Emmy Predictions, Netflix Is Adapting ‘Lonesome Dove,’ and ‘The Paper’ Season 2

The Watch

Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Netflix's upcoming miniseries adaptation of 'Lonesome Dove' by showrunners Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart, p

Key takeaways

• Netflix's adaptation of 'Lonesome Dove' will cover the entire Call and McRae epic, including four novels, marking a significant expansion beyond the original 1989 miniseries.
• The renewed public interest in 'Lonesome Dove' reflects broader cultural trends, with notable figures like Taylor Sheridan and media outlets highlighting its enduring relevance.

Main topics

• Netflix's 'Lonesome Dove' miniseries adaptation
• Emmy Awards predictions for major categories

Notable quotes

'If you're reading this book, you have no rights.' – Taylor Sheridan's introduction to the new edition of Lonesome Dove.

Conclusion

The episode blends cultural commentary with personal storytelling, cel

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) I need supports to have to clear the room. Speaker 1 (0:08) Stand up and walk now. Speaker 2 (0:11) Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor for TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio, the chief TV critic for the Hat Creek Cattle Company, it's Andy Greenwald. Speaker 1 (0:24) You know, some companies still really prioritize the written word. Look, you Speaker 2 (0:27) know what I mean? It's like First Amendment still counts down there. Greenwald, great to see you today on the show. Some lonesome dove is fucking back news. The Emmys are almost here. We're going to play a little bit of Will Win Won't Win or Will Win Should Win, I should say. The paper has come back for its second season. We discuss and maybe a little bit of Watch After Dark. I think a lot of Watch After Dark. It might be a lopsided show today. Settle down. Great to see you, man. The Watch at Spotify.com if you want to reach out. The Watch Pod underscore if you want to watch us in short form video. The video of the entire show can be found on YouTube at the ringer-tv channel as well as on Spotify where you can listen to us as well as other podcast platforms. Where can people Speaker 1 (1:11) find the metadata and the live feed? Is that iraqgoals.net? I Speaker 2 (1:16) actually got... When I said that, I've been talking about my affection for, I believe, long lost illegal streaming piracy platform called IraqGoals.net. One of my favorite Speaker 1 (1:30) bits. Speaker 2 (1:30) And it's where real ones used to watch like La Liga games. Real Speaker 1 (1:36) illegal ones. Now Speaker 2 (1:37) it is the subject of Lioness season four. Speaker 2 (1:43) Joe is going to redact me and take me to Gitmo for watching Valencia versus... There Speaker 1 (1:49) is a knock list for people who illegally streamed El Clasico in 2003. Speaker 2 (1:54) And Kyle is just going to kick my door down and be like, you have no rights. And I don't. I have to Speaker 1 (2:01) pay for what I did to society. Speaker 2 (2:03) But it's awesome to see you. And if there's a lightness to the air, it's just Speaker 1 (2:07) because we got good news this week. There's not a lot of good news. Yeah, what's the... The good news is that Lonesome Dove is going to be made into Speaker 2 (2:14) a miniseries by the Netflix Corporation by Zoe Kazan and her writing partner and producing partner, Jeb Stewart. And I'm so excited to talk to you about this. I didn't know you were... Actually, I Speaker 1 (2:25) don't even know our... I didn't know you were going to frame this as good news. I'm not saying it's bad news. I Speaker 2 (2:30) don't think it's bad news to have a cool new Lonesome Dove miniseries. Speaker 1 (2:33) I think it... Yes. I think... I don't want to start with the zag. Yeah, well, you're zagging. Let's go along with it. Because a minute ago, you're like... What are you doing? Speaker 2 (2:41) Why are you on your computer? How Speaker 1 (2:43) do you Speaker 2 (2:43) spell tiptoe? Is that with a hyphen? And then sometimes I'm getting a vibe that you have become what I was during COVID when we would record on Zoom and like you'd talk for five minutes uninterrupted and I would read Twitter. And that's okay. That's definitely something that only happened Speaker 1 (2:57) during COVID. That has never happened since we rejoined the studio. I Speaker 2 (3:03) have Speaker 1 (3:03) a Speaker 2 (3:03) rat goals.net on. Speaker 1 (3:04) And Blue Sky, where you are just getting them. No, I just couldn't tell what you were doing with your computer. Here's the thing that some people don't. Let's pull back the curtain briefly. I know you want to. You work really hard for this podcast and everyone in this room who also worked really hard appreciate it. You have a rundown. You have a run of play. Yeah. You plan. And part of the fun, fun, I think, is that I'm not often shared into that. I'm not read into that. Now, do I complain about it? No. Speaker 2 (3:31) No. I get the impression that you're like. Thanks for doing this. I Speaker 1 (3:35) thank you. But Speaker 2 (3:36) you wouldn't look at it any earlier than you would when you arrived. So when Speaker 1 (3:40) we sat down and everybody took their places and the cameras turned on, I just sort of briefly peruse Hollywood reporter and deadline just to see if I missed anything and to slightly prepare for what you're going to hit me with. So I thought maybe I want to start with Lonesome Dove, too, which was on deadline. a day or two ago. Speaker 2 (3:58) Well, this has been a strange week, right? Like, there was a story on a site called notboring.co that talked about everyone is reading Lonesome Dove, which I feel like has been a pretty consistent trend for the last couple of years. Decades. But yes, Speaker 1 (4:11) especially recently. The Speaker 2 (4:12) person who wrote the piece was nice enough to give us some credit for, like, starting a wave. I love it. I know Gia Tolentino wrote, like, a long piece about it in New Yorker. I mean, I think... Lonesome Dove has been... There's Speaker 1 (4:24) a new edition with an introduction by, I believe, Kyle from Lioness. I'm sorry, his alter ego, Taylor Sheridan. Speaker 2 (4:31) And you open it up and he's like, if you're reading this book, you have no rights. Speaker 1 (4:36) I'm like, Speaker 2 (4:36) no! Damn it! I just lost all my rights. Oh, well. So it's been in the ether. I think we had talked about the baiting war that had been happening where I think... Larry McMurtry, the author of Lonesome Dove, obviously one of our favorite writers and a celebrated screenwriter and novelist over the last few decades. He passed away a few years ago. Speaker 1 (5:00) 2021. I remember eulogizing him on COVID while you scrolled Twitter. Speaker 2 (5:04) Yeah, I was like, God damn, these are some great takes from Ezra Klein. You know, this guy never leaves this platform. Speaker 2 (5:13) We talked about the bake sale that happened for the rights to, for the Lonesome Dove series. It's the tetralogy of four novels. Yes. And a man named Thomas Tull, who used to be a legendary executive, legendary pictures executive, won the rights from James Speaker 1 (5:30) McMurtry. Larry's son. Larry's son. Accomplished musician. Speaker 2 (5:33) And he runs a company called Teton Ridge. And it's, you know, kind of went silent after that for a while. Speaker 1 (5:40) Well, it went silent outside. the hollywood bubble there were there was clamoring for it like he basically it went on the market um to attach creatives and also to find a streaming which i Speaker 2 (5:53) did not know i i don't think i knew that it was like in the process of finding creatives and i didn't know that they were as far along as they were because shortly um after this this blog post went up kind of saying like people are still reading lonesome the summer of dove never ended So Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stewart are announced as the co-writers and co-showrunners of the series. And Netflix will be the streamer for it, will be the home for it. And not only that, but they've bought into Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, Dead Man's Walk, and Lonesome Dove. So it is the entire Call and McRae epic, which is really exciting. It Speaker 1 (6:36) is really exciting. I think one of the other... So let's start from, let's do two things. One, reading Lonesome Dove is one of the most pleasurable experiences of my adult life. It is one of the greatest American novels of all time. It is, to read it is to not just lose yourself into. It's an incredibly engaging adventure narrative and a vision of America that is timeless and alluring and horrifying in equal measure. But it also reads you into the Hat Creek Cattle Club of society, of people who are also like, welcome, brother, or welcome, sister. Like, it is a wonderfully communal experience. And I remember when we were reading it together during COVID and even before we started podcasting about it. we were talking about it and we would get messages from people we know or barely know or like or admire like elwood reed the showrunner was like you have inspired me to read it for a fifth time yeah like i can't wait to saddle up again so the the sort of slow march of this book back into the public consciousness on this level is awesome and when we did pot about it we also talked about the fact that lonesome dove is iconic in two mediums the mini series on cbs from the 80s with um with Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones is widely considered to be one of, if not the best mini series of all time. Speaker 2 (7:51) Crown jewel of it. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:52) And we covered that as well. And we were really, um, I think struck by how incredibly also timeless some of it was and also how eighties TV, some of it was and what to circle all the way around. It's very exciting to think of a project that will be translating Lonesome Dove in totality, meaning that, um, Streets of Laredo, which we'll talk about more in a second, which is really an intense corrective, not just to some of the absences in Lonesome Dove, like Native life, internal lives of women, trains, the existence of trains, which he admits he forgot about when he wrote Lonesome Dove, but also to the myth-making of the fandom of Lonesome Dove, which he wrote as a tragedy, but was hailed as like a return. It's kind of like a Born in the USA situation where everyone was like, man, what a great song about being born in the USA. Yeah, and it's like. Speaker 2 (8:40) it's about Vietnam and debt, you know? Yeah. So Speaker 1 (8:43) the idea that they could begin the story knowing the scope of it and maybe honoring our friend Larry's fuller intentions for the project is, it's thrilling. Speaker 2 (8:52) I don't really remember the miniseries, what it leaves out that I was like, oh my God. I mean, like the miniseries does a very nice job of hitting a lot of the highlight moments. There's Speaker 1 (9:03) very little po-campo. That's right. One of my favorite of the... The chefs. Yes. Of the two cooks. Of the two cooks that Speaker 2 (9:11) accompany them. Top two. That's a great bill list. Speaker 1 (9:15) Top two lonesome dove chefs go. Also chefs doing a lot of work there. I Speaker 2 (9:21) agree with you about the book. I was talking with Tyler Parker and our ringer colleague and wait a second co-host last night about this and we were like have you ever met anybody that doesn't love this book? Who read it? You know like does anybody read this book and say, eh, not for me. I Speaker 1 (9:40) don't think so. I Speaker 2 (9:40) think it kind of is, I know this sounds weird, but like, is this what Huckleberry Finn is supposed to be? Is this book like the great American novel, the great American journey, the great American, like, you know, shared experience of, of a, of a dream of a place that doesn't quite come true. I think it's like, it's kind of emerging as that. Um, maybe not in, uh, universities and maybe not in literary supplements. But, you know, as my guy Taylor tells me, you can't trust everything you learn at a school. That's Speaker 1 (10:14) right. The communist infiltration of the schools have not managed to X out this book yet. And Speaker 2 (10:18) speaking of Taylor, you know, you had mentioned him in passing because he did write a forward for an introduction for the most recent edition of Lonesome Dove. And he talks about the immense impact it had on his life very sincerely. Speaker 2 (10:35) In Kim Masters' write-up, so the journalist Kim Masters is a really, really well-sourced journalist out here in Hollywood, and she wrote a piece within the structure of Matt Bellany's What I'm Hearing newsletter for Puck, and she talked about the bidding war that just happened. So Zoe Kazan, Jeb Stewart, they have East of Eden coming in October on Netflix. Speaker 1 (10:57) And Speaker 2 (10:57) evidently, Netflix is very satisfied with what they did and how they did it. Speaker 1 (11:01) And had a good experience working with them. They announced that they Speaker 2 (11:05) were ready to take meetings about who was going to do this. I believe they have some pages. They have started this process in Speaker 1 (11:14) earnest. You're saying there's a script. Speaker 2 (11:15) Yeah. And they took meetings like a week ago, and it was expected that there was going to be a lot of competition for it. What most people would expect, just given the subject matter and the fact that the original Lonesome Dove miniseries aired on CBS in the first place, was that Paramount was going to be involved. And they were not. And Kim's piece, I think, I would say, delights in poking fun at the fact that David Ellison missed out on this, found out that no one bid on Lonesome Dove and tried to come in with a late-inning offer, Speaker 1 (11:50) but Speaker 2 (11:51) Netflix had already sewn up the deal. I do wonder whether or not, like, you know, Taylor Sheridan is leaving Paramount. Speaker 1 (11:58) I thought you were going to say, I do wonder if the Justice Department can break up this deal. No. Rob Bonta, do your duty. Speaker 1 (12:07) If Mike Pence has the courage, this won't happen. This will Speaker 2 (12:11) be Ken Paxton's big Hail Mary. He's like, we need to bring... I don't even know how the fuck that guy sounds. That Speaker 1 (12:16) was pretty Speaker 2 (12:16) good. I think you should workshop Speaker 1 (12:17) that. Speaker 2 (12:17) Not making fun of his eye, but I am. Speaker 1 (12:21) I mean, I think it's okay. Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:23) I think Ken Paxton makes fun of a lot of things I believe in. So I think it's... A lot of things that you believe... Yeah, I think some stuff that I think... Speaker 1 (12:30) Don't get aggregated. It sounded like you were saying, he makes fun of the things I want to make fun of. Speaker 2 (12:34) No, no, no, no. You were not saying that. Speaker 1 (12:37) He was not saying that. No, Speaker 2 (12:39) I was saying, I bet if Ken Paxton watched this pod, he'd be like, look at this fucking guy in the Oregon hat, you know? So Speaker 1 (12:45) I'm just... You think he would go after you first? Which camera's on? You might be lucky to catch us straight. Ken Paxton would be Speaker 2 (12:53) like, you know what? CR never misses. Speaker 1 (12:57) I'm just saying, if there are only two options... Yeah, you think he's gonna miss CR? For Speaker 2 (13:01) Ken Speaker 1 (13:01) Paxton? Ken Paxton would he would much rather run against me. Okay. Speaker 2 (13:08) And I Speaker 1 (13:10) don't blame him. I would not do well running for statewide office in Texas. Speaker 2 (13:16) Yeah. Speaker 1 (13:17) Okay. Okay. From beta to beta. I mean, can you just see the headlines? Yeah. Come on. Speaker 2 (13:22) Where was I? I was cooking up a imaginary conspiracy theory that this. The one of the reasons why this wouldn't be a paramount was because Taylor would no longer be at Paramount soon because he's taking his television right where's to Universal this I cannot imagine he had no interest in making this and I wonder whether it was like Well, Speaker 1 (13:45) we can't bring Lonesome Speaker 2 (13:46) Doug in and not have him do it right, you know what I mean? Like it was it just seemed to me I wonder if there's a Taylor Sheridan element of Paramount not making a bid in earnest for this. Speaker 1 (13:57) There's the case for Paramount to make it for legacy reasons and because so much of what we see, do, think, and feel is based on the whims of billionaires. So if David Ellison really loves it, that's good. If David Ellison really dislikes other things, that could be bad, like freedom of speech. Whatever. Who knows? Cut that for the ad. You guys could cut an incredible attack ad on me just from the first 10 minutes of this pod. It's okay, man. I don't need Speaker 2 (14:24) your endorsement. Let me turn around the Speaker 1 (14:27) water bottle I borrowed from my daughters today, which is an REI Outdoorsman water bottle. So let's just really lean into the problems here. There's the case to be made of why they should have had it, but there is also an aggressive case why it makes sense for Netflix because in this new, like they have kind of a prestige division. where they want to grab a piece of the marketplace that they either had never had or kind of let, had ceded a little bit to Apple and HBO, exactly. This is the best of all worlds because it is not just high-minded, prestigious, literary, cinematic, because they're banking on what Zoe Kazan did with East of Eden, but also pretty red meat, like pretty right down the middle, incredibly popular entertainment. So it is kind of a no-brainer to me that they would, in a... Level playing field. I bid everyone else for it. Speaker 2 (15:14) I have one plea. Speaker 1 (15:17) Yeah, Speaker 2 (15:17) I Speaker 1 (15:17) got a couple. Speaker 2 (15:19) Please shoot this in Texas. Yes. Speaker 1 (15:22) Yes. Oh, no. Yeah, are you thinking like New Zealand or something? Well, New Zealand is the Speaker 2 (15:26) setting for East of Eden. Now, East of Eden, I believe, I mean, they could have been shooting this for quite some time. I think East of Eden started shooting. It may have been a COVID era. Like, this is a good place to shoot if like we're coming out and we still have. Speaker 1 (15:41) I feel Speaker 2 (15:42) like East of Eden's been shot for a while. Speaker 1 (15:45) I don't think we have the right read on. I think it has been, but we don't have the right read on the timeline because I think it was announced a long time ago. Yes. And I think it was originally for a different streaming service when it was announced. I think it was Apple and Netflix picked it up. Okay. So I think we may be dating. it to our knowledge of the project, but that's probably not when they were shooting. Speaker 2 (16:03) Anyway, I understand why people shoot things in other countries and the tax breaks they get and the labor costs that they have. It is what it is. I hate it. But this is an authentically Texan and Western story. Texan Montana story. If we can't get behind this, like, what are we doing? You know? I agree. Speaker 2 (16:25) That being said, Speaker 1 (16:27) I Speaker 2 (16:27) just said on the previous podcast we did, I believe when we were talking about maybe when the East of Eden trailer came out. So it was a couple of podcasts ago. I said, you know, based on the trailer, it seems like. Zoe Kazan has reconfigured the East of Eden story a bit to be a little bit more about the Kathy character. Speaker 1 (16:46) Yes. Speaker 2 (16:47) Which is not really what you would get from it if you were reading the back of the book, say. That is not what usually people lead with as what's East of Speaker 1 (16:55) Eden about. Yes. Speaker 2 (16:57) If I and I said I really support that I think it's like cool to see people who find different angles with their adaptations and I don't think that everything needs to be a page for page recreation. So I have to then also stand on business and say yes. Zoe Kazan. Do your thing with Lonesome Dove. Now, I think that she is probably coming at this with like an incredible amount of reverence, as is Jeb Stewart. Jeb Stewart, for people who don't know, is a legendary screenwriter and producer who worked on The Fugitive and Die Hard and has bones, has like old structural bones in the genre filmmaking world. And Speaker 1 (17:35) honestly, I feel like being named Jeb and doing Lonesome Dove will open some doors for some locations in Texas. I don't mean to get back. Since it can Speaker 2 (17:44) be Speaker 1 (17:44) like, you mean Jeb Stewart, the Confederate Speaker 2 (17:46) general? Speaker 1 (17:47) First thing on Google, just tell him to only Google once. Yeah. He'll be thrilled. Speaker 2 (17:51) Uh, so I guess I, I just was going to say is just like, I'm prepared to, uh, I mean, I, I, I, I have no idea how they're going to approach this, but I wouldn't, I, I, I think it's important to be like supportive of. Like you do not have to shoot it exactly as it happens. Speaker 1 (18:09) No, I, I, I appreciate your being honest here, holding yourself to account. Uh, intellectually, I agree with you Speaker 2 (18:18) emotionally, emotionally. Speaker 1 (18:19) I I'm in a bit of, I'm in some tumult. Yeah. Um, the feeling that I feel, this is, this is maybe, this is definitely an inexact comparison, but it reminds me of, uh, two years ago, like when the Eagles. I don't know if you remember they went to the Super Bowl. But like when a team that you spend all of your life obsessing over and consuming and like breaking down suddenly is in the public sphere and there are no other teams left and everybody's doing it. There's a very intense feeling for me of like, it makes me more anxious. You're trying Speaker 2 (18:46) to gatekeep the Eagles. I was trying Speaker 1 (18:48) to gatekeep the NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles. No, but like I'm very emotionally involved in the narratives as they mean what they mean to me. And now suddenly everyone's looking. Speaker 2 (18:56) Yeah. And Speaker 1 (18:57) Lonesome Dove does not belong to us. But