that some celebrities are “boycotting” the event because of this. I’ll believe it when I see it. Come to think of it, the most aspirational, unrealistic part of DWP2 is the fact that culture workers are ultimately able to stand up to the tech oligarchs. At least Meryl Streep - Miranda Priestly herself - won’t be attending this year.

LET’S CRACK OPEN THE AUSSIER

The Nose Plays

In May 1990, French screen icon and legendary piece of shit Gérard Depardieu decamped the set of Green Card for his home country, where he attended the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac, in which he played the titular role. It was one of the great successes of Depardieu’s career: he was awarded the Best Actor prize by a jury headed by fellow normal man Bernardo Bertolucci, and the film would result in Depardieu’s lone Oscar nomination the next year. According to a 1990 New York Times article, when Deparadieu returned from Cannes to New York City, he received an “urgent message” from Green Card director Peter Weir requesting he hurriedly return to set. “I am thinking,” Deparadieu said, “‘Oh non, am I late? Have I done some damage to the production?’” Upon his arrival, cast and crew were buried in work, not a single member turning their back to greet Depardieu. That is, until all 150 of them did, revealing 150 accompanying prosthetic Cyrano noses. Out stepped Weir with a set of cue cards, which he used to direct the set in a performance of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. “I did not know whether to laugh or to cry,” Depardieu told The Times, “So I did both.”¹

LET’S CRACK OPEN THE B-B-B-BONUS DOSSIER

Doctor, doctor, give me the news / I’ve got a bad case of Limania

While making their 2005 blockbuster Mr. & Mrs Smith, writer Simon Kinsberg coined a term that would come to define the working process of director Doug Liman, at least in almost every article written about the man in the late 2000s and early 2010s: “Limania,” a portmanteau conveying Liman’s tendency to (perhaps, uh, recklessly) figure things out in the moment. According to Liman himself, Kinsberg meant it “as a term of affection,” but, Liman joked, “things always play better in print when there’s antagonism, right?”² And look, few contemporary directors are better at playing into antagonism than the Limaniac in question.

Because of this past week’s (great!) Ben’s Choice episode about Liman’s 2014 film Edge of Tomorrow, we’ll likely never do a full Liman miniseries. Given his latest work—a largely AI-generated movie about the inventor of bitcoin starring Casey Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Pete Davidson—maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Yet, I’ve read few quotes better than Liman during my time on the show, so maybe it is just a little bit of a bad thing. As evidence of what was lost, here are five Limaniacal Edge of Tomorrow quotes that didn’t make it into the episode:

• Liman, to the Los Angeles Times, on what really matters: “I don’t need the studio coming down on me. I make movies for me and posterity. I’m more scared of history than I am of the studio.”³

• Liman, to Den of Geek, describing his $178 million movie: “The opening of Edge Of Tomorrow may be the most independent thing I’ve ever done. I filmed Tom Cruise in my editing room, and he did his own hair and makeup. So I’ve never been far from making an independent movie.”⁴

• Liman, to Rolling Stone, on something that sounded easier than making Edge of Tomorrow: “I was training to climb Mount Everest. It was originally for a project I was going to do with Tom Hardy [about Everest climber George Mallory]…compared to the movie I was making, the thought of scaling a mountain seemed restful. It was like, ‘Well, there won’t be any exo-suits, there won’t be any aliens, there won’t be the challenge of trying to get an honest performance out of someone in a totally computer-generated environment….’ It really felt like, after what I’d gone through, trying to summit at 20,000 feet would be a breeze.”⁵

• Liman, to Den of Geek, describing the feeling cast and crew had leaving the set of Edge: “[W]e felt like we got out of that by the skin of our teeth. Like we came through a firestorm and got out the other side and were like, ‘Okay, nobody’s interested in going back into the burning building’.”⁶

• Liman, to IGN, on what he intended to do with the long-rumored sequel, which he tentatively titled Live Die Repeat Repeat: “Yeah, it’s going to revolutionize how people make sequels. It really will.” When he was asked to expand on that, Liman said, “I can’t, but it will. You mark my words.”⁷

Consider them marked, Doug.

WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?

David Sims, Host: “Have we recommended Blue Heron yet? Finally caught it at the IFC Center this week and was really impressed!! 2026, year of great Canadian cinema.”

Ben Hosley, Producer: “I recommend visiting Niagara Falls. I went this past weekend and was major gobsmacked. It’s just crazy how big and wet these fuckers be. I stuck to the US side (sorry Canada) and viewed everything from da Goat Island. unfortunately did not ride a splashy boat. But I did goto the cave of winds which is a kinda janky ass elevator you take down to the base of the Bridal Veil falls (pictured here). Also shoutout to Buffalo! GREAT TOWN!!"

Soakin’ Wet Benny

AJ McKeon, Editor: “Hawaii this is not new, but I had never been, and I just got back from my 10-year anniversary trip with my wife. It’s a pretty great place.”

JJ Bersch, Researcher: “My daughter turned seven last week and we got her a Kindle for her birthday. Despite being a very good reader/listener for her age, she’s always been intimidated by the longer books at the library/(independent) bookstores, and our ulterior motive was to hide the length of books to get her to read more advanced (and interesting) books: there are only so many times a parent can read through another Humphrey the Hamster. Mission accomplished: we’re now speeding through Trenton Lee Stewart’s 2007 novel The Mysterious Benedict Society, easily the longest (and most enigmatic) story we’ve ever read to her. (And, for the other Harry Potter-averse parents out there, it makes for a great alternative to She Who Shall Not Be Named.)”

Marie Bardi, Social Media: “I read Adofo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel yesterday, and can’t stop thinking about it. 100 pages, sneakily suspenseful science fiction that feels particularly relevant to someone obsessed with movies and movie stars, with a genuinely haunting ending.”

Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “I did it, you guys. I watched Babylon for the first time. It is now, by some margin, my favorite Damien Chazelle movie. He is still not my favorite guy, but that movie owns.”

THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST

Writer and romcom expert Esther Zuckerman joins us to talk about this 1990 oddity, released the same year as Pretty Woman, but centered around the star persona of Gérard Depardieu instead of Julia Roberts, it’s Green Card.

CRITICAL DARLINGS
We’re joined by two journalists who have reported on Michael Jackson for the podcast: our own producer Benjamin Frisch, and Danielle Hewitt, to try and make sense of the deeply flawed film, Michael, that also features some of the best pop music of all time.

MEANWHILE ON PATREON…..

We’re coming down with a case of LiMania as we get on the porch for another Ben’s Choice. We’re Living. We’re Dying. And We’re Repeating as we discuss the 2014 Doug Liman helmed Edge of Tomorrow.

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COMING SOON:

1. New York Times, June 4, 1990.

2. Rolling Stone, June 6, 2014.

3. Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2014.

4. Den of Geek, July 28, 2017.

5. Rolling Stone, June 6, 2014.

6. Den of Geek, July 28, 2017.

7. IGN, October 28, 2016