Crime 101

He's got bestsellers and they're making movies out of his.

If you saw Crime 101 this past fall, Don wrote Crime 101 as a novella in one of his short story, one of his two short story books that have been out recently.

Broken, terrific stuff, including Crime 101 that became that movie that was the number one movie at that time.

And in addition, uh he had done uh a book called broken no no i said broken a book called uh the final score which was his last book published also terrific terrific stories but we are at warwick's because i only go i had not met don but i had read all his books so i go to warwick's with a friend of mine jeff dotteth who had worked with us at kfmb radio years ago and jeff has had a podcast for 20, 30, 40, I don't know, 50 years.

And so Jeff and I went to this sold out book signing that Don had at Warwick's in Los Angeles.

No question.

No question.

And we mentioned Crime 101 in addition to Savages.

I want you to talk about it.

But I found it very fascinating that it harkened back to that kind of Hollywood golden era when I was watching films as a kid.

Well, just to finish up on the part that we were talking about a second ago about how a CPA came to write.

I would suggest to people that I've said this many times over the years that I've written some of the most creative prose you ever want to read to the IRS.

yeah yeah

If it's a big sloppy wet kiss that these people are involved in, whatever it is, it's it's being played on the screen in my head.

Yeah, it's funny because I'm a big movie buff, right? Like I know obscure films and I'm a big fan of particularly the genre you're talking about, because I immediately thought of something like the Thomas Crown Affair kind of deal.

The charming, flawed, not too violent kind of guy, you know, you know.

A passionate and outspoken advocate for environmental justice, he co-founded the Solutions Project to accelerate the transition to 100% renewable energy and produced and starred in 2019's Dark Waters to expose corporate chemical pollution.

Last year, Ruffalo starred in Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho's bizarre sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, and earlier this year he was in the entertaining ensemble thriller Crime 101.

This summer, he returned to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Spider-Man Brand New Day.

He has a lot of great films to choose from, but I think my favorite of his is Spotlight.

we've done this i've had this thought every year where like i'll see some bad films like concurrently in like you know whenever like springtime and it's like a bad marvel film a thing i thought was gonna be good is bad and like just bad actual like a very commercial jurassic park movie that i think is bad and i'm like oh films just kind of suck like and then I get to the awards season and I'm like no there are amazing films that come out every single year it's such a wide such a wide sheet of different options and I'm like are you used to sort of oscillate because people aren't watching films like we are like doing you know one to three films a week every week for the year

you put up with the I don't know what's the one I'd take ten Crime 101's to watch one Josephine

Yeah, and I do remind myself when people come up to me and they ask me about, oh, what do you think has happened? And they go like, oh, films are so rubbish now.

And I'm like, no, they're not.

One bad, two mid, but enough to keep me awake.

I'm glad I saved them all for a plane and didn't commit to them at the cinema.

I was tempted to watch Crime 101 or Michael like George Gesson at 247, but only saw a handful of Michael screens.

Your glowing review of Crime 101 didn't give me much hope for a plane viewing, so I skipped it.

And so that worked out well.

Don Winslow, the author of The Cartel, Power of the Dog, The Border, The Force, the Crime 101 movie that was out recently.

Don was with us live from his house in Rhode Island.

That was great.

Very generic.

Crime 101.

Yeah, I

saw at least three people

watching Crime 101.

Crime 101 should be delighted that it's been watched by that many people in the play.

You know what I'm saying? Like even for a plane, I think it's so dumb.

Okay.

This is vindication, really.

It's because we thought his role in Crime 101 was too small.

We're

mad at him for that.

was bad.

Also, Crime 101, you guys said you liked that movie.

That was an L.A. movie.

That was a good movie.

And I think this is something that really speaks to the point you were mentioning earlier with regards to The Running Man.

And I'll actually add another film that actually came to mind, which was released early this year, called Crime 101 with Chris Hemsworth.

And

the reason I bring that up is because...

could have had his assistant direct it and be like, you wouldn't tell the difference.

Bingo.

And then I think of a film like Crime 101, which I enjoyed for the most part, and I enjoyed Chris Hemsworth's performance in it, but it was one of those stories where, again, I see this happen with a lot of modern films, or particularly films within the last maybe five to ten years, where we have a let's say, a morally complex, or in the case of Hemsworth's character in the film, he's a criminal, he's a thief.

But he, of course, has, you know, the quote, heart of gold, or, you know, he's really not all that bad.