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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, now Sam Sanders take on the Oscars last night, and yours on the broadcast itself for any of the awards, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Some of you know Sam Sanders as co-host of SiriusXM's news and culture podcast, Vibe Check. Previously of It's Been a Minute on public radio, new episodes of the current podcast are available every Wednesday on the SiriusXM app and wherever you listen to podcasts. Sam, great to have you. Thanks very much for coming on.

Sam Sanders: Honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Did you think this was a generally good year for movies? Let's say among the ones nominated for Best Picture, or for that matter, ones you think were excluded?

Sam Sanders: Oh yes, I thought it was a great year for movies. I think Barbenheimer was so good for the industry. I thought American Fiction and Past Lives and Poor Things and The Holdovers were phenomenal. I think the international films were great. In terms of the movies, I was wowed by this past year of films. I think the Oscar ceremony itself was pretty safe, but that's fine.

Brian Lehrer: Well, tell me if you think this was safe. I thought it was at least funny near the end. They seem to have a little time to kill, which is unusual for an Oscar ceremony, which usually runs long, but they seem to have a little time to kill and maybe they planned this from the outset. I don't know. They were keeping an eye on Donald Trump's social media and apparently, Trump took the opportunity to slam Jimmy Kimmel, who does a lot of comedy about Trump. What did Jimmy Kimmel do? He read it on the air. Here's that minute.

Jimmy Kimmel: Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars? His opening was that of a less-than-average person trying too hard to be something which he is not and never can be. Get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with another washed-up but cheap ABC talent, George Slopinopoulos. He would make everybody on stage look bigger, stronger, and more glamorous, blah, blah, blah. Make America great again. [laughter] See if you can guess which former president just posted that on Twitter. [laughter] Anyone? No? Well, thank you, President Trump. Thank you for watching. I'm surprised you're still watching. Isn't it past your jail time?

Brian Lehrer: Did that make you laugh, Sam? It made me laugh.

Sam Sanders: It made me laugh, but listen, hear me out. I never agree with Trump except on this, it's time for a new host. Jimmy Kimmel has hosted the Oscars four times. I think it's time for some new blood. I really enjoyed Aidy Bryant hosting the Independent Spirit Awards. Let her host it, let Maya Rudolph host it. Let Tina Fey and Amy Poehler host it, but we need some fresh host blood. I do think that.

Brian Lehrer: Love Aidy Bryant. We were looking up last night, how many times did somebody host the Oscars or win an Oscar? Jimmy Kimmel, four. Bob Hope, in relatively ancient times, hosted it 19 times, I read.

Sam Sanders: Are you serious? Oh my God.

Brian Lehrer: Among the Best Actress winners over the years, I saw that Katharine Hepburn won it more times than anybody else.

Sam Sanders: Even Meryl Streep.

Brian Lehrer: I would have guessed Meryl Streep also, and maybe there was just less Hollywood in those days. Maybe there was just less media, less choice in those days and that's why people became institutions in that respect. Now, you can come on and name all those names who could do it instead of Jimmy Kimmel. I don't know, just a thought.

Sam Sanders: Totally. He did fine, but I want some fresh blood.

Brian Lehrer: I find it hard to play the Best Picture game because these are individual works of art that are different from each other. The Holdovers is such a totally different movie from Oppenheimer, just for one example. How do you judge one against another? Is there one that you would have given the award to?

Sam Sanders: I think I probably enjoyed the smaller nominees more than the bigger nominees. I thought American Fiction, Past Lives, Poor Things, and The Holdovers were just phenomenal. I think Barbie and Oppenheimer tapped into a cultural moment, but they were both in different ways, flawed films. When I think about who should have won, knowing the Academy and those front runners, I think Barbie as a film defined a cultural moment, and so seeing Barbie lose to Oppenheimer, I felt the same way as I did when The Social Network lost to The Keen Speech.

That film was all about the rise of Facebook, and it defined a moment, and it lost to a decent Oscar Beatty movie. I think 15 years from now, when we think about this time in our lives, we'll think of Barbie more than Oppenheimer. That movie was more a film of the year in the moment, in my opinion.

Brian Lehrer: That's a really interesting point. I have an 18-year-old niece who's a sophomore women's studies major in college, and she loved Barbie so much. I think age might matter there. Her feminist consciousness is still forming and the framing of the gender role reversal to convey male privilege makes it so clear and wrapped in a toy story kind of setting. Maybe it's generationally imprinting and reinforcing in a way that some people may have dismissed it as too simplistic in its theme.

Sam Sanders: Well, I also think that the Oscars still have this nasty habit of giving Best Picture to films that are "Best Picture movies." They're stoic. They're historical. They have great men doing great things. I'm so tired of that stereotype and that trope always being the front-runner. I think that's what we saw with Oppenheimer last night. It's still a great movie, but for months folks were saying, "Well, this is the kind of film that wins Best Picture." I don't like Oscar races where people say that for months. That just feels unfair.

Brian Lehrer: It struck me that two of the big films were about unreal women confronted with being a woman in the real world. Barbie and in its extremely different way Poor Things. It's an unusual coincidence, but there was an overlap that struck me.

Sam Sanders: I think personally, I probably had the most pure fun at the movies this year watching Poor Things. I think Emma Stone, just everything she touches turns to gold. That movie was delightful and so fun to watch. Watching her act in this role where she has to have a fully formed body, but the mind of a baby, and then she grows into herself, it's hard to pull off, and she does it brilliantly. I don't know. I was probably one of the few people who thought that she deserved that Oscar for Best Actress. She really did.

Brian Lehrer: Stephen in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen: Thank you very much for taking my call. I wanted to say I agree 100% with what you said. Oppenheimer was a damn good film. I did enjoy it, and I sat in a theater with a bunch of young people who I definitely looked around and wondered, "Do half of you people even know who the hell this man was?" Other than that, I thought that Jimmy was damn good. He did a great job. What I also thought, too, was that in the future, I was looking for Willem Dafoe and some of the others, but he didn't and Paul Giamatti was one of my favorites, but what I was going to say is--

Watching our friend what I thought, too, was when Trump supposedly sent that tweet, I thought to myself that, "Sir, you and the others should really learn, you don't play with comedians because they bite back." [laughter] The question I wanted to ask you and I will hang up. I wanted to ask you, gentlemen, both of you, what do you think of the state of movie theaters? Because I wonder, and we talk about it, me and my friends, are movie theaters in a decline because people are doing this at home, watching at home, downloading a movie off the net.

Brian Lehrer: It's a great question, and I'll admit that I watched six of the Best Picture nominees this year, and I watched them all at home, and I don't know if I would have gone to sit through Oppenheimer or even Flower Moon, which I like better, but I was able to watch them over three nights a piece at home. To his question, Sam.

Sam Sanders: I am cautiously optimistic about the state of the box office. It's been climbing every year since the pandemic getting closer back to some new normal. We saw with Barbenheimer last summer, the ability of films to still become billion-dollar juggernauts. There's another sign this year that has me hopeful, a really small rom-com called Anyone But You from Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. This film has made over $100 million globally as a rom-com. For years the thinking was rom-coms were dead at the movie theaters. They want to watch them at home, et cetera, but to see a film like that one do well at the box office makes me think that given the right film, the right marketing, people will still go to the movies. I'm optimistic.

Brian Lehrer: Stephen, thank you. Call us again. Another notable win from last night was Cord Jefferson winning Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction.

Sam Sanders: Oh, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Here's 30 seconds of his acceptance speech.

Cord Jefferson: I understand that this is a risk-averse industry. I get it, but $200-million movies are also a risk, and it doesn't always work out, but you take the risk anyway. Instead of making one $200-million movies, try making 20 $10-million movies or 50 $4-million movies. There are so many people. I just feel so much joy being here. I felt so much joy making this movie. I want other people to experience that joy.

Brian Lehrer: That's one of the moments from last night that will definitely stay with me, like, "Can they do that? Can they make 50 $4-million--"

Sam Sanders: Oh, they can. You know what? Watching Cord win for this movie, one, I'm so proud of him. I knew him back in the day when he was a journalist at Gawker. We're old friends. To see him go from Gawker journalist to Oscar winner, amazing. I interviewed him this Oscar season to talk about the whole process in the industry. I feel like what Cord was saying last night and what the Oscars themselves were saying last night was that all of Hollywood is really ready to move past its Marvel moment. When someone Cord says, "Stop making films that cost $200 million," he's saying, "Stop making so many Marvel blockbusters. They're not good for the industry."

You also heard a joke from John Mulaney about Madame Web, this Marvel-esque new flop. I feel like a winner like Cord and a speech like that, he's saying, "Bring small film back. Forget about these big superhero blockbusters. It's not good for us, and people are over it." That's my takeaway. I think if that is a future, with people like Cord leading, I'm so excited for that. I mean, there's so much Marvel fatigue.

Brian Lehrer: Shelly, in Westport, you're on WNYC with Sam Sanders. Hi, Shelly.

Shelly: Hi. Thank you for taking my call, long-time listener. Question, why have we had this very strong movement over the years for performers to be called actors regardless of their gender, and yet when we get to the Academy Awards, we still bottom out at Best Actor, Best Actress? Every other category is gender-neutral. Is it time for us to switch to best performer in a female role, best performer in a male role?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Shelly. Sam, have you thought about it?

Sam Sanders: I have. I think you're never going to see a moment in which the Oscars go from Best Actor, Best Actress to just one acting award, to go from giving out four Oscars for acting to maybe just two. Who wants that? The stars don't want that. The filmmakers don't want that. We won't see that. I think you can change the ways you define gender for these roles, but you're not going to see a Hollywood that chooses to have fewer awards instead of more awards. I just don't see that happening.

Brian Lehrer: What happens when you get a truly non-binary person in an award-worthy role?

Sam Sanders: I think you've already seen this play out on Broadway. You have people say what category they want to be considered in, and they say which one they want to be up for. I think you ask the performer. I think it's a case-by-case basis.

Brian Lehrer: Before we ran out of time, on this show, as many of the listeners know, we generally interview the five nominated feature documentary filmmakers. Did you pay any attention to that? Well, let me play a clip. I'll just remind everybody that it was a very interesting year for the documentary nominees. I thought they were all international, from Chile, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uganda, and India. Mstyslav Chernov's film, 20 Days in Mariupol, obviously about the war in Ukraine. One very hard documentary to watch. His acceptance speech certainly talked about the issue. Here's 40 seconds of that.

Mstyslav Chernov: I wish for them to release all the hostages, all the soldiers who are protecting their lands, all the civilians who are now in their jails, but I cannot change the history. I cannot change the past. We, all together, you, among some of the most talented people in the world, we can make sure that the history record is set straight, and that the truth will prevail, and that the people of Mariupol and those who've given their lives will never be forgotten because cinema forms memories and memories form history.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, I don't know if you saw that or any of the documentaries.

Sam Sanders: I did.

Brian Lehrer: Any thoughts? Can a documentary Oscar make a difference to the issue?

Sam Sanders: Watching the show last night, I've got to put it in a larger context. We had that speech about Ukraine on the same night when a lot of celebrities at the show wore red pins, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Then Jonathan Glazer, who won an Oscar for his Holocaust film, The Zone of Interest, he talked about that conflict as well. What's disheartening is to see these filmmakers chronicling history, trying to teach us lessons, but it seems as if through leadership or whatever, we haven't learned the lessons, and the same history kind of repeats itself. As beautiful as those speeches were last night, you turn the show off and turn the news on, it still feels we're stuck.

Brian Lehrer: Sam Sanders is co-host, now, of SiriusXM's news and culture podcast, Vibe Check. You want to give yourself a plug? You want to tell people what to expect on Vibe Check, anything like that?

Sam Sanders: I just want to tell you that I'm such a big fan, and being on your show is a highlight of my career. I listen to you all the time. I think you're great. That's it. Thank you for being you.

Brian Lehrer: Aw, now you got me blushing, and I don't know what to say. Sam, great talking Oscars with you. Thank you very, very much.

Sam Sanders: All right.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, thank you.

Sam Sanders: Take care. Bye-bye.

Brian Lehrer: That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our national Politics Podcast. Our intern this term is Ethlyn Daniel-Scherz, Juliana Fonda. Today is Shayna Sengstock at the audio controls.

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