"Wicked" and the Best Ad Campaign of 2024

0:00 Today on the Film and Whiskey podcast, I'm joined by an extra special guest to break down the new movie Wicked. We're talking about it as a movie and as a Broadway adaptation. Then I'm joined by CMO Mike Spadier from Still Austin Distillery talking about the best marketing campaign of 2024. That's all I had on Film and Whiskey. Well, hey everybody, welcome into the Film and Whiskey podcast.

0:42 I'm Bob Book and I'm not flying solo today, but I am bradless because I am joined by an extremely special guest, somebody who has been just groveling at my feet, begging to be let onto this podcast. You know what? You can probably tell by the resentment in the voice that it is a relative of mine, and it is, in fact a relative of mine. It's my sister, Julie. Julie, how's it going? It's going good. How about you? I'm doing great. Julie's here as a representative of the Twins on Tour podcast and more importantly than that, Julie, being my sister, got to tag along with me to a screening of the movie Wicked yesterday. So she got to see what it's like for Old Bob to be surrounded by die hard fans of something.

1:28 And what a grump I have become. Yeah, Bob literally left the theater soon as they were like, who's ready to do some trivia? Bob was like, not me. And he left. They had a whole trivia section before the movie started, and then they called people down to do a singing contest to see if they can hit the high note from the song Defying Gravity. And I was like, no, baby, what is you doing? I can't. I walked out. I could. I couldn't do it. I didn't want to laugh at those poor people. They were so brave. All really good. Though I'm glad they were but. Assumed they'd be bad and that's what's wrong with you. It's why I don't like listening to the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events, because it's like, you don't want to laugh at our nation song, but if the guy sucks, what are you going to do, you know?

2:08 That's true. I mean, I guess you just say that guy sucks and move on with your life. But that's. True. So today's episode is a cross branded episode between film and Whiskey and the Twins on Tour podcast. So depending on where you're listening, you might be catching us on Twins on Tour. Julie, tell us a little bit about your podcast and how it lines up with Wicked. Yeah. My twin sister Jen and I, we review all of the travelling Broadway productions that come through Playhouse Square up in Cleveland and EJ Thomas Hall in Akron. We're in our fourth season, just about to start our fourth season, and we've done all kinds of shows, including Wicked. So you guys look at it from the theatrical production side of things.

2:49 I look at movies, and now we have a movie that kind of hits both of those things. We haven't really been able to make this work so far because there haven't been a lot of Broadway adaptations hit movie theaters in the last few years, especially during the pandemic. Like you and I weren't going to go out and see In the Heights, right? Especially ones that are actively touring as well because West Side Story came out. But I haven't seen a professional production of West Side Story come through in 10 plus years, so. There you go. So Julie, I think let's dive into talking about Wicked. We saw it before most of the general public is gonna be able to see it. And you know, spoiler alert, good movie. Excellent. I like this movie a lot, Julie, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, I was really surprised because the book for Wicked came out in 1995. I've never read the book, but the musical's been around since 2003.

3:34 And right before the movie started, Bob looked at me and went, I know absolutely nothing about this. And I went, how have you escaped Wicked? Anything. It's been on Broadway for 20, one year's down. He's like, I know, defying gravity and that he does not like Indiana Menzel's voice. And that's all he knew going into Wicked. I mean, can you blame me? Honestly, I was like a 13 year old boy when this came out, but it definitely was by design that I avoided it. Like it just didn't. Seem like you avoided it. It just didn't seem like it was up my alley. I don't know. And I think it was kind of like it was the big diva show on Broadway for a long time. And I think that like I, I love a good musical. Wicked. Just something about it was like, it doesn't seem like it's gonna be for me. And so I went into this.

4:18 Yeah. Because. Growing up in our house, I know how much the Wizard of Oz was loved in our household. And for something, anything Wizard of Oz related for you to be like Nah, pass. That's what's shocking to me. What's really shocking is is how much of A diva I am and. Bob's not being extraordinaire. So, yeah, like the lights go down on this thing and I look at you and I'm like, I really don't know. I I know Defying Gravity. I am familiar with the song for good, which is spoiler alert again, not in this movie, but that's pretty much it. So I I wanted to bring you on today, Julie, and kind of crash your party on your podcast feed because you know so much more about this musical than I do. And I think we can look at it from your point of view, from the angle of how is this as an adaptation of the stage play and then kind of talk a little bit more about how is it just generally as a movie. So maybe let's dive into talking about the adaptation of it all. You've seen the the Broadway show, I think multiple times, right?

5:17 Yep, twice. OK, how does this stack up to the show? Both in like overall quality, but also in terms of this is a two hour and 40 minute movie that only covers Part 1 of the musical so I'm sure they added a ton of stuff here. Yeah, just for spoiler alert for anyone who has not seen the track listing that was released online several weeks ago, this only covers act one of the musical, which going in, I was really worried seeing that it was a 2 hour and what, 41 minute runtime or something like that. I went, OK, that's about the runtime of the whole musical. I was really, really impressed with what they did with this. I think John M Chu was a perfect director to pick for this movie because he really does pour everything he does into his movies and they really took a lot of parts of the musical.

6:04 If you listen to our episode on Wicked, it's our longest episode because there is so much that happens in this musical. And one thing that I said in our episode was that Wicked's pacing is really bad because it covers so much in so little time that it takes a while to process. You sit there after the curtain drops on Defying Gravity at the end of act one, and you're like, OK, a lot has just happened. And we take our mom to a lot of these musicals usually. And it's usually like telling mom like, OK, did you understand what was happening here? Did you understand what was happening there? Because it covers a lot of stuff in a short amount of time and I really appreciated the fact that they took all of those things that maybe were the conversations at intermission from a musical and flesh them out completely in this movie.

6:50 There is no question on what's happening or why something's happening in this movie and I really appreciated that from a storytelling standpoint. It was really nice to see. Did it feel like they fleshed things out like appropriately? Did anything drag for you that like they they went overboard on? Like overcompensating for? I don't think so. I think everything was pretty well paced in this. There were a couple dance numbers, the Ozdesk ballroom in particular. I thought that whole sequence went a little bit too long when Alphaba and Glenda were doing their little dance together. That probably could have been chopped in half and had the same emotional impact on you because it takes about 14 seconds in the musical. But I really thought that the things they decided to flesh out more, like a lot of Alphaba's back story, the whole thing about Mama Bear raising her and everything, that's not in the musical.

7:39 It was her parents didn't like her because she's green, here's her sister, let's head off to school. So having that whole back story and seeing her relationship a little bit better with her father, I think kind of helped you understand where Alphaba was coming from a lot better than in the musical. I'm realizing now that like we, we haven't really set the stage for what this musical is for anyone who might not be familiar. So it is based on the Wizard of Oz IP. It is essentially the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch. And so you meet Elphaba, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda when they are, I don't want to say school children, essentially like university students. Yeah, yeah.

8:19 Yep, it's college. OK, so you meet them in college and they become frenemies and then besties, and then a whole bunch of stuff goes down in the Land of Oz, political cover ups galore. And then Elphaba essentially becomes the scapegoat for all of this. And Julie, you already alluded to this. The movie is left on a cliffhanger as she is kind of driven out of Oz, becoming a fugitive, but, you know, fully empowered by her anthem defying gravity. And that's like the end of the movie right there. Yeah, and the tagline for the musical is so much happened before Dorothy dropped in, because it basically shows you where everything that you're going to see in The Wizard of Oz comes from, which I really enjoy because there's some Easter eggs in this first movie that if you've seen it, give things away for the second act. But I was in the car with Bob on the way home going, Oh my gosh, I could spoil so many things for you. And he's going don't because I think I'm in a good place right now.

9:14 Yeah, I really thought that this movie did a great job of knowing what the audience is probably familiar with from The Wizard of Oz, like lore and dropping in what I assumed to be Easter eggs for things that are going to happen in the musical. But like, most of them went over my head. But I could still tell that they were trying to, like, do a little bit of fan service, but it never felt like Pandaree. It never felt like the way they do it when you're watching a Marvel movie or something like that. And I, I really appreciated that because, you know, me being a complete noob to this story, I thought that that John Chu and the screenwriters really kind of held my hand and watched me through this world in a way that built out the world that didn't seem like cloying or like it was talking down to me.

9:58 And I was also never bored. And that's like that says a lot over the course of two hours and 40 minutes. Mm hmm, and they really did have a brick of a book because the book for Wicked is probably like 400 plus pages. Wait, so are you like when you say the book, are you talking the? The book that the musical is based off of Wicked. Like a novel. Yes, there is a whole novel. It came out in 1995 and it's like thick. I've never read it. I've heard really good things though. But they really pulled from the book to fill things in here and to flesh things out more. And again, I haven't read the book, but I think they really did stick to the source material because everything that's supposed to get hit in the musical gets hit and explained upon.

10:38 So you can tell they definitely dived back into that original source material to tell this story better. All right, so let's kind of talk about the cast here. And I wanted to go through like all the tiny side characters because you were telling me, Oh, such and such is a guy that was on Broadway. And to be frank, Julie, like this is a this is a two person musical. Like it is. Of course Michelle Yeoh deserves a mention here and and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard deserves a mention, but even they feel like third level characters, do you know what I mean? Like they're the 2nd or the 3rd and 4th largest characters in the movie probably. And they feel like they're pushed off to the side because this is such a two person show. So you've got Ariana Grande as Glinda, you've got Cynthia Arevo playing Elphaba, and they are filling in the shoes that were made famous by Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, respectively, on Broadway.

11:33 Who would you like to start with 'cause I think these both both of these performances deserve some discussion here. I honestly could start with either of them. It's you can tell that on Broadway Linda and Alphaba bow together at the end. There is no lead character per SE in this musical even though I personally believe it is Alphaba as the main character of this show. But they put them both up for best actress in the musical. They competed against each other because they agree with your opinion there that it is a two person leading musical. So I mean, I'm good with starting with either. Let's start with Ariana Grande because my my hottest take on the movie is that Ariana Grande is good, period.

12:14 Like I I would say she's better than fine. I would say that there are definitely scenes where especially towards the end of the film where she's more like exasperated and gets tearful that she actually brings out the acting chops. But I felt like for about 75% of the movie, her role was to be overblown mean girl Comic Relief, and she did that well. But when you're going up against Cynthia Areevo, she's playing a more shallow character. And I also felt like she wasn't really like plumbing the depths that that Cynthia Areevo was acting wise either. Yeah, I really, I thought her performance was a complete beautiful homage to Kristin Chenoweth's Glenda.

12:55 Because if you're like me and a nerd, you've watched all the behind the scenes stuff, talking about it and her story with trying to get Glenda and how proud she wanted to make Kristin Chenoweth 'cause they're really good friends in real life. You could tell that she put the character work in to make Kristin Chenoweth proud. And I think she did here because I was really worried with, you know, we all know Ariana Grande is. Yeah. When she sings, you know, she's like, yeah. And I'm Ariana Grande. And I was really worried she was going to bring too much of that into this character. When she originally was announced as Glinda, you could tell the girl took some voice lessons to make her voice sound operatic. I thought her singing was beautiful in this. She definitely has the, like, the physical vocal range to pull this off, which I didn't realize that she could hit that upper register as as much as she can.

13:43 And you were telling me before the film started about Kristin Chenoweth being a trained opera singer before she moved to Broadway. I do think that like some of the really, really high operatic notes, like she hits them, they're not her strong suit, you know what I'm saying? And I think that like if we can move to Cynthia Erivo, I just there's there's so much surrounding this movie and Cynthia Erivo maybe or maybe not being difficult to work with and they'll. Don't erase her, Bob. Yeah, the whole don't erase me thing. And I think people are kind of carrying in some ill will towards her as they go into this movie. And once the movie starts, it's like, oh, no, Cynthia Erivo is one of the most talented people in the world. Like she she does this thing, this kind of knowing, sideways little smirk grin that she does 100 times in this movie and it works every single time. Every time.

14:31 Oh my gosh, she just, the levels of charisma dripping off of this woman are unbelievable. But then she brings so much emotion to every single song in this film that she sings. It was like I would forget that this was a musical for long stretches because there wouldn't be a number. And especially when they would just plop you into a Cynthia Arevo song. I was like, oh, this is this is what musicals are supposed to be. Yeah, I it's very alphaba of her to have a controversy surrounding her as this huge important role probably for at least right now, the defining role of her life so far coming out that she's got all this controversy. It's very alphaba of her because everywhere Alphaba goes, she causes controversy. And I mean, I knew she was going to kill it. I was blown away.

15:17 I mean, like you said, every time they pulled close to her face. And, you know, they probably did this after just watching how charismatic she is on screen. Every time they pulled close, you just felt such emotion. And when she cried, I'm finding myself tearing up. I've seen this musical. I know what's about to happen. And I'm sitting there going, she's going to defy gravity. She's gonna do it, man. The first real song that she gets is kind of. Wizard and I. Yeah, it's it's like the I once song. It's called The Wizard and I again, you boy, not familiar with this musical. And it it goes the whole bell in Beauty and the Beast running across an open field at the end of this musical number. By the way, pretty bad CGI in that. That was probably the worst part of CGI in that whole movie was those white cliffs with her just like superimposed stand with her arms.

16:09 Up And yet we're in a packed theater yesterday and there's just something special, like when you can feel the charged energy of a crowd watching something I I would have bet my life savings that that crowd was about to erupt into applause when she hit the last note of the wizard and I I. Was ready to. I was too. I'm surprised nobody did it. I feel bad that I didn't start that round of applause, but it's it's kind of a throwaway song in the grand scheme of the musical 'cause you're waiting for something having big like Popular or Defying Gravity. And even that number had so much care and and effort put into it by Cynthia Erivo that I was like ready to give her a standing ovation right then and there. Yeah, it definitely, I've said this to you in the car out on the way home.

16:53 In most musicals, that would be the 11:00 number with how much it builds and builds and those last few notes that she hits like that's it's a huge number for almost any other show that I've seen. And they're just like, this can be, I guess, third in this one. I guess we'll just, you know, give her a little doodad here and move on with our lives. And it's like what? Right. Yeah, that's every other musical's best number by far. Yeah, and she's just like, I guess I'll pump this out third and move on with my Dick. So let's talk about it as a movie a little bit. And, and, you know, obviously you can't separate it from it being a, a musical or an adaptation, but I'm trying just like if we can try to talk about it in a vacuum. I think it's a really good movie. I don't think it's like a 10 out of 10 movie for me. And part of it is that there are definitely a couple walls for me.

17:44 And it was funny, you and I were kind of disagreeing about this. On the way home. There's a Prince character named Fiero. And when he arrives on the scene at university, they give him like the I'm a bad boy kind of a greaser, like the way that he, like, undoes his little jacket and it looks like he has like a Danny Zuko shirt underneath it. And they have this big extended dance sequence to a song called Dancing Through Life. And I got to be honest, sis, like, that was that was long. I checked my watch a couple times. Dancing through life always a skip for me. I've every time I listen to the soundtrack I skip dancing through life. Jonathan Bailey, my favorite Fiero that I've seen.

18:25 The ones I've seen live. Jonathan Bailey was fantastic. He doesn't have much of A character. He doesn't. And that's why I was so surprised that I'm sitting there watching dancing through Life, being like, wow, I want to go to the Oz Dust Ballroom with you, Jonathan Bailey, AKA Anthony Bridgerton. Anthony Bridgerton's the worst. And I'm like, yeah, Anthony Bridgerton, let's go. But I really, he had that. I kept thinking, like, boy band appeal, that he definitely sang it poppier than I've singing on Broadway. And I think that's what that song needs. He'd sing it more like Harry Styles would get up and sing it if Harry Styles was it karaoke night, You know, he had runs in there that weren't Broadway, but they worked so well for his character. And I'm like, this is what Fieros needed this entire time. He needs to come and be like, you know, don't break my heart, all that kind of stuff.

19:16 It was really good. I thought his charisma was fantastic. Yeah, And maybe it's just that I'm pushing back on the inclusion of that song at all because for me, you know, I'm watching this movie and there's this subplot about animals who can talk, and they're losing their voice because they're being oppressed and systematically, like, genocided by by who knows who. And you're like, oh, man, there's a lot of intrigue going on. And right before that happened, you you start to get the kind of bickering greenness between Elphaba and Glinda. They sing this song about like, how they loathe each other. I thought that was hilarious. And so I'm on board. And I'm really caught up in the momentum that this movie's building. And then they're like, and a love interest needs to come in now. And I just thought Wickeds.

19:59 Boys to fight better than Wickeds, girls to fight better than over a boy. That's true. I just felt like a ground the thing to a halt. And then as soon as they move past that, they go to this big kind of ball called the Oz Dust. And I thought that that scene was maybe the best scene in the whole movie. And it was a scene that you said like that was the lull for you. And and watching Cynthia Erivo get emotional as they're like ridiculing her. I just thought that's like, that's the Oscar clip for Cynthia Erivo. Like put that thing in the Oscars clip because it it nailed it for me. Yeah, I think there's this thing when you study theater. It's called the Rodgers and Hammerstein formula. When they wrote Oklahoma, they have a specific formula that every musical followed from that point out. It was boy meets girl, girl meets boy. Whoever's the lead, they fall in love. They have a conflict and then they have to resolve it. And I think they definitely included the Fiero character in the Fiero Problem, especially for this movie to fulfill that golden rule of Broadway.

21:02 Because without the inclusion of Fiero, you just have two girls bickering. And the rule with Rodgers and Hammerstein is if you don't have I have Love in it, it's not a good musical. And obviously Fiero plays a much bigger role in all of this in Act 2, which will be Part 2 of Wicked. But he definitely comes in and plays the role he needs to play in this for his character. Because like you said, he really is a small character for how big of a number they give him in act one. And it this sounds like A to be continued, but it makes a lot more sense once you see Act 2. See, and that that's the issue for me as a guy who's like, I'm just trying to look at this as one self-contained piece of movie making. And you can't really do that because, you know, there's an act 2 coming. So it's like, I don't, I'm not saying I want to hold it against the movie, but the answer can't always just be like, oh, don't worry.

21:54 Like it'll make way more sense once you see the second one. And that's an issue I've had with tons of movies recently, like Dune. I just feel like we've gotten to the point where we're taking IP that should be one movie and we're purposely expanding it to 234 movies just to try to milk as much money as we can. And I think to this movie's credit, I didn't feel like that 99% of the time. You know what I mean? I I don't know if he felt the same way, but. Yeah, 'cause they really, they probably could have made a fantastic, both acts included in one movie adaptation of Wicked. And for the fans it would have been fine. It would have been satisfying if they just copy pasted. I really do think they took a gamble though, because I Remember Me and you were having a conversation before you were like, man, I didn't expect this many people to show up to this today at the screening we saw and you're like, I had AI thought like there was a portion of my mind that was like, maybe this thing's gonna bomb because they have been pushing this movie harder than anything I recall in the last few years. Like huge, huge advertising budget for this movie. So they really did take a risk of what if they would have put all of this into it and the movie completely bombs and we don't get Act 2 because we've seen that happen with a lot of movies recently in all these standing franchises of something bombs.

23:06 And they're just like, all right, we're going to release you direct to Disney Plus or whatever. So they really did take a OK, we're going to put all of this fleshing out and character building into one movie and just cross our fingers and say like, we're either going to release both of them knowing they're bombing, or we're going to release 1 and just have it stand by itself. All right, spoiler free because I haven't seen Act 2. Obviously. Having now seen the two hour and 40 minute version of Act one, do you feel like they made the right choice? A to split it into two movies and B to flush it out as much as they did. I do. I will say though, I don't think they can do that with the second movie. I think the second movie has to be significantly shorter. Is there just not as much musical left or like there's?

23:48 A There's a lot of music left, but there's not the rest of the story. Where we pick up in Act 2 only takes a few weeks, so they can't flesh it out over. There's like a time jump between 1:00 and 2:00. They can't flesh it out into two hours probably without having to pull a lot from the book material because the musical, the second act moves very fast. OK. So I think if they, I think they made the right decision in doing all of this world building, but I don't think the second-half of this can be two hours and 40 minutes without it really dragging in places. Before we wrap up, I do want to say you were just talking about the marketing for this movie. And I do think that this is like the most classical movie marketing I've seen in a long time.

24:31 Like I'm seeing it on TV, I'm hearing it on the radio. Like they're using channels that they just usually ignore anymore, which I really love. It feels like, hey, let's all go back to the movies finally, you know, But all of the marketing has been built around that final note of defying gravity. And having now seen the movie, I think it's so brilliant because you know it's coming and you know, that's probably where the movie is going to end. And they even within the song, they keep cutting away. The music keeps dropping. They keep building to it. And every time you think she's going to go to it, she doesn't go to it. And then then when it finally happens, it's pretty rare that something gives me chills in a movie theater now. But like, legitimate chills at the end of that song.

25:14 The only thing I was upset about, I don't know if this is a huge spoiler or not, but I discussed this with you as we were leaving the theater. I really wish they would have cut as soon as the note hit like they do on Broadway because the end of act one in Defying Gravity, she sings the note, everyone in the chorus hits their big note and then it's blackout and they showed Alpha but like fly off in glory at the end and I'm like, that was great. You look great, Cynthia, proud of you. But that was about 15 extra seconds of just music that we didn't need. I think it would have been a lot more powerful to follow the Broadway there and just black out on the note. Yeah, yeah, folks, sorry for the spoiler, but there's 15 seconds of flying at the end of this movie. I, I don't know how upset people are going to get there to be like, why would you give that away? They probably will.

25:57 What did you think of the color saturation throughout this movie? That was one thing. Oz is colorful and there were times where I felt Oz looked muted so. There's. Lots of pastels. It wasn't as vibrant as I pictured because like we all think of the part where Dorothy walks from Kansas into Oz and how big and bright everything was and I missed the brightness in some parts. Yeah, it looked, it had the color palette of like one of those shitty Tim Burton Disney movies. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like it looked exactly like the, the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland aesthetic and that really sucked. I, I think that they try to do as much as they could, especially in the early scenes, like when they're doing kind of Ding Dong the witch is dead of showing like the flowers on the ground looking really vibrant.

26:44 But even then, it looked like it's kind of like when you buy a light bulb in your house and you can either buy the ones that are more yellow or than ones that are more like daylight white. It looked like they filmed everything under daylight white in those scenes. And so it still didn't have like that Technicolor pop to it. Yeah, that was the only thing, because I agree with you, like sets, costumes, like they put in the work and they're going to get up for everything, deservedly so. But that was the only thing is I just felt the color saturation was off. And that's the biggest thing I've seen online as a complaint from people who have seen the movie early, is that they missed the big brightness. And I agree with that. Yeah. And I think the only other thing that is like a big hang up for me is I think the CGI is pretty bad, pretty rough in parts. Hit and miss for sure.

27:25 Like, and when it's hitting, it's still very obviously CGI. That's The thing is it's not like seamless, but the very first shot of the movie is this kind of long extended Warner where they're showing like the the ruins of the witch's castle and you see her hat and then it flies out and follows a monkey and just like everything CG and it looks real bad. They even give us our quartet from Wizard of Oz walking back down the yellow brick road and they were very clearly CGI it. Looks like APS 2 game. It really did, yeah. And so when your movie costs like $200 million, you do kind of hope that it would be a little bit better than that. But I think, again, to the movie's credit, it doesn't over rely on those things. And I think for the most part, you know, the the monkeys come back in at the end of the movie and they're pretty substantial. And so it does, again, it takes it down just a really small peg for me from where it could have been. But I did like that it wasn't over reliant on CGI. Yeah, I agree a lot of that stuff because when you meet the Wizard of Oz, I assumed that the whole mask that Jeff Goldblum talks through when he's I'm Oz the Great and Powerful, all that.

28:32 I assumed that was CGI and that was real, that whole that whole room they were in. Because I saw a TikTok last night of people doing interviews on there with Jeff Goldblum and he's like, Nope, this whole thing's real. Like he was showing how to work it and everything. And I was like, look at you, Jeff Goldblum, you go. All right, I think we should give this movie some final scores here. So I'm I'm looking at it not from like how faithful of an adaptation is it? I'm just trying to look at it as how good of a movie is this? And I think this is like an 8 out of 10 movie. This is really, really darn good. I actually think it's a better movie movie than In the Heights, which was John Chu's last movie and last adaptation that he did. I think it's right on par with like The Color Purple that came out a couple years ago. I think that the craftsmanship in this movie in terms of like set design, costuming, incredible. Like it's going to, it's going to be nominated for a ton of Oscars and it feels like big old fashioned movie making in a lot of ways.

29:27 I had a blast, Julie. I'm gonna give it an 8 out of 10. I think I'm looking at this more from a movie or a musical to movie adaptation instead of just like I'm gonna score it as a movie 'cause that's your thing, Bob. So I'm gonna score it as like how good of an adaptation. I think this is up there with me, probably with Hairspray. Hairspray is one of my favorite all time movie musical adaptations. I really think this was a fantastic adaptation of a musical to a movie. They really did the homework and went through and got the things they needed to help the audience who, like you, were not familiar with what Wicked is about, to understand it completely and to get invested in the world. I'm, I'm going to give it a 9.5 out of 10 because I really, I went in expecting to be disappointed and it surpassed it at every level for me. Because when you look at something as iconic and as big and as influential as Wicked as been on Broadway, you expect it to disappoint you.

30:22 And it did not disappoint me at all. Well, that's awesome. All right, So it's an 8 for me. It's a nine and a half from the Twins on Tour podcast over here. You're welcome, Jen. I scored it for you. For an average of an 8.75 out of 10. Wicked is in theaters today, folks. Go see it. It's a good Thanksgiving movie. It is. It's a good family film. Julie, it's good to have you on the show. Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about having you on for so long. You guys are Harry Potter experts and we did all eight Harry Potters without having you on. So I was very better about. That this is me making it up to you. Thank you so much. Julie, where can we find you and tell us the handles for Twins on Tour? All right, so where? I mean, we're everywhere. You can listen to a good old podcast on Instagram. We are the dot twins dot on dot tour 1 because it that's the only name it let us pick.

31:09 We are on threads at twins on tour. We are on Facebook, the Twins on Tour podcast and you can pretty much just find us anywhere you Google the Twins on Tour podcast where the first thing that pops up. There you go. All right, let's get to my interview with Mike Spadier from Still Austin Distillery. All right. I'm joined by Mike Spadier, who is the head of marketing for Still Austin Distillery. Mike, how are you today? I'm doing well, man. How are you? I'm doing great, folks. It's not super often that my day job and my podcast job overlap like this. But as you guys know, I'm a marketer by day and I saw a really exciting marketing campaign kind of come across the Internet over the last week and hit Instagram pretty hard. And people are justifiably freaking out about it because still Austin, who you may remember, remember from some of our reviews on this podcast based out of Austin, TX, is really disrupting the industry with this new campaign. Mike, before we even really dive into the specifics of the campaign, first of all, thank you so much for being here. Tell us a little bit about your history with the brand. How long have you been doing marketing for them? Yeah.

32:17 So thanks for having me on, first of all, and for the kind words. Yeah. I've been working with Still Austin since about 2020. So I used to own a marketing agency here in Austin and Still Austin became one of my clients and we were doing kind of digital advertising, social media, content design, things like that. And in 2022, I sold my agency and came on full time as Chief Marketing Officer for Still Austin. So been working with the brand since 2020, kind of a fractional CMO for the first couple years and then full time CMO since 2022.

33:00 All right. Let's kind of set the stage for this marketing campaign a little bit. So obviously I'm not working there with you in Austin, but I have to imagine that when you are starting a whiskey company outside of Kentucky and your primary focus is on bourbon and rye that you're automatically fighting both the perception of, hey, it's not from Kentucky, so therefore it's lesser quality. And also the perception that people have, which is again, is an incorrect one that oh, it's not in Kentucky, so therefore it can't be called bourbon. So I think you guys have done a great job of leaning into that. Hey, we got to educate the public a little bit here side of things. But I imagine that before you kind of went all in on making that your marketing like lean that it was a huge point of frustration for you guys. I'm sure this is a conversation you're having all the time with people.

33:48 You know, I would say the first first couple years, it was very frustrating. It was always kind of like a man, how come people don't understand this? It's really easy to Google. Why does everyone think this? And then probably after a year or so, we were kind of like just resolved to it. Like, oh, that's OK, be cares. And then, and then in the last, I would say 6 to 8 months or so, it became like a, like you said, like, let's see how we can lean into this, right? And so we made a couple of videos and social media posts that were almost like making fun of the idea. So we did a lot of posts that were like kind of clipping people's comments and all this stuff. And, you know, basically bourbon outside of Kentucky is going to always have a, an initial stigma of like, well, it's probably not any good.

34:39 I think we've done a good job over the last few years of kind of proving that it can be from anywhere and still be good. And so then we just kind of kept playing with this notion that what could we do to highlight this and lean into it and everything else. And then we looked at the calendar because we're the, we're the official whiskey partner of the Texas Longhorns, which is here in in town, the University of Texas. And we were looking at the the calendar and the schedule of games coming up and we noticed that on Saturday, November 23rd, Kentucky was coming to play us here for football. That's. Awesome. I was like, oh, we should do something to, you know, make fun of that or, or celebrate that, however you're looking at it. And that's kind of where the idea came from. Oh, that's awesome, man.

35:25 Yeah. I mean, and beyond that kind of timing, I think it really is the best possible time for you guys to stake your claim here because we've been talking about it on the podcast all year. The bourbon industry has really been in kind of a state of flux over the last year. I think that a lot of the big name players are trying to find their footing again. We've seen a lot of acquisitions. And so for you guys to really stake your claim out in Texas as hey, not only are we, you know, the Texas whiskey that needs to be on your radar, but put us up against any of these Kentucky brands and see exactly what we can do. It seems like a really ripe time for you guys to try to get a corner on the market right now. You know, yeah, thank you. I, I think if we were to just be, you know, starting from scratch and then just coming out of the gate saying where is good or better than Kentucky, Where is good or better, Kentucky, Kentucky, Kentucky.

36:14 I think I've actually seen quite a few brands maybe overplay their hand a little bit and try and like make the case to say, hey, we should be in this conversation. And to be honest with you, the only reason we've even embraced that sort of like topic is because it's being said about us. We, we didn't set out to be the anti Kentucky or be in the conversation with Kentucky. We just set out to like make good whiskey. But what's happened over the last four years is a lot of like really well known critics and a lot of urban people online and, and in comments and forums and podcasts and everything.

36:56 They're the ones that keep saying it, You know, they keep saying, I can't believe this is from Texas. This is some of the best stuff to come out of Texas. This is as good as stuff that's coming out of Kentucky. And so, yeah, at at some point we just said, all right, screw it. If if people are saying this about us already, let's just go for it. Yeah. Well, and I think what I love about the way that the campaign is rolled out to this point has been that you guys aren't on the offensive. You're not taking on Kentucky. It's just like, hey, we want to make you guys aware that good whiskey can come from anywhere. Good bourbon can come from anywhere in the United States and that shouldn't be a burden or an obstacle to you trying this. And I think let's get into talking about this actual new campaign because this thing is exciting as hell. I was talking with my Co host Brad about it right before I jumped on with you.

37:42 And I asked him, like, you know, if you had to sum up the the spirit of this campaign, what would you call it? And he's just kept saying cheeky. It's real cheeky. And I, I really like that phrase because there's a playfulness about it that it's, you guys aren't for, you know, pardon my French here. You guys aren't being assholes about it. You're not taking on the entire industry in Kentucky. But it's a really playful take on this perception of what whiskey, you know, should come from or should look like. Mike, why don't you go ahead and break down a little bit for our audience what the new promotion is? Yeah, so it all stems from that, that misinformation. And so from all everyone kind of for years saying it's not real if it's it's not real bourbon, if it's not from Kentucky or it can't be any good because it's not from Kentucky.

38:26 And so he said, all right, well, what can we do here? So let's let's say the enemy or the target or whatever you want to say in your words, not being Kentucky is correct. We definitely don't want to say we're, you know, screw Kentucky. We're better than them. They don't make good stuff. Like, clearly they're the originators. There's no disputing Kentucky makes good stuff. Our whole thing is like, OK, well, we we've belong in that conversation. I think we've proven that good stuff can come from anywhere. And so the target or the enemy in the cheekiness of the campaign is really kind of the invisible misinformed customer, right? And, and I think what's nice about that is, you know, typically if you see somebody online say, oh, it's not real, if it's not part in Kentucky or whatever, you typically will see something underneath that where somebody's, you know, joining into the the conversation. Actually, that's not true.

39:20 Here's the truth, You know, so it's like we're almost like attacking the misinformed consumer that everyone is sort of like educating at the same time, which I think is sort of the cheekiness of the whole idea. So calling it, you know, Kentucky fill up day is basically what what the whole idea is to say. All right, Well, you think, I think the the intro is really like, in spite of our best efforts to let people know that good bourbon can come from anywhere, there's still a lot of misinformation out there that only good bourbon can come from Kentucky. So what we're saying is all right, once you're finished with your next bottle of your precious Kentucky bourbon. Bring that empty bottle to us here at our distillery in Austin and we will refill it with our award-winning Cast Strength bourbon whiskey for only $1.00 so that you can see for yourself just how good Texas whiskey is.

40:15 And so that's kind of the start and the finish of the whole thing. And obviously being able to say like come get a dollar bottle of whiskey is already kind of its own, you know, popular thing. People that already know our brand and love our Cast Strength bourbon are, you know, jumping at the chance to get a dollar bottle of that. And then really the fun cheeky part is like, we're going to put it inside of Kentucky's bottles. So, so you know, some of the imagery I think you've probably seen, but maybe see like a bottle of Makers or Bullet or Jim Beam or something like that with our label just stuck on top of it is pretty appalling to some people. Well, I mean, so again, you know, when when you work in marketing, you learn to see a good campaign and from the optics of it, first of all, like seeing your whiskey in a Maker's bottle is just that's, it's brilliant marketing. The $1.00 aspect of it is brilliant marketing. People feel like they're getting an incredible value and they are.

41:09 I mean, it's what like $60.00 off the, the shelf price of this stuff. But then I have to also imagine that like, your bosses are pretty happy with this as well because you've already made the product. Like it's, it's just, it's stuff you guys have on hand that you're able to, you know, essentially be a loss leader for you guys. It's just, dude, I, I don't know what else to tell you, but this is for me, the most brilliant marketing campaign I've seen in the alcohol space this year. I really appreciate that, man. I think the team, the team is really excited about it. We were really, you know, as you said, your bosses are happy. I was expecting the bosses to shut this down after. This is one of those campaigns where like, you know, I'm, I'm sure you understand this, but you sit around with your team, you come up with weird ideas all day long. And then every once in a while you go, oh, that's kind of fun or that's really interesting.

42:01 Let's let's run that up the flagpole. And this is one of those ideas where, you know, we were fully expecting once we go run this up, they're just going to say, oh, that's funny. But yeah, there's no way we can do that. And you know, the further we got through the planning and everyone just kept saying, yeah, I love it, let's go for it. I was like, it's eventually someone's going to say no to this, right? And Nope, hey, let us do it. It's almost scarier when you get green lights all the way up. Totally. Oh. Yeah, absolutely. I, I had a few moments, you know, crisis of confidence with the team where I was like, I think what's bugging me here is that nobody said no to this. And I fully expected it and I don't know what to do. Well, Mike, I, I again, I think this is super successful ad campaign for you guys.

42:51 Tell us a little bit about what's coming up next for Still Austin in the wake of this thing. I imagine you guys are going to take a nice long nap after Kentucky Fill up day, but you guys have anything coming down the Pike that you'd like to announce here or plug a little bit? Yeah. I mean, we've had nothing but non-stop marketing, product releases, campaigns this whole year has been nuts. And we've we've seen some really, really strong success. And so Kentucky Phillips Day is this weekend, I'm not sure when this is coming out, but Saturday, November 23rd. And then next week right on the heels of that, we will be making our full announcement for our most premium release we've ever had before, which is called Tanager.

43:32 And if you follow us or, or or in our orbit, you might have seen some a little bit of info or imagery that's been released about that so far, our most premium release. It's it's a really, really cool mix of old world techniques from our master blender, Nancy Fraley that she's learned from Armagnac and cognac regions. And the Nashville is a red, white and blue corn mix and really, really interesting like process for how this thing was made. And if you're familiar with like slow water reduction, how we how we kind of like reduce our, our bourbon now or we slowly add water over time, this is kind of like a successor to that a little bit more interesting in the way the process works.

44:21 And I think on the site you'll be able to kind of read all about it. But it's this process called Petito, which they use in cognac and Armaniac. And essentially what it is is after we've extracted whiskey from a barrel, we then add water back to the barrel and that water ages in the barrel. And so the water is taking on all kinds of wood sugars and flavors and characteristics of that spent Ferrell over the course of the year. And then it kind of it takes on, you know, 20 to 50 kind of proof actually of, of, of alcohol. And then instead of adding water like we normally would in the, in the process, we actually take whiskey that we've been aging for five or six years and then add it to the water. And so the water creates this really interesting mouthfeel and super long lingering finish.

45:14 And Nancy, who the, the our master blender sort of kind of created this cigar blend bourbon. And so with this whole process, it's our very first cigar blend bourbon. It's called Tanager and it's going to be awesome. Folks, this has been Mike Spade Here. He is CMO over at Still Austin, and he has headed up the best ad campaign of 2024 in the spirits realm. Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it man. You can find Film and Whiskey on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube at Film Whiskey, or you can jump into our Discord server. We're on there every single day talking to you guys, fans of the Film and Whiskey podcast, about Wicked, about Broadway, about anything you want.

45:55 You can find the link to our Discord at the end of every single one of our show notes. We'll be back next Tuesday with a regularly scheduled episode, but until then, I'm Bob Book and we'll see you next time.