Blank Check with Griffin & David - Life of Pi with Ray Tintori

Episode Date: September 16, 2018

Filmmaker Ray Tintori joins Griffin and David to discuss 2012’s Oscar award winning drama, Life of Pi. But was Tobey Maguire in an early cut of the movie wearing a terrible wig? Did Ray’s mother work as a script supervisor on this film? Does Ang Lee know about this podcast? Together, they examine the early stages of development for this project, working with VR technology and Griffin sets the record straight about his father. This episode is sponsored by [Casper](https://www.casper.com/check) CODE: CHECK, Vanity Fair’s [Little Gold Men](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/little-gold-men/id1042433465?mt=2) podcast and Abrams Books’ new release [Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/typeset-in-the-future_9781419727146/) by Dave Addey. [Halon Entertainment - Life of Pi Previs Highlight Reel](https://vimeo.com/64898823) [Dennis Hopper reading “If” by Rudyard Kipling on the Johnny Cash Show](https://youtu.be/T2LUbk_7uKg)

blank check with griffin and david blank check with griffin and david don't know what to say or to expect all you need to know is that the name of the show is blank check podcasts don't think like we do people forget i gotta start over podcasts don't think like we do. People forget. I gotta start over. Podcasts don't think like we do. People who forget like that. Jesus Christ. What the fuck? Podcasts don't think like we do.

People who forget that get themselves killed. When you look into a podcast's eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you and nothing else. It's true. It's true. It's true, right? It's a good line. I didn't go for the most iconic line. I looked for the truest line.

True friends. We are, of course, hashtag the true friends. And this is Blank Check. This is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their career and have given a series of blankks to make whatever crazy passion project. I can't speak to that. I didn't sleep very well.

You're a disaster. I'm a disaster. Why didn't you sleep well? I mean, what a time waste of a question. The old backaroo? Back's not doing great. Sure. I don't know if our guest knows this.

I have a serious back injury. How'd you get that? Work. Doing stunts? Dial injury. How'd you get that? Work. Doing stunts? Dialogue. Dialogue. Yeah, you know, the way that serious actors injure themselves on a stunt-based TV show. Is it a good shot?

Marshall. You think it'll make the show? It's certainly not like the moment in Mr. Impossible Fallout. Can we talk about Fallout right now? Can we start right now? Yeah, because for film nerds like us, you see Fallout and you turn to whoever you're seeing it with and you go, that's the shot where he broke his ankle. And it's really exciting to people.

And they're like, seriously? And you're like, yeah, he's running on the broken ankle. I had no idea that that shot was going to start a minute and a half before the injury. That he was just going to book across that roof. And when I realized that that's what I was seeing was like a rubber band just being pulled and pulled and pulled yeah i was going to end with like like tom cruise actually injuring himself on screen yeah it doesn't end that's the middle of the chase is what's crazy i'm saying that shot oh yes yes yes it is uh insane there is a moment i cannot get over in that movie

which is when like as part of the comedic dynamic of Benji giving him all the dumb glib notes, where he goes, can you go any faster? And Tom Cruise looks like he's running as fast as any human can, and then he throttles up to the next gear. I cannot get past that moment.

That's great. I need to see it again. When I need to get hyped up about stuff, I listen to the track, the score track on the soundtrack when he's running. Which one is that? Because I listen to the score a lot. I think it's called like Windows and Rooftops or something like that.

Yeah, there's the best track. Now I'm going to look up my favorite track. I've seen it four times. I saw it twice last weekend. That's a good weekend. I want to tell you, there's a really cool thing music-wise in that movie, which is that moment where he crashes the motorcycle and then pulls out a knife and you're just like, what are you doing, motherfucker? You got nothing. And then he slips

into the hole and then you're underground and it's cold and dark and safe. They start playing a cue that is actually just a lift from the old 60s TV show. Copied and pasted right onto the movie. It doesn't sound like anything else in the movie. And it's this weird dog whistle that just like, I wept with joy

for like four minutes after seeing that movie for the first time. I just love it. I do think it's the best score out of the six movies. No. No.

I think this one's incredibly good. Great score. Incredibly good. Great score. Your favorites goes protocol. Those strings though. Yeah.

I think this is the best score but it's like never gonna get enough credit because it's so much repurposing of the pre-existing things. It's pretty distant from the last two scores. I also love the Rogue Nation

score. I think the Rogue Nation score is fabulous. It's a series with good scores and I like that they switch it up. Yeah I do too. I do too.

The series five score is very orchestral. Yes. And there's number six is much more series five. I just said I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Fallout is much more like electronic and music-y and weird.

It's very like haunted. Fallout. Fallout though. Fallout is a celebration of life. It's a celebration of dance. All your good intentions. Yes. I won't let you down.

The blood. I won't let you down. You choose. Je suis désolé. I won't let you down. You choose to I won't let you down. You choose. Je suis désolé. I won't let you down. You choose to accept it. So this podcast is about Fallout, directors who have massive success

all around their career, and sometimes those checks get misplaced. Jesus Christ. Sometimes those checks clear Ben, and sometimes they Fallout baby. It's a miniseries on films of Ang Lee.

We've gotten to his second Academy Award for Best Director. It's called Life of Pi. That is the movie we're talking about today. Yes. His highest grossing film? Worldwide, I think so. Shit. I watched

Pi. Ben. No. Ben. Damn it. Didn't you do worldwide I think so shit I watched pie Ben no Ben damn it didn't you do some other bit like this recently what did you text us I can't remember

we told him to watch taking Woodstock and instead he watched Woodstock 99 on YouTube no but no there was something with Billy Lynn as well

what was the Billy Lynn thing I can't remember I just I'm going through a rough patch in life we told him to watch Billy Lynn's long halftime walk and he thought we were telling him to take a long walk.

And that I did. He did. That he did. Ben's going through a transient stage. Is that fair to say? I'm going through an air mattress at various friends' apartment stage. Right. I think it's important that we document all of our personal lives

on this podcast so that if we ever listen back we'll be like oh that's what was happening to me can we say what day

it is because you guys never do that no we're not going to do that we want people to triangulate it to guess it

based on context I'm not giving you a date if you say a date I'm going to bleep it by the way Alec Baldwin just dropped out of the Joker movie

so Life of Pi is his third highest grossing domestic and his You say a date, I'm going to bleep it. By the way, Alec Baldwin just dropped out of the Joker movie. Life of Pies' third highest grossing domestic and his highest grossing worldwide. So the Crash on Tiger and Hulk beat it worldwide? Or domestic, I mean? Yeah. Okay. And worldwide, this was a blockbuster. By far, because I think his second highest grossing worldwide is Hulk, which made $2.45. And this made $6.09 worldwide.

That's such a weird thing. This was a huge hit in India $2.45. And this made $6.09 worldwide. That's such a weird thing. This was a huge hit in India and China. Yes. It was like his biggest movie in Asia, I think. For sure. It has to be. Far and away. To join us on today's episode, we have a very special guest. He's a dear friend of mine.

He's a remarkably talented filmmaker. Emmy Award winner? Absolutely. He's an Emmy Award winner. Do you know this? I wish I could say absolutely to the question Emmy Award winner. David, Pulitzer Prize winner? No. Give it a second.

Yeah, give me a minute. Ben, Fuckmaster? Hell yeah. His work can be seen on the new Netflix series,

Maniac, which will now will be out by the time this episode comes out. I'm not sure. It might be a week before Maniac. which will now be out by the time this episode comes out. I'm not sure. It might be a week before Maniac. I might legitimately be a part of the rollout of Maniac.

We'll be in the space. That's exciting, though. I didn't realize. That's great. Is that going to be good? I'm excited for that. Or I'm very intrigued by that. I can't put into words how good it is.

That's really fun. I'm so freaked out and honored to be a part of the crafts people that made that show I have a small like four minute section of it that I was responsible for and it was like felt like going back to film school or just I cannot speak highly enough of what those people are doing Cary Fukunaga right

is involved he's sort of back I feel like he's been chilling for a second there's a very good GQ article about him and sort of him feeling like I missed like four years prime of my directing life. I would have loved to have seen his it. Getting caught up in sort of the development cycle. Me too. You don't feel like a lot of his ideas

ended up in that movie? I think a lot of them did and I think that's the stuff I like more in the movie. And I have no problem with Andy Machete. I don't mind that movie. I think that movie's fun. I think that movie's solid. The stuff that really pops for me is the stuff that feels like it very much came out of his development. I like the part where he dances. He took the Alienist and It

all the way right to the end and then decided not to do it. Those are two projects I think are out there and that are popular. Pretty incubated by him. I think his producer on both of them. That's the thing. There are certain sections

in it where I just wish he was literally the person choosing the coverage. You know? Developmentally, I see him... Life of Pi. It's my fault. I lost down this road.

Ray, you have worked on several Ang Lee films. No. Worked on one. Yes. You have been on set for several. I visited two sets, and then I was an actor in Taking Woodstock, and I was also a camera operator in Taking Woodstock.

You play one of the filmmakers, so you're both on camera filming, and then some of your footage ends up in the movie when he does the crazy sort of Woodstock multi camera thing. Absolutely. Yes. What were the two

sets you visited though? I had a pivotal life experiencing life experience visiting the Ice Storm set as a seventh grader. That was your bar mitzvah right?

It honestly fucking was. It really fucking was. Like it was a yeah just a day that my life changed forever. Greats and Tories. I didn't know if I that was your bar mitzvah right it it honestly fucking was it really fucking was like um it was a yeah just a day that my life changed Ray Tintori

I didn't know if I said your name hi guys hi yeah Ray Tintori is here so Ice Storm was like a life changer for you yeah which I would love to give you guys

some of the details of because I think it's like the context of what was going on around that was just unbelievable and then I I spent three days

on the Billy Lynn set right um in Atlanta um and specifically the three around that was just unbelievable and then I spent three days on the Billy Lynn set in Atlanta and specifically the three days that was really they were shooting out that whole confrontation scene with Steve Martin at the very end so I basically was there very much flying the wall but just seeing Steve Martin work so hard you know for three days and really that was fast that was. Just to like, to see those weird cameras. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And to see people sweat. I love seeing geniuses when they don't know exactly what to, you know, it's like he, I

didn't, I would not say like, he was perfectly in control, but I feel like he's been labeled a genius like 25 years ago now. Yes. And so it's just like him actually showing up and being like, I'm going to earn this today was just like amazing to see. Here's a question for you. Watching Ang Lee work

with someone like Steve Martin, right, who is like such a veteran at this point and Ang Lee has this reputation for being like a man of few words in terms of how he directs his actors you know

how much does he have to like get hands on with a guy like Steve Martin about how weird and different this process is in terms of modulating his performance

because of the technology you know I mean I'll tell you when I say fly on the wall I mean I was on the wall they're in the center of the room sure I'm not like

you weren't butting your head into that conversation. I'm at the monitor, you know, with like cool 3D glasses on watching a feed of like, not high frame rate, but really watching in 3D.

I am not bothering anyone. I don't think anyone knows I'm there. And I certainly, I think good directors, as you know, do not say things so loud that everyone on the crew understands the back and forth

of how it... That's a very good point. That's a big difference between for me, like, a good director and a bad director. Sloppy director. Yeah. Well, there's just a thing if a director's like, I'm going to save time by just peeking my head in and yelling something. Right. They think they're saving time, but

they're actually killing, like, energy and goodwill. Right. Yeah. Because then it's sort of like your mom showing up in the playdate and being like, why haven't you done your laundry? You know, it,? It feels like that. Pick up your room. It's like a hurricane hitting here. Mom, I'm playing Lego.

Now you're out of the Lego space. I'm playing my Lego game where the wizard is the captain of this spaceship. What is that? I had a long running in my head Lego saga. Oh, that was your narrative? Centered on a spaceship I built,

but then I had like a wizard guy and at some point I put the wizard guy in the spaceship and I was like, I guess he's like the captain. Game changer. Yeah, and then I was like, so he does magic, but they're in space. And then they're like, right. It all sort of evolved around that.

Was that sort of like an ongoing narrative then? Yeah. That was, you established your play pattern. That was your... Sure. Sure. Yeah. I made myself like a space station pattern. That was your... Sure. Sure. Yeah. I made myself like a space station

that had a windmill inside of it so there was a bedroom with the gears in the center of the bedroom but then it also had like a crane on the outside so it could like have a loading dock. That was the,

that is super cool. That was a long narrative. My big thing was a, was a buddy cop dynamic between a cop and a T-Rex which I realized was just Theodore Rex. Right, right.

Which I had tried watching and given up on. It was like this bad as like a six-year-old. Right. And then I was like, but I think I can make this work. Yeah, maybe you did.

Up in the old bing bong, you know? Oh, boy. So, Life of Pi is a movie with a very interesting development history. Oh yeah, let's talk about it actually, Ray. And then Ray will get into the film itself.

Ray has set up a small office in the corner of the Audioboom recording studio. He's got some strawberry mango seltzer. Different colored markers. Two seltzers. Are you a two seltzer. Different colored markers. Two seltzers. Are you a two seltzer guy? Two coffees. Okay. A fruit bowl.

A phone charger. Hey, he's got an RX bar. I don't know if you noticed that. Hey. Great product, great company. I can't remember. Very much. I could not get the peanut butter chocolate though, which is my personal favorite.

Yes. Have you tried the peanut butter and jelly? No. Harder to find. Very good. Worth the effort. I'll say worth the effort. A gentleman's bar. But you've been doing like thorough research you've been

sending me over the last week all these different things you've been like digging up compiling editing condensing and then i did not forward any of it to david and ben because i'm a mess of a human being you certainly are this research was done out of crisis, I would say, more than out of a desire to be overprepared. There's a lot of stuff I know about the making of this film that I just wasn't,

basically, my boundary that I set was I can't come here and spill the beans on, I'm not the Julian Assange of Life of Pi, you know? You're not aiming to be

blank checking leaks. You're not going to blow the lid on this one. Your mother was a script supervisor for Ang Lee on like a number of his films.

She was a script supervisor on three films and the still photographer on one film. Okay. So it was Ice Storm, this,

Woodstock, and then Billy Lynn was the one where she was still a photographer. So he's like a family friend of yours and you did like

very thorough cross referencing to make sure that nothing you were saying hasn't already been shared publicly by and then the other thing if I can embarrass you is you did get like explicit permission from Ang Lee to be on the podcast to make sure he did not feel like you were betraying

trust yeah I think anything less would have been unacceptable I'm realizing I probably should have done the same with my father before I started talking about his financial problems four years ago. Oh, interesting. That might have been a smart thing to do. How's he doing these days? Okay.

Steady? That's good. I saw your dad at, I feel like the last time I saw your dad was at Brewster McLeod. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah, he showed up late. Ray is, I've up late uh Ray is

I've referenced this Ray is the person who and I've told him this is not anything he needs to feel guilt or shame about but at the premiere of the tick

Ray referenced how much he liked the bit of me talking about my father's financial problems oh absolutely not true you you you invoked it

in front of no no no what you said no I just remember what it was my brother and my father were there and you said I feel like I know you guys better was. My brother and my father were there and you said

I feel like I know you guys better because of the way Griffin talks about you on the show. And that made my father very paranoid to figure out what I had said about him.

Right? I think that's what you said. I told Jamesy who by the way did not appreciate being called Jamesy. And who you'd never met before and he doesn't go by Jamesy now

and whenever I invoke him in childhood stories I call him Jamesy because that was his name until he was like 10. The one story I referenced was some story about you having to have your toys cut back because Jamesy, which I thought was just hilarious. And he told me that was not what happened. It's 100% what happened. James got the Nintendo 64 when the Berlin Wall came down against video game systems in our home.

I was the same thing. I was the person who had to sort of fight and scratch to get the fucking thing. There was a video game Berlin Wall came down against video game systems in our home. I was the same thing. I was the person who had to sort of fight and scratch to get the fucking thing. There was a video game Berlin Wall. And then once we had them, my parents were like, oh, it's no big deal. James Lee went,

Peter Newman, tear down this wall. And he got the 64 in his bedroom because I had more toys because James didn't like toys so no one ever knew what to buy him. Interesting. I honestly think your father baited me at a certain point because because he was like you know i'm a gambling guy and like looked me really hard in the eye and i did i went and just didn't didn't take the bite to go gambling

with your dad here's the thing i want to clarify this on the record okay which my father will love curvy nooms on the record my father had a gambling problem previously the root of this problem was sports betting right that's the thing is like that's less fun to me i would want to go to like a casino guy yeah i think he's gone to casinos casually never has a control but he would he would call his bookie every week and be like no i i figured it out and like this week we're betting the spread on this and like you know that was his whole fucking thing and like like when i see like photos or videos of my parents before like i was born a lot of their friends referenced a lot just like that was his gambling buddy that was his bookie

when i'm like who's this guy why did i never know this guy and it was like these are the guys that were conditionally oh he was a last scene on the verizono bridge in 1982 and then he mysteriously disappeared right but it's like like needles from back to Future 2. And I'm like, who's this guy? My mom's like, that was the guy where your father had to stop seeing him in order for us to get married. Did you guys not like the needles line in Solo? Really? Oh, I love that. I forgot to reference it.

Wait, what's the needles line? My friend Needles who died doing this. I don't remember this line at all. Oh my God. You guys are too hard. A reference to the greatest character in the history of cinema. What are you, McFly, a chicken? So my father had a gambling problem.

It was like curtailed before I was born when my parents got married. And then independently, my father had financial problems because I've referenced both things. I think a lot of blankies have extrapolated and it's even on the Wikipedia that my father had a gambling

remission four years ago. Interesting. Which is not the fact, but that's sort of the narrative that's been crafted between the two things. I honestly think I know what happened, which was before I even met you. I had been listening to the podcast a little bit and the first thing that I told my father was,

Griffin really talks about Pete's gambling a lot on the show. And then I think my dad told him. And I think that... Oh, that's very possible. Does your dad listen to our show? No, I just told him. Does Young Lee listen to our show? Definitely.

Definitely, yes. He only listens to the Ben's Choices, though. Here's my concern. The one thing, I did ask for explicit permission, and I think I wrote him a... I showed you the letter. Yeah, very long, nice email. A letter?

Like a letter letter? Like on paper? An e-letter. It was a long enough email, I think, to qualify a... I showed you the letter. Yeah, very long, nice email. A letter? Like a letter letter? Like on paper? An e-letter. It was a long enough email, I think, to qualify as an animal. Just check. Just check. But I explained my understanding of the show. But I think the one thing I did not say

is that you are a silly Billy. Yeah, I am a silly Billy. I feel like the way you wrote the email made me sound a lot more legitimate. Because the way you described David is accurate and the way you described me made me sound like an adult yeah but I think I was honest about what I think is the actual

like the quality of the analysis going on here but I am like the shoe that I'm waiting to drop is like an email from Ang Lee that's just like subject to fart detective question mark you know like what the fuck who's this little stinker? Fart detective question mark? You know, like, what the fuck? You didn't tell me. Who's this little stinker? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm the general Talbot. I just like thinking that Ungly had to think about our existence for one second. I love it. You know, he didn't probably have to think about us for very long. He said he was delighted. Well, he's no, but he's a very thoughtful man. I think the second he found out about the podcast, I'm not saying he listened to it,

but I think he sat in a room in silence and really contemplated the notion of our podcast for six to eight hours. Right. And I love that notion. And I wish he had known, going into that deep thought, that I'm a little stinker,

but bygones. Bygones. So things we've now clarified. All right, we've done clarifying. My father's finances were not tied to gambling. We don't want to do another summer camp episode. He spent eight hours thinking about us. Fair, fair.

I did go to a summer camp in New Milford, Connecticut. It was for very special little boys and girls. Very special. Alright, so Jan Martell wrote a novel and it came out in 2001, I think. Yes, 2001. Big hit. Literary sensation. It was a hit. It won the Man Booker Prize

which is a big British literary award. David Sims read it by The Pool in 2002 Humblebrag on a summer vacation and so that's I feel like really crucial

to the narrative of this film that's the most important piece of context because that's the moment when president of 20th century Fox film production

Tom Rothman gets the email okay Sims has picked it up we officially have gone cultural moment Fox 2000 yes executive elizabeth gabler is hot on that book she's the one who hears that i was reading it by a pool she gets the ping yeah her beeper goes off and so she hires someone to write a screenplay

and they bring aboard who m knight shamalan let's get him on the very cool a very logical choice he's the most famous indian american director alive his films are very much about like religious M. Night Shyamalan. Let's get him on the boat. Very cool. A very logical choice. He's the most famous Indian-American director alive. His films are very much about religious crisis. Absolutely. Especially up until this point that's been a big thing.

He loves to wrestle with Catholicism and he's never really made since his debut film, like his debut film Praying with Anger, he never made a movie that really addressed identity in any particular way.

So maybe this is going to be a way for him to like, you know, kind of return to that initial theme that he explored. What a twist. But that's the interesting thing. I mean, this is very much of a piece with the things he was exploring in Praying with Anger and Wide Awake.

But he has unquestionably become a much stronger filmmaker at this point. So the notion of him going back to religious material, crisis of faith stuff, with his current toolkit. And it's also just exciting at that point. So the notion of him going back to religious material, crisis of faith stuff with his current toolkit. And it's also just exciting at that point in time to go like, oh shit and then Shyamalan's going to make something that is in no way a thriller is kind of

exciting. He says his big hesitation that eventually caused him to leave the project was that. He wrote his own screenplay for the film. He was like on board. It was going to be his direct follow up to the village it was set up

and he dropped out because he said I got freaked out about the fact that it was kind of a twist movie that it has a twist at the end

and I thought my name being attached to the movie with that twist at the end was gonna bring too much baggage into the theater

people would expect they'd be looking for he was very alarmed by the twisting and I get it actually I kinda do yeah but so he instead

makes Lady in the Water, which is a triumph. He makes another water movie. It's a fascinating sort of like sliding doors thing where you just wonder if he had gone straight from the village to this. He may have, like, you know, he might not have done a good job, though. Who knows? And also, it would have been a tougher movie to make even in 2004 or 5. Yes. You know, visual effects wise and everything. Like, I don't know how you do that shit. Like, maybe it would be a bad movie to make even in 2004 or 5 like yes you know visual effects wise and everything like I don't know how

you do that shit like maybe it'll be a bad movie but even just alternate reality where like he's got his deal at Disney he moves over to Fox to make Life of Pi he makes his Tony film then he just goes back to Disney and he still has that home whereas Lady in the Water like torpedoes like all of his major professional relationships

um yeah so he drops out and they replace him with You're right. It's real sliding doors. Alfonso Cuaron. Yes. Oh cool. And he decides to make

they really like contracted with the three like sort of visually exciting perhaps like non-American directors. I mean M. Night Shyamalan's American

but Alfonso Cuaron and then he drops out to make Children of Manda and Jean-Pierre Jeunet coming off of I guess a very long engagement. He's the next, yeah, because that's 2004. He's the next one who signs on,

writes a screenplay. Again, there's all these screenplays floating around by auteurs. Because every person who came onto the project really tried to make it their own. It wasn't like they were working off of the basic adaptation that had been commissioned. No, because that's the thing.

This film is credited to David McGee and no one else. None of the other scripts, I guess, were really involved. And this is a book that people had said was kind of unfilmable. Well, it's a book that's mostly set on a boat with one character and animals. And mostly just one animal.

And that's it. So yes, that's an inherently challenging. It's got a weird narrative structure. Weird narrative structure. It also has all this stuff about religion that is hard to convey. I guess, like you might worry to a mainstream audience.

And it's very it has this dumb framing device that can suck in movies. Yes. I like the framing device a lot in this movie. Like Citizen Kane? Yeah exactly. That movie's a fucking stinker. What's the problem? Yeah well. No just like you know the thing where it's like oh well let me tell you my story

and then you cut back to him and he's like and so then the boat went over there and you're like oh god. And there's also just the fact that, like, this movie, spoiler, hinges on the notion of, is the story you just saw true, or is it sort of a metaphor for what happened? Sure. A non-literal retelling of the struggle the internal jury has gone through. Spoiler alert for Life of Pi.

I think that plays differently when you're reading it. What's the sled's name? Pi. Richard Parker. It's Fight Club reading it. What's the sled's name? Pie. Richard Parker. It's Fight Club. Yeah, it's Fight Club. The end of Life of Pie is that the sled is Fight Club. Right, and then Irfan Khan is like,

you can't talk about this. The guy's like, so I'll write my novel now. Right, and then they turn over the sled and they see Kaiser Soze written on the back. And then at the end it turns out to be a sequel to Unbreakable.

My absolute favorite part. No, no. But one of my top five. The breath that David takes before he says Unbreakable on the split episode has just so much

contained joy in it. That's wonderful. I've just rewound and rewound. It's just like, yeah. People like it when David gets into the dirt with me. Oh, wonderful. I've just rewound and rewound. It's just like, yeah. People like it when David gets into the dirt

with me. Oh, yeah. Good episodes are often like David Goofy. You know what I mean? Like, dog. When people say the dog is off the leash.

Right, exactly. That's the term they use. Hey, Ben. Well, this week we're talking about an Oscar winning movie, Life of Pi. That's true.

And we are being sponsored by one of Pi. That's true. And we are being sponsored by one of our closest sister podcast friends. Is that how to describe a sister podcast friend? I think so, yeah. Okay, it's called Little Gold Men. It's a podcast, you might have heard of it. It's from Vanity Fair.

And it's hosted by multiple friends of the podcast. I know these guys. Katie Rich. Sure. She's been on a few episodes. Titanic, Sixth Sense. Yep. Broadcast News. I met her baby.

She's a great baby. He's a toddler now. Oh, he's not even a baby anymore. Time, you know, is fleeting. It's a flat circle. Correct. You got Joanna Robinson on our Minority Report episode. You got Richard Lawson.

I like Richard. Man, on so many Blank Check episodes. I like all the hosts,. You got Richard Lawson. He's like Richard. I mean, on so many blank check episodes. I like all the hosts, but I like Richard. Mike Hogan, who's a very important person,

but we'll get him on blank check. Why not? Sure. And it's, it's on many fair. He's got Oscar on the show. Oscar himself. Oscar, Oscar,

just a statue. Why not? Sure. Great. Yeah. Let's, let's bring them on the little gold man himself because this is a podcast where they talk about the academy awards the emmys like award season they talk about movies and pop culture uh you know with an eye on on the award ceremonies coming but like you know they go in all kinds of different directions especially because it's a year-long podcast they do great interviews and you know for look i'm not going to pigeonhole

blankie listeners but you're a bunch of nerds you probably care about this stuff as much as i do and if you're interested in like the movie business and award season and everything that's coming out this fall it's kind of essential to listen to it. And Katie and Richard and Joanna and Mike, they're so smart and they know what they're talking about. So check out Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts. Yep. Stitcher. Stitcher. Spotify. Wherever you listen to your shows. Google Play. What else you got?

I don't know. There's others. Sure. This is sort of a bad note to end on, isn't it? Bye. I don't know there's others sure this is sort of a bad note to end on isn't it bye Lil Go Ben 2009 yes

Ang Lee comes aboard and says I'm you know this movie's gonna cost 120 million dollars yeah Fox is freaked out

they're not sure and then I guess they eventually are like, well, all right, let's do it. They dragged their heels on it for a little bit because they were like, they were, no, they were courting him very hard.

He agrees to do it. He starts developing it. And then he goes, okay, cool, I figured out how to do it. This is what I need. I became an all or nothing proposition of, if I'm going to make this movie, it has to be this. I mean, do you want to weigh in on this, Ray? Yeah if I'm going to make this movie it has to be this. I mean do you want to weigh

in on this Ray? Yeah I'm going to try not to interrupt you like that. No no please interrupt us. Interrupt us please. I think this is a really interesting dynamic as I've read about it because it seems very different than what you usually get which is a director who's like what I'm going to make is going to be so good that it's going to make money and I don't really care to figure out how that happens. Sure. And then

the studio's like convince us convince us. I think Ang Lee thought that this, they thought that this was a hit. Right. Way before he did. Right. And he thought that

they weren't serious. He thought it was esoteric and I don't understand how you can put this sort of studio pressure on a movie that is, there's a quote I read in some of the material

you sent to me was he met with Tom Rothman and he said, what kind of movie do you think this is? And Tom Rothman said I think it's a family movie. And he said what the fuck are you talking about family movie? His family dies at the bottom

of the ocean. He said what happened when you read the book? And he said I finished it and I gave it to my wife. And he said then what? And he said the rest of my family read it. And he went that's the point. Everyone I know who's read this book has shared it with their whole family and everyone in the family gets something else out of it. It also went around my family. I'm sure either my dad book has shared it with their whole family. That's how I read it. Everyone in the family gets something else out of it. It also went around my family. I'm sure either my dad or mom bought it

because it won the Booker Prize. They read it and then they were like, you know, magical realism. Check it out. That was like, Tom Rothman's whole sell was this movie has some weird reflection pool

kind of thing where people like see themselves in it regardless of age, regardless of background. And it works as sort of this like Rorschach test. I have not read the book. I do think the triumph of the book is the first part

and the part with the family, the part where he explains his relationship with the religions all that stuff. That is when you're just like I love this man so much and I love his family. And then all the rest of the shit, you're so hooked but it's because you're so into pie.

But yeah, I mean, I'm sorry. I feel like I cut you off in the cutoff races of 2018. Stop. It's okay. Everyone talk. But yes, this notion that they were courting him very aggressively, that they were like, this is a major commercial film. And that he then started considering it and came back to them and went, okay, I agree with you, but the only way to make it is this level of technological breakthrough, this level of difficulty in production.

And I guess 3D is like a thing right about now, right? Because it's 2009, 2010, but like it's sort of like brewing. This is like in the lead up to Avatar when people are like, I don't know if that thing is going to fucking work. It's just me seeing Beowulf five times. Right, right. I remember seeing Beowulf with my friends and going so think about what we just saw and James Cameron is now making an alien war movie and we were just like whoa but that was sort of that was

like the hanging promise of like either he's gonna elevate it or the thing just dies with James Cameron and uh he got really into I... A thing I always think about with regards to this movie is films set on water are kind of perfectly made for 3D. Absolutely. Because of the water working as a surface, everything above it. It makes this shadow box

effect where it's like the water into a vanishing horizon in the middle of the sea. Everything floating on top of that. Do you see Fallout in 3D? I haven't yet 3D is exquisite I've heard it's like the best

post conversion you must go up to 84th street that's where it's still playing in 3D and see if the bulb is pretty good it's a good bulb

which you really gotta find this is what I love about Ray he talks about he knows what theaters have good bulbs you gotta tell me

where the good bulbs are I saw it opening day at Arclight in 3D in LA, which was just perfect. And then saw it IMAX 2D, saw it on a shitty multiplex in Florida 2D, and then saw it up on 84th Street in 3D.

So you haven't done 4DX yet? I missed 4DX. I heard it was amazing. I heard it was amazing too. Our friend Bobby Finger said it was phenomenal. And it's like literally the thing that I feel most impeded

in my current state of back injury is that I can't see 40X movies I've had to pass on The Meg I've had to pass on

Fallout all I want to do is be 40Xing left and right I'm going to say that tarmac in Fallout is one of the most memorable things

in the movie that like opening and it's like it's very much like what the water in this film feels like where it's just anytime you see it it's very much like what the water in this film feels like, where it's just any time you see it, it's just glorious. That's fucking awesome. So he gets into that thing.

He gets into the idea of shooting the movie in India and in Beijing, places that don't really have— Taiwan, sorry, sorry. He goes home. Taiwan and Pondicherry. And these are places that don't really have production infrastructures. Certainly not for a movie like this. Certainly not Pondicherry, which is like the opposite end of India from where the film industry is. The big film industry.

Right. But they shoot, obviously, the opening stuff, the home stuff in Pondicherry. And then they shoot all the water tank stuff in Taiwan. That's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. He returns to Taiwan basically as the prince of the country. Yes. He's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. He returns to Taiwan basically as like the prince of the country.

Yes. You know it's a he's like the national hero. I honestly think Is he really that he's that highly regarded? I mean he did make like

he won an Oscar. It's a little bit like Peter Jackson bringing the you know home. It's he basically did that thing where it's like if you go home with a movie with a

budget this big they will give you an airport. Yeah. They give him an airport. They rolled everything out. Right. Yeah. And so. Right this big they will give you an airport yeah yeah they give them an airport they rolled everything out right yeah and so right they filmed this movie in an airport because they didn't have like they're just like just take it right there wasn't like a tank there wasn't a studio they were just like we'll give you the amount of space to be able to build

yeah you're right in a disused airport i will say that every time i visited an angley set it's never been like a proper studio like it's never in some normal he doesn't like just go to Burbank Ice Storm was shot in the in the armory up in Harlem on 134th street

the home of the Harlem Hellfighters sure and was so cool and in Atlanta it was some funky warehouse they were in like

they all made this movie in like an abandoned airport filled with dog shit yeah he's never really made a soundstage movie I think they're always pushing. I think they're always putting the money on the screen.

I really think it's like, and I really admire it. It's never like, oh, this is a really great craft service table. It's like, even when it's a big movie, it's like,

let's push this. I have a Billy Lynn question now because I believe on next week's episode, which we definitely haven't recorded, we say that it was shot in a stadium in Dallas,

but we don't say, like someone said that, we were like, oh, okay. I can't remember which of us. I'm not, no one't say like someone said that we were like, Oh, okay. Uh, I can't remember which of us I'm not. No one's to blame here. It's all good.

It was Dave. Uh, but it was shot in Atlanta. The stadium scenes. Yeah. Did they just use the Atlanta stadium? No, there was a,

okay. So the set that I visited was in Atlanta and it was a warehouse where they had like the interiors in Iraq and and they had his house. I mean, you were in the office. So basically, it was all that stuff. There was a stadium that was about to be demolished that they shot all of his stadiums in. Because I was just wondering how they accomplished

the stadium stuff. It's crazy. Anyway, cool. Good to know. So whatever we say next week. I do love that about him, and that's one of the things I feel like we've talked about this many series,

is he's got a really good sense of place his locations don't feel arbitrary and the movies feel very tied to them um so yeah i mean which makes this movie sort of an odd duck in his career up until this point because you have a film who's like centerpiece middle act is entirely a cgi created environment. But yes, he throws out this list of demands. It has to be $120 million. I have to shoot it in 3D, which hasn't really been proven at this point. I want to cast an unknown 16-year-old to

play the lead part because it has to be someone the audience doesn't have a relationship with. Like as opposed to the super famous person that could play this part? Right, which is the other crazy thing. It's a movie where by design there's no bankable movie star that can play it. Even in supporting roles, there aren't really positions like that other than the one they try to do.

Now this speaks to Ray and our, my, I can't speak today, our crazy relationship to this movie. Okay. Which is that Ray and I, who were not yet friends at the time, years later found out that we were both at the same screening of this movie. Okay. That was a work in progress, friends and family screening. Okay.

Why were you at this screening? Because Ang Lee's producing partner, former assistant, lived in my building growing up. And my father would have friendly conversations with him in the elevator. So you got an invite, come by. What's it up to now? And he'd go, Hulk, it's going to be very crazy.

Honey Lungs Balls, man. That's what he said, less cautions. And he went, not for kids, not for kids. He'd throw out his one sentence in the elevator ride. Brokeback Mountain, really good, very sad. It'd be his very quick pitch on whatever the movie was before he got to the eighth floor or whatever. And he reached out to my dad and said,

so we've picture locked this film in terms of, not picture locked, but we've locked our edit. We think we have our cut. We haven't started the effects. They're going to be so expensive that we want to make sure the edit is perfect before we actually- Do all the effects and all that shit.

Right. Would you want to come to this friends and family screening and give notes? My dad said, I will probably fall asleep. My dad's very bad at staying awake during movies did he fall asleep during brewster no he didn't that's like his favorite movie ever it's a weird movie yeah that movie is weird yeah that's what he said after we saw it griff i gotta say that that movie is so weird and he's right it is weird it's very weird uh if my father was famous i would be on saturday night live now i've like honed my impression of my father so meticulously sure because they'd be

like we gotta get someone who can play peter newman on the show griff i just that that movie it's so far out there do you think saturday night live is interested in someone doing ethan hawke monologuing about Elvis in The King? The thing about Elvis is he always went for the money. I lose it. I can do the thing about Elvis. You're getting Mike Freight. You had it really good right before you recorded it. It's not about Mike Freight. It's about, it just has to

sort of be bubbling within me. Our mutual friend who introduced us, Jordan Fish. Jordan Fish. Hey, Jordan. He made an AI where you could text with Ethan Hawke That was basically Just took really pretentious Ethan Hawke interview answers

And just like gave oblique answers To whatever you were saying And it was awesome Can I tell a terrible Ethan Hawke story? No And the person who's terrible in the story is me No Fine

Go ahead How short is it? Very short Okay I filmed a short film in high school Okay And I needed an office space in it Because in high school I made short films about people who worked in offices. An experience you were deeply familiar with.

Everyone else was making like short films about like kids hanging out. Right, right. And then I made these films that starred adults who didn't go to our school and everyone would be like, what the fuck is this? Bad art. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, yeah. Yeah.

But so I got like a friend of my father's to give me their office over the weekend and be like, hey, four teenagers and a random 35 year old man are going to come into your office on Saturday and shoot a bunch of scenes. And they were like, here you go. Here are the keys. Okay. And Ethan Hawke was using a backroom in the office at the time as like his temporary office. And we found it so funny that there was like this big Ethan Hawke like nameplate on the thing. And then he had his little like not mailbox, but his little like folder to put like mail into. Right. So the guy, the lead in my movie.

What did you do? Had this big beard and we had to cut it to then shoot earlier scenes before the beard has grown out. Okay. And we collected all the beard clippings and we put them in an envelope and put them in ethan hawksford why did you do that horrible that's terrible i said the story makes me look bad yeah it does we thought it was really funny because we thought like will he open this and be like god i get it that is profound man the thing about elvis yeah oh my god the thing about elvis i love that he's in that Elvis documentary and just talks about Elvis for a while.

And no point is it like, Ethan Hawke's relationship with Elvis is this because he doesn't have one. Yeah. He just wants to rap about Elvis. I just love how much Ethan Hawke has figured out his thing and how much we're all like,

yeah, we're on board now. We're 100% on board now. Anyway, you guys were at the same screening of Life of Pi. Which was, here's the movie with zero visual effects. So this film came out in November 2012.

So when's this screening do you think? I think this was September 2011. Does that sound right? This is like a long time before. Or is it earlier than that?

I feel like it was like September 2010. Does that make any sense? No, that seems crazy. Feels more like the summer to me. No, yeah. But was it 2010 or 2011?

No, this film was shot in 2011. Okay, so I think it was like the summer to me. No. Yeah. But was it 2010 or 2011? No. This film was shot in 2011. So I think it was during the summer 2011. Sure. You took a big sip of coffee. I believe so. It was like a year and change before the movie came out. That makes sense. And we watched this cut that is near identical to the movie that you now see.

Sure. But where the kid was visibly in a tank. Okay. You could see the green screen walls around him. You could see the green screen reflecting on the water. The CGI was very sort of like pre-Vizzy. So it's just like there's a tiger, but it's just like a little video game PlayStation 2 tiger. If anyone wants to know exactly what this looks like,

this is public. This stuff is, if you just Google Halon, H-A-L-O-N Entertainment, it's a pre-Viz company. They did a pre- and post-Viz, and you-N Entertainment. It's a pre-viz company. They did a pre- and post-viz, and you can watch. But it's the post-viz that you saw, right? Yes. Like, yes, I was watching this video.

It's weird. Am I correct in remembering that the tiger was gray, that it, like, wasn't colored in? No, it was colored. No, it looks exactly like this. It has, like, a texture map on, like, a pretty simple mesh. So it looks like a Tomb Raider, like, early Tomb Raider tiger. Yes. But you should also check out the other Howlin' Entertainment,

because they basically have pre-vis stuff for Red Tails that's fantastic, and for Deepwater Horizon, which is fantastic, as well as Ghostbusters. These are amazing to watch. Ben, check it out. Ben, look at the video. Ben is watching the video. He is looking at it.

He's peeping the video. It's cool, right? You can say it's cool. The movie Shredded. This is looking at it. He's peeping the video. It's cool, right? It's cool. The movie shredded. This is the thing that's amazing. Even with this level of really simple, low-res, the movie fucking killed. People were into it. That was the thing I found most impressive was, as opposed to imagining you watch an unfinished preview effects cut of Attack of the Clones,

where it's all shot in a green screen and without those backgrounds and without those elements the movie is nothing you could tell how much thought he put into the framing the construction of the sequences like there was still very clear visual storytelling in the journey of him on the boat and his survival without all the elements there yeah and i think a third of the tiger shots were an actual tiger yeah there's obviously real tiger mixed in when you're watching it. They never had, what's the actor's name? Suraj Shamra. Yeah, they never had him and the tiger in the same shot.

They used shots of the tiger isolated for those sort of close-ups or sometimes they composite together. A lot of that they then used as reference material and redid in CGI. But a lot of the close-up tiger moments are real. Basically, everything with the tiger, they got a real tiger to do it. Yes. And they filmed it. They had a live-action unit, and then they had basically a big blue cage that had a boat inside of it.

And there was four tigers with various levels of animalistic behavior. There was one that basically had been named Jonas that had been kind of raised as a human in a bed in Canada. It slept in the bed with his trainer and that was the sweetheart. And he went to Vassar, right? Exactly, for real. And so that one is whenever it's very

sensitive. My mother said like, oh yeah, I was in the cage with Jonas. That's fine. But the other ones were like, let's all stay out of the cage. Yeah, I would not, to be clear, go anywhere near a tiger. Never. Ever. On season one of The Tip when we had the Midnight the Talking Dog, they had two dogs on set.

And the trainer, I was like, what's the difference between the two dogs? And he was like, one of these dogs is better at stunts. One of them is better at dialogue. But you saying that Jonah was like the sensitive tiger, it is like certain like animals. You're like, Oh, this guy's better at closeups.

It's really true. For whatever reason, this animal you can project emotions onto. I've done some heavy lifting directing animals in my life. And there definitely is. It's like they do different things and you swap them out. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's crazy with this dog. It was just like the dog had some intelligence in its eyes and they were just putting meat on a stick and making them look at different marks. But that dog sells it more in its body language than when you put the Mr. Ed talking mouth over it. You know? Yeah. It fucking works.

I would say just the thing about directing animals is like you set up. What you need to do is you need to set up a system of positive reinforcement where you basically make a deal with the animal so that they know if they do this, they get that. And basically you have animals that have either bought in it's almost like they've bought into society and capitalism

or not they're like oh I'll do this even if it's uncomfortable for a second because I know I'll get this treat the thing they would do

with Midnight was they'd say good take pay him and then a guy would walk over with a treat that was the payment system

of positive Pavlovian reinforcement I prefer money. Sure. Yeah. So the other crazy thing about this earlier version we saw is that clearly the studio was like,

we need one big movie star in this. And Ang Lee called upon his previous collaborator, Toby McGuire. Who he had made two films with. Yeah. At like the beginning of his career before he became a minted movie star

to play the part of Yan Martell right in except no he plays reporter apparently i remember him explicitly being yan martell or he is styled exactly that was the thing that said they took in this they make rave stall reporter no no no really yeah martell no he's an author he says i loved your first book and he's like i threw away my book i'm i'm just going by the incredibly well-known accurate website wikipedia okay where he i know it's linking but here's the thing it's linking to a hollywood reporter article that says he's playing a reporter i remember him explicitly being yeah but they probably just throw his name onto him but the crazy thing is they... They never say his name in this movie.

They got weirdly didactic about trying to make him look exactly like Yan Martell. Someone that people are not familiar with the visual appearance of. Yeah, they shouldn't care about that. And can you Google Yan Martell quickly? Yeah, it doesn't look like... I know what Yan Martell looks like, but I mean... He's got very distinctive hair. He does.

He's got sort of a bouffant hairstyle. A curly mop of lightly parted orangey hair. Yeah. He's got kind of a Malcolm Gladwell style. Yes. But, you know. Right. Yes.

A big blonde fro. So they put that wig on Tobey Maguire. So he looked like Sean Penn in carlito's way correct and it was the single most distracting thing i have ever seen in a movie because they they recast him and reshot it all they must have gotten that note so many times i mean this screening we were at which was like the first time we were really showing the movie to people and i'd say there were probably like 30 people there right it was like a pretty big it was like a screen at the AMC 25.

It was somewhere between 30 and 40 people. And afterwards, it wasn't like a Q&A session. It was like an open forum discussion for like over an hour about all the different aspects of the movie. And that was the big thing that everyone threw out. And it was pretty interesting because like Ang Lee would weigh in with his like,

well, this is what we were trying to do. I'll explain to you why it turned out that way. And the thing he said was it felt like we didn't want it to be distracting that Spider-Man is in this movie. But it somehow became the most distracting thing in the world that it's like they're trying to disguise Spider-Man. Yeah, no, that doesn't work. Right. And his performance, I remember, is being like he feels in it. He feels committed. Like he's certainly trying. He's a decent actor. Yeah, no, that doesn't work. Right. And his performance, I remember, is being like, he feels in it. He feels committed. Like, he's certainly

trying. He's a decent actor. I thought his performance was fantastic. But you, like, could not fucking get over it. It was, like, so jarring. And especially when, like, in the middle of the story, it cuts back to Tobey Maguire with, like, this SNL-level wig. It's also, like, distracting to

have, like, in a movie that's mostly unknown actors and then, like, Irfan Khan, right right to cut to someone who is like so iconic to american audiences certainly at that point is still like you know very well known and associated with like a really big blockbuster role and to just cut back to him wearing like a mad tv get up i also think what's with irfan khan's so good in this so fucking good there's so many pivot points that could where things could get by the film that he just catches and goes like this is now nailed down

everything's gonna happen in the next 25 minutes is based off this one little gesture he's one of those just like brutally honest actors extremely crucial to this film success in my opinion

I've never seen a movie with him in it before but you just know he's such like an old shoe like incredibly this guy is a movie star and setting him up with someone like Rafe Spall,

who just gets blown over. Yes. And the character is supposed to get blown over. That's the thing. It kind of, it was to the movie's detriment that you were spending that much time paying attention to and thinking about Tobey Maguire.

You kind of need someone to just show up and do the job. I think Rafe Spall's a very good actor. It feels like almost- Rafe Spall's good too. I like him. By design in this movie, he's just kind of doing the bare minimum. Yeah, he's pretty quiet.

Not in a lazy way but I think they knew you can't have the guy asking the questions overpower the guy who's answering. I like look at his blazer sometimes.

I think that's cool. I think about the fact that Timothy Spall is his dad and then I sort of ponder both actors' handsomeness and like how different

they are. You feel like him and Ben Stiller are both just like waiting for their genetic time bombs to go off. You know what I and Ben Stiller are both just waiting for their genetic time bombs to go off. You know what I mean?

It's like they'll wake up, they're 50 years old, they're like, wait, what is this? Yeah, Irfan Khan, who is a fantastic actor. I mean, it feels like there are a couple pieces

of coverage that maybe they reused from our version. I can't tell, but it feels like they wholesale. I remember, I want to cross-reference with you. I remember in the version we saw, they never left the house. Is that incorrect? That's probably incorrect. Okay. Because all the stuff

with them walking around the city, I remember it being very housebound, their whole conversation. That transition from them on the bench to the set piece of the shipwreck, there's no way that... That's true. That is true. That's so boarded. Right, there's that sort of

crucial moment where they're looking out at the ships in the, you know, in Montreal or whatever, right? And the opening... The opening chunk, they're very isolated. Like, they're keeping them in very, very isolated coverage. Yes. So I was watching and being like, right, I guess they must have

only shot Rafe Spall's stuff and reused all the Air From Concept, but then it starts to become more and more them together. They probably did a mix, right? Honestly, the thing that I don't understand logistically about this movie is both times they shot those bookends, it was two days. That's crazy.

It's a lot of dialogue. It's also crazy to think of him giving that entire performance twice. They go away, you know, they're in a lot of the first third of the movie and then they do

kind of basically vanish. Once you get to the boat, it becomes more present tense. It's all. Until the Carnivorous Island. That's when they,

and then he's like, the island was carnivorous and you're like, oh, right, they're back. Here they are. Irfan Khan, great actor. I knew him because he'd been in this movie, The Warrior,

which was this sort of, it's not a Bollywood movie. It's like a British Hindi movie that's kind of like a sort of Indian samurai movie. It's great. He's awesome. And that was the surprise BAFTA winner of like best British film. He was in Salon Bombay, right? Yes. All the way back. I didn't see that till later.

And what had he been? I'm trying to think if like... He's in Namesake. He's in Darjeeling Limited. And then Slumdog. He plays... And he's in Slumdog obviously. The opposite role of this. He plays the guy who's asking the questions that sparks the story. In Hindi cinema he's often the villain.

He's typecast as a villain. And here he's usually cast as like... Because then he's in Jurassic World. He's in Amazing Spider-Man 2. He's kind of great in Jurassic World. In Amazing Spider-Man... No, he's in Amazing Spider-Man 1. Oh, right, right.

In both of those, he plays the businessman who's like, I'm sure it's fine. Both actors play the bad businessman in these new Jurassic Park movies oh that's weird Rafe Spall is the bad businessman in Fallen Kingdom

in a you know a bit of a lazy performance no offense Rafe but he is just kind of like literally says that line where he's like

well you know we gotta make money or whatever my favorite thing is that Irfan Khan played Baloo in the Hindi version of the Disney live action Lion King. Not Lion King, Jungle Book. No, he was in the Lion King.

Baloo showed up for some reason. Yes, he's also going to do the Tailspin movie, the live action. Irfan Khan's doing the live action. If only. Oh my God. I wrote a paper in post-modernism in college about tailspin do you think if i could go back in time and sit roger kipling down i'd be like one don't send your son off to war it's gonna scar you forever uh two you remember how there's like the the bear in your

jungle book stories well that's gonna be in a movie and then that character will be a seaplane pilot in a tv show he's to run like a seaplane company. Right. Shere Khan's in it too. Isn't he like a mob boss? Shere Khan is a businessman. He's a businessman in Skyscraper.

They've all been transported to the world of like bush pilots. Louis runs the bar that they all hang out at. I will say. It rules. Who had that idea?

Right. Louis is kind of like the Casablanca set up like this is Rick's place. He's like Sidney Green. Yeah. It's like crazy. It's like Roger Rabbit being like an extended riff on Chinatown that just like is going

over the heads of like every single kid. You should be going to Disney and pitching them. Here's the sideways sequel to that Jungle Book movie that made so much fucking movie. It's also set in the 30s. Yes. Like they explicitly reference World War I. That's what I'm saying. It's like very Casablanca.

No, I know. But they're not just, but it's not just the dressing. They address that they are in the 30s. That's crazy. Something like Chippendale Rescue Rangers is just like, this could just be the timeline. Do you remember the cult episode?

No, I don't remember that. There was an episode about mice that would bathe themselves in soda fountains, and it was a brainwash cult. Jesus Christ. It is the best fucking episode. It's so disturbing and like sorrowful. Yeah.

But yeah, I think both those shows, I think it's in the run of like after Tailspin. It was the Disney afternoon thing. They're like, let's do these revisionists. Right, right.

With like DuckTales and Darkwing Duck and that whole sort of extended universe they were making. But the weird thing is that like Chippendale Rescue Rangers is like, well, you could just go like

this is part of the same timeline as the original shorts. They went from fucking with people in trees to just putting on clothes and solving mysteries. You like the Jungle Book, right? Yeah, I like the Jungle Book. Okay, okay. Forget the Jungle Book except the characters. Now, do you like

bush piloting in the 30s? Do you want them to be living in a town called Cape Suzette, which is a a town called Cape Suzette? Which is a pun on Crepe Suzette? I was such a literal kid that when Tailspin went on,

I would like break down and I'd ask my parents, I'd be like, has he met Mowgli yet or not? Like I couldn't fucking figure it out. And they were like,

this is a different Baloo. And I was like, but it's not. It's not, it's Baloo. And anyway, what do you think Roger Kipling would think of that? I think he'd love it. He'd be like sounds great. Do I get residuals? He'd ask for points.

The best robot chicken sketch they've ever done is they did a Bourne Identity parody where Baloo is in the jungle for Jungle Book and starts having flashbacks to the suppressed memory of him. To the palesman.

Yeah. That's funny. Have you ever seen Dennis Hopper reading that Rudyard Copping poem on the Johnny Cash show? No. Google Dennis Hopper reading If. The last 10 seconds of it

will just make your heart stop. It's incredible. Like a pie. Right. They offered the roll to Baloo. He turned it down. Everyone contacted him. So you guys saw this screening.

You saw it with Tobey Maguire. You saw it with no visual effects basically right you walked out of there the book knew very little about it I'm watching it the first 40 minutes I'm like was I wrong in thinking this was about a kid in a boat sure because they go as you said

they go really deep into setting up his character with a lot of like different like not dead ends but just like different areas of just sort of fleshing this kid out and his family and his lineage. I mean, when it starts with that much stuff with the uncle, I was like, did I read the wrong synopsis of this thing? It's very novelistic, right?

Where he's just like, let me explain. This is going to take a while. It's also a lot more stylized than any movie he's made up until this point. Yeah, because you've got the guy with the tapered, weird body. I love it. Right, where you're like, whoa, that's sort of a crazy visual joke from the director of Brokeback Mountain. It is aesthetically, weirdly kind of this midpoint

between Jean-Pierre Jeunet and M. Night Shyamalan. It does feel elements of both those guys. It's also kind of Wes Anderson-y at that point. Oh, the opening stuff is very art direct, is very colorful, the narration and all of that. And I'm watching, I'm like, what the fuck is this movie?

I have no idea what it is. Even like the two times he's made more fantastical movies at this point in his career, Hulk is pretty naturalistic. Sure. Crouching Tiger is pretty naturalistic,

you know? Yeah, no, you're right. I know you're, yeah. Like he's working fantastical things into naturalistic environments and then this is like starting out with like

ostensibly non-fantastical things being presented in a very quirky fantastical way that's why i love that early scene when he tries to see the tiger yes i think it works because you might watch that scene and be like what is this kid a moron like you think he could just hang out with a tiger but like because everything's been so like light and fairy tale in a lot of ways kills the whimsy pretty fast and like that presents interesting contrast yeah and like and you've had the scene where he does pie on all the chalkboards which also seems sort of like vaguely supernatural like you know like these things that are right i remember this was the discussion that i remember him asking the audience in the test screening was like were you picking up on the fact that all that

stuff in the beginning was lies yeah that none of that happened. That's supposed to be the tell that he's an unreliable narrator. It's all too ludicrous to understand. Yes. Even just in the way it's visualized and everything. And I look at these opening sections and even the background actors

feel much bigger than any Ang Lee movie. They're all in this very heightened state. There's the shot of like the two women riding by on the bicycle and they're just like too joyous for a guy who's so into like very specific body language.

It's like, the note is just like, be happy. You're in a big movie. You know? You feel like Taking Woodstock is more naturalistic performance-wise than this? I do. I do. I don't think it's entirely successful performance-wise. I mean, you're obviously the best performance in Taking Woodstock is more naturalistic performance-wise than this? I do. I do. I don't think it's entirely successful performance-wise. I mean, you're obviously the best performance in taking Woodstock. Thank you so much. And I think we said that extensively on the

episode. Do you know what scene I'm in? I don't think so. The big crazy track. I'm at the very end of the track. Okay, yeah. That was terrifying. That's fun, though. That must have been terrifying because it's like everything has to go perfectly up until you and you're the one who can blow the tape. And the secret

of taking Woodstock is that every single person, no matter what they're dressed as, was a part of a casting call for hippies. So those nuns are just like ladies from New Paltz who are super stoned and are blowing it every single time. These kids showed up with long hair and they were like, well we need some Hassids. And they shaved

their heads, except for the payas. That's crazy. That's really funny. No, I think taking Woodstock is all over the place. I mean, this is one of the issues with the movie, is that there isn't a clear sort of tone to

the performances, which usually he's good at getting his entire cast on the same page. Some people are super big in it, some people are super small in it. This is the first time I'm seeing him make a movie where everyone's at a heightened level. Where it's clearly working in a fantasy non-literal realm.

But I at this point have no idea what the fuck the movie is. So we learn about Pai Pisin Molitor Motel and his relationship with God and his family. And then they spotlight, right, he practices three religions. His relationship with God is his family right and then they spotlight right he he practices three religions his relationship with god is very non-literal and trying to get closer to this man rather than practicing any sort of doctrine or any sort of right dogma or anything like that and this is a lot of the book like the movie pairs it down it's kind

of the book is sort of like a third a third a third all of it sure yeah it's been a while since i read it but yeah. And then it introduces this character that they created that's not in the book who's his love interest, the dancer he recognizes. And they like circle her, underline it,

put it in bold, like then I met her. Right. Where it feels like, okay, so this is clearly going to be the main thrust of the movie now. Not at all.

Not at all. Forget it. Also, Tabu plays his mother. She's this like extraordinarily famous actress. She fucking rules. Like that's, I feel like for some audiences, that's the actress where you're like,

oh my God, she's playing his mom. She's just in the movie. Anyway, carry on. Sorry. But he said he put her in there because he wanted a sense of what he was losing when he got in the boat. Yes.

Whereas everything in the book is sort of, this is the grounding before he gets on the boat and then his life hits this new chapter he wanted a sense of something that was like incomplete right you know that he lost behind it takes until minute 40 for him to the storm to start i can i just get into like what i think about the open i think the the really as i've gone through it this morning, the way this film teaches you how to watch it is astoundingly good. And I think the deployment of the different spectacle is like it stays constantly surprising you. So it's like the opening, it's like that sloth shot. Right?

I love the fucking opening. The opening credits with the animals is wonderful. It's like that sloth shot. Right? I love the fucking opening. The opening credits with the animals is wonderful. It's so important. That opening credit sequence is like a video game orientation UX. Kind of like you're like, are you all set? Are you ready to go? Right. It's like your load screen.

The film takes you through a series of airlocks, basically, to get to the point where you are really paying attention. I remember the opening five minutes of Avatar were rocky. Yes. You know what I mean? Like really funky cutting from like the canopy jungle to like the eyes with the parallax. And then the exterior. It's like a mess. And if you watch the extended version where there's like 20 minutes of stuff on Earth before that, it's bad.

Like it's actively bad. It's clear that he wrote this whole opening that didn't fucking work. And that's this rocky like, you know what? Let's just like as inelegantly as possible get through this shit fast. Whereas this movie's really like setting you into a mindset.

And I just think that the way that the different like hammers fall and as they're introducing you to different things about this movie, like up until like The Uncle is great

when he shows up with that weird body. He's great. But then that, I was just going through the things that happen in this, these series of shots where then he, it's where there's this crazy Dutch shot of these people on this balcony.

Even all of this stuff looks like the fantasy sequence in Sweeney Todd. Right, right, right. And then somebody just flies. Why are they not just flying? Through the foreground and then he happy feets in in the background like that. That's the other thing. He's doing the crazy transitions in this movie. He's doing some of the speed racer stuff where you're literally collaging images.

Weird overlapping. This is just a shot of a man flying. Yeah. I love that shot. And then, check this out. She goes above him. How high is she supposed to be? Like, what?

Yeah. Any time he does the sky. This is the guy in the pool does the sky above him. The reflection of the sky on the water, I lose it in this movie. This is a huge moment for the audience. If you've ever seen a shorts program, every film starts and the audience is like,

how much are these people going to hurt me? It's usually a first laugh or something where you go, that was a directing choice of quality enough that I will relax and let these people take me. I think choice is the key word. When you see someone who clearly is doing something specific and it's like, I can trust them

because they know what they're doing. They haven't lost control of this thing, whether or not I like it. I remember being actively against the first 40 minutes when I first saw it. I think a lot of that had to do with me having no sense of what this movie was. You just being like, where's the boat?

What are we doing with this? And the thing you're saying where it's like, why am I meeting his love interest when she's not going to return? And all I just remember was the one sentence synopsis every time a director I like signed on to this movie

that like, it's a kid in a boat with a tiger. And I'm going like, is my memory faulty? Is that not what this movie's about? So I'm confused by it. And I'm also just thrown off without having seen

any sort of promotional material, any clips or anything, by just this movie being so aesthetically and tonally different than any film I've ever seen. I later come to realize I saw it in theaters in 3D when it was released, watched it again too last night. Of course, what you're saying is he's teaching you how to watch the movie.

He's setting you into a world. He's inviting you into the home. And I'd also say the way this movie is described is a lie. It's not a movie about a kid on the boat with a tiger. And they know that and they're I'd also say that the way this movie is described is a lie. It's not a movie about a kid on the boat with a tiger. That doesn't, that like it's, and they know that and they're trying to make it everything but that basically.

Right. There's two, there's more than one boat. Yes. The boat keeps changing. Yeah. There's not just a tiger. There's a monkey and a zebra and a hyena.

Right. You know, there's like, it, until you finally get to the shot where it's like, okay, now I'm looking at a boy and a tiger on a boat and they're like squaring off and then it just stays in that shot. And it's like, okay, now I'm looking at a boy and a tiger on a boat

and they're like squaring off and then it just stays in that shot and you're like, okay, now we're at the boxing match. Right, and now it's like, at that point, it's like an hour into the movie. Absolutely.

In a movie where I always think of this movie as being like 230 plus and it's actually a tight two hours. It's a little over two hours. It's like two hours, seven minutes. It moves though. Everything keeps changing. I mean, this is also a thing of like,

I worked on a movie that had a lot of scenes of like spaceships, exterior shots of spaceships going throughout space, and it was like- Star Wars? Yes, Star Wars. Episode four, New Hope. I do want to look at it. Familiar, familiar with it, yes.

And the thing was like, if we do this literally, every single shot will look exactly the same. But we need to make a progression. So like, this movie, if you did it literally, could be incredibly visually monotonous. The ocean is a million different colors. It's almost like he's going through train stations.

Now I'm in this scene, now I'm in that scene. The boat keeps changing. His body keeps changing. And also, once he gets to the boat, it has to become an adventure film at, Annalise Hill pitch was like, it has to become like an adventure film at that point. The survival has to be,

I need to put a little more emphasis on the series of sort of challenges and tests that this guy goes through rather than just the internal spiritual journey. Right. But I feel like he's not interested in making like in the heart of the sea or one of, one of those movies that's about just like the human body and during the greatest test.'s so or even the shallow but it also is it is process based it's very much about this kid learning which i love any process movie you know in apollo 13 when they have to make the filter out of just the course you gotta put the square peg in the round hole the best sequence right but the craziest thing about that is that it actually happened and that's the craziest thing about that is that it actually happened. And that's the craziest thing in the fucking world. That NASA had to be like, why does that tank not?

You have that and this? Why are they not compatible? It's like, well, all right. Well, they have this shit. We have to make a box that it goes through. Like, it's still, I love it so much. Apollo 13, a masterful screenplay written by? Kiva Goldsman?

John Sayles. John Sayles wrote Apollo 13? Absolutely. How did I not know that? He fought like hell for the credit and didn't get it. I believe he did not. That is 100% a movie written by John Sayles wrote Apollo 13? Absolutely. How did I not know that? He fought like hell for the credit and didn't get it. I believe he did not get it. Oh, crazy. That is 100% a movie written by John Sayles. Yeah, because it's credit to Broyles Jr. who's like one of those guys who's got a lot of credits.

And then Al Reiner who only wrote Apollo 13 and wrote For All Mankind, the space documentary. So like, you know whatever john sales had that run from like 90 to like early 2000 where he was just like quietly one of the best studio like script doctor punch-up guys right and then he makes he writes the notorious jurassic park four script right which sounds fucking amazing and i still wish was the ideas of which are still being parceled out that's what's crazy is they've used them in all the other ones. I know. But when you read that script,

you're like, it's like, and you like read those interviews with Spielberg where he's like, and now we know what the movie looks like. We've got the story. And you're like, you thought that was definitely the story. I love it so much.

Human Raptor hybrids with guns. If you haven't gotten to that point where you feel comfortable doing that, then why even make Jurassic sequel? That's true. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, just fucking go for it. His Quick and the Dead script rules. Really?

That's a good movie. You ever seen it? We gotta do Raimi. I know. Saddest music in the world and Quick and the Dead are the only films that have bracket structures. That I know of. Oh, like...

Sadistic music in the world's a good movie. Like, you're a bracket structure. It's very satisfying. Yeah, I just love guys like that who like didn't even view it as like a one for me one for them thing

because like John Sayles also came out of Corman that's the thing like he loves just being like writing assignment fix this make it better I agree

but read the book by Roger Corman how I made a hundred films and never lost a dime it's the best book ever hey Ben David I heard you finally got yourself a mattress yes 100 films and never lost a dime. It's the best book ever. Hey, Ben. David.

I heard you finally got yourself a mattress. Yes, I got a Casper mattress because I found an apartment. I have a home. You have four walls and a roof now. Yes. And in that space goes a Casper mattress. Indeed.

How is it going for you? Oh my God. It's really great. They made the whole process so easy because again, like moving is so a nightmare. Right. And Casper, you can just buy online at your convenience and it just gets shipped.

Yeah. It's in a box. Yeah. What the, and there's like, it's not like a door size. I'm trying to think of how to describe it. You know what?

There's that. Oh, the corner of the studio. The thing that keeps the water cold. It's about the size of a mini fridge. It's about the size of a mini fridge. That's right, because Casper products are cleverly designed to mimic human curves. They provide support for all kinds of bodies.

How's your body? Does it feel supported? Does it feel comforted? It does. Well, you spend one third of your life sleeping, so you should be comfortable. This is true um so the original casper mattress it combines multiple supportive memory foams it's got a quality sleep surface with just the right amount of sink and bounce baby and it's got a breathable design so you can sleep cool throughout the night now casper offers two different kinds of mattresses apart

from that yeah they got the original but then they got the wave oh of course and the essential i got the essential okay uh that's got like a streamlined design at a price that won't keep you up at night right exactly yeah the wave is the one with the premium support system patent pending that mirrors the shape of your body so there's a lot of options. They're all designed and developed and assembled in the U.S. And the affordable prices, it's because Casper cuts out the middleman

and just sells it directly to you. It's free shipping and returns are also free in the U.S. and Canada. And if you're not completely satisfied, you can just put it back in its mini fridge box, get it the heck out of there. We are going to offer our listeners a great deal if you're interested in getting yourself a casper mattress i've got one

ben's got one yes we we love our casper mattresses they're mattresses they are comfortable you sleep on them it's a great experience and you can be sure of your purchase with casper's 100 night risk-free sleep on it trial so you can get 50 towards select mattresses by visiting casper.com slash check and using promo code check at checkout terms and conditions apply again if you want to get 50 towards select mattresses you can go to casper.com slash check and use promo code check at checkout terms and conditions apply and uh yeah i mean get yourself a good night's sleep like ben finally can do after weeks of homelessness thank god oh sorry about that right this is actually happening it happened it happened and i know you're processing it now, and it's tough,

but we have to keep talking about the movie. We have to survive. We have to go on. So, minute 35, the family dinner, the father announces the intention to move and sell the zoo. Adil Hussain plays the dad. Yes. Sort of a bad zoo boy, if you will.

No, I think he's a pretty good zoo boy. Okay. I think he's a pretty good zoo man. I don't know, man. He's locking up the zoo and putting it in a boat. He does lock the gates. That is true. He locks the gates after he sells it.

Yeah. And... He tranquilizes the banana. Yes. Which I love that too. I love just watching him like cut the banana and put the things inside. Yeah. And just how loving the narration is about his dad.

Yeah. And how he's realizing his dad is totally a fish out of water as well he's a businessman doesn't really know how to deal with these animals yeah this and how they're all you know like that that that that teenage thing where you're like oh i'm not the only important person in the world you know that's sort of like growing realization right my parents are flawed people with like their own problems yeah but he's on the ship for like one day yeah where the only real dramatic thing that happens is a a fist fight with gerard derpardieu as you know here's one thing i wanted to say yeah this movie

has irfan khan in it yes who is like now older but certainly at you know at a moment in his career was like a sex symbol in his country and gerard depardieu now aging but was a sex symbol in this country utterly right and irfan khan looks pretty great like the hair is a little silly you know he's got the sort of big hair in this movie but he looks pretty great yeah it looks like i don't know like how it looks like the lump monster from wonder shows him he looks like fucking pizza the hut he looks like i don't know like how it looks like the lump monster from wonder shows him he looks like fucking pizza the hut he looks like muzzy i mean i know we make a lot of muzzy references on this show but he looks like muzzy he looks like an old crone in like a hans christian anderson movie i mean fairy tale what's crazy is i remember seeing this whatever it was like

seven years ago right right? Sure. And being like, Jesus Christ, Gerard Depardieu does not look good. And then watching it now, having seen Let the Sunshine In, I'm like, Gerard was looking pretty good. Right, because in Let the Sunshine In, you'd literally think he's like furniture for a while because he's so massive. You're like, is that a credenza she's talking to? There's a moment when they first cut to a close-up of Gerard Depardieu at the very end of Let the Sunshine In where I went like

Wait a second is this movie in 3D? Because it felt like his nose was coming out of the screen. I don't mean to mock Gerard Depardieu's you know

middle age he's old he's like seven years old you know older gate sure it's the mileage though

but it's crazy i don't mean to mock gerard epper do but let's remember he peed on the carpet in the middle of a plane because he drank too much white wine he also keeps in protest yeah and he also keeps like moving to increasingly like oppressive countries because he likes doesn't like paying taxes right isn't that a thing of his yeah but he keeps on making asterix movies of course well he was that's the thing i think he buffed up to play obelix and then he just stayed there yes and he now he is obelix yeah but i just like that like asterix has changed like four times i think four or five different actors like cycling in a new asterix and jeff ardu is he is ready right you know what i love about asterix he gets younger obelix stays the same age jesus let's see what's the

last that's a reference to the very successful french live action asterix film activation series he hasn't made one since 2012 where they saved britannia okay uh yes uh there you go interesting uh so debordu comes in he looks like shit and he's looking for a fight this guy's just a fucking ass he looks like a pile of mashed potatoes

but he's serving rice right pouring gravy on top of it they ask for no gravy because the wife's vegetarian and no sausage

and he takes umbrage at this and there's a fight the cow the veal came from is vegetarian right you know that and that

gets into a fight a very sort of centered sailor comes breaks it up sits down next to them explains to them

like yeah and I don't think the scene works without that lovely scene with the one of the bits where I like really key into the movie

is those those silver plates in their dinner oh yeah you know what I mean like that's one of those things where you're looking at it

and I'm like I don't know what that is exactly but I know that is correct. And it's incredibly tactile. Someone's done the research. And just seeing how lovely their life is, you really do feel bad for this family now that they're being put through

this terrible experience, even before the shipwreck. Then the shipwreck. Once again, I remember being very distracted by Depp or Dew the first time, but now I totally get it that you need someone to make that much of an impression that quickly. You need that character to pop. He needs to be in the back of your brain for the rest of the film. He's going to be important.

Even though you'll never see him again. Right. Now, I remember in the cut we saw there was a scene where Pi potentially hallucinates Deppardieu coming back onto the boat. Absolutely. Right? And cut out of the film. Interesting.

He wakes up. I thought that would muddy it too much. And see a silhouette of like him coming back with a knife and then you're just thinking of the scenes with the orangutan who is depart jew-esque even though he's not supposed to correspond to the orangutan did they double cast him in this one no you need to remember him stop being mean to sir i was watching this just on the way he's also going to be our guest on next week's episode on the way over here I had forgotten I watched the last scene

in the cab on the way over here and it's like it's a murder confession and I think that you remembering how unpleasant this guy is really makes you go like okay I get it and you go like there was a horror for him in murdering someone so evil and so disgusting and also like I mean the movie and the book, and you go like, there was a horror for him in murdering someone so evil.

And so disgusting. And also like, I mean the movie and the book makes this even clearer. Like he won't, he, he won't, doesn't want to kill anything. Yeah.

And the movie, you see that he's so sad when he has to kill something, animal. But yeah. And the, you know, cause he's a real strict aesthetic sort of vegetarian. He sees God and everything as well.

Cause it's truly horrible. He saw his mother get killed by Gerard Depardieu and then had to kill Gerard Depardieu. That's ugly stuff. He saw a man get eaten. Yeah. Aten.

Aten. Do you know the craziest thing I found about this movie on Wikipedia? Or I found this through going to the Wikipedia entry for the book. Sure.

Is the reason he named the tiger Richard Parker is that there were like three different instances of a man named Richard Parker on a lifeboat involved in cannibalism. And one's an Edgar Allan Poe story, and then two of them are like real stories. Right.

People just decided to pay homage to Edgar Allan Poe. All in the 1800s. Yeah, but all three guys were named Richard Parker. I'm joking. That's crazy. And he was just like, that has to mean something. If guys named Richard Parker keep I'm joking. That's crazy. And he was just like, that has to mean something. If guys named Richard Parker keep on

ending up on lifeboats, either being victims, or adjacent to cannibalism. A cabin boy? Yes. In a famous legal case in 1884? Jesus Christ. And then the third Richard Parker drowned, so his dead body was

cannibalized. Yes. Very neat. Very nice. No problem there. Great stuff. And then the third Richard Parker drowned so his dead body was cannibalized. Yes. Very nice. No problem there. No. Great, great stuff. And then the fourth Richard Parker is played by Campbell Scott in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in which he turns out to be a secret agent. I forgot that his name is Richard Parker. Richard Parker.

It is kind of a masterstroke of the book and the movie, but I think especially the movie where you're watching the tiger, the fact that he has a full proper gentleman's name like a first and last name helps you like without anthropomorphizing him it helps you really invest in him as like a real creature. You know because if he was named like Claw

or something you'd be like that's a fucking tiger. Richard Parker you're like how do you do? Tigers are just, there's some word for them let me look it up that, uh, people in environmentalism, uh, use for,

uh, animals like tigers and elephants, a charismatic megafauna where it's like, these things are so insane and iconic to people that you kind of can't believe that it's real. And that's why you center your environmental campaigns on a tiger or, you know, we have to save the elephant. Like,

you know, cause people are like, if I saw a tiger and I you know, we have to save the elephant. Like, you know, cause people are like, if I saw a tiger and I've seen tigers in like the zoo or whatever, humble brag, I've been to the zoo. Humble brag. You know, you are kind of like,

oh right. This is like a functioning creature. Yes. And like, you're also looking at, you're like, this is designed to destroy and murder something fast. Well,

and they have this weird intelligence in their eyes that is misplaced. Where you're just like, this is designed to destroy and murder something fast. And they have this weird intelligence in their eyes that is misplaced. Where you're just like, this is the thing that gets me. And it's like, no, this is the thing that just wants to eat shit. He's just fucking hungry. So get ready to say humble rag. I was just in Alaska on vacation. Okay, yeah, that's fine. You can do that.

You're allowed. You work very hard. And when he said that, when the dad says that line about you're just seeing, I was thinking about all the animals I saw in Alaska. You're like, oh, there's so much going on here. And it's like, well, no. I'm reflecting myself a little bit in Alaska. Did you go to Alaska by yourself?

No, I went with my girlfriend. Humble ram. And Richard Lawson. Double humble ram. Not for all of it, but for a bit of it. And I saw like a bald eagle. And that's another one where you see that. And you're like, oh, all of this creature is where you see that and you're like oh all of this

creature is all pointy ends like it's all sharp he lives to destroy things but certain animals like that that just project a certain amount of sophistication otters were the big ones it's like that moment at the end of Fantastic Mr. Fox where he sees the wolf in the distance and he's like I get you

where you see an eagle and you're like dude I understand and the eagle's like i don't know what you're talking about i want i want a rat right the eagle's like i can see like two miles that way and there's a rat and i want to eat it right and you just look at the eagle and you're like man this country how do we go so far you're like america is a flawed but fascinating experiment in democracy. And you see otters. I see otters. So many otters. And they lay on their backs in the water.

You see so many otters? In Alaska. Oh, okay. Not all the time. Yeah. Dude, you live in Brooklyn. They catch crabs and they put them on their tummy and then they just kind of like eat them.

And I'm like, I eat crab. On my tummy? I am not a dog person. Interesting. Okay. But I've had, you know, any of you had like

a really important relationship with any cats in your life? My dresser kittens. Right. Exactly. I'm a dog person. Yeah. Because I'm not a cat person

historically. I don't like them. I'm a cat person. If you have anything, pig, this film will play on, and there's certain moments like especially when he's,

when he's thinking of whether to kill him with a hatchet. I swear to God, they make the water pull back his face in the exact same way when you're petting your cat's face. That's what their mouth does. There's a lot of stuff I think where they're like, if you have that in you, they really

play on your heartstrings. I also think I've never owned a pet, but my father has two dogs that he calls the boys. That's by the way how he got himself into financial trouble. Each of them cost 2.5 million dollars. And they only eat quail eggs.

But he calls these dogs the boys and I like will dog sit when my whole family goes away because my family goes on vacations without me. All the time. By my choice. When I'm with the dogs I find myself talking to them a lot

and forming these very odd intellectual relationships with how I think they're processing things. In the same way I did when I found these cats at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm having conversations with them. I think this movie gets at that kind of thing especially if you don't like have a natural casual relationship with an animal of just like if you're with an animal isolated for

that long or a period of time that is high stress you just start to be like I need to feel like I'm relating to something else that I'm not just here by myself and that's so much of what sustains pie right is that like that's what he says about Richard Parker right like I'm relating to something else. That I'm not just here by myself. And that's so much of what sustains Pi, right? That's what he says about Richard Parker. I felt like there was someone else with me that I had to keep an eye on and almost take care of. And that he says that kind of saves him. And I have to be alert. It saves him.

It gives him something to live for and a challenge every day to work on. My favorite thing, which Ray, you alerted me to, is that because they didn't want to make his survival tactics look too professional because he's not a kid

who's equipped for this circumstance. Do you know about this, David? No. Ang Lee asked his son, here are a bunch of oars and a life vest. What would you make out of this? Okay.

And his son, who's not a survival expert, made the thing that the kid made and then he gave it to the art department and was like, replicate this. Okay. And his son, who's like not a survival expert, made the thing that the kid made and then he like gave it to the art department and was like, replicate this.

Wow. Like a lot of the tactics he uses are things that he asked his son who was like not an outdoorsman. Right. But he was just kind of like, well.

Yeah, you got 10 minutes, here you go. I guess this is your base and then the oars kind of spread out. Rather than have someone production design it. And I think that's

one of the best, coolest stuff is the different rafts and the progression. The triangle thing is amazing. It was a collaboration. Basically, they just made him go in the pool and just tie these things together. He's very bad at tying knots.

For the punch up on all that design was they got their shipwreck survival consultant. Remember this guy's name? It was in all the books. I'll find his name in a second. Basically, there was a guy who survived their shipwreck survival consultant. Remember this guy's name? It was in all the books. No. I'll find his name in a second. Basically, there was a guy who survived for two months on the open sea

who was on set every day and a huge part of the pre-production. Jesus Christ. And was just like, seems like a pretty rangy guy. There's a subtext in the book that he needs to calm down because he's very,

he's still a little out there. Maybe understandably, you never get over something like that. It to like calm down because he's very, he's still a little out there. Maybe understandably you never get over something like that. It changes you permanently. Certainly, especially when you're recreating it. Like that's the most Hollywood thing in this movie is that like pie is like pretty well balanced. Yeah.

Yeah. He like kind of figured it out. But I mean, I think that play that, that that's part of the, uh, uh, what's the fuck?

Jesus. Uh, narrator, unreliable narrator thing yes where like for one you sort of start to realize like oh i can't really trust the paint picture he's painting for me but i understand why he's doing it and then two it's like he gets dumped on the beach at the end of the movie and then at the end of this at the end of the movie you see his family come home yes and you're like so he has figured it out but you're also like but there is like 30 years here. Yeah. That are unspoken and like who knows like how you feel

back. Sure. Also my big takeaway from the movie is that he makes this story because that's the only way he can like process this thing and be sane and move on. It's too painful. Yes. That was another thing I remember from the cut we saw is you never saw the family. It cut before they walked in the door from him just referencing that.

Oh, interesting. Sure. And everyone was like, I kind of want to see the wife. Because we kept on wondering. If he ended up marrying the lady from India. When you don't see her, you wonder if that's like the super pat kind of like full circle thing that they were aiming for. Yeah, but I like that it's not. Oh, I do too. But if you don't see her, you wonder if that's what they were trying to set up.

I just circled back. I think that the design thing, when they got that guy to do Punch-Up, what's genius about it is that all that design is a collaboration between someone who is Pi at the beginning of the journey and Pi at the end. Yeah, that's cool. Which is really cool. Because I like when he sort of starts putting slats on it too.

He's got some flooring. Neither of which are production designers. Yeah. So cool. Right, right. That's what's really cool about it. Can we talk about that color of the inside of the boat though? Oh, sure. I'd pay money just to see that color.

Don't you think? Come on, talk to me. It's just wonderful. I mean, just the fact that you get to spend so much of the film looking at that color is just a joy. I will say,

my favorite stuff in this movie is when he gets like very surreal with the colors of the sky and the water. Yeah, that's not, I think of the sky especially, obviously the whale scene. There's that section

where it's sort of like magic hour sundown and it's like all orange. You like that red sort of like, yeah. It could be so many

different things and that one is, it looks so good against the blue and it just is like. That shot is obviously kind of extraordinary. Why'd they crop it like that i don't know that's crazy google image there's the one that's interrupted by the can you know what i'm saying i think you're

watching yeah like i just love uh that shit um i will say like we were talking about uh the ways in which the effects have and haven't held up. I think Richard Parker's pretty impeccable. Pretty good. Some of the, yeah, basically. 90%. And performance-wise, it's incredible. You just totally fucking buy it and you buy into it as a character with emotions and all of that. I think

some of the sort of environmental stuff, when it's not that heightened and stylized, feels like plasticky to me. When they're going for just like, this is just the sky and the water. It feels a little like too cartoony for me. I prefer when they push it into that more abstract zone. You know?

Okay. And I think it also like works with the journey he's on more when it just starts to feel like he's going through like, you know. space yeah yeah the toughest stuff they've got is the tiger being wet anyway that's the only thing I'm thinking of it looks so hard it doesn't look funny it looks fine I think one of the most

audacious things is that first real close up of the tiger that they do that I think is CG I think it is I know what you're talking about they cut from a quivering like sphinctyer piece of meat. Yeah. Like in 3D right up next to you.

This is real meat and then they show you their CG close up of the tiger and go like, look, I will put my art next to that on the wall. I think it holds up.

The big thing he said was like he went to Rhythm and Hues, the visual effects company and said like, I'm going to put real animals in this movie and they need to work

seamlessly side by side with CGI animals. Right. Which is like a big ask. I don't even know if it's an ask as much as boxing them in. Yes. You know what I mean? Right. This is what you're going to have to do.

Right. This is the standard I'm holding you to. Because I've directed projects where the effects were done by NPC that did all the environments on this. And I definitely have worked with a lot of different animation studios and effects studios and there is like there's always this moment

where you're like I need you to do this extra 15% and they're like we're done working. It's impossible. And I think that one of the master strokes

was that he boxed them in but they didn't have an out. Yes. So I mean we kind of brushed over the initial like a hyena orangutan.

Did we just skip the shipwreck? Oh, yeah. Because the fucking shipwreck's incredible. That's amazing. Okay. Let's talk about the shipwreck more. That's when I started going like, okay, I see what he's doing here.

The shipwreck's great. Clear turning point in the movie. Okay. He's upending everything. Yes. The dynamic ups and downs of that sequence, if you go through and do the Robert McKee for every good thing, then it has to be followed by a bad thing, followed by a good thing, followed by a bad thing. It's like him seeing that red light and being like, okay, I'm good, and then looking at the guys.

And when the guys get washed overboard, like that's what it looks like in real life when bad stuff happens. You know, that little flashlight going out into the ocean is so scary. And then the framing, I was going through it like frame by frame. When he runs down the stairs, you don't see that the bottom floor is flooded until you hear him scream like an animal. And then he jumps, and when he lands in the water, then you realize you're underwater. And that's when the zebra shows up. And I think that zebra is the whole movie. That's the opening the doors to the Wizard of Oz.

That's the moment where, and I love that if you go back and listen to that scream, it's so painful to listen to. And it's at the exact moment that he kind of like maxes out all his levels on just terror and trauma that the magic starts. Well, yeah. And the zebra thing is like so kind of absurd as an image in the middle of a sequence that is like so upsetting viscerally. Yeah. You know? But he, no, I think it's just like really really well done shipwreck stuff yeah it is I like the shot of the boat going in the water

the best I think they I might just be burning my brain because it was in the trailer like they just know how visceral that feels the shot of it like slamming yeah I'm trying to think of something else from the shipwreck I mean I like that shot of the where he's hovering yeah I mean that I like the idea that it goes into the's hovering? Yeah. I mean, that is amazing.

I like the idea that it goes into the Mariana Trench and James Cameron could do a follow-up movie about what's going on down there. Pies of the deep. Yeah, the shipwreck, you know. Well, I don't know what the boat's called. But yeah, I mean, he's fighting to get on. I mean, he wants...

It's called the Sim Sim. Yeah. Hey, it's the Sim Sim. Is it? It's the Sim Sum, baby. All right. David Sim Sum. David L. Sim Sum. But. Hey, it's the Sim Sum. Is it? It's the Sim Sum, baby. All right. David Sim Sum. David L. Sim Sum.

But yeah, I mean, he doesn't want to get on the lifeboat because he wants to save his family. They throw him in. Yeah, no, I know. With Depperdue, the sailor. Right. And then the animals sort of get thrown into it. I mean, it's just like chaos.

And then he wakes up in this boat situation with this collection of animals. We're like, this happens very quickly. Is it this fast in the book? Pretty much. Yeah, okay. Yeah. No, I was just curious if in the book

there's more stuff of him with like all the animals. Oh, I guess so. But I think the degradation happens sort of one by one. Right, where it's like, and the same idea that like he thinks

Richard Parker is gone because he saw Richard Parker in the water. And then there's that moment and it's good in the movie when Richard Parker suddenly like leaps out. Yeah he's been hiding under the tarp the whole time. Kills the hyena, drags it under the tarp. Right which is pretty much like a great train robbery like

direct to camera 3D shot of like the tiger leaping at you. Can I make a Black Panther comparison too? Please. Okay I'd say that this whole section where you're like the problem is the hyena. Uh huh. Is like that waterfall fight in Black Panther where he? Please. Okay, I'd say that this whole section where you're like, the problem is the hyena is like that waterfall fight in Black Panther where he has to defend the crown against his calendar.

Against Mbako. Yeah, and it's like, Jesus Christ. This fucking Mbako guy. Couldn't get worse than this. Exactly. And then you see like, it's like Michael B. Jordan shows up

and you're like, oh, we are fucked. You know, it's like wonderful. Yes. I love that first waterfall fight scene in Black Panther so much because I mean, my argument for why Black Panther like wonderful yes yeah i i love that first waterfall site fight scene in black panther so much because i i mean what i my argument for why black panther is like a genuinely like it's a masterpiece it's a great movie i really need to re-watch it is yeah that at the

end of the movie when uh denis guerrero guria uh like when he's when uh kaluuya is like you would you would you know you know you know attack me to defend the thing and she says without question you're like yeah because those are the rules of wakanda like a country i have no no knowledge of that doesn't exist it's fantasy yeah and like you're so steeped in like all the tradition of the movies yeah and then so two hours later you're just like yeah we gotta protect this fucking place are you kidding me don't you know that and like that bit when mbaku's got him yeah and he looks like like he's gonna have to kill him when he's got mbaku you know at the end of that fight and everyone's like you know you've done great but you gotta tap out like this is

and you're like yeah come on man you you gotta you gotta protect the honor of your tribe like that i didn't know existed five minutes ago, basically. There's something very exciting about watching a movie where people are that in love with their country without being zealots. Yes. Where it's just like, this country's important. It means a lot to them.

Right, and a lot of Marvel movies are good at that fast world building that you need to do, but Black Panther's just especially good at it. It's the only time they make you actually care about the place. Yeah, because like- Like in the other ones, it's like, okay, this is a cool place. Right, like Asgard- Asgard looks nice, whatever. Yeah, that's the thing time they make you actually care about the place yeah because like in the other ones it's like okay this is a cool place right like that's a thing i mean you don't care about it not really yeah i mean whatever also it's it's a people not a place yeah well i

actually disagree i disagree too yeah um pretty cool place it's like a pretty cool place had like a force field and stuff um but yeah mean, this whole survival chunk of the movie is, you know, the film kind of changes on you in terms of now removing Irfan Khan for a long time. Yes, exactly. You're alone on the boat

with these animals quickly animal. The animals do kill each other pretty fast. The hyena kills the other animals. Right, and that's him trying to figure out how to cohabitate with Richard Parker with his own narration and his diary and then it's just them I guess it's like a solid

40 minutes before they reach the carnivorous island then it's a 16 year old 17 year old who had never acted before carrying an entire movie with a CGI tiger and remember when they gave him so many big parts after this? After he made a giant international blockbuster? But I do think this is somewhat the curse

of being the unknown actor where they're like... You're pie. Yeah, right. Well, you were great in that, but that was clearly just like a fluke, right? Like, you know, Ang Lee, yeah, I don't know.

Like, you can just sort of dismiss it. People dismissively give Ang Lee a lot of credit, which like clearly he did some incredible stuff in preparing with him. He was in Million Dollar Arm. That was his big follow-up. He went to NYU undergrad as a filmmaker, and in the summer he goes back to India and is in movies and gets paid a lot of money.

Really? Absolutely. That's cool. Do you know what, though? He's in the regular cast, Do you know what though? He's in the regular cast like you know main cast of God Friended Me

on ABC this fall. He's okay. CBS this fall. I mean I like that. God Friended Him. It didn't friend him though. He friended the mayor from the mayor show. He's a really good actor. No it's just a very impressive

like it sounds like he's doing well he's filled in life he has a good career but the thing that makes me angry is when dumb studio executives fall back on this thing of like oh we can't make a movie with like an east asian lead because none of them are bankable and then when you have an east asian led movie that makes fucking 500 million dollars worldwide. They're like, well, but that's just the one thing he can do. They don't let people like this become leading men in blockbusters. You know, number one song on Spotify right now is yellow.

You know what I mean? Is that true? Yeah. Because of crazy. Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. And that whole story of John M.

True, like writing to Chris Martin and being like, I know you turned us down. I assume the studio just sent a form request or whatever. He's like, but this song is so important, and I loved it when I was younger. Did you read about this? Yes, yeah. And then immediately, they were just like, hey, they gave you the thumbs up.

He never replied to him, but he was just like, yeah, sure, whatever. No, obviously, clearly the song matters to you. Yeah. No, it's just like this couldn't be a more complicated production. You know? Sure. If you're, you know, Sourav Sharma,

you come out of this film, you're like, I understand everything about how to be a professional on a set. I've gone through The Ringer. I've done every type of thing. I've worked with effects. I've worked practically,

like, you know. Do you want to talk about the rehearsals that they did? Yeah. That was fascinating. Do you want to talk about this? Well, I just? Yeah. It was fascinating. Do you want to talk about this? Well, I just, from my own personal experience being directed by Aang. And you did win an Oscar for that performance.

So you're able to speak from, right. I sucked. I'm the worst part of that movie. Not true. Oh, Ray, so awesome. That's not true. You joke? We talked about that on the Taking What Suck episode.

Trust me, we're on the record with many parts of that film that are worse true you joke we talked about that on the taking we're on the record with many parts of that film that are worse than you but I'll say your guys thesis that it's it's body language stuff it's huge

that was the one note I got from him it was about the way I was moving my hips interesting you know it was like because I was camera operating

and when I camera operated I tend to kind of shift a little bit give a little parallax you know keeps me in the moment and he was like no

you just gotta plant there your nodal point and that and it was like the only thing we really talked about was just my body stuff and what do you want you want to know i think he's very aware of things like that where it's like that's just you being natural it's you doing you your muscle memory of how you feel when you operate a camera but he's so aware of what body language communicates and how it could like send the wrong message uh in terms of the story What about the rehearsals for this movie? He like worked with him for like weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, if not months,

just having him walk around a room and being like, we're going to work on When You Were Seven. Like walk like When You Were Seven. Think about When You Were Seven and just spending time like acting exercise into all of that so that for a movie where the kid has to go through all these different stages of like his body decomposing him gaining maturity survival when he's broken when

he's stronger all these kinds of things right that he gave him this sense of the history of how his body has changed and how his mind has changed over time so then it just sort of became like a thing that was like an automatic response if he could be like in this moment you're sort of humbled to how you felt when you were seven and he's like i spent four hours doing the seven thing right you know yeah and i think it's a thing where like you know when actors talk about like oh i wrote like a character biography i wrote diary as my character you know so that way you have things to fall back on it like helps if you have uh sort of memories that you've created it's so much more productive when you have a director who memories that you've created it's so much more productive

when you have a director who's actually worked with you to be like let's act out things so you have a literal memory of what it felt like in your body to do these things even if it's a fake acting exercise so if i say when you're seven you know what that feels like as opposed to like i wrote a fictional story right i think it's just good shit. It's really real shit. What I know about directing actors is that you do not use adjectives. You do not talk about the film you're trying to make. You give them the information

that they need to know to actually live in that moment. What's a bad adjective? I don't know anything about directing. If someone says, this is your James Bond moment, or this is the moment where I want you to have the hero shot where you become badass. I'm like working a specific way, but where you talk to them about, like, the end result of what you want the moment to convey in the film as opposed to what they need to be feeling. And sometimes even if it is a technical thing you're trying to get at, it's so much more productive to find the way to trick them into getting there than to tell them like the end result is I want you to be orange. You know?

Yeah he said basically just he said he it's almost like he made a data bank of sense memory stuff. Right. You know so he could and Ang Lee says here in this book so next time he needs to get to that point he doesn't need to go through all the psychological memories. Yeah. So it's conditioning like with a tiger on set.

Yeah kind of. Yeah. And like especially for someone who's never been in a movie before, it just gives them like a really strong base. Yeah. You know? My favorite part of this whole, the shipwreck section is the flying fish. New Zealand. That's a great scene. Yes. Yes. When New Zealand is swimming through the

water. That's wonderful. I mean, I like the whale. It's weird they cut out his cameo because that was in the earlier cut. Do you remember? You know what I'm talking about? Yes. No, New Zealand from the Muppet Show was in the early cut that we saw. Throwing the fish. Yeah, flying fish. And then Ang Lee said it was like too distracting. They also had him wearing a

Yan Martell wig. He was also played by Tobey Maguire. He was played by Tobey Maguire in the Yan Martell wig. Right. But it was New Zealand. You guys were aware of the aspect, like the framing stuff? Yeah, the aspect ratio stuff is so fun. Yeah. What's up with that? No, I just love that and I think it's a thing that's underused where like he uses the sort of letter

boxing to have the fish overlap over the sides of the frame. Yeah, they did it in the Ghostbusters movie a lot too. It's just like it's basically popping in the frame. But also, did you look at that talk that the French guy explaining the moving? So Brian Gardner, who's the stereographer on this

like the guy from Coraline and I would say it's like one of the I would say it's like Ang Lee and then number two on this movie

is Brian Gardner in terms of why this movie is amazing he developed this thing that was a it's the the proscenium frame is basically

on hinges on both sides and it's coming out like this it's coming out like that sometimes it bends out there's all this stuff where the screen is basically on hinges on both sides and it's coming out like this. It's coming out like that. Sometimes it bends out. There's all this stuff where the screen is basically

falling backwards and you don't notice it. There's like a tremendous amount of stuff that is less showy than that. That is like working on thoughtful, psychologically effective. Just incredible.

Yeah. I mean, he is one of the few guys and I said I felt this with Billy Lynn as well in an episode we haven't recorded yet. Definitely haven't recorded yet.

That he really understands using that stereoscopic depth as, Jesus Christ, stereoscopic depth as a part of the language. You know? Like color or lighting or anything. And that episode definitely isn't insanely long. No.

It also doesn't definitely go off the rails in the last 30 minutes when we should have ended the episode already. Correct. And then we just start laughing constantly at God knows what. Did you guys talk about how his teeth are translucent and his skin is translucent when you see it in high frame rate? We wouldn't have talked about that because we haven't recorded the episode yet. But also, I forgot about that. You can see, if you see it the right way, you can see the blood moving through like the veins in the temple and it's like

he's quite pale he's a pale man no offense to Joe Alwyn but he's I think that's I think there's something there though eventually yeah

yeah there's something there life of pie guys so come on is there anything else you want to talk about for the carnivorous island and the end of the movie

there's sort of the movie? There's sort of the big dream sequence. Not dream sequence, but sort of like into his mind. I like that. That's what I was going to say. Another thing was like describing this movie as a boy on a boat with a tiger is a lie. There's all these other things that happen. Because now it becomes like a little bit of like a Homer's Odyssey thing where they're going through like individual trials. But there's not a lot of challenges that are relating to the practical challenges of life on a boat with a

tiger now he's sort of fixed it now it's pretty quickly that gets solved right i mean there's the the whale disrupts them you know there are things you know obviously there's the moment where he lets the tiger back onto the boat it's this sort of like humane slash like necessary act like even though the tiger's dangerous and hungry that's my favorite would have eaten piece of richard parker acting the whole movie is when he's sort of like just so sort of pathetically clawing at the side that's what it looks like when you get your cat yeah their mouth looks exactly like that i love that um but then yeah i mean he he gets to this island little pencil little pencil you like the little pencil

the pencil gets smaller oh I love that oh yeah the last time you see him writing you can't even see the lead it's like so tiny that he's still scratching out and they use the

the tally marks on the side of the boat really well as a way to not have to like tell you how much time it's been but every time they cut and you see it again you're just like

Jesus fucking Christ did you read the section that was actually about the board that my mom had on this? No, I can't imagine how hard this was. So basically, and this is the work that I think my mom was the script supervisor on this but I think that I recently got into a bind on a project where I was asking for them to hire a script supervisor

and they were just like, what you're describing is not a script supervisor. And eventually they just got me a hired another director to be my assistant and it was like, okay, that's what my mom does basically. And eventually they just got me a, hired another director to be my assistant. And it was like, okay, that's like what my mom does basically. And so they had this 20 foot board that was basically like,

they were charting like the spiritual journey. Yes. Like with metrics, they were charting how much Pi is becoming a tiger. Like just a tremendous, everything in this. And his physical states are so different. All of that stuff.

Basically they were like we are terrified of this thing not moving. Yeah. Everything needs to be changing. There has to be progression. And what they would do is they would chart it out on this big board and whenever they would see dead spots. Yeah. They would go okay now we got to put some dynamics in there. Yeah.

And so it's always like changing color pad. Like it's, there's just a lot of, for a movie about just floating rudderlessly, literally, there's a tremendous amount of like dynamic kind of action going on, like on like 13 different levels. The thing I just, my really standing out to me watching it without the VFX was that like, even without the elements,

even in this like environment that is clearly artificial, you're buying into it because he changes the storytelling language for each little section so much yeah that it doesn't become monotonous it doesn't just become like here's a kid in the middle of the frame yeah that's that's surrounded by water when i saw this movie that is how i felt about the movie you thought it got repetitive i thought i found it boring especially once he was on the boat uh i think i was uninterested in 3d at the time i think i was sick of 3d yeah because it's 2011 right so we're like two years into 3d this is like because there was the run for like a couple years where there's that weird thing where like four consecutive best cinematography

oscars were won by 3d films is that right for avatar life of pi hugo and gravity but you're missing 2010 okay so yeah but something like five four out of five consecutive years are won by it and it felt like once a year a major director steps up to the plate it feels like the general public is starting to sour on 3D but once a year someone steps up and it becomes an event and even if you think you don't like 3D you have to see Gravity in 3D. You have to see Life of Pi in 3D.

Hugo performed worse out of those but it was obviously very well regarded. Yeah. And then that kind of ends. Then it stops being like major filmmakers are going to try to make their 3D movie. Like, abruptly, in a really kind of interesting way.

Because it was like proven that on average 3D movies weren't performing as well. But if a major person made one that was like, oh, this is intrinsically tied to the storytelling and they've done the research to make the tech work, it would always do well. I'm trying to find the last cinematography movie that was even, like, a movie that was even available in 3d right mad max wasn't right it was

okay so madman um anyway uh i didn't like this movie uh-huh i now remember that i was going through an insane uh like end of relationship close to breakup like time then this was like right before we met yes we became friends because we were both not doing well correct and perhaps that influenced

my like somewhat sort of sour opinion this week because when I watch it now I was very taken with it and fond of it like maybe not like my favorite Ang Lee

but like your ex at the time also was a Bengal tiger but this film's a little triggering for you you have to admit I know that's true

and used to live in a little boat. Did that scene though where he's saying you've taken my family, you've taken everything. What? I surrender. What else do you want?

Did that resonate with you at that moment in your life? Yeah, very much so. Yeah. I mean, that's basically word for word a conversation. Yeah.

No. You know what I mean? And I remember in the Q&A too just being like, he asked me directly, like, is this thing working for you? And I said like, after that scene, like, he asked me directly, is this thing working for you? And I said,

after that scene, this is the greatest movie ever. You full stop love this movie. I think David and I are in similar places where I like it. I would say I like it a lot. If you've ever had the experience of going and seeing your friend's indie band play a show, and you're like, I just feel so good that they're on stage and they seem really

confident. Imagine going and seeing this stuff. It's like, imagine going and seeing your friend's band and the band is life of pie. Sure. You know what I mean? I fucking love this movie. It's like, I'm so proud of these people. And the thing you told me is like,

you know, speaking to people who are working on the film and everything, it was constantly like, I don't know if we're going to fucking pull this off. Yeah. We might have overreached. Sure. Which is kind of what happened with Billy Lynn.

Yes. You know, Billy Lynn. Yes. You know? Billy Lynn is like an overreach, which I think definitely gave him the courage to think that it was worth trying Billy Lynn when he's like 10 years ahead of anyone realistically attempting that. But yeah, so he gets on the carnivorous island.

That's cool. That's just like a D&D adventure. Yeah, because it kind of feels like maybe like problem solved. I like that in the book too. Yeah, right. But also I just like that idea ofD adventure. Yeah, because it kind of feels like maybe problem solved. I like that in the book too. Yeah, right. But also, I just like that idea of like, oh, you've reached paradise. And like, in so many-

It's filled with Timones. It's filled with meerkats. You got Timones for days. Some jammy meerkats. But just like that, you know, like the classic stranded man, it would be like, oh, you see a mirage and it's not there or something. Right. But like this is like, no, it's there.

There's a tooth wrapped up. Is that the beat from Blair Witch Project? Yes, it definitely is. Weird, right? High up. Is that the beat from Blair Witch Project? Yes, it definitely is. Weird, right? Highest paid. Wait, what? I missed the joke. They open up the big scary, nothing scary happens in that movie,

except for they open up a package with a tooth in it. The scariest part of the Blair Witch Project is, well, apart from the ending, is that weird package of goo and tooth. And it's the same tooth. They paid the tooth 2.5. Tooth gets the

width in this movie. I don't know if you know this but tooth gets the width with tooth. I hope it's Fallen World sidebar for one

second. The moment that I really started to like that movie was when I realized that that T-Rex that was in the back of the truck

drugged and I ambient or whatever was the same T-Rex that was chasing the Jeep in the first movie and I like on Ambien or whatever, was the same T-Rex that was chasing the Jeep in the first movie. And I think that brontosaurus that dies is like the first. I think that those are arcs over movies for specific dinosaurs. I think they're going there. The captain is very into that. He talks about Jurassic World being unforgiven for the T-Rex.

Really? And that is all I will say about that. Did you hear the way I just said really? Yes. Dismayed? That is all I will say about that. I will watch Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom at some point. You should.

Yeah. It's an interesting movie. I'm more into it when people describe it. That's kind of how I felt watching it. I do like the first scene though and i like some of the end yeah i don't know the last three minutes is pretty cool yeah but well we could talk about it but not today we're not talking about that today today so he gets off the carnivorous island but pretty quickly after that he ends up on

good normal safe island he does that's the thing is like you're like oh man like he came so close and then it's like well no actually five minutes later and then he makes it and it's like i think it's just that idea of we've reached the end of the story right we've reached the plausibility breaking point he's reached his journey his relationship about that to the japanese people uh the japanese insurance agents they're like a carnivorous like yeah come on what are you talking about yeah jesus christ Does this represent some kind of like, you know,

like the dream sequence where he has some passion in the Christ where he imagines getting off. It's like, it's the last thing where you almost

get distracted from here. It's like, it's a trap. Right. He almost doesn't make it. Yeah. He almost falls prey and succumbs

at the last possible moment. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I also always get really grossed out when he eats that like root. You don like vegetables it just looks gross yeah i love the

you know he that richard parker just walks off uh yeah that that hits me really it does and is and the uh um sharma plays it so well yes you know the the emotion like the crying like it's actually hard to do that right you're like right it's just like a fucking tiger he doesn't have any relationship to me he doesn't think about like

man we went through this crazy fucking thing together but then I suppose there's metaphorical import to like you know it's like his he doesn't need it anymore like a part of him is gone

right yeah they put a lot of stress in the making of book on that this very last shot before it goes to the credits and they're like,

pay attention to it, see what it is and they really like cue it as like, decipher this. Uh-huh. I've done what I think I can do. It's basically like a,

you know, vertigo type hitchcock thing where it extends and then the color drains from it. Yeah. And they're like, what is that shot? And it basically

is him passing out. Yeah. Like the movie ends when he, like the spirit animal he's had to create to survive, he no longer needs it. It disappears and he goes unconscious. So that's, you know, we've been talking around it,

but the twist of this movie is. We kind of talked about it. Yeah. It's essentially a disassociative episode. Right. Like he creates an alternate identity to be able to win his own survival. Yeah.

It's a narrative. Right. Right. And it's much like, I guess there's this, you can draw this idea that like, it's kind of like the stories of religion, you know,

like, cause there's those early scenes where he's with the priest where he's like, but why would God send his son and have him suffer for it? Like that just seems mean and all that, you know, like where he's like, but why would God send his son and have him suffer for it? Like that just seems mean. Yeah. And all that, you know, like where he's like, what is this story you're telling me? It seems so impossible to empathize with or what, you know?

Well, and what's interesting about it to me is that when he tells the story, it's so much about that initial incident with the cook and the sailor. Right. And his mother, which is why I asked if it's longer in the book with the animals. Because when it happens with the animals, it's just like a pretty fast two-minute sort of sequence, right? And here it's clear when it tells the story that that was the real thing, and then

he doesn't even really tell them about the survival after that in the same kind of way, you know? So this whole rest of the journey that we've been watching is him just fucking coming to terms with what he's done. Less than the actual act. When I was reading this breakdown that my college professor, Scott Higgins, hi Katie, was basically breaking down all the stereoscopic kind of things that they're doing. And they basically said in that last scene where he's giving the kind of confession to the auditors basically, the investigators.

It is like that scene in Fallout where the walls fall backwards. Yeah. And where it's just framed on Tom Cruise and you feel that, like, vertigo thing. Basically, as this is going on, they're taking that animated, like, they have a proscenium that they can angle. Right. And they drop it backwards and then extend. Like, they're doing all this crazy stuff.

So the room sort of gets wider and deeper and their faces come more and more forward? You basically are falling up and towards the screen. You get a kind of flight of passage, kind of out-of-body experience. That's crazy. There's a lot of cool stuff. I think this is worth watching in 3D. Yeah, I think I'm going to buy the 3D Blower

since I have the last 3D TV ever made. I spent the summer living at Doug Trumbull's house and he has a great 3D TV. I have to say, this was the movie like True Lies where it's like every day at lunch he had all these 3D Blu-rays and we would just always watch

this 25 minutes of Life of Pi with our glasses on. Let's watch this. And just kind of skip around in the movie. It's really, really fun to watch that way. And I find also, 3D movies are often better on smaller screens. You can kind of get a better sense of what they're doing.

I really like 3D. I know you hate it, David. I don't hate it. I just have no interest in it. You go like, you do the thing where you throw your arms up. I do that a lot. Like the big air puppet outside a used car dealership.

That's sort of the Sims movie. It rarely does much for me. It gives me a headache. I spend so much of my experience being like, okay, I have to hold my head just like this and now everything looks good. 3D is good with really expensive glasses and it's terrible with

real D glasses, which is what they give you. I just get bummed out that I feel like the lazy 3D, the sort of cash-in post-conversions, and that sort of like kind of creates the hunger to cash-in post-Avatar. It can be good, yeah. Yeah, because I do like the sort of like what we were talking about, of like once or twice a year, here's a serious director using it

in a very pointed way. And I feel like the glut of sort of just like the sloppy post-conversions has soured people on it so much that you don't have people actually like trying to do something painted with it using it as a thematic tool. But I'm also like like I say it just like doesn't like I say in the Billy Lynn

episode I like the window. I'm trying to watch the movie like I like looking at a frame like that's what I like about cinema. I'll tell you what I like about 3D. Okay. I like that like that is it that like the images sort of like come out of the screen yeah that was very concise what i like about it is i don't think it actually reflects reality i like the stylization of it you know like watching a 3d movie for me feels like watching a musical david's doing the arm thing again where it's just like this is just like an expressionistic tactic

rather than breaking into song. It's like they're using the force of these objects in relation to each other to make you feel things. And here's, I think, why the movie has to be 3D. Yeah. And why Ang Lee figured this out.

It's like, okay, you've got to go back to that scene in Pondicherry when you go from the comic book insert that gets so crazy looking and then it cuts to the shot of someone just like putting a candle on the water. That candle moves out.

The whole background's out of focus, and you realize it's actually, like, a 4,000-person thing that they did. Lovely movie. Thinking about the movie right now. They were talking about shooting that scene. They said the entire crew was on set lighting candles, and it was just, like, it was the moment where they all just bonded forever as a unit. lighting candles, and it was just like, it was the moment where they all just bonded forever as a unit.

I just think like ripples in 3D of the water will never stop being captivating. Right. Okay, here's what he says. Vishnu sleeps floating on the shoreless cosmic ocean, and we are the stuff of his dreaming. And then he just stops and says, spectacle. That's cool.

You know, and the dad says, don't let these stories and pretty lights fool you, boys. Religion is darkness. And I think this movie is like using 3D and spectacle to kind of like, it's like a church. You go into this movie and it is a spiritual experience. Right. And he's not sure whether that's safe or not.

And it sells you. He's afraid of spiritual experiences that give meaning to chaos. And so the thing needs to have so many exploding socks and so much just kind of like adornment to it because it's about the danger of maybe succumbing to believing in the really like Baroque version of what happened. Also that sort of stylization and technological like, immersement is like, getting you into the story in the same way

that Rafe Spall is like, fully just head in, listening to every single detail of this thing. When I look at Rafe Spall's characters, Rafe Spall keeps trying, he's too greedy. You know, I think that scene where he reaches for the bread on the table

and then sees that he's praying and gets kind of ashamed. And then your front counter, that line where he goes, yeah, on the table and then sees that he's praying and gets kind of ashamed and then your front counter, that line where he goes, yeah, let's eat, is like fantastic. Like that's like a hinge point for the movie

and what I do like about Ray Spall's character is he's like a gluttonous like white bastard who's just like, give me the payoff, give me the payoff. Like I'm here to extract it.

Well and also, and then he eventually learns to like stop asking questions and he realizes like the story will come as it comes. Because when he first mentions the tiger, he's like, oh yeah, no, there was a tiger. But there's also that scene very early on

where he's like, I really liked your first book. And he's like, oh, thank you. I've been writing the second one. Oh, is it set in Pondicherry? Is that where you're there? No, it's set in Portugal. It's just cheaper in Pondicherry. And he goes like, oh.

And you can tell he's got a judgment about him, but he just sort of lets it simmer and then he doesn't say anything. Which I remember in the Maguire version, him being fully sold on the wonder of the story from the get-go. He was playing it much more like, oh my God, this is amazing. What great luck that

I've met this guy. And it felt like they were trying to set him up as more of a traditional, like in a weird way, audience surrogate. Like you're hearing the story through him, whereas like the race ball stuff in this is still at a distance where you're watching how the guy processes the story

rather than hearing the story through him. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is smarter. In the book, I think I remember it being more, they're more fighting about religion. Like it's more of like an argument yeah they physically fight frozen through a window yeah

and it's crazy and then there's like a big like parkour scene yeah where they're like chasing each other around Montreal oh my god David through his headphones he broke them and he's now setting the studio on fire it was right there it was right there it was right there

but you know right so there's like a little more sense of like when he says like and so it goes with God you're like oh he's really like convinced him or made a profound argument that he understands is profound so the argument with people I guess who prefer the book to this is that the book is more

ambiguous and sort of putting you in the position of, like, which story would you rather believe? Whereas the movie, it feels like just because I think it's the nature of having people act these things feels a lot more weighted towards this is a coping mechanism. Yeah. Because you have Irvin Kahn and you have Sharma

like talking these stories through and the choices they made as actors make it seem like they're dealing with a tremendous amount of trauma. I think my big revelation at 7 in the morning as I was walking around my neighborhood was I was like, okay, so the

cool thing about this film is it's like a big tent film. And that's why it works as a four quadrant hit. It's because you can actually go in and have different experiences. Yes. You know? It was rated PG. Yeah, which is crazy. And instead of like doing what most four quadrant films do where they say like let's hem in this, let's hem in that, let's like not offend as many people as possible.

This one goes like you can have radically, like if you believe in God, this film goes really hard for you. Like, if you believe in God, this film goes really hard for you. If you're, like, raised like a violent atheist like I am, you watch the film and you go, okay, so this is cool that they tricked religious people into watching this. And then this morning I realized Ang Lee believes in God. Yes. For sure. Yeah, 100%. And I got tricked. Yeah.

You know what I mean? This is not, like, I am an atheist who was tricked into thinking this movie was on my side. was tricked into thinking that this movie was on my side. He also talks about that his sense of God is very much just the idea of there being a power that's tying things together rather than following a certain

narrative of the religious trials of development of man and things like that. Just in the process of when they describe him making this film, he was being guided. There's a lot of stuff where it's like there was a symbol basically on the tiger's head. Like he cast the tiger because there was like a sign on his head and there's like all these

photos of them like praying on set. And, you know, it's like it's really and when he describes like his process of directing, it's much more like just paying attention to the world and kind kind of trusting the hand of fate yes you know uh definitely uh as you said a weird four quadrant hit very much so do you want to play the box yeah because there were you read a lot of press before the movie came out everyone was like that thing's gonna fucking flop like even if it does okay it was so expensive they're releasing in thanksgiving and then like hurricane sandy happened and people were like that's right it's a fucking storm movie Like, even if it does okay, it was so expensive. They're releasing it on Thanksgiving. And then, like, Hurricane Sandy happened. That's right.

And people were like, it's a fucking storm movie, you know? Yeah. Like, but they released a trailer that was just very much sort of like a showcase reel. Like, they'd be like, now an exclusive look at Life of Pi. And it was, I think, the first section. I'm trying to remember what it was. They did one of those things where before 3D movies they released like an excerpt almost like the Dark

Knight thing before I am legend. Maybe it was part of the shipwreck or something. I vaguely remember that. I think it might have been the sequence with the flying fish. That sounds very plausible. It also premiered at the New York Film Festival and like got good reviews and that was like a couple months before it came out. So there was like you know

some healthy buzz. Very much a movie that felt like it could have landed in the middle in there was like you know some healthy buzz very much a movie that felt like it could have landed in the middle in terms of not getting rave reviews not doing great box office landed weirdly

on a static ends of both Thanksgiving weekend yes 2012 okay number one is the fifth in a franchise

and final is it Twilight Break and Dawn part two yes which I think we may have discussed in a box office game before. Which is also the best. In its

second weekend. One day we'll really hash it out about the Twilight movies. Yes, we will. Number two. Mm-hmm. In its third weekend, it's made $221 million. It's really, it's the most astonishing hit within a very successful franchise.

So it's the highest grossing? I believe so. I don't believe so. I know so. Oh, is it Skyfall? Skyfall. Yeah. The 23rd Bond movie, I believe.

Far and away the biggest. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of those things where Bond had always done well. There was a ceiling, though, to how they performed. Far and away the biggest. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of those things where Bond had always done well. There was a ceiling though to how they performed. But it made a billion dollars.

And like that was like, oh, what? Like that doesn't usually. Yeah. Also known as jellyfish reflection to me. That's all I care about. This was a big year

for like jellyfish in movies. Love those moon jellies. Because everyone got scared off after Seven Pounds and then this year like Ang Lee, Sam Mendes are like, I'm bringing jellyfish back.

Speaking of Seven Pounds, and then this year, like, Ang Lee, Sam Mendes are like, I'm bringing jellyfish back. Speaking of Seven Pounds, the After Earth Gemini Man comparison is going to be so fantastic. Oh, I can't wait. Because instead of making Jaden into Little Will Smith. It's Little Will Smith. It's Will Smith fighting Little Will Smith. And it's, I'm so excited. I hope they draw something like the Fresh Prince.

I hope it's good. It's going to be amazing. I mean, here's the thing I would say, as like being a kid that grew up as like a family friend of Ang Lee, every single time he's decided to make a film, it's good. It's going to be amazing. I mean, here's the thing I would say as like being a kid that grew up as like a family friend of Ang Lee. Every single time he's decided to make a film, it's been baffling. You know what I mean? It's always like, you're like, really?

Yeah, because my mom works on Ice Storm and it's like, what's Ang doing? Ang's making a Kung Fu movie. Yeah. Okay. All right. Like, Ang's making Hulk. Okay. Okay.

It's a cowboy. It's a gay cowboy. Right. These all sound bananas. It's a movie about- They it's a gay cowboy these all sound bananas it's a movie about they do sound like lateral moves yeah a movie about someone having a panic attack

in the middle of a Destiny's Child it's insane yeah so it's like when I hear like okay it's like it's a Will Smith film where it's like basically

Looper yeah right you know except he's playing both parts but I think the idea that's so amazing about it is just that like Will Smith as a young man did not get those opportunities to give a phenomenal performance.

And also, my big theory is that all the stuff that Will Smith has been doing on Instagram is similar to what he did with this actor where he's becoming young again. Actually, through Sense Memory. Oh, that's kind of interesting. Don't you think? Will Smith on Instagram has been adorable. He's been really great. Because he's young again. Interesting. He's training himself to be young again actually through Sense Memory Will Smith don't you think Will Smith on Instagram has been adorable because he's young again he's training himself to be young again

and that's what we're seeing and if that energy is going into this movie and I'll say it's the first time Will Smith's working with a really big

important smart director in a while sounds like Michael Mann arguably right I want to look at his filmography just to make sure

I'm not like dissing someone and like and you know like no offense to david air sure or akiva goldsman right but like i mean do you count m night shamalan because if not at that point he's like that's a bronze star but also like if not you kind of got to go back to basically like either alex proyas if you if you buy that, or Michael Mann. What were you going to say? Oh, I just think that M. Night Shyamalan coming off of both of these things, I think they're signing on to Will Smith projects. Like Will Smith-generated projects. Yes, which is very interesting.

And makes sense in a post-Billy Lynn climate. But I'm very curious to see what that movie looks like. I'm very curious. But I do, I mean, what you were saying about every project he signs on to sounding like just completely confusing. I've been watching these movies, a lot of them with the lady I've been dating,

Humblebrag. Jesus Christ. And once every 20 minutes... Wait, I should have said Humble have said humble brag yeah i'm calling my own humble no you say it say it again i've been watching a lot of these movies with the lady that i've been humble brag humble brag fucking humble brag he roasts me so much for daring i'm very proud of you actually i think this is great stuff thank you uh but like, every 20 minutes during whatever movie we're watching, will just go like, wait a second, Ang Lee's career is fucking crazy.

Like, she just, in response to random scenes from movies, will be like, how is this the same guy that made that thing? Especially when you watched them all at once. This has been a really fun miniseries for that exact reason. Remind me what the one before this is and the one after this is, and she just goes like, that's insane. It's just why I wanted to do them, because it's that thing of like

the genre switch that they toggle so crazily. Right. Yeah. Like I was talking to her about Hulk and she was like so what does he make after Hulk and I'm like Brokeback and she was like what did he make before that? I was like Crouching Tiger. I honestly think it's like there's a lot of directors it's like the Werner Herzog model where you're

like look at that thing up on the mountain. I'm going to go run up there as fast as I can and then I will prove to you that life can be like this. That is not what he does. He's not a crazy, he's not like an arrogant person. I think he's actually a person

who is just reacting to the world, taking his cues from it. And when I talk to him on the set of Billy Lynn about what he's doing, I genuinely get the impression that it's his understanding that this was the only rational path forward. Which is crazy.

Seriously. But that's part of his but that's why it's ill as an artist right is that he's resolute about the things he does and also it's like if you read the the stuff i sent you about like the backstory of of him actually the whole thing of like oh he wanted to be an actor right but it was like it's many steps before that it's like he basically was mikey from the ice storm the way he describes himself as a kid. Just like, he's like, I was spaced out,

I was brooding, my entire childhood. Only went to art school because he couldn't get into any other school. Couldn't get into the military. Right. Failed the military test.

Right. And then got sent to the art academy, which is basically like LaGuardia High School. It's just like, hide these kids here. Right.

Right. So they don't get beat up. But he was just sort of guided through the universe. Yeah. And then in that, he's like, can't do theater stuff

because it's so verbal. Yeah. And then in that, he's like, can't do theater stuff because it's so verbal. Yeah. And then goes to film school and goes, this is bullshit. Like, I've fucked up my life. And then he realizes that on his first sight and sound thing, people are listening to him for the first time in his life. Yeah. And he said, like, I was actually the first time that people listened. And he said, I did it because it was really easy and because people listened to me for the first time.

And I've been directing ever since. It's crazy. You know, and I honestly think this, his career is the, he's, yeah, it's all real. It seems very nice. But it's like, this was the, as wild and as ambitious as these films are, I think they were all him being like, I think this is the path of least resistance. Yes. And I'm a good, responsible person.

Like, this was my only choice. That's what feels crazy about them. His filmography, if you look at it, I think we've said this before, is it feels like he's a 1940s studio system guy where they're like, here's the new movie we're assigning you. It looks like the filmography of a guy

who doesn't choose what films he makes because they're so varied and all over the place. It's like Howard Hawks, now you got to do a screwball. Now you got to do a Western. Except it's very deliberate. and all over the place that's like Howard Hawks now you got to do a screwball now you got to do a western you know except it's very deliberate and it's just him

oscillating between all these weird different modes so number three oh wow at the box office sorry no it's fine

I want to do that I thought it would be funny is one of the other best picture nominees we already discussed it Argo? nope Argo is number ten

Silver Linings Playbook? nope Silver Nope. Argo is number 10. Silver Linings Playbook? Nope. Silver Linings Playbook is number 9. They're all in there. Lincoln. Lincoln. What's it up to at this point? 62 million in three weeks. It's going to make another 120 million dollars.

Another A.V. Kaufman masterpiece. Knife of Pi is number 5. With only 30 million in its opening masterpiece. Now, Life of Pi is number five, with only $30 million in its opening weekend. Yeah, but Thanksgiving is one of those weekends where you can have multiple films open well. But number four, also opening this weekend.

Yeah, because even after that weekend, that would not have given Fox confidence they were going to make a profit on this film. Yeah, I don't know. It's an animated film, number four. Is it Hotel Transylvania? Correct. Incorrect.

What? Incorrect. Is it Wreck-It Ralph? Nope. That's number six. Fuck. Is it a DreamWorks? Yes, it is a DreamWorks. But you you hesitated so it wasn't an obvious dream i

barely remember the existence of this movie i feel like you have some take where you're like no it's not bad oh oh yeah this is the best dreamworks movie the last 10 years oh god wait rise of the guardians yeah you think this is good yeah fucks it's ans. Talk about an unfilmable concept. They can't show. It's a movie about owls that tear each other's bodies apart. No, that's Legend of the Guardian. The Owls of Gahool directed by Zack Snyder. This is Legend of the Guardians.

No, that's Legend of the Guardians. Oh, this is Rise of the Guardians? This is Rise of the Guardians. Excuse me. Rise of the Guardians is the one where like Santa and like Hitler unite or whatever. It's the Avengers of children's imagination. It's Easter Bunny, Sandman, fucking Tooth Fairy. Desecration.

Russian Mafia Santa Claus played by Alec Baldwin. It fucking rules. Chris Pine is Jack Frost. He's a very handsome boy and they fight nightmares. It's an elegant movie based off a William Joyce story. It made $32 million at

the box office. Underperforming and it's a crime. It made $300 million worldwide. Should have made $300 billion worldwide. That'd be a lot. I insist that everyone rent Rise of the Guardians now. You've also got

Red Dawn, the remake of Red Dawn. Doesn't exist, never happened. Really doesn't exist. You know that movie was made with China as the enemy rather than Russia, and then the Chinese box office grew so much that they digitally changed it to North Korea. I didn't know. Do you know about what happened to Ghostbusters

thanks to the call? No, because ghosts are illegal. Ancestor worship. Ghosts are illegal in China. Can you imagine? All four of those characters being like, we're going to beat up your grandma. Yeah, they are afraid of some ghosts in the people's mainland of China. Taken 2?

People's mainland of China, Jesus Christ. Yeah, Taken 2, one of the greatest premises and one of China. Taken 2? People's Mainland of China. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Taken 2, one of the greatest premises and one of the most mediocre movies. Okay. That's the box office. It did very well, as we said.

Do you remember the premise of Taken 2? No. Oh, it's that all the people he killed in Taken 1 are mad at him. All the henchmen. All the henchmen were related to one guy who's like, he killed all of my nephews. All 200 nephews and now got to get my revenge.

It's one of the most audacious openings to a movie. He's leafing through photos of his family and killed by Brian Mills, killed by Brian Mills. He's throwing them all into a mass grave and he went, I will find this man. And then it cuts to fucking Liam Neeson yelling at a car wash attendant alright well this is our five hour episode on Life of Pi we're done I mean I don't know Ray

do you have any final thoughts what else do you want to say before we head off into the sunset like Richard Parker without looking back I'm just so honored to be a part of this this show has been incredibly important to me for the last two years. When we were seeing, was it Rogue One?

I remember you telling me how Ray had just talked to you about how much he loved the show. Remember that? Yes. And I was in a rush, and I was like, what the fuck? I don't know who you're talking about right now. It was very short with you.

You had said a very nice thing to me about the show, and I related to David, and David was angry that his girlfriend, Humblebrag, was late to the movie. Yes. Even though we had reserved seats. We had reserved seats. You were very stressed out about it.

I was very stressed out about something, and I didn't know who you were talking about. I was like, huh? But that has always stuck with me. I've been a massive fan of Ray's work for a very, very long time. I never told you this, but I literally wrote a paper on you in film school

on your short film, Death of a paper on you in film school. On your short film, Death of the Ten Men. Oh, wow. I don't think it was very good. It was talking about... It wasn't in a film class. It was talking about artistic inspiration. Wow. Truly. And

we knew the same people that didn't know each other for years and years and years and then we sort of became friends through you listening to the podcast. We saw Allied together. Right. Right. Which Fox?

That's a good movie. Allied Fox. I'd watch Allied again for this podcast and see what I think about it. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. Last time I saw Allied

Donald Trump had been elected the day before. Not good. That may have colored elected the day before. Not good. That may have colored my opinion of it. My take on Allied is that I really liked the desert stuff. I liked it. It was the England stuff where it lost me.

I love all of it. Ray, thank you for being here. It's in his hands. Ben is homeless. And going through some stuff. And we love him. Ben's sort of in the middle of his lifeboat in the middle of the ocean right now.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. And he's begging for a tiger to jump in with him. Please. Come on. Come at me, tigers. Ben needs company right now. If you need to stay at my place, I actually have some room right now. For real. It me, tigers. Ben needs company right now. If you need to stay at my place,

I actually have some room right now. For real. It's an option. Okay, we'll talk off mic. You're actually going to have a conversation about this off mic. Immediately consider that. Thank you very much for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. Thanks to Andrew Goodup for our social media, Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork, Lane Montgomery for our theme song. Go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit. And as always, truly feel free to tweet at

Ben if you have a suggestion of where you'd love. Hey Ben, also we're sponsored today by Typeset in the Future, which is a book coming out from Abrams Books that's by blogger and designer dave addy and it invites like sci-fi movie fans on a journey through genre defining classics you know your 2001 your star trek your alien your blade runner these great sci-fi movies they look at how these movies use the creative visions of the future through typography and design so you know you can see

all these cool film stills these concept arts these uh type specimens and then they got interviews with people like paul verhoeven former subject of a blank check mini series chip casters uh so it's very geeky it's very it's honestly very david sims it's uh fonts and title cards and stuff like that in uh sci-fi movies it's on sale november 6th from abrams books