The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever with Chris HarrisonChris and Lauren are back from their Thanksgiving holiday and like everyone else they have checked out Wicked and Gladiator!
Find out who gets a thumbs up and who a thumbs down from these two! From the start of the press run to being in the actual theater they talk about it ALL! A special Happy Birthday to Lauren and after a year of marriage, they finally take their honeymoon. As usual, they have a lot to talk about!
This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison and Lauren Zema coming to you from the home office in Austin, Texas. I hope everybody had an amazing Thanksgiving week last week as we I guess officially kick off the holiday season and.
If you dare to find me, look to the western sky.
We also thank you LZ kicked off movie season.
Have you guys seen Wicked?
Oh my gosh, okay, we did. Here's the thing, Thanksgiving winding down. Hoping everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving with your loved ones. Hope that no one turned away their loved ones for whoever they voted for.
By the way, I am interested to hear if anybody had any great like political moments.
But yeah, great in a funny way, not in a horrible I hope you. For the record, I'll say, everybody on MSNBC or whatever it is saying that you should turn away family members from holidays because of who they voted for.
No, that's not what America is about.
To me. America, the America that I hope and dream and idolize, is one where we can all feel differently and still come together and love each other and.
Yeah there was once a dream called Rome.
Oh we also saw Gladiator.
Okay, just seemed like the time to slide that in. There seemed very both both actually both movies seem very apropos. But the cool thing about the holidays. Elsie and I are big, obviously journalism fans, but we also love the movies, and we love to dissect these movies and we went deep with the family when they were in town.
So I grew up in a movie loving family.
And I don't know if this was a tradition for you, but no, it was not movies at all period done not really.
My brother and I we would go see movies, the kids would. My family. We weren't big.
Movie we were we I mean, I think that's part of why I got into entertainment journalism. My dad loved movies, my grandmother did. We went to see a movie like almost every weekend as a family, or if not, we were at Blockbuster. And you know that was those those great times where it was the family activity to go and everybody could pick out one movie and you better not get those late fees. But the movies really feel like a holiday thing to me as well, because for sure on Thanksgiving and or Christmas, there was always a Okay, what movie are we going to see as a family? And I do really love that this year Wicked and Gladiator are kind of bringing people back out for that. I bought our Wicked tickets a month ago, back at the end of October, and it was almost the showing was almost sold out at that point. I couldn't even get all six seats together in October. So I was happy, like, Okay, I love when we as a country can have a kind of communal experience too, Like Barbie felt that way, and movies used to always feel that way, and I think Wicked is feeling that way.
Yeah, I definitely. You know, they tried to link it to Barbenheimer. I think because Licked. Oh, I think we're we're now so uncreative that we just have to go back to something that we knew.
That does every movie have a sequel, But every like phenomenon has to have a sequel, Every cultural moment has to somebody.
Has to be something. It's like, Okay, what is Taylor Swift? Now she's the new beat. It's like she's just Taylor Swift. But they they so they tried to link it and it was very This was this experience I felt was very unlike Barbenheimer Wicked. I had this weird ebb and flow excitement about Wicked. I went from unbelievably excited to very trepidacious to very plea, why are you because of the press?
Oh, there's see, they didn't really worry me. I mean, if everybody's seen it, They've been doing a lot of press for Wicked. I'm quoting Puck the Hollywood News outlet here. Apparently three hundred and fifty million dollars spent on the marketing for the movie itself only cost one hundred and forty three million, So it needs to make a lot of money to make that back. I think it will. But they have been doing so many interviews, and you all have probably seen the Ariana Grande Cynthia Rivo interviews. They've gotten very emotional. They've cried in multiple interviews. They've been holding hands, and it's definitely been poked for that.
They've lost themselves, they've lost.
It in these roles.
And so anyway, I was so excited because it is one of, if not my favorite musical. It has a very emotional tie. It's one of the first big musicals I took my daughter Taylor to when we did a big Broadway trip when she was younger. So I love this musical and I was so excited for it. Then I saw the press and I'm like, just please stop talking. Everybody stopped. I just I just want to enjoy this.
I would like they were.
They were doing so many trailers and commercials too. I would look away. I was I'm like, I don't want to know any more about this movie. I just want to go to see it.
They almost over exposed it.
It was fifty million dollars.
They lit up the Arc de Triomph for crying out loud in Paris in pink and green. I am pleased to report it was fantastic, incredible Arianna and Cynthia fantastic. The movie was spectacular. I'm going to say this right now. I'm dropping the mic, dropping the tea. This will win Best Picture this year at the Oscars, period dot full stop. You heard it here first. Wow, Wicked will win Best Picture.
Okay, I'm absolutely with you that it should win. I don't know that it will only because the Oscars always vote for well, at least in recent years, vote for something for the most part, that's like an art house film versus an actual blockbuster movie. The last time a music I think the only time a musical has won Best Picture was Chicago, and it won's if I believe six Academy Awards. Other Academy Award nominated musicals, Mulan Rouge was nominated for eight. I don't know if it won any, and le Miss I think nominated for eight as well, and it won a couple of them, but Chicago definitely the most winningest. I would absolutely love to see Wicked win Best Picture. I at the end of the movie, Taylor and I were sitting next to each other. We turned to each other, both crying in a good way. I laughed, I cried. I walked out, saying that is the best movie I've seen. And I don't remember how long.
It reminded me. I'm gonna I'm going to date myself here. The last time I felt an energy like that, And it's a very different crowd, very different, different demographic, but the same energy in Rocky one and two, when when people stood up and cheered, and I vaguely remember that people were going people applauded.
At the end of Wicked.
They appl at the end of Wicked. It felt weird that they weren't applauding at the end of every si.
I kept wanting to because you do feel they did an excellent job of creating the movie in a way where you feel like you are watching a musical in a theater, meaning on stage, but not but it isn't so primitive as a stage like they made it a movie, but it had the feeling of a stage musical. And I mean that most complimentary way. A couple times I wanted to applaud at the ends of songs.
I just there was an energy walking in young and old, which I love. A bunch of young people coming to see this movie, a bunch of old people who just love the musical.
I've seeing a movie in a credit and so there.
Was this energy. Everybody was talking and so excited for this and when it launched, everybody just was spellbound. And when it was over, applause rang out in the theater and the buzz as everybody was walking out, there were girls singing at the top of their lungs. You went into the bathroom, and the girls I went.
Now, I went in the bathroom in these sweet girls, probably like ten or eleven. They actually had not gone to see it yet, but they heard me talking about it and they said, did you just come out of Wicked? I said, yes, it's so good. Are you guys going to see it?
And the girl was.
Like, it's my birthday today and I'm so excited, and I said, oh, it's my birthday tomorrow, and it just was a It really was a nice moment of like, oh, this thing, as you're saying, this movie is crossing generations.
I think Barbie did that.
I think Wicked's a better movie. I think you know, I remember I would put Wicked up there. You're saying, Rocky, I would put it up there for how I felt in the theater after like the Lord of the Rings movies in the early two thousands, where I just thought, no, notes, what a movie. And before I went in, I was wondering, what is this run time? I think it's two hours and forty minutes and it's only part one. There's still a part two coming. I only saw the musical once on stage years ago, and obviously it's not like a six hour musical, so I guess they must have had a dialogue to make part one in.
Part two, Yeah, lots of and there was a lot There was an I won't give any spoilers away, but there was a whole section in there that wasn't really apart. Really they lifted it out. Yes, I'll just say about the animals.
I thought that was in the musical.
Not really. They didn't very vaguely in the musical.
It was definite more scenes.
Yeah, oh that was ply a much deeper meteor part of the movie.
But I was worried about the runtime. I did not feel the run time.
I passed the squorm test, and they definitely passed the squirm test. I wasn't ready for it to be over, and then I realized this is probably where they're going to cut. Yeah, they did.
I thought it was expertly cast. Jonathan Bailey, Cynthia Arrivo, Ariana Grande all amazing.
Ariana Grande probably going to win Best Actress.
I mean, I think they should all be nominated.
Cynthia Rivo, she was fine, She was good, She was very good. There was nothing wrong with her. Ariana Grande was just she does such comedic chops. So I think we saw that when she was on Esen l Well.
I think what you're alluding to is that they are going to potentially be competing against each other, and that's the problem.
Yeah, I'm both best afters.
I will say, even with Kristin Chenowith and Dina Menzel back in the day, the part of Golinda just it lends itself so you can do more with it. Yeah, I have better comedy chops. She has better lines. You know, the the the bad Witch, the Wicked Witch definitely lends itself to just emoting emotions and stuff.
Right, Glinda has the range.
She's funny, she plays airheady, she has like poignant moments.
It's like legally blonde. You know, you get to like.
Totally and I think that you know, we've seen Ariana's comic timing on SNL, but I had not seen the full range of her acting skills and they are all at play here. And you know, she's talked for years about loving this musical and obviously she took training for it so seriously, and she was incredible. I definitely thought hers was was the standout performance.
Okay, you said no notes, I'm going to give you two.
Wow.
Jeff Goldbloom and trying to sing well.
It wasn't great.
I love Jeff Goldbloom.
He was funny.
I saw in an interview that he hired a vocal coach. I don't know where that money went.
Yeah, it was.
Maybe more than three hundred and fifty million should have gone. So that was he plays. Obviously the wizard that was.
His singing was snuck. Okay.
People gave Richard gear a hard time for singing in Chicago.
I thought the memory it was very infamous that he wasn't He was the only one not nominated because they said his singing was bad. Please, yeah, Richard, you're fine.
I also think one of the brilliant parts of this movie was they went further than the musical with just a little notes of kind of just homages to the Wizard of Oz, homages to.
Remember the music.
I feel like the beginning, the way they started the whole thing was a little bit different than obviously the musical because they have, you know, the cgi of the way. They kind of included a nod to the Wizard of Oz in the beginning. That was really cool. They just did a good job. I thought with like throughout the movie.
I can't speak to because I don't remember them. Details of the musical well enough to know how much it was different. I did love the costumes, the set pieces. I mean you really, That to me was the big difference of why it was worth making this a movie beyond it being an on stage musical, because even Chicago, like Chicago, isn't all these set pieces and that kind of thing.
You know.
This movie has magic, has you know, animal characters and sorcery and color and the Emerald City and forests and their schools. So it had all this opportunity where you can do a lot more with a movie than you can with.
A stage play.
And the costumes and set pieces and the use of CGI were all great.
You might be more wise about this than I am in the movie industry. But what I liked about it, and I don't know how to describe this, Maybe you can articulate it better. The CGI didn't bug because it seemed like they used a lot of real sets.
I would love to know what they used or not, because yes, sometimes you know, you watch a movie and you're like, will they spend a lot of money on the CGI?
And it just looks like CGI? So this feels stupid.
Just didn't too much green screen this didn't feel like.
That well in Lord of the Rings, Like I think you can tell the movies that hold up because they used miniatures and animatronics and CGI Like in Lord of the Rings. Those movies are, you know, more than twenty years old, and I think they hold up because they use a lot of miniatures.
Draassic Park holds up because they us a lot of animatronics.
I think the New Jurassic Park, you just feel like, well, I'm looking at a CGI dinosaur.
This didn't feel that way.
Yeah, and so ten out of ten, ten.
Out of ten, Now let's swing the other way, okay.
And by the way, just box office wise, Week one of Wicked, what one hundred and fifteen million, and I think is what I think, that's what you said. They they're I would think they're about six to seven hundred and fifty million into this thing. So it has to do about a billion dollars for them to really feel good and pull this thing off. And so they're in week two. It did really well in opening weekend, and I think the number was in that range. Right.
It looks like the latest numbers are that.
Wicked.
I believe it was the highest grossing opening weekend for a musical of all time. It's over two hundred million in the middle of its second weekend. I think so by Sunday, Wicked expected to reach just under two hundred and sixty three million domestically worldwide three hundred and fifty eight million.
And I think, you know with some of these movies that where they're shooting to putting them in the can that have been failures lately, like you look at Mission Impossible that really worried the box office and worried the studios because the first one did not do great, to the point of having to change the name of the second one and move the date. And so I think there was probably some lessons learned, and that's probably why they put three hundred and fifty million dollars into promoting this, because they realize if they don't launch Wicked one, Wicked two is dead in the water. So it's it's going to be a massive success worldwide, and it's going to be a huge it and I think it will be the darling of the Oscars this year. I think it's going to crush I hope, well all of a word season, when you know, get to the Golden Globes and all that.
I can't even really think of other movies that have come out this year.
So and then we also went and saw Gladiator. Gladiator too, which everybody have been talking about, obviously, the Russell Crowe, huge epic hit that was a massive success back in the day. And now we have Pedro Pascal, we have Denzel Washington, Paul mes Cow Ams Cow.
And it wasn't great.
It was a mess. It was a bit of a mess.
I was very disappointed.
I it felt like not a sequel but a remake but worse. And I wanted it to be great. I love the original Gladiator. This didn't even I couldn't even say this was as good as so you know, maybe if it was just as good as remake.
Okay, I get to watch Gladiator again. It doesn't need a remake.
But it was bad the bad CGI first of all, but much more importantly bad script.
Some not all not great acting plot line that like didn't.
A lot of holes, a lot of holes in the script.
I think Paul mescal is a really good actor, but his character is basically, you know now Russell Crowe's character and in the original Gladiator. I think my biggest issue is in the original Gladiator. Russell Crowe's character was this man everybody rallied around, and that's how he was able to change everything in this movie. Paul Mescal's character had like no reason for everybody to rally around him. I don't know, he wasn't very likable.
We just had to I felt like they rushed in, was like, okay, we got to just hit these plot points real quick, and let's get back into the coliseum and let's get going. And there was such great character building with Russell Crowe that made us love him, understand why he was loved, and we went on this journey with him, and they just did not do that in this movie at all. And you're right, I was trying to think of, you know, was it the fate of trying to follow up such an epic film, But you know what, Top Gun did that the last time, and they did a fine job. And there have been others that have gone on to do great sequels. This was a really rough sequel. And I get that sophomore album is a tough one to make, but this one.
Really, I mean, look, we waited twenty years. It should have been good, you know, Like, honestly.
We've waited twenty five.
I mean with.
Wicked, we waited twenty years for the movie and it didn't disappoint.
Like they have that in common.
And I think it's going to do well in these first couple of weekends because people loved Gladiator and they want to go see it. It's not the worst movie ever I've ever seen, but it wasn't good.
Yeah, if you want to turn off your brain and you're like, it is, I couldn't even.
Turn off my brain. It didn't, as you say, passed the squirm test. Another's a long run time.
I was going to say the same thing. I was really ready for it to be over. I was like, okay, I kind of started getting tired nodding off, and I'm like, oh, that's this is rough.
I had a bit of a headache towards the end. To be honest, I can't say the same good things. Would not recommend maybe catch it on a plane. That's really how I felt.
Wow, I'm bummed. I love the first movie.
I wanted it to be good.
I don't know what's going on.
I do.
I think that like I think that today, like some people say, movies aren't as good as they used to be because all we make is sequels. I think it's more than that. I think that tech people are running movie studios instead of creative people. I think that there's so many there's like way too much analysis of data instead of just feeling what a good story is and like making art. And I think that there's way too many boxes trying to be checked, like well, we need an action scene every five seconds, and we need, you know, to fill all the you know, reach all these different audiences through these paths. And it's like, if you followed that path, Godfather never would have been made, Citizen Kane never would have been made, the whole industry wouldn't exist. And I don't think people are just making good movies anymore.
I think you just hit the nail on the head with We we Get Aside.
I'm just going to.
Say with Wicked, so brilliantly put together and done and edited in the script, and and they they took the musical and I think they went even a little deeper, and I think brilliantly done. What I felt like I was watching with Gladiator, I almost felt like I was like flipping through reels on Instagram, Yes, on Instagram, where I'm like, uh.
There's the little yet that made no sense together.
Like you said really quick of like, okay, guys, every five minutes, we need a little dialogue. Okay, we're at five and a half minutes. We got to get back to a fight scene. Okay, now for minutes it seemed very It was like I you said into Ai, make me Gladiator too, and that's what AI kind of spit out.
I truly had a headache after which, as if I had had too much screen time.
Not going to do well. Probably, I think week two three in the box office will start to fall off. Denzel did his job, Denzel.
He's just having fun.
Denzel was Denzel, and he's he seemed very theatrical. He's like, I'm just gonna have a good time with this. Out of ten, where are you four? Yeah, I might give it a four point five, but it struggled.
Yeah, Well, hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Let us know what movie you saw in What was not the glicked phenomenon, but it was a wicked weekend. We really enjoyed it and hope that you had a good time.
We have to wish you a happy birthday.
Thanks It doesn't feel it really doesn't feel like my birthday this year.
I don't want it. It's too close to Thanksgiving this year. Usually I get like a week and even then it feels a little close to Thanksgiving. This week, Thanksgiving is very late, and so a day between my birthday and Thanksgiving it feels a little weird. It's wonky's it is Thanksgiving us Thursday, we had Friday, and now my birthdays and Saturday, it feels wung oh.
Without giving away your age where it's not a big one, do you feel like when they're not big ones, you're kind of like, what is this one? You know what I mean? When it's not like that kind of a five or a zero in it.
Or I don't know, and I don't care about giving away my age. I'm turning thirty seven. I mean sometimes I still feel the weird funkiness of like the way the past couple of years, like the pandemic and on, have affected all of our sense of time. You know, it's weird. I think, like, I don't know if everyone feels this way, but my early thirties were all in the pandemic and that didn't like feel normal, and you know, I think that like we have had a few things in the works that have taken a lot longer over the past year then we wanted them to, so that I think I don't totally know how I will mark this past year in like, you know, usually I can look back and say like, oh, that was the year I started at ET, or that was the year we moved to Austin, And I don't totally feel how to mark this year right now.
Yeah I get that. Yeah, yeah, but a great but oddly a great one.
As well, though, no, there was a well yeah of course, yeah.
But yeah, I know I understand what you're saying though, because usually yeah, you think back of like oh that was when I was thirty two, I did this or whatever. Yeah, I get that.
Yeah, I think it's been really a really good year. I think I feel a little a little rudderless right now. So I'm I mean, I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I wouldn't call this like one of my best years, but I think it was a good year. Last year felt like, oh we got married. This year, you know, this year, I don't know what the the thing was and that makes me feel a little rudderless, And so I don't know how to mark the year yet and then at the same time, I'm reminding myself, like, you know, life is good and everyone's healthy and happy and be grateful.
I mean, maybe this will be the year that my nephew was born.
But that feels like a thing that's not mine, so it feels weird too.
So yeah, and we did finally go on our honeymoon, which was nice.
Yes that's true. Well not okay, so now we're wrapping that up. Well, yes, everybody, we just went on our honeymoon. We didn't go on a honeymoon when we got married because we had our two weddings and there were so much celebrating. So we decided we'll go on our honeymoon for our one year anniversary. And so we are also just coming back. No joke landed, and then our family came in for Thanksgiving. We are just coming back from Portugal and Spain, which were incredible. We did Porto, the city of Porto and the Doro Valley, the wine region of Portugal, which you'd always wanted to do, and Bilbao, Spain, which had been on our list.
We se yeah, spectacular cities. The people were wonderful, it was great. It was very interesting to be over in Europe too. A few people kind of leaned in softly to our politics, which was really interesting. Oh you know, like a couple of people would be.
Like so well, like people wanted to ask us. A couple of people were like, so who did you vote for? And so what's the vibe over there? And it really is interesting to see or to and I don't mean people like American people, I mean Portuguese people and Spanish people. It's interesting to be abroad so close right after the election and see how much news of our election had reached other countries.
For sure, I happened to be filming. I forget where we were in the world the first time Trump was elected, and I remember remember being at the airport and people coming up and just they would know where Americans and same thing. You realize how heavy of an influence our culture and our politics and our news has around the world. Even in small towns. People kind of just want to know what's going on and like, what's the vibe over there?
Yeah, which is why you know, We've talked about the media specifically related to the election on several podcasts, and it's why I feel so adamant about the need for the media to become better and get back to really being a vehicle of discovering the actual truth and seeking actual truth because you kind of realize that, like our news stories become the sources for news broadcasts in other countries, like about American news and the way that that message dissipates.
So there's so much power in that.
You know.
We were kind of talking to like to one gentleman, and it's interesting he was talking about Portugal, sounding like, you know, just from him, Portugal having a lot of the same concerns a lot of Americans have about immigration issues and economic issues and and cultural issues and uh. And he was just like explaining to us the way that he sees he saw Trump and he saw Harris and everything, and so that was interesting.
Yeah, it was a good and a beautiful trip. Yes, even though year later it was wonderful to celebrate and we're gonna wrap this up because we need to go celebrate you right now.
Wow, I really sounded depressing talking about my birthday.
I think it's I think I would feel better if it wasn't supposed to Thanksgiving. I don't think I've had time to process what it is from they you know it's maybe it's because we just saw Gladiator. If we if we'd recorded this after I saw Wicked, I might have feel better about my own.
Birth halfway through there, which I'd just cut my head off.
And that's a dad joke for your holiday.
Gladiator, Dad, Joe.
We love you and we're thankful for you.
Yes, happy birthday, babe. I love you very much.
I love you too. I can't wait to see what you caught me.
Oh, I know we need to go up in our presents right now. We will do this again next time because we have a lot more to talk about. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.
