--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sam Sanders: Hey, it's Sam Sanders. It's Saturday. Before I started my weekend, I wanted to let you know that we have something special for you today. It's Intuit, a Vulture podcast with Sam Sanders. If you don't know Vulture, it is the authoritative place to go online to find out about what's happening in popular culture right now. They're also really good on what was happening in popular culture years ago. They're great on nostalgia. And now they have a companion podcast hosted by the one and only Sam Sanders.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm Noelle King, the second of two hosts of today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos, one of the two hosts of today.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Noelle and I actually helped Sam kick off this episode. So you're going to hear from us. But then you're going to hear a really interesting conversation that, quite frankly, I don't think you're going to hear anywhere else about how exactly Hollywood works, especially when it comes to intellectual property and milking intellectual property to death.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I found it fascinating. I hope you enjoy it too. If you do, subscribe to Intuit wherever you listen.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I do want to say I got dressed up for y'all today. I wore my new favorite shirt. It's my Katy Perry California Girl shirt. I went to see her in Vegas this weekend. Stunning. Stunning. Her show. Her show is a Quaalude fever dream.
--:-- Noel King: And one day, we will get Katy Perry on this show. I have the t-shirt. I went to the concert. It was a good seat. It's going to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But until that time comes, who's favored to win? Definitely Noelle. I have Sean Ramos-Varam. And Noelle King. Sean knows I've been studying for the game. You've been studying. You know Noelle is a study. Noelle has valedictorian vibes.
--:-- Noel King: And we love it.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Before we start the exam, can I have you both write your full names on the Scantron? Tell our listeners who you are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos, one of the two hosts of today explained.
--:-- Noel King: I'm Noelle King, the second of two hosts of today explained.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I don't do second or first, y'all are both co-lead singers and that's right. We're the Hollow Notes of daily news podcasting or who was the other one, Ashford and Simpson, that's them and that's y'all solid as a rock.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said it. I feel like both of you have played games about the news with me before, but this is a new game and it's different.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I'm going to tell you real quickly what it is. It's a game that we're calling here on Intuit. Intuit, not Intuit. I mentioned a recent headline and the two of you tell me whether you're Intuit or you're not Intuit. And at the end of this game, I will award points and choose a winner based on how much I like your opinion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You got this, Sean. Thank you. I'm rooting for Noel.
--:-- Sam Sanders: With that, let's get into it. Are either of you into a new Selena album, which features 10 never-before vocal tracks from Selena that have been digitally altered to make her sound older?
--:-- Noel King: Not into it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not into it.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Is that mean?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not me.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Sean, what about you?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hard pass.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Is anyone out there even clamoring for this? Who's this for? Who's the intended audience? Can't we just let Selena be?
--:-- Noel King: I am a South Texan who is a big Selena fan. And one of my favorite films of all time is a Selena biopic starring J-Lo. And even I don't want new digitally altered Selena vocals. Let her rest.
--:-- Sam Sanders: So apparently the backstory, and this is all approved by Selena's estate and her family, and her widow, their estate is going to release tracks with some vocals that she recorded when she was between the ages of 13 and 16. But they want to make her voice sound, quote, a little bit more mature.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's giving Tupac hologram vibes.
--:-- Sam Sanders: And I didn't like that either. You know, the Tupac hologram, I feel like of all the iterations of let's resuscitate someone who's been dead for years, the Tupac hologram seems a little more respectful than something like this, where you're just trying to recreate something that sort of wasn't there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which artist would you allow to be resurrected?
--:-- Sam Sanders: Is Willie Nelson dead yet?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Joking. I'm joking. He's on tour.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I know. I know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That That was a joke. That was a joke.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Oh, my God.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Next question. It's a three-parter. First part of this question. Are we into or not into Shaggy? Shaggy? The singer.
--:-- Noel King: It wasn't me, Shaggy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Shaggy? What did Shaggy do?
--:-- Sam Sanders: What did he do? First, answer the question. Are you or are you not into Shaggy as an idea?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think I'm pro-Shaggy.
--:-- Noel King: I'm pro-Shaggy.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Okay, yes. If he hasn't done anything terrible, If you're about to update me with something hideous, I'm about to update you, wait for it.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Second question. Are we into Sting, the Stinger? He had his time. He has his talent. Wow, Desert Rose was a bop. Desert Rose was a bop.
--:-- Noel King: I'm into what Sting did for tantric sex. I still don't quite know what tantric sex is. But I know Sting did a lot for it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh wait, Did Shaggy, wait a second, I think I know from a Tiny Desk concert that Shaggy and Sting did a thing together.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Well, here's the thing. After that first Tiny Desk concert, there's been more Sting and Shaggy content. And quiet as it's kept, just this May, this duo released a new album. And it is a Sting-produced reggae album of Shaggy singing covers of jazz standards like Come Fly With Me and Luck Be A Lady.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I am so into this.
--:-- Sam Sanders: So Shaggy and Sting began to collaborate after they were on tour together years ago. But a while back, Sting told Shaggy, hey, I kind of feel like you have the same vocal range as Frank Sinatra.
--:-- Noel King: Shaggy's like, nah, dog. And Sting was like, yes, you do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it took a few drinks to convince Shaggy that this album of Shaggy reggae jazz standard covers could work. But it's here now.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Wow. And it's Shaggy doing Sinatra. Okay. Just, yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was hanging on every word.
--:-- Sam Sanders: You guys are musical. You know I'm not.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Does Shaggy have the same vocal range as Sinatra? I mean, there's a difference between vocal range and vocal talent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I hate to say it. I don't think it works.
--:-- Sam Sanders: And when I see the two of them together, they love each other. They have fun together. What I want for them is like a buddy comedy movie more than I want an album from them. Right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I would definitely go see that. But it sounds like somebody should call the police.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Oh. Well, it won't be me.
--:-- Sam Sanders: All right. The game is tied. This last question for all the marbles. Here we go. Are y'all into or not into HBO Max taking TV shows and movies off its platform without telling viewers like you and me?
--:-- Noel King: Okay. I know. I have to think about this one because HBO Max is the only one of the things that I actually pay for. So I'm going to take a moment here to ponder this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, I will tell you all the list of things that have been taken down so far.
--:-- Sam Sanders: All right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amy, Amsterdam, An American Pickle, Charm City Kings, Check It Out, as in Czech Republic, Final Space, Full Bloom, Here and Now, Locked Down, starring Anne Hathaway, Moonshot, Mrs. Fletcher, Vinyl, and The Witches remake, also starring Anne Hathaway.
--:-- Noel King: No, I'm good with what HBO did. I think I'm okay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you hate Anne Hathaway.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Wow. She is gorgeous and talented. Great gowns, beautiful gowns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Czech, what is the, I would watch the Czech thing, I think, but nothing else on there.
--:-- Sam Sanders: They're not removing Game of Thrones. There you go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Exactly.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Yeah. It sounds like they're removing things that you realized or remember existed to begin with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So then Noelle, you okay with this?
--:-- Noel King: I'm okay with this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. Well, I will say this. I will say this. The trailer for American Pickle looked really good. Of all of those movies you named, that is the only movie I set aside time to watch.
--:-- Sam Sanders: And it was disappointing and all the good parts were in the trailer as so often happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I will say good riddance to all these things. I'm into HBO Max taking garbage off the platform.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I will say my favorite version of HBO Max is every few months, a new series featuring a prestige actress over 45 doing bad things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, yes, yes. That's my favorite category.
--:-- Sam Sanders: On that note, I've got to determine a winner of this game. Good luck. And it shall be determined by a tiebreaker.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Oh, wow. Damn. And the tiebreaker is which of you will have the best review of this Shaggy jazz classic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to play for you now.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I would resurrect Frank Sinatra, changing my original answer just to see his face.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, yes. Sean, can you beat that? I don't think you can beat that either.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I would just ditto.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I capitulate. Noelle, you win. Sorry. Noelle, you win. It's up to you. Do whatever you want.
--:-- Noel King: We are Ashford and Simpson. We both win. Solid as a rock. Solid as a rock.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Oh, I love it. I love it. Noelle, you won, but emotionally and spiritually we all did.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Thank you both for being here. I love it. This was delightful. Thank you, Sam.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Dear listeners, you can catch Noel and Sean five times a week with their daily news podcast called Today Explained. And as a special treat, you can probably also hear it on a public radio station near you. It's good. Go check it out.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I'm going to try my Shaggy right now. I can't do a record. I can't. Never mind.
--:-- Sam Sanders: So after Stranger Things finishes its fifth season, which maybe doesn't even need to exist, there's also going to be a Stranger Things stage play. And there's going to be a Stranger Things spinoff series as well.
--:-- Sam Sanders: And you know what? I am irrationally annoyed by this because I think it represents a not so good trend in TV and movies.
--:-- Sam Sanders: The biggest hits and names and brands, there's this increasing pressure to keep those things going no matter what. Avengers! You know, everything Marvel. Game of Thrones, which is getting a prequel. The Lord of the Rings, they're making more of that. Star Wars, which truly never ends.
--:-- Sam Sanders: It feels like that kind of stuff is sucking all the money and energy and attention out of the room. To the detriment of newer and smaller ideas.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I want to talk about this with someone who I thought would also be mad about this. So I called up Damon Lindelof.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You know me as one of the guys behind Lost. I also did The Leftovers and that amazing single season of Watchmen on HBO.
--:-- Sam Sanders: And Damon has a rep for knowing when and how to end things and how to fight against that urge to let some things go on too long.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I mean, I didn't just do one season of Watchmen. I also cut that show down to nine episodes from 10 while filming the show.
--:-- Sam Sanders: But I was surprised. In our chat, Damon was not nearly as pessimistic as I am about this extension of big TV and movie mega brands.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: In fact, Damon kind of cheered me up.
--:-- Sam Sanders: So here's our chat about making art in a media world full of Goliaths and maybe too few Davids.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I have brought you here for a very particular kind of conversation. I want to talk with you about how to say no in Hollywood, because it seems that whenever something works on screen, there is more pressure than ever before to keep it going, or bring it back from the dead, or revive it, or make a sequel, or a prequel, or do a spinoff, or make a new multiverse to make the world even bigger.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Do you think it's harder than ever when a TV idea or a film idea works to say no to just keeping it going forever?
--:-- Sam Sanders: Harder than ever, it's always going to be hard because once you've got someone's attention, you want to keep it.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so the idea of letting it go and not knowing if you're ever going to get it back again is sort of like it's antithetical to the way that we're wired.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: From a slightly sort of more cynical industrial standpoint, this is a business, right? It's an industry.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so if you make a couple of great Marvel movies, the instinct is like, we need to make more Marvel movies and we need to sort of expand this.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I have this sort of like interior feeling of like, wow, I wish they made less because they would make each one that came out a little bit more special.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But I watch all of them, Sam. You're better than me. You're better than me.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: People don't want things to end. I do. But in general, the audience wants them to perpetuate.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I wonder how you feel about all of that as someone who is able to say no and stop the thing.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I wonder if, like, can we talk about perhaps your most famous no, your most famous forcing an ending? And this was how Lost played out.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Last week, most of us were strangers. But we're all here now. And God knows how long we're going to be here.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: So Lost becomes a success. You're making this show. ABC decides early on that they want it to go 10 seasons. And you say, no, we'll give you six.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And then you even say, we're going to make fewer episodes per season than the norm.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I feel like that would be so hard to even ask for now.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Well, it seemed impossible at the time. At the time that Lost started, as you might imagine, the primary critique of the pilot was, how are you going to keep this up?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: There's this big sort of cinematic plane crash, and then you start introducing 14 major speaking part characters, all of whom we're going to be tracking.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And in addition to that, the island that they're on, they're not going to be leaving it anytime soon. The show's called Lost, so they kind of have to stay that way.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Are you going to run into the Gilligan's Island problem where the audience starts to get frustrated because it would make sense for them to be trying to get off the island?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And my response to that always was like, you're right. So let's design a finite beginning, middle, and end.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: ABC just didn't want to engage in that conversation at the time that they picked up the show.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Is like, make 13 of these and let's see how it goes. The show was such a ratings hit that it became clear to me instantly that all conversations about ending the show would be over.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I was like, hey guys, this is really great news, but don't forget that issue that you had of how are you going to keep this up?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: The answer is we shouldn't keep it up forever. That's when ABC said, oh, we were thinking more like 10 seasons.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so the compromise ended up being six. Yeah. But I personally wish that we could have done it in four.
--:-- Sam Sanders: But even just hearing you talk about wanting to do four, having to do six, but pulling them back from 10, how hard would that conversation even be if you were making a show like Lost now?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Because I compare what happened with Lost, this world that y'all built that had to end, and I compare it to a thing like Stranger Things.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I like that show. Every season, the kids kill the aliens, and yet they come back. They're endlessly building out this world because they have a thing that works in this fragmented viewing economy.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Like, would you face more pressure making a show like Lost now to just keep it going, keep it going, keep it going, keep it going?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Yes to all of the above.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But what you do now is, and this is certainly what we did on Watchmen, which is at the very early stage, you just say, I want you to know that this might only be a season.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: We want to design nine or 10 episodes with a beginning, middle, and end. And here's why that we would do it that way.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Could there be another season of it? Maybe. But that's not really the plan here.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: What do you think? And if they say we're not interested in picking up anything that's multiple seasons, then they don't go for it.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I do feel that I do see creators now in 2022 saying, I have a five-season plan and that's what we're going to do. And then we're going to be finished.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I love the fact that Harry Potter ended, you know, JK Rowling was very specific in saying, there's going to be seven books and I'm going to bring the story to a close and did.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But then there was a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. And then the prequel movies, which are still happening. For sure.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I don't begrudge them the right to keep it going. And as a fan, I'm sort of like, and not just a fan, but I've made prequels and sequels and reboots.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: So I can't be a hypocrite and say, God, come up with an original idea. Meanwhile, I'm making two Star Trek movies and and Prometheus.
--:-- Sam Sanders: I wonder also how much of this is about the changing relationship between fans and these shows and these movies and the folks that make them.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: There was this really weird story in the news last week. Super fans of the Ryan Murphy show, American Horror Story, got pissed waiting for season 11 of that show because they said he wasn't giving them enough information, behind-the-scenes info about the new season.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: So they tweet last week and say, we're going to go on strike, a media blackout, until Ryan Murphy gives us something.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And the next day, Ryan Murphy announces the launch date for American Horror Story season 11.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Wow. And you're like, whoa, fan service has gone to a new level.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: How much is the keep these worlds going-ness of it all tied to fans just being louder than ever and demanding more than ever?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: For those of us who are working on a television show or a movie, we're investing many, many hours, days, many cases, years of our lives to these artistic pursuits.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But the fans do the same thing. And they have real relationships. The more energy that we invest in these things, the more entitled we begin to feel that we should have a say in what the outcome is.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: One of the things that I was fascinated by as it related to Lost was that the two questions that we got asked most often were, are you making it up as you go along? Are you just winging it?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And the fans wanted the answer to that question to be absolutely not. We have a plan. We are executing that plan and understanding that not everything is going to work, but we're sticking to the plan for the most part.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Don't worry about it. We got this. We're piloting this plane. We're going to land it.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: The second question that they asked most often was, what input do we have as fans? You know, are you listening to... But how do you, okay, but do you feel like you should have to listen to them at all?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But here's the thing is they want the answer to that question to be, we listen to everything that you say and it affects the outcome of what we write.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But then that would suggest that we don't have a plan and everything that we're doing is like, the band basically finishes a song and then we say, what do you want us to play next? versus that we have a set list.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so you kind of can't win.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I will just say, having experienced the intensity of the fandom for all of the wonder and fantastic feeling that it brings and also all of the terror of, oh my God, they're going to hate us if we do this.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: It is rarefied special air and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I mean, that said, you're famously not on Twitter.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Correct.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I mean, like, like, I think it's a part of this, like, existing IP conversation and a part of this, like, how can you say no conversation is the way to say no or to feel comfortable enough with what you're making to say no is to not listen to all the noise.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I think if you're a creator now, there's so much noise to listen to. There's more noise than perhaps 20 years ago.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Is the answer just like tune some of that stuff out, delete your Twitter?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: It is. I mean, you have to tune some of that stuff out, right? Because it's your job to hear how people are responding to your stuff.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I don't think it's fair to demand an hour of someone's time to watch an episode of something that you've made and then say, but keep your response to yourself.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Mostly you want to know if they liked it. You would rather not know if they didn't like it, but you can't ask for only positive feedback.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: It just doesn't work that way. There's always, of course, going to be people who say, this is terrible. It's the worst thing that I've ever seen.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You don't know what you're doing. You're a fraud. You're a huckster.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Those people are always going to be out there. They're not haters. They may be. Some of them may be. Sometimes they're haters.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Yeah. But some of them are having a legitimate response.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: We've all watched shows that we used to like and then stopped liking or liked less.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: That's part of the nature and the risk of continuing beyond one's expiration date is eventually that milk starts to taste pretty sour.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You know, I was expecting you to be a little more dour on this stuff like I am.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I personally, as a viewer, I am mad at the existing IP industrial complex.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I'm mad that fans think that they can tell a person how to make a show.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I'm mad that there is a loss of a certain viewing monoculture.
--:-- Sam Sanders: And you're not mad about this stuff. And you seem pretty optimistic about the state of the industry.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You caught me on a good day.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You know, I mean, no, I just, I think that your anger is righteous.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You know? I love to hear that. And I completely and totally share it.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I think that probably what you're hearing from me is an acknowledgement of my own complicity.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I can't sit here and move over into the category of where you are and then answer, but you made Watchmen. That's pre-existing IP.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: You made Prometheus, pre-existing IP. You made two Star Trek movies, pre-existing IP.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I can't not acknowledge my own hypocrisy.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I think that sometimes hypocrisy sounds like optimism. It isn't.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I am pessimistic about where this is all headed because I do think that... Really?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Tell me more about that.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I think because the real special stuff, the gems, the original stuff, which everybody craves, right? Everybody says like, I just want something original.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And then ask people like what their top 10 favorite television shows of all time are. They're going to mention probably 10 things that were original.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: They resonated in this way that, you know, The Wire, The Sopranos, or Breaking Bad, or I May Destroy You. These are not things that were based on pre-existing IP.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so it's going to get harder and harder for the light that those shows shine to basically break through the cloud cover of all of the juggernauts.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And that makes me sad. It does feel like it's only going to get worse.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: What's the fix for that then? If you're in charge of all the industry, what's the fix?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I would be very bad and I'd be almost instantly fired if I were in charge of the industry because I'm not motivated by what's going to make money and what's going to get the most eyeballs.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: But the people who sit in those chairs and pull those levers, they have to be, or they're going to lose their jobs.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so that fundamental idea of we have to scale, we have to make more, we have to go bigger, it has to keep going.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I'm just sort of more along the lines of, hey, we had this wonderful experience. We got two, three, four seasons of something that we loved and you're not going to get any more.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And that's what makes it special.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I love Fleabag. If Phoebe Waller-Bridge wanted to make a third season of Fleabag, that is absolutely her right.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I will be watching it. But I'm so glad that she hasn't. If I were running a studio, there'd be a lot of pressure on me to talk her into making more.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I wouldn't be very good at that job. But I would make less, less, less. Less episodes, shorter seasons.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Much more of sort of like an artisanal. And again, using that word makes me want to punch myself in the face, but not in it for Big Macs.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I'm in it for the special meal that I had in one place at one time.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And what's amazing about it is I have to go back to that place in order to have that meal again. I can't just walk to the corner and get it.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Last question for you talking about loving and ending things. You've said no to more Watchmen, a show that I want to say received more Emmy nominations than any other show that year that it was up for all the Emmys and won a few.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: What if a studio says, we're going to give you a bajillion dollars, just give us a Watchmen prequel, sequel, something. Give us would you do it?
--:-- Damon Lindelof: A bajillion I wouldn't. You know I really believe that I wouldn't.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: One of the things that made the Watchmen experience special for those of us who are inside that process that there was a looming end date.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I think that maybe the only reason that it worked was because we knew that we were going to be together for these two years and then everyone was going to go off and do separate things.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so I feel like I'd be dishonoring the work that was done on the season that we made by continuing it.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And I also feel, as a fellow comic book nerd, some allegiance to the original Watchmen.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: And so I think that that idea of like, Watchmen is a very special thing. You come in, you do your version of it, and then you're finished.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Just treat it with some degree of fragility because these things are very fragile and you have to treat them with care, love and care.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Well, I tell you what, you have given me a little bit more faith in the world of TV and movies.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: Have I changed your mind? Oh my God, come on. Come on, Sam, come over to the light side.
--:-- Damon Lindelof: I think it's going to be all right. I'm going to choose to see the bright side. You're telling me to.
--:-- Sam Sanders: That's the perfect ending. We stuck a landing. Yes, we did.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Thanks again to producer and screenwriter Damon Lindelof.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Also, one more thing, listeners, before we get to our last segment of the show this week, I want to save some space for Vulture TV critic Jen Cheney.
--:-- Jen Cheney: Olivia Newton-John loomed so large in my life, she said that if she had a daughter, she fully would have named her Olivia.
--:-- Jen Cheney: When the news broke earlier this week that Olivia Newton-John died, a lot of women in my Gen X demographic were really, really sad, including myself.
--:-- Jen Cheney: And I was trying to think what it was about Olivia Newton-John that resonated with so many of us when we were kids.
--:-- Jen Cheney: And I think it has a lot to do with both her arc within the movie Grease, which kind of paralleled her arc as a musical artist, where, you know, she started out as the girl next door.
--:-- Jen Cheney: Hopelessly devoted to you. As she moved on with her career, she started to lean more into, you know, more adult, more sexy kind of material.
--:-- Jen Cheney: And in the movie Grease, she makes that transformation ostensibly to win over Danny Zuko, which is not the best message.
--:-- Jen Cheney: Tell me about it, Stan.
--:-- Jen Cheney: But as an artist, I think she made that decision of her own accord, and that was how she wanted to express herself.
--:-- Jen Cheney: You better shape up Cause I need a man And my heart is set on you.
--:-- Jen Cheney: On a subconscious level, that really resonated with a lot of girls, this idea that you could be the kind of girl who wears all black leather, but also be sweet and nice, that you could contain multitudes.
--:-- Jen Cheney: I think in some way she really conveyed that to all of us, and I really appreciated that about her, and I'm going to miss her being in the world a lot.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Thanks again to Vulture critic Jen Cheney.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Culturegeist.
--:-- Sam Sanders: Culturegeist. You're listening to Culturegeist.
--:-- Catherine Van Arundonk: My name is Catherine Van Arundonk. I am a critic at Vulture. And my obsession this week is that there are 25 new episodes of the children's show Bluey now available to stream on Disney+.
--:-- Catherine Van Arundonk: But my real obsession is that in one of the new episodes, it's called Omelette. The mom is making breakfast for the dad because it's his birthday.
--:-- Catherine Van Arundonk: But she doesn't make it as fast as she possibly could because the youngest sister feels left out.
--:-- Catherine Van Arundonk: So the mom slows down to try to include the youngest sister in the breakfast-making process, even though the dad is hungry and annoyed and it's his birthday.
--:-- Catherine Van Arundonk: Here is my issue. I got in a very serious, life-changing, very upsetting disagreement with a colleague at another publication because he watched this episode and he believed that he was seeing a tragic story about a dad whose needs always come last.
--:-- Catherine Van Arundonk: And meanwhile, what I saw in that episode is a cautionary tale about a mom who has to parent her children and her spouse.
--:-- Justin Curto: My name is Justin Curto, and I cover music for Vulture.
--:-- Justin Curto: And what has been emotionally haunting me recently is Maggie Rogers' new album, Surrender, which just has these little moments that just, like, hit me right in the field.
--:-- Justin Curto: On one of the singles, Horses, when toward the end she sings in the chorus, I see horses and I know there's a way.
--:-- Justin Curto: There's this breaking in her voice and it's really emotional and I'm like, I feel that.
--:-- Justin Curto: Or there's this song called Shatter, where she's singing about how her heroes have died and she wishes she could hear a new David Bowie song again.
--:-- Justin Curto: And I'm like, girl, me too. Makes me want to make a Tumblr account again just so I can post all these song lyrics and be really emotional.
--:-- Rhianna Cruz: I'm Rhianna Cruz. I'm a producer at Switched on Pop.
--:-- Rhianna Cruz: And over the past few weeks, I've started to dig deep into the absolutely baffling story of Paul Abdul's plane crash.
--:-- Rhianna Cruz: If you're not familiar with the illustrious history of superstar Paul Abdul, Paul has told this frankly outlandish story of a crash in the early 90s.
--:-- Rhianna Cruz: And I took, I had to take seven years off, and then I reappeared on American Idol. So the thing is, though, about this crash is that reporters
