Spotlight on Michael Keaton | Birdman, Clean and Sober, The Founder

you've hit play on the screen companion a show about helping you to decide what to watch [Music] tonight today we are highlighting Michael Keon clean and sober 1988 Birdman 2014 the founder 2016 let's just go chronologically in clean and sober Michael Keaton star is Daryl pointer a Philadelphia real estate salesman and addict who lands in hot water after a one night stand ODS in his bed and the firm discovers he's been embezzling to fund his habit wanting to disappear he enters a drug rehabilitation program banging his head against the walls trying to figure a way out of his problems while also going through the hell of detox he is indeed where he should be and that he does in fact need to get clean and sober John do you think this movie is a dime a dozen as far as addiction movies go or are there any areas where it distinguishes itself I think it worked really well because every addiction movie has a formula oh he needs to get in there he pretends he's fine oh he relapses and just didn't follow that formula at all and I thought it did a really good job unlike some other movies this one doesn't explicitly have him holding some other dead addict in his arms or something super dramatic where you go oh yeah he's really hit it this movie is about him it's not other people's problems I guess also I liked the character Charlie she's another addict in the program and I was surprised the second half of the movie how much it shifts and she becomes a really close second lead because I cared about what happened to her was more coffee or something I think I better go why I told any I was working so so what if he calls I'm not there live with me I can't why not I can't leave Lenny why not because because why because it's not that easy it is all you got to do is want it well I don't know if I want it well you know you deserve somebody who cares about you you know me I maybe it's not me I mean it might be somebody else but it sure ain't Lenny I can't yes you can all you got to do is tell him [ __ ] it I'll tell him no hey no hey I'll tell him here I can't tell him why is you're afraid Don't Be Afraid don't you get it you're never going to have to see this guy again ever I'll go to the house I'll get your stuff out he would't have to deal with you he have to deal with me just tell him he kept saying he needed her yeah they weren't supposed to get together that wasn't going to be healthy if they did no there's no way they never bring up why she's even in there and multiple people kept saying why are you in here there's the family group her boyfriend I guess the other adct came and was like I don't even know why she's in here well she says in that scene that she was in danger of getting fired cuz she was getting high too much but we never see her high like the whole First Act was Michael Keon strung out we did see her about to get high yeah yeah she was about to there's that scene where he found her vial of drug unspecified drug that she flushed immediately or so we think yeah we never saw it that's true it's the old um if there's no dead body the guy's not dead Trope I guess but they Circle each other cuz they had a lot of chemistry and another movie they would have been good together but she already seemed like she was in one codependent relationship with her abusive boyfriend that to leave him and move in with Daryl the way he wanted her to was going to open another can of worms isn't that something they say about people in a rehabilitation program or on the 12 steps you shouldn't be hanging out with a bunch of other addicts that are as fresh to it as you are yeah it's you need a sponsor you don't need someone else I guess it's like a balance got a boat thing where it's like you need someone on shore you don't need someone else in the boat who could easily bring you off when they go down it makes sense for Daryl not to see that but other characters around him and I think even Charlie does at one point they mention it to him it's not really a good idea what for you stands out about Keaton's portrayal of an addict the confidence that he wasn't one he went in he kept calling for Coke he kept going back he kept passing every drug tell me how happy I'm going to be with this one darl am I going to be happy let me ask you something the [ __ ] are you doing here you got a problem darl you don't even know you got a problem do you you know how long you've been straight man 12 Days 12 whole days Days 12 days 3 hours and 20 seconds 24 seconds 26 seconds that's how we do it there second at a time minute at a time one day at a time but you got to know you got a problem check up fore they didn't have that moment where he relapses he just had the realization of okay I am an addict I need to find a real sponsor not try and bang every chick here I was seeing traces of Beetle Juice and some of the petulent I'm the victim here temper tantrums yes there was a lot of moments in the movie I was just like how is this just not considered a dark comedy and they're like oh it's straight up drama some of this is really funny like you said yeah I kept see flashes of Beetle Juice like hey there he is can't say his name too much and since that released earlier in the same year 1988 maybe he hadn't shaken the Ghost with the most completely from his psyche I was still in there still part of who he was hey maybe part of it is his hairstyle in the movie if you just dye it white it's very reminiscent of Beetle Juice it was the start of the Widows Peak 80s crazy where everyone pretended it was okay cuz everyone was high on cocaine yeah but crazy grimy that worked for this movie it did maybe this was I don't know how the time works in the afterlife maybe this who Beetle just was when he was alive and then when he dies oh my God that's his origin story the post credit scene is he OD like you could just exist forever in the afterlife of both directions right oh crap I like that so much although that means this movie ultimately ends with a really depressing ending it's going to be a depressing ending but we cracked it this movie came out the year before Batman and that Tim Burton production caught Flack from Keaton's announcement as Bruce Wayne do you think clean and sober shows any qualities that supports his casting in Batman absolutely cuz the character is supposed to be dark and brooding and I feel like the complaint was did you just cast Mr Mom as Batman well I understand that it was announced long before the release date but I hope that since clean and sober came out the year before Batman that once people saw him in it they felt a little bit better about his casting kind of like layer cake when Daniel Craig was announced as Bond yeah yeah especially WB cartoons back in the 9s sometimes they would have caricatures of Michael Keaton and they always have them with gigantic arched eyebrows those eyebrows do a lot of work his caricature eyebrows are putting on all the work and the rest of it no one notices that his mouth is literally just a little starfish why do you have to describe it like that I wanted to take the high road and not say butthole oh man so what was your favorite scene or supporting performance Henry Jud Baker As Xavier the guy who breaks the TV at the beginning and goes nuts and then he's just killing it in all the physical activities later in the movie he did so much with nothing how do you know that dude's name cuz I'm looking at the IMDb page okay cuz I thought maybe he ended up being a bigger actor than I'm aware of he might have been for a split second I thought he might have been high tower from Police Academy that' be great no he was on an episode of Dark Shadows though when we are first introduced to that guy he's losing it from being in detox and I'm glad that they brought him back cuz that seemed like it could have been just his One Moment In the movie mhm but then and he sticks with it and he has a little bit of a Redemption Arc you see him doing those push-ups like crazy yeah he's going nuts I was really scared for those two nurses that were trying to Wrangle him at the beginning Oh my he was going to just crush them he was twice their size yeah over 80 episodes of the screen companion listen to the show on podbean Spotify YouTube Rumble and more drop us a line via the screen companion gmail.com or join the Facebook group tell us your favorite guests and what topics we should cover next further support the host by going on amazon.com and picking up his two sci-fi novels self recognition and traversal the weight of Worlds available in digital and print Editions I think so often in these types of downward spiral dramas they build up to the lead character breaking down and sobbing it could be powerful but I also think it's loow hanging fruit I hate when they treat a performance as amazing because the actor cried every other scene in clean and sober when we finally get that moment where Daryl is going to break down he starts to weep and then he gets hit in the back with a snowball I love that sometimes the events are enough and I don't need tears to know a character feels like crap that was his wake up moment I'm just like I feel bad ah snowball like that would have been his Oscar moment but then like in a comedy sketch the music starts to swell and then immediately breaks up something kills it what's your biggest criticism for the movie it almost romanticized cocaine really in what way you never see it he just wakes up one day and oh he's the best worker at his firm and he's so good at working and then like without the cocaine his life falls apart but it also put him in that position it kind of did what do you mean well at the end when he's yelling at all his co-workers for all the sh they've done too everyone in this real estate business is a human being there's no way those [ __ ] weren't also high on cocaine that boardroom scene actually I think he interrupted them in the middle of lunch I think so cuz I think they had food on the table and they're like we're having a meeting right now darl it's like no you're not you're eating shut up I have something to tell you I got flashbacks to when you've done something wrong and your parent parent confronts you about it oh because he tries to say that he lost the money without saying specifically how we lost the money and then the head of the company just looks at him and says Daryl did you did you steal it or or did you blow it up your nose or something something to effect to like use it for personal gain or something like that and just the way Daryl squirms yeah yeah he's caught he's caught he has to admit to it and then he sits down and pours his heart out I'm happy to say my dad never had to sit me down because I stole money to buy coke yeah not even the drink I never stole even for the drink you buy coke it was Vanilla Coke what don't act like you don't drink Coke I learned it from watching you I'm trying to think of cuz I always maintain even if you love a movie there's something to complain about I guess if I could see a director's cut some special re-release I want a little more from the ending it feels very abrupt and I see why they did it that way cuz the real meat of the story felt like it was over but I could have used a little more with him oh maybe what if he ends up sponsoring somebody at that meeting at the end of the movie oh yeah that might work who's the guy that mentored him that actor's name uh EMT Walsh yes I liked him in the movie as [Laughter] well if you were the head of the mpa in 1988 and what we saw is what you had to rate do you agree with the R rating it originally got in the 80s maybe to protect the children I probably would yeah it opens on a bare bottom and I think I was six when this movie came out obviously I didn't see it then but well if it had been a PG-13 then you wouldn't have been allowed to see it that too um yeah you make a compelling point maybe PG-13 would have been the better choice it's a really tame R can we agree on that it is t r i think I was a little shocked when I saw that it was R afterwards I don't even think there's that much swearing right no there isn't I remember the very first time I saw this movie that opening scene Daryl in bed with a woman who turns out to a Ved she's face down butt up naked I think I saw this as a teenager originally and I was like ooh you know a bare bottom and then the way he gets in there oh yeah cuz he's going to do more coke that's the romanticizing of cocaine is doing it off of sexual lady's body part but then the moment you realize something's wrong with her like oh gross darl stop it don't get in there don't you realize that it's cold H but yeah turns out the lesson here is a nice butt isn't always perfect there could be something wrong with the situation it could be a nice dead butt besides him being decades younger in this movie is there anything in clean and sober That's Unique compared to Katon acting in today's other movies I think a lot of his modern movies he just shows a rage I wouldn't want to get yelled at by this guy I'm not necessarily afraid of him but I don't want to get yelled at and I don't think he demonstrated that rage in this movie I think it was he was more morose and more childish too cuz he spent the whole movie trying to undermine Morgan Freeman Morgan Freeman that guy plays a mentor in just about everything he's the wise old guy watching this movie seeing him as a young man he's still the wise old man but I don't think he ever comes off as the magical black guy do you think no he's not he's not the magical black guy in this movie as he is like uh What uh sha shank sha shank thank you I don't recall there being a specific heart-to-heart moment where he's been the tough guy getting on Daryl's butt about staying clean and it's not that crap where it's like oh you know we found a middle ground we're eye to eye on it now oh we're friends let's give each other a hug none of that crap no that never happened there was just a probably what a pre- rehear speech while they were both peeing at the same time moving on to Birdman John what's it about Birdman a washed up superhero actor attempts to revive his fading career by writing directing and starring in a Broadway play based on a book he loves and did you read that off of IMD most of it one of these days we're going to work up your confidence enough where you don't do that I always get like sidetracked I'm like ah this movie's about that one scene where Emma Stone smoked on a roof yeah where Edward Norton's character was mad that they didn't use real fruit on set [Laughter] yeah you being married to someone in the theater world how does the behind the scenes nature of the story feel real or not compared to stories you might have heard this was the first time my wife and I were able to sit through the whole movie because the last time I tried to show her the movie she got a call from work that things were going very wrong behind the scenes so we couldn't finish the film we had to leave about half hour in the comedy being we couldn't watch a movie about things going wrong in a theater because things went wrong in her theater we don't have an actor and if we cancel the first preview the Press is going to smell blood and we can't afford to lose any more money at all okay what do you think I should do well we hire an understudy let's use the understudy yeah rean listen to me please for the love of God listen our perfect dream actor is not going to knock on that door and go hey fellas when do I start you know can I talk to you for a second yeah what's up did you find another actor no okay well Mike's available he is Mike who I thought he was doing the thing he was he quit I got fire Mike who which is it quit or fire well the Mike it's usually both Mike [ __ ] who Shiner yes Jake oh my gosh how do you know Mike Shiner we share a vagina you think You' want to do it mhm how do you know cuz he told me he want to do it Jake Jake yes asked me if he sells tickets fine does he sell tickets he sells a shitload of tickets now ask me if the theater critics level the theater critics level they want to SPO on him hey Leslie right on his face everything for a reason right think you come in this evening I'll call him and find out Michael Keaton plays rigan in this film and rigan is producing a play that he thinks is going to be his comeback and you're saying the The Hectic nature of the behind the scenes in the movie is pretty true yes I counted about 57 times where my wife yelled the actor shouldn't be the director every time something went wrong well I would like to hear her say that to Warren batty he did pretty well he's not trying to direct a play so with Keaton's past mirroring his Birdman character in certain regards did you find that it added positively to the flick or did it ever take you out of it I loved that aspect I felt that was the movie for me it added definitely positively to it but do you think besides that I guess you could say Michael Keaton isn't overly serious about his acting credits is there anything in the movie that feels like he's commenting on his past specifically obvious well Birdman and Batman are so similar like the flying themed Heroes I think the only difference is that Batman bowed out of Batman 3 so that he wouldn't become rigin I guess that's true in Birdman don't they say that he went to part four was that his last movie or was it three I think it was three and part four was all he had to do was say yes and make a billion and he was trying to be relevant actor not just a movie star huh how dare he the nerve considering how narcissistic he comes off I'm almost surprised that he would have turned down the fourth movie in a popular franchise he's so narcissistic he sees himself as having superpowers we'll talk more about that when we get into the ending yeah okay what was your favorite scene or supporting performance it always tickles me pink when he locks himself out of the back of the theater and has to walked through Time Square in his underpants just to get back in on time to catch his queue everyone else felt that it's such a realistic performance and really was just an idiot and that's not like it was a volumetric backdrop wasn't he just walking through in real life yeah I wonder what was going through Keaton's head when he had to shoot that scene ah it's so Breezy today it's chillier than I remember for August and what do you feel like is your biggest criticism I'm going to go two cuz the constant cut the non-stop single shot sometimes gets distracting and then they use the pretending that he has superpowers part a few times I watching it live like wait a minute re-watching it with my wife having to explain and be like I think he's just delusional he hasn't let go of the past of being a superhero CU he keeps hearing that V the delusions and the voice go together this is the second time I've seen this movie specifically the ending bothered me and I wasn't sure if it was a movie I would put in my plus column or in my negative column that's why I was happy to revisit it for this but it actually degraded further than I thought it would it was more than just the ending this time every Scene It felt like a movie and I think part of it is what you're talking about with the constant Warner the simulated Warner cuz it obviously wasn't one long take yeah but the writing too that felt overwrought the characters were Broad in a way that I think would have worked better on stage than on film the moment I realized it was too clever for its own good was when Michael Keaton and Ed Norton are walking on the sidewalk and they pass a street musician who's playing the drums and the percussion score turns diagetic in that moment it took me right out of the movie that's funny in a parody flick like Johnny Dangerously In Birdman I'm thinking what are we doing do you want me to believe in this world or not and he comes across that same guy I think later in the movie who's just he's in the break room still playing the soundtrack for the movie yeah it's like don't wink at me with that crap on the second watch I was checked out I think I had a better time the first watch because it was in a theater that definitely helps any movies always going to get a little better seeing it in a theater and back in 2014 I was happy to see a career Resurgence for Michael Keaton since then he's gone back to the well played Batman he's doing beetle us to there isn't the same absence to make the heart grow fonder and now the most important part of this conversation about Birdman John tell me what do you think the ending means I think he's in Hell okay well we'll just set it up for us you know what leads to the ending what is the ending or at least what we see on screen the play character the stage character that Riggins is playing is supposed to shoot himself at the end of the play and on opening night he brings a real gun in and he shoots himself on opening night as soon as that happens that's the first cut it's the first cut in the movie um and then he wakes up wearing a mask that looks just like the Birdman mask and his nose is all messed up and makes him look like the bird man character then he flies out of window I think he died on stage and this is his hell damn I'll buy that all right because I always want to start from a place of logic not just what can we do to spice up the interpretation mhm but what you just said if I play it through my mind I said I checked out I have seen this movie however this is one of the few times for the podcast where I did not watch the whole movie to prepare I watched the First Act got bored with it I also had a headache so that didn't help I was tired of the movie but I knew I wanted to talk about the ending with you so I definitely caught the last 15 20 minutes when Emma Stone who plays his daughter comes into the room after he's gone out onto the window sill we don't know if he jumped or not we don't see him and she looks down at the sidewalk and then she looks up and she smiles and makes no sense to me but the way you described it what if she's like a demon in his hell and that's why she's smiling cuz she's evil and he's dead yeah he's dead she's there to torture him I think there are very few logical ways to make this make sense but what I came up with was going back to all the times they're winking at the audience letting you know it's a movie the same way that like Saturday Night Live sketches how often do you ever watch one and feel like you're sucked in to the moment mhm it's always them just putting on a show you know you're watching a sketch you know so in this the ending is just another example of the director going I don't care about giving you a literal ending something that you can intellectualize this is purely emotional it's just like a little curly q kind of like what Paul verhoven did at the end of Total Recall except it totally worked in that movie but in this one I just feel like they're jerking me off I mean that's literally called a happy ending in a [Laughter] massage well my masseuse was really old and her hand felt like sandpaper oh wow that's what it felt like with this movie oh yeah metaphor metaphor okay that's yeah I guess you could say it was all metaphor at the very very end but once it gets into that territory it's like well jeez if you can interpret it any way then why commit it to film what am I supposed to get out of this so it was frustrating that being said I do want to point out that I don't think the warer thing entirely works but they definitely put effort into it it feels like a fresh movie if you want a pallet cleanser I think Birdman is definitely something to check out that's a good one the long takes for the actors right it's basically the same as being on the stage cuz you got to go through so much at once that's true just another example of them being clever mhm do you get it do you get it guys I don't know cuz this what next movie was the remnant that was long ass takes too so it might not necessarily have been a nod to the theater moving on to the final movie we're going to talk about today the founder the founder focuses on on a I guess it's like a milkshake mixer machine he's the equivalent of a door too salesman but he goes businesses to business and one day he discovers a little restaurant and this is uh Circa 1954 55 something like that and he discovers a place called McDonald's he speaks to the owners they give him the rights to sign up people for franchises and expand the business and eventually he decides he doesn't need the McDonald's brothers and he cuts them out of the business tell is all this time basically there's a lot of American qualities to this film good and bad in this one John does anything stand out about Keaton's work versus the other two movies we saw there was no redeeming him in the end the other ones you're supposed to hate him in the beginning so that he can have a redemption in the end and this one he just gets worse and worse and worse as a human well that's interesting because my next question is judging solely by the film's accounting of History because I have not studied McDonald's corporate history I'm pretty sure you haven't either but we have definitely both watched the founder so purely off of this film and whatever its bias is I guess you do feel Ray Croc is the villain yeah he's definitely the villain he ran two very nice gentlemen out of business and made billions in the process he scorned his own wife stole someone else's wife did he steal Patrick Wilson's wife played by Linda Cardellini or is it just that two people in Loveless marriages found each other it's how you look at it no it was wife stealing just pure unadulterated wife stealing if you ask the adulterers they're going to have a different perspective oh yeah but those [Laughter] guys I think Croc is an anti-hero because while he does some rotten immoral things he's also a perfect example of making something of yourself if you're willing to put the work in blur the specific details of how he achieved his dream smother the lens in Big Mac sauce and what you have is a guy who was unfulfilled in life and by the end of the picture he got what he wanted the universe went to him with Ry you're middle-aged you got a house a wife you could stop right now baby but hey let's go a step further how would you like to Super siize your life and that's what he did standing on the proverbial corpses of dick and MC McDonald and Patrick Wilson's character not to mention all the future owners that he screwed over by becoming a land Mogul did you feel the same way at the very end of the movie when they show pictures of the real people I got this Gremlin feeling from Ray Croc he looked like a little guy that would Shake You Down for your [Laughter] watching the ending I remember thinking oh wow this guy really yeah he looks Shady he's a real piece of crab he seems like just a horrible human being and then the uh Weinstein Company logo flashed up and was like oh no that guy is [Laughter] worse how do you think the McDonald's brand comes off in this picture the First Act I think when uh Ry is talking to the McDonald's they use real stock footage and old photographs to show them as like two loving guys who started this amazing thing and it felt like propaganda and then the rest of the movie is just Ry being a very bad human definitely it's like okay here's this Feelgood story this backstory that all giant companies want to have and make up but guess what the more you watch the movie you realize that's not the actual real beginning of this company M I feel obligated to mention that the McDonald's Brothers as mentioned in the film from my glorious State of New Hampshire we have so few celebrities I want to make sure everybody out there knows you people in California New York New Hampshire is on the board with creating one of the biggest companies in the world one of the greatest evils this world has ever seen oh yeah we started it baby yeah they clearcut forest for their beef and everything like did you ever work in a McDonald's my first job I'm glad you asked I'm 16 years old oh in 1976 tell me more about that child labor 76 holy I'm '90s late '90s I quit with I turned 18 because uh child protective laws no longer applied to me and I was still in high school so it was like they were going to work me till midnight every night before I having to go to school in the morning do you remember what they paid you an hour yeah it was like seven bucks six bucks who's minimum wage well I was also a valued McDonald's employee back in high school for a short stretch I got to say watching the slimy way Ray Croc did some of his deals it makes sense what led me to quit after 9 months I was supposed to get a raise from 625 to a whopping 650 an hour ooh and the manager who laid out the deal when I got hired the very same person she sat me down when I asked her about it and said we can't afford the 25 cents right now you that extra what 10 if you work 40 hours it's what 10 bucks a week well adjusted for inflation you know that's like a mountain of cash in today's dollars huge needless to say I gave my two weeks notice you know there are a lot of Ray Crocs in this world but for you John is there any sort of moral to the story any message to take away from watching the founder don't trust a shady businessman yeah yeah like he says at the end they made over a million dollars a piece off the deal yeah and what that was what the 60s like they yeah they were set for life yeah they weren't hurting for cash just as long as they didn't think about how much more they probably should have gotten with the 1% profit thing that oh that's it's got to be a handshake deal cuz otherwise the board won't go for it and for sure in that scene when they're hammering out the details of separating the partnership with Ray Croc you see the look on their face when they said we're going to do a handshake deal I totally saw in their faces that they knew exactly what it meant yeah right yeah they knew they were never going to see that money but hey Happy Meals everybody Happy Meals golden Arch es and poop in the ball pit yeah that ball pit would smell so bad sometimes a that was always the punishment if you screwed up somewhere they like all right your punishment is to go clean the ball pit like oh just like cleaning sober you find a dead girl in there that [Laughter] ODed it's a little awkward cuz the first thing you do when you cover her bare bottom as you get in there like Michael Keaton did I was do one Quick bump off her ass and turn this dead body over to the police and they're like John don't you realize she's probably dead I knew it getting in there sir the smell was a dead giveaway not really though cuz it's McDonald's and everything smells like that so can you blame me oh smelled like OD hooker what was your favorite scene or detail when Nick offerman's character was getting up upset that Ry was trying to Pedal a milkless milkshake it reminded me of working there and having those weird bags in the back you just pour into the milk machine it was such a like obvious thing of yeah there should be milk in the milkshake McDonald's just found a way to save you me and all our owner operators literally hundreds of dollars a year in electric and what would that be two words powdered milkshake I'm telling you I came across a remarkable product called instant like I say it's a powdered milkshake it's a fraction of the cost of ice cream and requires no Refrigeration great I'm tell I tried it myself it tastes just like the real thing it's delicious comes in chocolate comes in vanilla me I'm a vanilla Man Ray we have no interest in a milkshake that contains no milk when we had sawdust to the hamburgers while we're at it frozen french fries you don't want to save a bundle not like that we're talking about the same Great Taste same Great Taste while boosting the bottom line it's called a milkshake Ray real milk now and forever just something about that just was funny to me were you working at McDonald's when they rolled out the McFlurry yeah do you remember the Monopoly game as an employee was not allowed to participate I hated that cuz people would always bug us about it and they don't understand we only have so many fry sleeves and whatnot that have the stickers on it when we run out we're just going to switch to the regular ones it's not our fault damn it the people come in and yell at teenagers that's my first job it's my first real experience in the real world and you're yelling for it a recurring theme is that Ray takes ideas and reappropriates them he doesn't have original ideas so at the end Ray's practicing a speech in front of the mirror talking about persistence being the key to success mhm and did you catch that it's word for word from a self-help record he was listening to at the beginning of the movie that was really funny that that record was self-help record cuz like now you just put on a YouTube video or something it's so in line with his character the big moment where he realizes he can get rich off leasing land to franchisees mhm someone else came up with that idea you mentioned the powdered milkshake according to the movie Joan Croc came up with it I'd say hand inand with Croc's persistence was his ability to see the potential the potential of other people's ideas yes so then what's your biggest criticism for this movie with every movie and this is just a criticism of all semi-historical movies of this nature earlier when he pays and his meals ready immediately we're used to that but he wasn't every movie has what do you mean this thing the modern audience is used to is happening I'm not used why does that have to happen in every single movie about this stuff on the whole I agree with you but if we're talking McDonald's specifically maybe you've had the same experience since you're also a former employee let me tell you I'm not getting my order Speedy oh yeah it takes so much longer now the service sucks compared to our day we were better employees very much so yeah so in this particular case I felt like he had the advantage oh jeez you mean you could actually get your food quickly at one point in time I wish I could go back to the [Laughter] 50s I don't know would you get served I well they do touch on it briefly when Croc is courting people to get a franchise from him he says you're a man a woman he points to a black lady McDonald's is for everybody there are no Asian people in that crowd yeah but this was also in the midwest I don't expect there to be many Asians true I've been a Linda Cardellini fan since Freaks and Geeks I went to the defunct show ask me another on NP are mhm they did a recording in LA and I went to it and she was one of the guests and this is just a few years ago she still looked great very small lady but in this she plays Joan don't remember her maiden name or her first husband's name but she becomes Joan Croc and they give you a little bit of the spice between them it goes from them talking on the phone and then I want to say in the last 10 minutes of the movie boom she shows up at his house and she's his wife that felt very truncated to me and I wish they had expanded on that about their courtship and how it went down I really wanted to see Patrick Wilson's face when she divorced him look you make a mean steak but uh those Burgers I'm leaving you it doesn't compare to a quarter pound a quarter pound of a cheese M ain't no Porter House ever going to top that there is a lot of pounding at Ray Crocs house let me tell you the triple pounder oh we when he's managing his first McDonald's and he's telling the guy making the burgers you got to press down on that meat that's what he was doing with Joan pushing that meat ah ah [Laughter] uh this is where every one of our conversations go don't say it like it's a bad thing ah I love that every one of our conversations goes this way if you're into perverts listeners please contact us at thescreen companion gmail.com you're going to get the weirdest emails they're all going to be from me so after watching three films covering his pre restart him and has come back what do you have to say about Michael Keaton's acting kid's good he does actual human emotions very well he knows how to interact with his fellow actors acting is reacting he reacts very well also I think he's a monologue King he's got enough complexity to carry those introspective beats and it's not boring to watch so the final segment of our show TLD DL too long didn't listen John I'm going to throw some quick questions at you give me some quick answers so starting off with an easy one which of these three movies engaged you the most was Birdman if we're putting together a Michael Keaton retrospective what order would you show these three movies in I think chronological is clean and sober a better example of an addiction movie or the founder a biopic clean and sober is an addiction movie Kathy Baker is Charlie Emma Stone is Sam or Nick Offerman as dick McDonald such a weird one I'm gonna go Emma Stone is Sam what's the cont is there context to this we've already established you and Andrew love Emma Stone he loved her in U La La Land you weren't on that episode so I'll tell you and everybody who didn't listen to that episode I am not an Emma Stone fan Birdman did not change my mind on that I think Nick Offerman is an unsung hero of the film but fine Emma Stone go for it have it your way just like I is it Burger King that's Burger King which movie had the Best Supporting Cast I'm going to say the founder someone comes to you and says they've never seen a Michael Keaton movie which out of these three do you recommend to Showcase his talent specifically probably clean and sober McDonald's Burger King or Wendy's Wendy's I'm glad we can agree on something who looks worse from watching these movies theater actors McDonald's or 80s Coke field White Collar criminals that is a woo that's a tough one I'm going to say McDonald's screw those jerks unless they give us money for sponsorship and finally who's the bigger [ __ ] Daryl for embezzling money rean bringing a gun into a theater and firing it on stage and at one point pointing it at the crowd or Ray Croc for cutting out the McDonald's uh it's got to be the threat of life like the other two were money related rigin threatened someone with a loaded gun and then shot himself yeah that just feels like such an overly dramatic whiny actory thing to do yeah not only am I going to try to commit suicide I'm going to do it in front of everybody screw your feelings they got to see me if clean and sober brings you down which of the other two movies should you watch right after to lift you up I watched Birdman and felt better when Keaton didn't win an Oscar for Birdman didn't they push out the found her pretty fast to try and like make up for that which I think he also didn't win an Oscar for he never won an osar did he no he didn't as all three of these films have proven what a good actor he is he had to have been the best one of these years I'm pretty sure Birdman won the year Birdman came out and they let him do the speech so it was best picture but they didn't give him best actor no I think they gave it to Eddie redm for uh Jupiter Ascending Red Man for Jupiter Ascending oh man ah Stephen Hawking but he's not even he's barely using his body in that movie how much acting can you do yeah he's doing an amazing physical impression but at the end of the day Stephen Hawkings a real guy it's just mimicry it's amazing but it's just mimicry whereas in Birdman Keaton had to make that guy he had to create that person from probably a real place but that person didn't exist before that's [Laughter] [Music] acting you've reached the end of this episode of the screen companion thank you for listening