Blank Check with Griffin & David - Morvern Callar with Emily Yoshida

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

Mommy's back! Emily Yoshida joins the gang to talk about 2002's Morvern Callar, a surprisingly tender film about grief, starting over, and taking a Jet2 Holiday. We're chatting about Samantha Morton's unconventional star quality, our personal history with mixtapes, and the Fantastic Beasts franchise for some reason. Plus, Ben reveals his love of seaside snow, Griffin adds some context from the source material (or whatever he could translate from the Scottish dialect), and everyone agrees that Morvern did nothing wrong. Watch Shogun Season 1  Check out the official Shogun podcast Listen to the Emily’s Traitors Podcast: First To Breakfast Watch Carnival of Souls Watch the Romano Tours SNL Sketch Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wrote it for you. I love you. Be brave. I left money in the bank for the funeral. The card is in the drawer. You know the code. Keep the podcast for yourself. Now, I'm choosing not to do a Scottish accent.

I was literally about to say. Because it's typed. It is typed and I don't think you have a perfect Scottish accent. Oh, really? Is that a show? Maybe you do. Maybe I wrote a challenge. I love you.

Be brave. Now it sounds like it's from like the 17th sense. I left money in the bank for the funeral. The card is in the drawer. Do you know the code? Ben, you said you wanted... Ogres are like onions. We'll introduce the podcast one second.

Keep the podcast for yourself. Ben, you said you wanted Griffin to do some clickety-clack keyboard stuff. Yeah, but I feel like that's a post job. And I said, well, you could put that in. You said, I missed those old keyboards. Well, remember when I had the clickety-clack keyboard in COVID, and you guys were like, David, we can't hear

a single thing you're saying. Because clickety clackety clack any time you Google something. There is a reason we complained about that. It was because it sucks. Yes, I think it was fair if you'd complain about it. I'm joking. It's also because in this movie, there's a little bit of clickety clack. When you were using your keyboard, it was kind of a little bit more like,

how dare you? I'm sure it was very sad. It sounded like a damn room of monkeys using a type note. It was like honey going over a waterfall. We cannot overstate how loud and persistent. It was one of those like COVID. things where you're in COVID. I don't know if you remember this guest who I suppose this is speaking currently. Do you remember COVID? I don't know if you remember that. Wait, what? COVID,

the novel coronavirus. Uh, where you're suddenly are like, I think I need to buy something to this week to, you know, so that the wolves don't bark at the door. And then like, you go on like wire cutter or whatever and they're like, you know what rocks is a mechanical keyboard? And you're like, maybe that will bring me joy. I think I got a similar keyboard during... And you get one and you're like, clack, clack, clack, this is fun.

Then you realize you do a podcast. Wirecutter said, no, not for professional podcasters. Right. I mean, you don't have a directional mic situation. I do. I think they were just hearing it honestly

more than anyone else. Yeah, it was quite distracting. Types a lot and we cannot overstate how loud it was. He's always got to Google a thing or two. I think you guys might not even remember the early days of COVID. we didn't even have our

now fired researcher JJ Bersh and so I was still like Googling like what happened in back to the future Goh? It's so tough we wake up every morning and be like I wish I had someone to fire wait did you fire a couple times a week. It's a bit we've stolen from doughboys

I realized this. It took too long for me to realize it Oh I don't think I know because I think I was the one initially doing it and if I stole it from Doe Boys it was subconscious. I think it's yes I don't think it's I think much like I just fired it because I you know JJ, he just kind of grinds by gears and I want him out of this.

Honestly, I want him to leave the company. Does he listen to the podcast? Absolutely. He's like our biggest fan. Has he heard your notes? Because, you know, he should shape up. He will text us five times within the first minute of this episode. Wait, what was the doughboys bit?

Who were they fired? They were firing Yusong all the time. Oh, right, right. I don't think we're constantly. That's old school. Yeah, that's old school. But then Yusong was dead, I feel. The ghost of New Song.

Right, yeah. I was just going to say, do you remember when we did the Kingcast and we did that on Rivers' side where we weren't on Zoom. There was no video. Right. I think Ben wasn't, were you even participating in that? You probably spared that nightmare

of, uh, guest spot. Yeah. And, uh... Not the show. The show's great. It was just the nightmare of the technical nonsense. Like 40 minutes into the episode, I think it was the dearly departed Scott Wampler who went, I'm sorry, David, what the fuck is happening?

Because of the mechanical keyboard. He couldn't see it in. It was just like 40 minutes. He's got a wonderful guy. Yeah. The best. A wonderful. Man who did many great things. Top of the list was calling out your bullshit.

One of his finest works. What's this podcast, Griffin? This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers, and are given a series of blank checks

to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a me series I've been wanting to do for so long. Mm-hmm. One of my favorite living filmmakers. Mm-hmm. I feel like we, years ago, we're basically kind of like,

her next movie, shake hands, whatever it is, we're doing her. We're knocking her out. Well, that would have been, what, seven years ago? You were never, like, here was 2017. Yeah. And it's basically when I see that, I'm like, I'm calling it next one.

Yeah. And she basically works on a once every seven years clip, kind of. This is a mini-series called, We need to post about cap. You can do it. This is a mini-series called we need to pot about cast VIN.

There you go. See, if you didn't trip over it the first time and you would know it wasn't a good miniseries name. You need the struggle. That's what these movies are about. They're about working through struggle. Or I'd say that we're accurately about staying in the struggle. This is called, you need, we need to pod about cast VIN.

We need to pod about Cask VIN. And we do. We do. We do urgently. Yes. Later. But we'll get to that. We'll get to that next week.

talk about a big gap. Today we're talking about her second film. Mm-hmm. What the fuck just happened? Did you almost spill your Diet Coke? Yes. Easy Sems. Raging out over there.

It's fine. If this laptop gets busted, I can buy a new one with a mechanical keyboard. Click, quack, quack, quack, quack, sorry. God, the E is hitting everybody in this room different. I know. Really. And we are strobing the lights in here. We should mention and we're recording in a bathtub. Shit, I should have brought my strobe.

light. That would have been amazing. I had that thought while watching this of like, it's really a shame that Dalton Trumbo didn't live long enough to see Morvorn Caller. That's true. Finally an appropriate amount of bathtubs. And writing. And right. Clickety clacking. Bathubs and novels.

Yeah. Dalton Trumbo would have loved my clickety clack face. That would have been his favorite face for podcast. He would have loved it. Today we're talking about 2002's Morver and Caller and our guest today returning to the show long overdue. And I've seen it. I've seen it over the last. last year. Not, but last night I saw on our Reddit. Someone saying, where's mama? Just last

night, what's been going on? And she mentioned to me the other night, she was like, did you guys lose my fucking number? Why didn't I get called in for Fargo? You guys have gotten too big for me. Why didn't I? No, no, the answer is we knew like there's a new Ramsey coming. Yeah, that was it. We're saving the spot. We had actually written you in without telling you, which we sometimes will do that. Like someone will text me being like, hey, if you are doing that direct, I'd be interested. I'd be Oh, sorry, we already wrote you in. We didn't even tell you, sorry. It's one of the most iron-lock guest bookings we've ever had,

like Connor Ratliff doing Altman's Popeye. It's just etched in stone. Incredible. As something that must happen, and now it is finally happening today. Emily Yoshida, mother of blankies. Did somebody miss their mommy? Writer of Shogun, writer on Shogun.

Post of the Shogun podcast. And what's your Traders' podcast called? First or Breakfast. There you go. A Traders podcast, which will be bringing you back as far as I know for the next season. Mama's home. Do you do American traders or British traders? We do American traders.

We thought about doing it for British traders right afterwards because I think they went straight into it. Yeah, it went straight into the British season. And it was like, it was too. And the guys, did you know that podcasting is hard work? Oh, it's a lot. And the British one is non-celebrbs, but now they've done a celebrity edition. Yeah, they just, I think, wrapped up. And the American one is celebs.

Yeah. It started off kind of a mix of celebs and regs and then it became just celebs. And now they're going to do a regular season. I have put in my application. I know everybody's very worried. And they want to make sure that I am on the debut, Normie season of traders. But, you know, still no word back. So hopefully they're listening to this right now.

I can show my devotion to Scottish culture through this podcast today. The celeb season was mostly past reality TV show people. The British, and that's the British ecosystem of reality TV where they're like, and now celebrity Big Brother, who's on it? People from other Big Brothers that became celebrities due to their behavior. And shows that ripped off Big Brother and now they're going on the mothership. Right. It is just fascinating.

I'm not commenting on anything new here, but there's an ecosystem of like, if you pop on one reality competition, you basically can just jump around them in perpetuity. You're set up. And if it's a Bravo one, you're set for life. you can go on any Bravo show, you go to BravoCon, you get those appearance fees, it's a whole career. I feel like for a while it was won and done. It's like if you're at Survivor, they're not going to let you on the fucking amazing race. And now everyone does everything. Yeah, I mean, I think once Liz Hasselback got on the view, it was just like, oh, wow, you can, you can really go as far as you

want with very little talent or absolutely. Absolutely. What's she doing or how is she doing? Nobody needs to know. It's fine. Yeah. I'm sure she's fear. curious about something. But I mean, as practice for my inevitable turn on regular people traders, I did have my own. I hosted my own Traders game for my birthday this year. And it was pretty fun. So now I have a new, speaking of other careers, I have a new career I can do, which is like mystery dinner party host, part-time out coming. So, yeah, just putting it out there.

I don't know if you remember this. She wrote a children's book called God's Masterpiece. Jesus Christ. I don't know if you remember this, but the day of your trader's birthday party was when I took a, made a pilgrimage with our mutual friend Alex Guter to pick up the David Lynch atmospheric water generator.

Oh, yes. He was worried about being able to make it. Yes, and that was supposed to end up in my home. As a temporary resting place? As a temporary resting place, which I didn't even know. I guess he changed his mind before I was even consulted about. Like, Shirley, Emily would not want to house this water generator. I was like, what are you talking about?

There's a package that has a mailing label with David Lynch's address on it, and I could have it in my home. But I ended up seeing it recently, actually, at the office he's keeping in it. It's pretty incredible. Took a photo with it. It'd be funny if we rented a whole office just for it. People could, like, just go look upon it. Labels, right?

Well, you assure them it's like it's pretty cool to see in person. Yeah, I did a little bit of eye rolling when I was told about it at first and then I saw it in person. I was like, this is cool. I don't even know what it is. It's a water generator. But yeah, it's big. Let's not have oversaw big. The thing about it is it's huge.

The footprint of this thing is not small. And even though it hasn't been open, it's louder than a mechanical keyboard. Emily, Morven Caller. Yeah. Is it your number one favorite movie of all times? Or is it kind of just like your heart's off? Well, I was... Definitive Emily concept.

It is. It is a top five movie for me, I would say. Top five. Like, it's up there. I think that I was looking through my blank check appearances, and I'm pretty sure that it's like this and Castle in the Sky are probably... This might well be my favorite movie that I've ever come on to talk to you guys about. This is the 16th film you've discussed on this show.

If we're including Babe, which we should. We should. We are. He's a gallon. We must. Yes. It'll do. Um.

And you've, you've talked about movies you love. Welcome to Marwin. Welcome to Marwin. Marwin. Yeah. Welcome to. Welcome to. I mean, I'm sure you're, you know, you really, you do really like the handmade and you

really. I do. Yeah. I actually rewatch that. I mean, like, you know, I've had some really, really fun ones. I mean. And movies that I hold near. and dear to my heart.

But this one is... Yeah. Castle in the Sky is very special to me and this one is... Just the Emily Bible, if I'm reading. You know, like those are chapters in it. Yeah, yeah. I hope that is a compliment

considering everything the ghost down in this film. But yeah, I would say... Depiction is not endorsement. In my case, I think it is. Okay, yeah, we like it. We think she's cool. I think she did nothing wrong.

Everything she did is good. It was right, actually. It was very correct. The more I watch it, the more time that goes... by, the more I leaned toward that opinion of Morven Keller did nothing wrong. I think I kind of, because the whole thing with, we'll get into the plot, but the whole thing with Lana and the betrayal involved there is kind of played for last for so much of it. I think the first couple times I saw it. And also,

I probably didn't see it with like some titles the first time I saw it. So a lot of stuff is easy to get lost in the sound mix if you're not a native Scottish speaker. But I think, I think, yeah, the more clarity I have about that and, like, think more about their friendship from leave. Yeah. That girl. Was it a birthday or was it when you were leaving New York that you did the kind of like Morven Cal or screen? Oh, yeah.

No, that was really fun. That was, uh, so they, I think at the time there was maybe one or two tops, like existing prints of it in circulation and they happened to be, it was making the rounds. I think it must have been around. We need to, or not, we need to. You were never really here. Yes. Yeah.

And so it was a. a couple of the teachers here, but I remember they did a, I think it was a bam. They, they, they, they should it there. And I just sort of, I remember this was back in the days of Twitter being a place that people hung out and occasionally had a nice time. I, uh, I basically was like, okay, I'm picking the screening, you know, anybody who follows me, let's get tickets and, you know, let's hang out afterwards and talk about Morven Caller. It was basically a, like, loudly announced, this is important to me. Yeah. I invite anyone else to come experience this with me. Well, and it was such a, there was the scarcity thing with it then, because there was,

wasn't a 4K out. The only way to watch it. Yeah. Yeah. The new one, that's pretty new. That came out within the last five years. Yeah. And that is sold out.

Like, you know. Yeah. I got two copies. Hell yeah. One is still sealed at home because I, you know, you never know. These things. We've learned our lessons so many times now. We're things going in and out of circulation.

But the one that was on. Well, this is also a movie with like defunct distributors. Yeah. It like fell into like legal kind of. ambiguity for a while. Yeah, I don't know the whole timeline of that. I just know that for the longest time, the only way you could watch it

was like the shittiest transfer imaginable on Amazon Prime. Like, just off. Like, this is a beautiful movie, among other things. Just like cinematography, all the above. The music. It's all stuff that you actually want to have

like a pretty, you know, faithful thing of. And it looked like it was like, you know, something out of a cracker back, Cracker. Cracker barrel box? Yeah. A cracker barrel. Something out of a cracker barrel. And the woke cracker. Yeah.

The later one where he has not even a base cracker barrel or whatever. What did they even change? They just the guy. And the barrel. It was just the text. Because they hate men. They hate men and they hit barrel. Barrels, the most masculine of water containers.

Well, I mean, you know, in a pinch, it's also like a dress. If you're a guy who loses his clothes in a fire. I've been in that situation where I had to reach for my barrel. Yeah, the Blu-ray didn't come out until 2022, and there were less than 3,000 copies made, and there's one on eBay for $80. But this movie is like rentable and streamable again. Yeah, you can watch it.

Can you, like on iTunes or whatever you can? It's on Amazon Prime right now. It seems rentable. I don't think the Amazon, I still think that the Amazon Prime one is shitty. I could be wrong. You know what? I was pulling it up. to try to get the text, the opening text,

and it was far worse than what we had just watched. Yeah. Like, significantly. The Disney is gorgeous. It's, yeah. It's not completely vanished, at least. No, it feels like there was, right. They clawed back some clarity of who owns this movie and how they can license it.

Right, because this was an Alliance Atlantis choice. Yes, but then I was looking at the American distributor was a name I didn't even recognize. Momentum? That was a U.K. That was a production. We'll find it. You know what? I'm sure this will be the dossier, unless someone should do a good job.

About to get fired. When did you see this for the first time, Emily? Well, I'm pretty sure I saw this at, and sometimes I have mixed up memories of this, because there was a student movie theater at University of Iowa called the Bijie, which still exists, but the what? The Bijou. And it was just in the student union. You could go see, like I saw, you know, a bunch of me gay films.

I saw, you know, any art house thing that came through. usually like a year after it had been released. Like we were very, but it was a very important place. And I believe that is where I saw this for the first time. And I'm pretty sure I saw it, like I said, without any subtitles, which changes a lot. But I, but the soundtrack was so important to me. I think that they released a disc. I never had that.

But I just think, like, I was very in my, you know, Boards of Canada, like, Warp Records era in high school. And so that plus like the Velvet Underground stuff, all the can stuff. It did release the soundtrack. They did. Yeah. On cassette? That's CD.

It'd be cool if it was cassette. Somebody's got to do that. Whoever made these bespoke Lou and Davis albums for you has got to get on the Morvern-Callor mix tape. Yeah, Motion Tika Mutant. That feels like a good product, the Morvern-Callor mixtape replica with the soundtrack on it. Get on it. Yeah. Mo, get on it.

Had you seen Ratcatcher at that point? No, I had it. Ratcatcher became a real touch point in film school, actually. Like, I feel like my little club of nerds that I was friends with, we were very much, that was sort of in rotation as far as stuff that was inspirational to us. But I didn't, I hadn't seen it before. I didn't know who Lynn Ramsey was. All I knew that it was this movie with a cool soundtrack and Samantha Morton in it.

Right. Who is Samantha Morton was kind of like just starting to pop in a major way. Well, you know, it's crazy because I was. You know, it's crazy. Well, you don't know what I'm about to say. You can disagree if you don't think it's crazy, but I'm going to make the argument. What is it? I almost did like a Kamaglachlan Blue Velvet Dune flip with this

where I thought of this as being the breakthrough. And you're like, no, this is like three years after the Sweet and Lowdown nomination. This is the same year as Minority Report. Yeah. That's the wild thing. That's what I moved by the breakout. Because with Sweden Lowdown, it was like she got the deserved nom. Interesting movie.

Not a movie I have seen in many, many years. But obviously, Sweet and Lowdown made a nominal sum at the time. It was not a big Woody Allen movie. And then, like, after that, I think she's mostly in tiny stuff. She's in Jesus' son. But that was a little movie. And, like, apart from that, like, nothing much. That's the same year as Sweet and Lowdown, though.

And then this year is Morven-N-Callor Minority Report and there's one other film? The film she got the Oscar nomination for, but in America. Oh, but that doesn't come out in the States until 2003. So she gets a nomination the following year. I just always think of this as being her, like, breaking the waves, who the fuck is this? Absolutely. And instead, even though it was very much a, like, leveling up, like, oh, shit, we didn't know she was this good.

She has a nomination under her belt. She had done British Indies before this. But she is someone who kind of breaks out on TV first, and that leads to her movie castings. We can talk about it. We can. She's in the absolutely incredible 1996 Emma with Kate Beck and Sale. as Harriet, you know, as Britney Murphy. As Britney Murphy.

Canonically, Britney Murphy. I saw this film in theaters because I saw Rat Catcher, not in theaters, but when it, so shortly after it came out, because my mom interviewed Lidmer Ramsey for Ratcatcher. Okay. Lord knows why. My mom had this phase, I believe it was the great Graham Fuller, who's still a New York Film Critics Circle member.

I think Graham was the editor of the New York Daily News. news arts section and Graham is an artie fella and even though it was the daily news which is you know a New York tabloid where my mom worked for many years it used to be a real newspaper now it's like nothing but and you know I think it was a less already set but he tilted it artie for a little while so when Graham was in charge he would like and we lived in England and he would tell my mom like hey go interview this like Scottish director with a sort of vaguely big debut I mean Ratcatcher is a true tiny indie, but it did make waves.

It made waves, and I feel like it has a reputation as still one of those kind of, like, definitively important film school movies. Like Emily was saying a little bit. That is still kind of discovered by people. She won the BAFTA for, like, best debut and all that. You know, there was...

If you're, like, a young aspiring filmmaker, there are movies like that you can watch where you're like, this is this person's first film. They made it for how little money? Yeah. And I've never seen a movie like this before. And it can kind of explode your brain. in terms of understanding the possibilities of film language.

Yeah, that you can do something that's very cohesive and just feels like of a very specific vision for not that much. And fully realized right out of the game. So I, like the little pretentious boy that I was, was like, she was on my radar. I guess I'm also, I'm reading the magazines, I'm sight and sound. I'm plugged in the mags.

We all love reading mags. And I was, yeah, Samantha Morton, right? Like, she was a name a little bit. So, yeah, I was hyped to see this. I saw this in theaters when I was 16. years old. I'm proud to admit, I think it went a smidge over my head when I was 16 years old. I thought it was cool, but I think I was kind of like, whoa. Like, you know, I don't know if I was fully ready for Morvern Caller at that age. But the vibe was cool. I was less of a club kid.

I don't know if this is shocking to you guys. It wasn't really like the type to like, you never took a knee. Yeah, go rave in a pizza. Like, I don't know. What about that infamous? a dorm room picture of you biting your lower lip and pumping your fists. There's like four billion of those. And you're in like a sleeping bag or something? That is a classic. Never had a drum and bass era?

I shouldn't laugh because honestly. Now I did go to Glastonbury. I did go to Glastonbury. That's 2003. Well, who was playing? Radiohead. Radio head. Yeah, more than Calais.

No, I went because it was radio. That was the sort of way that got me over the line because I was always like, I don't think I'll enjoy that. It was fucking Radiohead. doing Hail to the Thief. You know, like that was the album they were promoting. And it was very cool.

I don't think there is a single musical act that could get me to go to a festival. These days? No, no. No. I was a little more pliable back then. I'm not a damp festival gal. Like, not a wet fest. If your fest is in the UK, tap is likely.

I would say I'm neither a damp festival gal nor a dry festival. Yeah, you don't want to dry out neither. If it's an indoor festival and I'm the only person there. And I can watch it from a bed. On a couch or bed, yes. I'm wet or dry, baby. Yeah, you'll take it in the way. I don't think I had seen Morvern Kaller again until I went to Bam to see it with you, Emily.

Okay. The screening that you guys are talking about. And I remember being like, yeah, fuck this. This fucking rocks, man. David? Yes. This episode is brought to you by Mooby, the global film company that champions great cinema. It champions it.

Unlike the others. No. To cry it. Barbarian. From iconic directors to emerging otters, there is always something new to discover. With Mooby, each and every film is hand-selected so you can explore the best of cinema.

You can log on to Mooby and check out all the movies they got. You know, Art House, you know, cool indie stuff, foreign stuff. Okay, this is awesome. There's a movie star movie, now streaming on Mooby in the U.S. covered on Blank Check soon. Well, I think that's the headline. Yeah, die my love. Yes.

You're going to need to watch it if you want to keep up with the show. True. True. I mean, I guess, you know, do what you want. You don't have to, but we recommend viewing the film. Please view the film. Die My Love, Lynn Ramsey's film. Great film.

Came out last year. It was a canon. It came out last fall in 2025. It's a visceral and uncompromising portrait of a woman engulfed by love and madness, starring Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for a Golden Globe, Robert Pattinson. It's kind of mostly those two. It's very heavy on the two of them.

Yeah, some top shelf. I was going to say some seasoning of Nolte and Spacic. Like dry age, let me tell you. Oh. Yeah, you've got them in there. But yeah, it's a lot. It's a big showstopper movie for Jay Law. And R. Pats.

Yeah. And even R. Pats knows he's playing Sack and Fiddle. Sure. But then there's like a-Laporting out the cello. A lemon pepper dry rub of Nick Nolte. I love lemon pepper guys. I love Nick Nolte. I love Nick Nolty.

look at Lynn Ramsey making her eagerly awaited filmmaking return. Obviously that's why we're covering her on the pot because we've been waiting for her to make another movie. And it was on the short list for cinematography of the 90th Academy Awards. I didn't even know that. That's awesome. It's a passionate,

complicated, destructive love story between two major stars in Lawrence and Pattinson who'd never been together on screen before. I know. I guess that's not that surprising, but they are quite a pair. The bat and the cat. K-A-T-N-I-S-S-S-S. Oh, Catniss.

Yeah. The Bat and the Steak. Mystique, that is. Oh, sure. Yeah, it's an awesome movie. The Steak and the Freak. Is that something he's played a lot of freaks? Sure.

Sure. Spoiler alert for the episode, but I was a big fan of the film. I know you were. Yes. Have you seen it yet? I haven't seen it yet. Whoa. You're going to like it a lot.

It's also based on a book by Ariana Harwick. Mm-hmm. Anyway. There's so much good stuff to watch on movie, but there's also awesome. Yeah, other good stuff. Look, if you're not a member, this is a perfect month to sign up in order to keep up with the show to stream the best of cinema. You could try Mooby free for 30 days at Mooby.com

slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I-com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. David? Yes. Let me put this into a language that you'd understand because you don't wear glasses. No, I don't. No, sometimes a sunglass. Whatever you.

Never an eyeglass. Some big, strong, tall guy with perfect vision. 2015, baby. Listen, some of us used to have to engage an experience that was like the worst of slow cinema, trying to pick out a new pair of glasses. It was an impossible tedious process that made you ask, is there a point to this? Yeah, it does sound quite irritating. But since I made the switch to Warby Parker, a big switch in my life that has changed the last decade of my life,

I've become basically a Warby Parker absolutist. And you probably lose a pair of glasses every other week. That's not true. That's actually not true. Okay, I'm so sorry. I usually find them. After a while. But the experience of picking out new glasses with Warby Parker is just like a quibby or two.

It seems. Do you understand how I converted this to your language? Yeah, and it costs a micro black hat. Oh, my God. Ella McKay actually might be the new black hat. Glasses shopping used to be, and Ben can back me up on this. Yes. So complicated and overpriced.

Overcomplicated and overpriced. I'm trying to buy glasses. I don't want to feel like I need a spreadsheet to understand what's going on. Spreadsheets are what we use for this podcast. Not glasses shopping. But at Warby Parker, they have their specialists there. It's so easy to try on pairs to browse the website, do virtual try on, to see how they look on your face. Which I love.

Love that. Right. You take a little pick and then it shows you what it looks like on the face. Live time. Live tracking. It's like seeing the piece of furniture in your room. Right. Yes.

And glasses are the furniture of the face. They are. They are the windows of the face because the eyes are the windows. To the soul. That's right. To the soul. So that's like drapes on the window. What are you wearing right now?

What am I wearing right now? It's hot. Oh. Yes. Okay. And dare I say it. They're hot. They're pretty.

You're not supposed to take it out of my mouth. I don't know. I don't know. That was my line that I was teed it up. And then you stepped in front me with a little ball bat. Tortish out, perhaps. I've never worn prescription, Morby Parker's. I have worn many a sunglass, though.

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They don't just, like, fall apart on you. No. No. And they're also, these prescription classes start at 95. So if they were to break a thing I have not experienced often, or you were to lose them, a thing that doesn't happen to me that often. It doesn't feel like you're putting yourself into jeopardy. I also want to point out every pair that Warwick Parker sells.

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Our listeners get 15% plus free shipping when they buy two or more pairs of prescription glasses at Warbyparker.com. Slash-check. Check. That's 15% off when you buy two pairs of glasses at W-A-R-B-Y Parker.com slash check. after you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Please. I was so in on Samantha Morton.

I was going to say you being such an Oscar board's guy. Exactly. There was this period in the 2000s where she had that energy of like, is this a generational actor? Is this person about to have like a durational decades-long defining run? To be getting this kind of attention on a big scale at a young age, in like small movies. Like that's unusual.

The Sweet Lowdown nomination was seen as like a major surprise. Right. And so was the in American nom. She wasn't getting percurses for either of those. Yeah. It's interesting now, but, you know, we, so, you know,

Griff and I just saw, um, Die My Love the other day. And it's interesting thinking about... Lynn Ramsey, though. Oh, Lin-Ramsey. And it's interesting to think about Jennifer Lawrence sort of in the same.

frame as far as somebody who like broke out really, really early. But it's like this, this feels almost like a kind of return to, okay, this is the stuff that I should have done before I, you know, got roped into three different franchises and shit. And now that's like, like, Samantha Morton was popping before that was the inevitable path for Samantha Morton. But Jennifer Lawrence, you know, had to come back to it and like get her own production shingle company and like, and like opt, really like, you know, opt into this kind of filmmaking again and acting. I, I think, I think Samantha Morton is just like too innately odd and even more than odd. She is like so emotionally like bracing and vulnerable where there's something a little bit

uncomfortable about watching her where you feel like you shouldn't be watching this. Like there's something voyeuristic about the experience of watching one of her performances that I think was always going to prevent her from becoming like a conventional studio movie star. No, yeah, she was never going to work that way. that most of her big budget projects are her playing like aliens and sci-fi projects. You know, a sticker in a tank. Right, right. She's so fucking good at that movie.

She's incredible in Minority Report, but also like John Carter and shit. Like, she's used in studios in like otherworldly ways. And like when she's playing a human character. And she plays a lot of villains like, you know. Right. Yes, there's that as well. I mean, she did like fucking three seasons of the Walking Dead. She did. She popped up on Walking Dead.

I assume it was sort of like one of those storylines where the humans kind of are worse than the zombies, if you think about it, for a certain point of view. Yes, I believe that. There's like, what goes on in your town? And they're like, nothing weird happens in our town. Hide the machetes. Charismatic cult leader brings them in. They feel safe.

Then it's weird. Welcome to Evilville. I mean, our foodville. Do you want some food? The food definitely isn't other people. I truly was like... I think there are two separate sets of cannibals on the Milwaukee Day. I think she was the leader of one of them.

There was like, there was a... I used to recap that show. I'm so checked out of the shit. I don't think it is. Branching out into the spinoff. She was like the late season supervillain who kind of replaced the knee in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like every Walking Dead season now is like three different colones in it.

And it's like... How many seasons of Walking Dead do you think there were? It's just over now. Mothership's over? No, but of the official one? Of the official, the Walking Dead. I think that there were like, what, 12? 11.

11 seasons. So the last one had 24 episodes. So that's pretty long. My favorite Walking Dead series that makes me laugh every time I see it. What is it? It's like Walking Dead like Daryl, the book of Carol. They did a book of Daryl and Carol, I think. The book of Daryl and Carol.

I think they announced that they were going to do a spinoff show that was Daryl and Carol. And then Carol dropped out and they were like, never mind. It's Walking Dead calling Daryl Dickson. And then season two, they were like surprised Carol's back. So then I think it was called Walking Dead Daryl and Carol. Is that right? Can you imagine not having watched any Walking Dead, but then be like, hey, I heard they're doing a season about Daryl and Carol. Maybe I'll get in. This is my moment. This is what I'm going to get into this thing.

Like, are there five of them now? I'm going to now, we'll just have to wrap this little tangent up quickly. Can you tell me how many seasons there were of Fear the Walking Dead, the original? Six. Eight. Which is Coleman Domingo. He was there at some point. Lenny James.

Kim Dickens. Cliff Curtis. Yes, sorry. Correct me from him. And that's the one where they started to be afraid of the zombies. That's like the start of the... Sort of, it didn't really have a very definitive, like, take on, like, how it was different apart from, yes, it was sort of a prequel. Kind of...

It was really just, like, another series in the world. Then there was the Walking Dead World Beyond. That's the kids, like the first generation... Oh, I've never even heard of that. That was, like, RIA Walking Dead, correct? That was, like, Stranger Things Walking Dead. Then there was... You could be making this up.

right now. He's right. No idea. Tales of the Walking Dead. So that's like Walking Dead anthology. Correct. Okay. Each episode's a standalone.

Then there was Walking Dead Dead Dead City. Of course. What the fuck? That was Maggie. Okay. Who is, of course, Lauren Cohen's character and Negan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character. Definitely needed a full series. You know what?

Actually, I met a listener. That had two seasons. Who worked at a dispensary. He was a stuntman on that series. Okay. So shout out. I can't remember his name, but good guy. Then you have the ongoing, the,

gave me a free joint. The Walking Dead, colon, Darrell Dixon, which indeed was then rebranded. The Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon, The Book of Carol. Dixon, the Book of Carol. And then don't forget that there's also

the Walking Dead, the ones who live in which it turns out that Andrew Lincoln, as Rick Grimes, the main character, is not dead and lives. And he's hanging out with Denai Guerrera as Michone. And then you're like, who else is in? They're like, I don't know, Robert De Niro. You're like, it's like everyone, they all had like, yeah.

That was the thing where, right, when they killed him off, he was like, he doesn't want the workload of a full series. He's sick of fucking being in, like, Georgia for eight months, you know, like sweating in a beard. This is the start of Rick Grimes movies. That was the announcement was he's not going to have a spin-off. He's going to make a series of Rick Grimes standalone films. And then they were like, never mind, he's back. He's in a new series. He's fucking back.

We called and nobody wants to do that. And he's got new supporting cast. lot of people from the old. It's the same fucking bullshit. It's the same fucking shit. It's just, I mean, whatever.

Like, it's, it is just funny after doing nine seasons with, like, I think I'm ready to stretch my movie legs. And it's like, the iron is cold. You cannot strike it. Also, movies are dead.

Yeah. Well, sure, but I mean, partially because of, I'm like, this was hot, you know, it was once hot. You could cook an egg on this iron. Yeah.

You know, like six years ago. There's that similar, the moment that Christopher Maloney chooses to leave SVU and go, like, I really want to make a play in movies was very bizarre timing. Yeah, he's back, right? Oh, he's back big time. Okay, good.

Yeah. Now, and he's still, like, hits people's heads against walls and said, like, you sick fuck or whatever. Okay, good. You disgust me. I'm glad they haven't lost their capacity to be shocked. To care. You know, a job like that can really...

Oh, that's... Yeah, it'd be funny if, like, season 28, they're like, what... Yeah, okay. Let's go get him, I guess. Who cares? What do you do? He fiddled with them. Okay.

The rest of it's against the law. He starts making like Megan Kelly Apologues. Oh my God. I shouldn't laugh. What a sick sad world. The first time they say a feebophile on Svue, we know we're cooked as a culture.

Christopher Maloney walks out of an interrogation room and says, we don't need to worry about this guy. He's just an a feebophile. It's not that bad. Just a great line we've drawn in this hand here. As you said it, a sad, sick world, one that would fit in in a Walking Dead

spin-off Walking Dead present-day America Our Glasgow, Scotland Okay, here we're back on rails Morven Caller Morven Caller

So I saw Griff, did you see this in theaters? You would have been a young star No, I actually didn't see it until the Fun City disc came out Again, as Emily was saying I missed your screening

which I regretted, yeah Oh, you weren't there? I was not. We went to Deshorsetalcone after a little bit of We did, yeah. Aaron was there. Aaron was there.

I mean, when I think back on that, I'm just like, yeah, who I don't know? It's a fog. It's a fog. It's truly. But it was something, it was a fond memory of that era. Well, you know what's good?

Uh-huh. Movies. Go ahead and see him. Love them. Love them. And this one, what a picture. What a picture. It's a normal film.

It's a very normal film about a woman with a normal state of mind, dealing with a normal situation. In a normal way. Yeah. Emily, you were saying that you never read the book. I haven't. No. Well, I thought about doing it just for this occasion, but then, I mean, there's probably a

reason I haven't. Oh, nice. You have it. Okay. It's written in Scots. Like, I think it's a bit of a tough note to crack. Oh, really? I've been trying to.

Oh, incredible. I'm like, I was committed to the goal of trying to read all these books before the Lender MC episodes. Because the adaptations are so different. Right. But in every case, apart from Rackhatcher, she's, well, Kevin is pretty long. But the other books are kind of like thin little volumes, like that she's, right, drafting. Oh, this is like 250 pages, but like double spaced and pretty large font.

I can get through this. But it is a little similar to. Clockwork Orange? And train spotted. Okay. The slang is not as extreme. Yeah. And you were saying while we were watching the movie, like, I've always wanted to read the book, but I'm worried the book would explain some of the stuff I like

goes unexplained in the movie. And the book, I have not made it all the way through because it's been a tougher read. It's like very modernist and it's basically a stream of conscious monologue. Then it sounds like it was accurately adapted. By the way, the book, as I've gotten through it so far, does not really explain shit that much. Okay, okay. It is because it's not like her trying to explain herself to the reader. This is what's so incredible about her, in my opinion.

And what's so fascinating that after Ratcatcher, she doesn't do a really. original scripts, that it's all adaptations. And she takes these books where you're like, how the fuck do you adapt that or why would you even try to adapt that? And she finds a way to make these films that, to me, I feel like she represents the inner life better than anyone else. Yes, a hundred percent. And she takes these films that are about like just kind of absurd tragedies or like

nightmare circumstances, the kind of things that are like so dark that people would rarely have the courage to even try to depict them on screen and also avoids the kind of clean narrative of it's a story of someone getting through this, overcoming it, working through it, processing it. There are movies that are absolutely about staying in the state. The headspace of the unimaginable. I mean, it's funny because it's like, yeah, she does almost uniformly depict people going through kind of unimaginable tragedies or difficult times.

Crazy psychological turmoil. And yeah, it can translate that novelistic interiority, I think. She just has such a way with visuals and, like, you know, I think is very specific about the actors that she works with. And, like, are you down to go on this journey with me, basically? And that's how you get, like, a Joaquin. And you were never really here. And Jennifer Lawrence and the new one. But, like, I think of it almost as, like, the way that it doesn't feel completely oppressive to watch her movies, except I would say maybe, and I have.

haven't watched it since it came out, but like, I don't know that I will ever watch we need to talk about Kevin again. It should be so unpleasant. But aside from that, I think it doesn't, it kind of goes down easier than you would think, I think, because you are so with the character in it. And that feels like counterintuitive. Yes. But the fact, like, you know, when you're thinking about somebody, a friend of yours who's going through a rough time and you just like, oh, my God, I can't, I can't even imagine being them in the situation. But when it's you going through the hard time, you do compartmentalization. You find the absurdness in the situation.

There's a whole like landscape of textures of what you're feeling as you're dealing with this tragedy or whatever you're going through. And I think that she does such a good job. Like it's not uniformly sadness, you know, agony, all of that, that there is humor, there is, you know, poetry and there is, you know, levity sometimes in the midst of absurd tragedy.

Definitely. I think that's very much. I think this movie is fun. I think this movie is fun. This movie is super fun. I think it's probably the fun. We were talking about this the other night. I think it's her only fun movie.

The character is committed to trying to have fun in a way, the other, her other protagonists are not. Die My Love is kind of, is quite funny. She's trying to have fun. It's funny. Yeah, and has that sort of like heightened, almost farcical stuff. But I wouldn't, it's not maybe not fun because it's still quite stressful. They were all intense. I saw people catching wind of art hints that this was coming up.

and there was a lot of, like, sicko-mode, he-ha, can't-wait, five weeks of the darkest shit ever. And, like, people who have seen the Ramsey Canon being excited at it. Because by and large, and Kevin may be the exception here, although I do,

I find that film watchable, even though it's the toughest of the five, is that these aren't, like, oppressive punishing movies. They are intense mood movies. They are, like, deeply felt movies. But even you, Ben, were, like, worried and expressing this to us

the other night when we were hanging out going in of like, when should I fucking watch this and maybe we should watch this all together

at the office because I don't know if it's going to bum me out to watch it too much at home. And that's because you read the synopsis, which starts with when she discovers her boyfriend

has committed suicide. Yeah. And you're just like, oh, so this movie's immediately going to put me in a bad headspace. You're someone who gets very emotionally affected by movies.

And we were trying to explain to you the other night out, like, it's not what you think it's going to be. Right. It might sound dark, and I suppose the subject matter is dark, but it's not punishing. It's not going to roll off your back. It's not like you're going to go like, oh, it deals with it in a light way.

But her movies aren't meant to be, they're challenging, but not in that kind of punishing, I want you to suffer way. They're just like very unconventionally structured narrative. She also is just a movie, she is a movie maker. Like, she is so, like, it's. It's fucking cinema, baby. Like, there's so much to look at and be swept up in. It's not sparse.

Her films are never sparse. They never feel silent or dry or anything. There's just always a wealth of visual ideas. So, you know, even if it is something tough that you're watching, there's still watching a movie. They're sensory. They're like very gripping. It feels so lived in, in lives.

Yes. I was really struck by just how I felt anxiety. because I really was like so immersed and rooting for the character and then even at the end it hit me too of like we did just watch her cut up her husband and yet boyfriend he deserved her boyfriend

oh I'm sorry it's still she was wearing a ring though I noticed this time I hadn't I thought it said in the synopsis husband I think his boyfriend at least in I take it his boyfriend either way it just it's you're rooting for her even No, she, I mean, that's quite an act. For some reason, I just always get annoyed right at the start.

I'm with her unconsciously, because it's not like she says. The movie basically starts with like four minutes of total silence. Sure. But I'm with her in that he doesn't say, could you please send the novel? He just says send the novel. I'm like, you know, can we ask nicely? Like, you're putting her in a really tough situation. Also, he has zero.

And then you're like, oh, that's why I send the novel. Yeah, he has zero explanation. of why I did it. Like, it's the most pat, like, just don't ask any questions. I was tortured. And the fact that the people at the pub call him Dostoevsky,

I'm like, was this guy kind of a pain in the ass? Like, I, you know, you kind of... Which is a very dark kind of gallows-humory way to think about it. But the movie has that gallows humor. And I think Ben is right in that, like, when she's chopping it up, you're almost like, yeah, good.

I'm glad she's getting this out of the way. This is, yeah, this is a good job by her. It had to smell horrible. The smell. Right. It's just, it's just, Hey man, it's Scotland, too. It's like, you know, it's like, it's a place with the most gallows humor

because it's dark. Everyone dies when they're 58 because I'll eat is fried Mars for us all the time. Don't come at me, Scott, you don't die. I mean, I think I was also very primed for this movie when I saw it, because aside from being in my Warp Records era, I was also in my, like, Bell and Sebastian era. Like, Scotland was, like, overrepresented in my pop culture intake at the time. So I was just like, okay, I kind of, there is this,

there is that, like, a wry sense of humor that even though this is a very different film than had a different tone than a Belle and Sebastian album circa 2000. Yes, I would say, lovely Stuart Murdoch is more on the precious side. Yes, but a lot of those songs are very, very dark. They just sound cute. But you're right that it's like a bone-deep sensibility thing where her finding levity and humor in these movies isn't some strategic like, well, I got to put some jokes in so it isn't too oppressive.

It is like, that is her worldview. It comes across in the way she like interrogates all of these characters and figures out like burrows into their mind and their feelings. And she's also like a funny person. Like when you read interviews with her and shit, you know? I know you were talking about you had a kind of intense. Yeah. No, it wasn't intense.

I wish it would have been intense. It was just like she had no interest in even looking at me. The one time I got to, you know, do a panel with her after, I think it was for you, I never really here. And, you know, I mean, we do a lot of these in our line of work. You get a little dissented. This was still a big one for me. I was like, this is one of my heroes

and, like, how am I going to not come off like a total asshole? And ideally, how do I get to have a drink with her after this? Right, right. And it was like, nope, it was not happening. Yeah. Do you think maybe you put her off when you were like, I'm not worthy?

I'm not worthy. That might have done it. Yeah, she's like, what is this in reference to? I'm, I don't want to. Yeah, it was, I kind of blacked it out. It was humiliating whatever happened. I find something perversely life-affirming about her movies,

A, because they, like, make me feel so deeply. And I think a lot of her films have central characters who are kind of catatonic, who are going through such extreme things but don't know how to process them in the moment and almost go numb. But the way she makes her movies makes me feel the range of human experiences,

even if it doesn't have some kind of, like, a sense of conquering the challenge at the end there's like a little bit of like just like well this is about

like being alive is this it's all of this shit you know you hope nothing this extreme ever happens to you I also just like I was thinking

this after dying my love I'm just like so grateful for her just always depicting like people who are not there's no assumed normalcy like we were saying

about anything and like I don't know I just find that So as somebody who often has to deal with notes for things where it's like, can you make this person a little more, you know, whatever, relatable or, you know, somebody that we can least understand it at first glance, like, oh, it's that kind of person. There's no like, oh, it's that kind of person with any of our characters. And I just think that that, that in itself is life affirming to me because it's like respectful of a range of human experiences and psychology. We'll crack open the dossier in a moment because there are a lot of good quotes from her about that. But I want to read this first. Sure. Because I opened with the second half of the note he leaves for her.

This is the first half. Sorry, Morvern. Don't try to understand it. It just felt like the right thing to do. My novel is on the disc. Printed out and send it to the first publisher on this list. Just the assumption. If they will not take it, try the next one down.

And then only past that point doesn't move to the emotional. Right. I wrote it for you. I love you. Be brave. Right. Right. Okay.

Fine. I mean, and all right, I'm not trying to discount the experience. of whoever this person is. But the movie does discount his experience kind of like that's like baked into what you're watching is that he's completely abstract and so you can project

like the darkest tragedy onto him or you can project sort of almost a weird comedy onto it. He was hot though probably. I think he was hot. I mean the guy she fucks in Spain is hot. I almost wonder if it's the same. Yeah, she's got taste and she has like the right radar.

She lets the other friend pick off the like Bucket hat weirdo losers. The straight up wanker. Yeah, he is a big wanker. He's a fucking wanker. You know the other crazy thing is this novel comes out of the exercise of Alan Warner trying to write a book about the boyfriend. He starts it from that perspective. Right, right, sure, sure, right.

And then he goes, like, this is feeling like. It's a little tropey. It's like, obviously. Right. And he was, uh, what's the, the quote? The rigidity of the perspective was frustrating him. And so he was like as an exercise, like, what if I write? her and then it just all started unfolding,

which is that that adage that everyone says of like the way to write a novel is you write 30 pages and throw them out. And the book starts on page 31. Like he almost needed the whole exercise, perhaps, of working out the boyfriend as a lead character to then throw out and write the other person. And that's probably why it's so good that, yeah, that there's... Is there any idea in the book of what the book, his book is about?

James is... Oh, what's his book about? I mean, I just feel like it's some sort of authentic slice of life thing, right? Sure, yeah. Because, like, why else would the publishers be into it? What if it would be so funny if they were, it's like sci-fi. Can you explain the rules of how the spaceship works to us? Yeah.

Like, what? I mean, the funniest thing to me would be like if it was about, if the book was called Morvern Caller. Sure, it was like about her. Because he says I wrote it for you and I'm like, is this, you know, some sort of ode to my amazing girlfriend, Right. She works at a supermarket. She's so mean. It's a book called My Crazy Girlfriend.

Where I'm in so far, and I'm under 100 pages, it hasn't really gotten into it, which does feel like kind of part of it, that the book remains this kind of abstract idea. For most of her time in the public sphere, Lynn Ramsey had a career marked by trials and tribulations. But in her early years, she had a speedy trajectory upward, I would say, pretty much to Mervyn Caller. It's after this that it becomes, she becomes very bumpy. Cursed, right, with, like, all these projects that fall apart and all of it. Anyway, so she goes to England's National Film and Television School for education. Then she writes a short film called Small Deaths. It plays at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival win to the jury prize, the short film jury prize. Her second short is

kill the day. Her third short is Gassman. She wins another Canjury Prize for that. Off of that, she gets Ratcatcher. That goes to Cairns on certain regard. She wins the BAFTA for best debut. So it's like, things are going great. After the release

of Ratcatcher, Ramsey gets attached to the first of many unrealized projects, a multi-director anthology project about sex? What? What? Along with Gaspar Noah and Hal Hartley. Never happened. It was an

anthology series called Uncensored that was supposed to be Ted Hope and James Seamus. Friends of the Pod, hand-selecting directors they wanted to explore sex. Hand-selecting. My goodness. Instead, she decides to make Morvern Caller an adaptation of

Alan Warner's debut 1995 novel. She first learned of the book when she was shooting Ratcatcher. It was recommended to her. She was attracted to the title character because she's subversive. JJ found that there were two different story she told it different times about. She also at one point said it was when she was making gas

man, who knows, but it was early in her career she gets handed this book. It reminds her of Camus the stranger, but with a young woman, she's got an edge. That was the big thing she said that she felt like she had not read this kind of like super modernist in the headspace of an unlikable, undefinable,

inexplicable character from the perspective of a woman before in the same way. Can I just, I found this in the book. Go ahead. First of all, his like, suicide note is much more like flowery and verbose and overwritten versus sparse. It's as annoying and rude, but in the opposite direction. But then it's pointedly, like after a good while I started paging through the disc,

the novel thing was page after page of words than a number than more pages of words and another number. You had to read it to get to the end. You couldn't see the point in reading through all of that just to get to the end. Without reading a word of it, I toddled over to the video and put on the thing. Not the original, but the remake was special effects. She pointedly doesn't read the novel. She's just like, what is this shit? Then she finishes watching the thing and she prints it out.

Okay, I'm going to read this book. This is the thing. The book really doesn't, like, demystify. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think I want to say, young Adam. Have you ever seen Young Adam? Film came out the year after.

That's a David McKenzie, right? It is. Also Scottish, also existentialist, also horny. Much more. Not a movie I just like. If you want to see, I like it, big old, thing. You can.

His thing is there. You can see his thing. I know. But you can see it. That movie's got a lot of floppy thing. Yeah, it does. Okay, cool. But like that is a much more, in my opinion, wrote existentialist, a Scottish guy, fucking

whereas this is so much cooler and so much more interesting. That is a movie that, like, has the characters kind of state the inner monologue. A little bit. So, yeah, she's very interested in this character. She likes the feeling of escape. She likes exploring this slightly lost generation. disenfranchised youth going out, traveling, having nothing to do. She calls Morvern something of a Western cowboy character.

Of course, she does have a hat. Sometimes for you to get that and boots. But this notion of like she rides into town, no one knows what's motivating her. She does a thing. She rides off. And she's got this weird void. The drug taking is like more hedonistic. It's not political.

It's not peace and love, right? It's like not the 60s anymore. thing she wants to comment on is there's something almost like self-punishing about the pursuit of happiness in a society that's collapsing in this whole notion of like a generation who believes that happiness is not accessible to them without money and there's not a clear path to making money. She also thinks that it has elements that might potentially interest wider audiences. I've got a young girl of 21. I've got some rave scenes. I've got some sex scenes. Lots of selling points. I think I'm becoming less naive about how everything works. I do think it's just

that Ramsey's like, I mean, this is frankly commercial. Popcorn. I mean, I'll say this. She chops her boyfriend up in the bathtub, and we go from there. I mean, it's interesting. The tension of the film for me and what I think, if there's anything that it is about for me, and I'll just, like, put this out there, it's like that I feel like, aside from just being a void, which I think is maybe a little overly simplistic about her, I think

it is about, like, truly being marginal as a person. And I think the greatest tension, as represented by the situation in the film, is like, she doesn't, she's feeling alienation from, you know, the youth culture in her town. Everybody else is an old corpse waiting to die. And there's an absence of sort of a literate, sophisticated adult existence, which you kind of assume her boyfriend may be represented. Like maybe he was sort of the smartest guy in their group of friends that would all go hit the pub. But it's like now she's there without him. There's this, and there's this idea of like a want for something that is neither the kids taking the E of the house and hanging out with grandma. But it's like also this sort of fundamental disinterest in boredom with like art as like a mannered thing or like as represented by the publishers at the end.

So it's like where do you fit in? then. If you are like a hedonistic embodied young woman who, you know, is, it finds, finds your peers to be like empty and unsatisfying, but like you also don't,

you're not quite equipped to be like a important young novelist, then where do you fit in in this world? And I don't know. That to me is like, that always feels like the tension or why she feels like, yeah, lost as a character. She's, she's bored partying and she's

bored at her job and she's bored relaxing. Yeah. You know, like, everything isn't quite hitting for her. It is a vibe. And, you know, you're obviously watching her in, like, a pretty extreme state of grief and shock. Distressed, shock, something like that. You also get the sense that, like, she wasn't a radically different person a week earlier because her friends are largely like, hey, what's up?

Yeah. You know, like, her best friend is noticing that something seems a little off in her. But even when she tries to confess it, she won't hear it. This is also the thing about hanging out with people who are constantly on drugs. It's like you can get away with being like that, whether or not your boyfriend's committed suicide or not, and people just be like, hey, I've seen a little down today. It's part of the same quote that David was pulling from the dossier

where she's talking about The Lost Generation and everything, but she was sort of like saying that two movies in and having made a couple of short films, she was already like, I guess this is the dominant theme of my work is like, outsiders. And when she talks about making movies about outsiders, It's not like outsiders, I feel like how they are often defined, but she's truly making movies of people who do not know how to function.

Like pony boy. Right. Yeah, sort of pop. We usually are telling outsiders to stay golden. No, that movie rock. But it's not just like subcultures or whatever. It's like people who don't know what to do or how to fit in. Yeah, and I think, I mean, she's an outsider only internally

because she's still, you know, among people. Like, from the outside, she's friends. she's going on holiday in Spain. She's with her peers there. She's not with them, though. Right. And it feels like she's wearing like a fake skin or something.

Yeah. But every one of her lead characters has some degree of that at their core. Yeah. I think Joaquin Phoenix's character and that one is very well adjusted. Handing gloves.

Exactly. That guy is the kind of guy that if I saw him on a New York City Street, I would shake his hand and say, how are you doing, sir? Who amongst us doesn't suffocate themselves with a garbage bag just to wake up at the morning.

Lynn Ramsey, here's a quote from her. I guess I'm just a dark girl who's kind of weird. I like bugs. Good, good, good, good, good. For me, it's coincidental. Both feature films of mine so far do start off with a death, rack hatcher as well. But they're both very different. Once an accidental death of a kid feels guilty

and he doesn't tell anyone. There's some similarity to that. But I think the death in Morvern is more about identity. She takes on someone else's identity, which gives her a chance to get out of her life. they you know like the theme of escape obviously is kind of happening in both but in Morvern

I feel like there is a there's sort of like a appealing fantasy to what she's doing in a way of like what if you did just fucking hack everyone up you know who's a mill around your neck and bury him in the woods let's also be clear right

the movie opens she's lying on the floor lit by Christmas decorations going on and off Sort of entwined in a body. It's a Christmas movie. It is. Mm-hmm. I had to double check that Shane Black didn't write this.

I have to say whatever mode they have the Christmas lights on is psychotic. I would, yeah, switch out of the sort of like bodega mode or whatever, whatever, like, you know, where it's just like, R. Do the Chasey Lights one. Or some twinkling. Yeah. But yes, they're sort of like physically entangled on the floor. At first, it almost feels like it's a post-coil.

thing, and then you see the blood, and then you get the sense that he has killed himself, and she is there just in this kind of blank catatonic state. It's so gruesome, too, because he's moved from where he, you know, cut himself. I don't know. There's something about that, too, that, again, feels really real, and that it's not just like he's, like, laying there in the chair in the kitchen or the bathroom or the bathroom. Or the bathtub. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. My boyfriend, like, when he was telling you, I was, you know, talking about doing this movie. And I showed it to him and he misremembered it as that she killed him. This is why I wanted to clarify. When we keep talking about him, she talks up.

Dead body. Right. His dead body, like, a week later. Yeah. But it is, I think, you know, it's one of those things because it's such a, yeah, it's kind of murky. how it's told. You could easily make that mistake. The letter is what makes it clear

that it was a thing he did of his own volition. But yeah, she like, is there? You're sort of, we're so used to the cinematic language of someone in this kind of situation having like a fucking Julianne Moore breakdown scene, right? Even if the idea is that she discovered

this body whenever ago, you're not used to seeing like a dramatic powerhouse actress next to a dead body kind of being expressionless. that there is just like a catatonic state of shock and grief. And then we see her just like, get ready and go out and meet up with her friends at the party that she was supposed to go to with him and just say like he's not here. And everyone's like, oh, God, what's the excuse this time? And there's this feeling of like procrastination of like, oh, fuck, what am I going to do with this dead body?

Both in like, what do I literally do with it and also what do I do with my emotions in processing this? That she keeps going like, let me just try to get out and have like a normal day. And maybe when I come back home, I'll be in a better mood to process this. I'll be in the right headspace to chop up the body finally. I mean, it's extreme, but when you're suffering from depression, I was going to. Exactly. It's like you just, she has shut down. You're incapable of dealing with things.

It is circumstantially extreme, but this is exactly how I handle laundry when I am this depressed, where I'm just like, I'll just fucking do it tomorrow, you know? I'll unpack the clothes tomorrow. Like, I think it's something about, what is it? It's executive function is what people would say. It goes out the window. It goes out the window. Right.

And I also think, like, as someone who suffers from, like, pretty extreme depression and anxiety, if I am, like, dealing with something that is actually intense, sometimes I'll be, like, I just need to, like, time shift the emotions of this. I can't handle this right now. I need to just, like, get through stuff. And then at some point, it will catch up with me later. Yeah. I think, I think, I don't know.

There's something to the idea of this being a movie. movie about escape, where it's like for somebody who is probably just depressed all the time anyway, this horrific thing happens, this gruesome thing that is definitely like a break in whatever the monotony was that you were feeling, you know, totally oppressed by. And in a way, like, the worst thing possible then becomes an escape valve because it represents at least a marking point in like what's otherwise, you know, a bunch of, you know, just like a depressive soup. And like it feels like the realization she comes to eventually, when she does eventually deal with the body and figure out what to do next is like using the tragedy as a rung to get out of it because it's something. It's something that happened to her.

Yes. Yeah. And beyond that, I also think that you can infer from the note on the computer that their relationship, has probably been one of mutual co-dependent depression. That's probably been their bonding element. They have been like in this together. Yeah. Which is like both comforting and also self-perpetuating.

Yeah. Versus like no one understands me, not even my boyfriend. It's like there's probably a like best and worst of times to whatever dynamic they have built with each other and then mutually like going out and escaping by dropping E with friends or whatever it is. It's funny because this is such a druggy movie, but it's like, but it feels like it's giving junkie couple so much that, like, and it would be there for that as well, but it feels, it has that vibe entirely. But part of like, the junkie vibe is like probably like depression as a drug, like them

giving into that, you know? Yeah. Like comfortably, willingly kind of staying in that state. Yeah. Because it's like, it's like, I actually think, because I wrote in my notes, I was like, I always wonder what their relationship was like. And the thing is, like, I don't think it was. was a bad relationship. But I think it, like, I mean, I don't think it was like fractious. It wasn't

like they were fighting a lot or there was, except, you know, if she finds out there was cheating involved, but like, it seems more like that where it's just you kind of sink to the bottom with somebody. And, you know, in the book, his note is so much more kind of self-aggrandizing. It is almost like this self-styled like, you know, the depressed Russian writers. You know, it's It's almost like a piece of legacy for him. Yeah. Almost like, won't this help the text? Yeah.

Right? That like this book came out of this stuff. Totally. Which is why I think it's like so much better to have it be annoying in that he's just kind of so blunt and unemotional about it. Because also then in the instructions he's giving to her, it's not like he's saying, I want the proceeds from the book to go to charity. Or can you buy my parents a house, right?

Or like, tell people my story or whatever it is. it's just like he's left her with this mess. He's literally left her with a bloody body in the house, all of the emotional work she has to do. And also like, can you just like get this sold? Yeah. And it's like, to what end? It's so extremely selfish.

Yeah, it's insane. Which is why, whether or not she's justified in doing what she does, there's almost a like sort of why not do it. Nothing wrong. Right, because it's like she's not betraying any notion of. I think we can all agree. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, what is gained by her?

But leaving his name on the book. I'm her friend. Yeah. And I find out she's doing all this. I might be like, we do it all right, Marver? That's the role of a friend. Unless...

Hey, Morver, I heard you chopped up the old boyfriend. I know he was dead already. Unless you'd been sleeping with him. Yeah. In which case, you don't really have a leg to sat on. David? Mm-hmm. Scoop.

There it is. Look, this episode's brought to you by AG1. They definitely didn't tell you to say that in the copy, right? They've been a proud sponsor of this podcast for years. I've been a proud user, endorser of their product. Yep, you do be scooping. For as long and you, look, like a marriage, you've got to find ways to keep it harsh. Hardly scooping.

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Okay, good. I just know you were in California. I wondered if the AG1 came with. Yeah, it always comes with me, and if it hadn't, I wouldn't have made it back from California. Just for gotten sent a pile of ashes. Yep. When it died on the Oregon Trail. In a cardboard box.

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I wouldn't know what to do if I needed to consume all those things separately. Eight ounces of water. Scoop. There it is. Into the eight ounces. It says 20 seconds. Is that like how long you keep it, you stir it around or whatever? Well, I like to shake it.

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and ag1 welcome kit with your first ag1 subscription order that's drinkag1.com slash check drink ag1.com slash check and it is impressive that I said all that with no mistakes yeah that's a lot of letters that came out of your mouth so cleanly I did my bet it's almost as if AG1 was helping the flow through your system. Scoop, there it is. And everyone's saying, scoop, there it is. So Alex Warner wrote a draft, gave up. It was like, I don't know how to do this.

Alan Warner, sorry, whoever it was. Yeah, his name's Alan. Who cares? I care a lot. No, I think we should never speak of him again. And then Ramsey, who wrote this, co-wrote this with Liana Doug Nini. As an animator, and I think it was a film school friend of hers.

So it took him about eight months for adapter, which makes sense because the book is one big monologue, so it's not exactly like screaming out for a screenplay structure. And there's plotier stuff in the book. She gets pregnant from the rave hookup. Yeah, yeah. There's like stuff like that's such a trait. That's exactly.

And because of the nature in which the book is like telling the story and you not being able to see her physically and the reveal of it, it feels less trite, I think, than it would cinematically. I will also say. She strips it way back. This may speak to many people who are listening. She says, I might have finished it sooner for the fact that I'm not a disciplined person. A typical day will find me getting up too late, getting in a mad panic, drinking seven cups of coffee, smoking loads of fags.

Just pretty, you know. And then deciding. You putting that act. I'm doing supergrass all right. It sounds like you're doing borat. I'm trying to obscure the words. I understand. And then deciding, Hoover, the carpet, paint the walls, or watch neighbors.

shout out neighbors. Great Australian's op-off. I could not relate more to this quote. Anything to avoid writing. Luckily, my co-writers more organized. The script finally did come together with her help. I love that this is actually just what she tells the publishers at the end, which is one of the funniest things, the funniest lines about writing ever.

Like, when you're a writer, you can knock off whenever you want. It's so true. It's also like you can't make these movies without some... A cute sense of insight in that way. She thought the pregnancy plot was really naf. another British expression. What does NAF mean again? Just corny.

Okay. You know, like, just kind of like, she just thought it was dumb. She says there's also a bunch of stuff about the kind of the culture in Oban, which is the city, town. City is a little strong, that she lives in Scotland, that she also is kind of like,

yeah, let's leave the town faster. Like, forget that. I think her point, which is right, too, is having the pregnancy at the end makes it feel like that's the actual rebirth moment. That's the new identity, that her kind of, like opting into.

A man would write that. Right. Where she's just like, no, it's, selling the book is the thing. Yeah, totally. And then restarting the cycle. And then, of course, the big thing, of course, is the book is a monologue.

This movie has no voiceover monologue, no explanation of what she's doing, which makes the movie a five-star masterpiece that we should just like kiss the feet of, in my opinion. Yeah. Like, it would suck so much if she was like, maybe I should go to fucking,

but, but, but, and it's like, no, she is inscrutable. 99 out of 1,000 people would leave some amount of voiceover in if the book is this. Yeah. Yeah. They scrape together, a budget is rated between like $4 to $6 million somewhere in there, but, you know, lots of foreign, you know, countries, you know. To go back to that real quick.

Scottish fund. Yeah. No, go ahead. But like, also having her do voiceover narration would make her inherently a literary character, which the point is she is not. She's fundamentally now. Yeah. Right. Some of the people they thought to play her.

I love this, that she was like, I wanted like Sissy SpaceX, right? Like, come, you know, like, I wanted a Scottish Sissy Spacec age 20. And that she ultimately gets to work with Sissy. But can you read her quote about Sissy Spac, which I think is really good? Is it in there? I wanted someone between, is someone a bit left of center, not conventionally beautiful, ideally with the kind of knot of this world quality that Sissy SpaceX had. At the time, she likes Christina Ritchie, but obviously she's American.

The British actresses she names Samantha Morton, Laura Frazier, Kelly MacDonald. make sense just in terms of like age. Right. She said Laura Fraser, she thought, was too conventionally attractive, who later becomes best known for Breaking Bad. She's the tightly wound pharma exec person, Lord Lydia.

Yes, and Kellynne McDowell makes sense as like the most prominent Scottish actress at that point in time. But Samantha Morton's popping. If I could just circle back to her comment about like things that are more easily sellable in the movie, right? Because later in the dossier, she calls out like,

how much it kind of collapsed commercially and how angry the financiers were with the movie. And she was like, yeah, I wasn't interested in making a commercial movie. I think she was getting smart enough to know there were enough elements in this that she could use to trick financiers. That it's not that she thought the movie would be a hit.

But that she says, hey, if I get an up-and-coming actress, especially when she identifies someone who has an Oscar nomination under her belt, and I can get her for cheap, and the movie doesn't cost that much, and it has like nudity and rock music and drugs and party scenes that dumb investors who like don't actually read scripts or understand what movies are go like, that sounds like a hit.

And then they watch the final film and they get furious. Samantha Morton, she sees photographs of her. I like this quote. And she says she looks really quite in a trance, something with her eyes. It's just, she just looks kind of bored is what Lynn like sort of reads from her, which she just thinks is perfect for Morvern. and on one meeting she's like, yeah, I'm casting you

right away. Like there's no, she'd done this movie called Under the Skin. Obviously, she'd also done like Sweet and Lowdown and stuff, as we said. But Under the Skin is the movie that she shouts out, obviously not the Glazer movie.

It's just like a 90s British indie drama about girls whose mom dies and they're sad. Never seen it. I've never seen it either, but what was the big TV thing? A band of gold was a TV thing she did that was a very big

miniseries. She did a Janeair and Emma. I remember that I was a I know a band of gold is but it looks like something. She's, you know, Samantha Morton's from Nottingham. She has a crazy life story. Her parents got divorced and then her parents

were, I think, just could not raise the children. Her father was an alcoholic. Her mother was in a violent relationship. So she was a ward of court and then she was in foster homes. And she's like a classic like Britain has such a structure for teens who go into like youth drama because there's all these soap operas and all this youth theater and stuff like and she just like got sucked into that world. But her teen years, I mean, she. They were rough. She survives child sexual abuse.

She has serious substance addiction issues. She's unhoused for like a full year. 100%. And then drama is the right. It's the only thing. And then she basically like kind of stabilizes out by her teens early 20 starts. working and people were always like, what's your craft? And she was like, my toolbox is my past. I never want to talk about it. Like, I'm pulling from all my experiences. My life was very

difficult. It gave me a perspective to understand where to pull emotions from. And she didn't really start talking about the stuff I feel like until her late 20s, early 30s in her career. Right. She's not Scottish. She doesn't use the Scottish accent in this movie. She's from Nottingham? She's from Nottingham. Which is, I mean, you know, you all know from Robin Hood, but is, you know, No offense to any Nottingham listeners, but kind of a, you know, just boring-ish part of the Central England. It's boring-ish. It's got merry men going around.

Unfortunately, it lacks for Mary men. It's kind of pretty. I guess it's true. She doesn't have a Scottish accent, but it's like she talks so infrequently, and the most she does speak is when she's like, I felt like she was affecting the British accent, like the London accent for the publishing people or trying to be.

It's funny because she's played, like she's Mary Queen of Scots in Elizabeth the Golden Age. But, and I think she could have done an accent. Ramsey said she could have done a Scottish accent, but I liked her accent and the fact that she had a similar background. And she just was like, I want you to be you. I don't want your voice is unique enough. I don't want you having to reach outside of yourself. Yeah, too far.

Samantha Morton says the music really helps. She listens to music as part of her, like, sort of preparation. She would have headphones on. That this was the first movie where they would play the music on set while she was working. So that her process was always listening. to stuff right up until they called action and then taking the headphones off. She loves this character. Here's a movie that lets her wear headphones

that plays the stuff over the loudspeakers. She said she would love to make Morvern Caller too, but I don't think that'll ever happen. I hear Morven Caller might be an Avengers Doomsday. Yes. Do you know there is a sequel book? Well, let's make it happen. It is expanded universe. I have not even cracked this one open yet, but Alan Turner's

these demented lands, which is the second installment in the Morvern Caler Unified. She does. She finds it. It's Dr. Doom. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's a book he wrote, I think, just two years later. Like, it was, you know, hit her.

Anyway, Morton also says she loved being directed by someone who is basically her age. Like, I think Lynn Ramsey's a little older than her, but, like, you know, by a young person. Versus, I assume, on, like, British TV. It's a lot of, like, fuddy-duddies. She says she's a beautiful woman. She's a very sexy woman. She's very confident about herself. And that's very infectious.

Being around her makes you feel powerful in your own. species. Pretty cool. The girl who plays her best friend, Kathleen McDermott, is a true, like, found her at a fucking hairdresser in, like, Scotland, like, total natural

professional actor. She's so good. She's great. She's so, so good. And I always was, like, I mean, I guess she was on, like, British TV or something after that, but she hasn't done that much. She's kept working. Yeah, she's got an Wikipedia page. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, and Dolly Wells is in this. Yes. She's the bookage.

The book agent where I feel like I know from... Yeah, like, you know, working with Emily Mortimer and No Fielding and... She's so amazing and can you ever forgive me. That's a performance I fucking adore. That feels like a movie you watch a lot.

I watch that movie once a year. Yeah, you're just like throwing it on. That is like another like peak depression cinema for me. I think that movie like depicts depression about as well as anything. Short of the Lynn Ramsey filmography. What? Mariel Heller up to? No, I know what she's working.

Melissa up to. What happened there? I mean, do you need I say it? Seven Ben Falcone movies. Yeah. She just was caught committed to working with her husband who I cannot think of a filmmaker. She's got nothing on the docket.

Yeah. Like, I mean, maybe she's doing TV. She like does shit. I don't know. She hosts like fucking kids say the darndest thing. She's doing SNL. She's like at the time we're recording this, they just announced she's hosting SNL in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, which she'll be funny. like that's great. She's not promoting anything. She's going on. I don't know. Maybe she's got some fucking Hulu show I'm not aware of. You never know. You never know.

That's the unfortunate thing. It is one of those sorts of shit. She could be on like her own Walking Dead spin off and we would never know. Now that I might be interested to watch. That could bring you back to the Walking Dead. The Walking Dead Col in the book of Tammy. Tammy's back. Or she's fucking kid you ever forgive me lady.

She's just like, oh my God. She doesn't even go outside. There's just zombies, like, moving around outside, but she's just at home just being like grumpy. But you guys watched on Frost. Correct? I saw on Frost. Did you get on Frosted? Emily watched it.

I'm still Frosted. She watched her 10 times a day. I've still 100% Frost. They have not removed the Frost. Staying that way. She is so good in that movie. She's funny. And especially because she's sharing scenes with Jerry Seinfeld, who is fundamentally not a movie star.

He's a committed actor. How dare you? There's got to be a name for a kind of take where it's like, it's not a hot take. It's just a like, who cares take. Like, sure, I guess she's probably good. It's a lightly toasted Pop-Tart cake. Right. It is more a statement about how bad the Falcone movies are and that her just basically

serving like core competency comedy movies are good. They're not. It's not like we're watching them. David, I tried to do a little revisit recently because I was like my girlfriend and I really like watching like 2000s, 2010's live action comedies that we skipped in theaters at the time because we're just like we didn't know how good we had it. And so often you throw on something like drill bit Taylor and you're like, fuck, this is like a nine out of ten now.

It's beautifully shot. Right. Right. Shut on film. Look at the grain structure. And I was like, let me try to fuck around with some of the falcons. And especially the ones I skipped. And they are like abysmal.

They are like anti-comedy. And then her showing up in like unfrosted and just having like jokes in the movie shot by like Bill Pope. You're just like, fuck, right. If anyone puts her in a half decent thing, she is good. She has not lost skills. She's just not chosen a good project in fucking forever. Morven Garland. She was Ursula.

She was. Films in Scotland in Oban where the novel is set. All those places are real, the flat, the bar. I said Glasgow. That was like probably insulting for me to assume it because it's like one of the only towns I've heard of. Glasgow is a major metropolis and this is a shitty seaside town. No offense to Oban. For all I know it's a great seaside town.

but I do find that in Britain, when you go to the seaside towns, and I might get dragged for this by seaside town residents in Britain, you know, they're from an era before airplanes when it was kind of like, if you want to see the sea and you live in Britain, you got to go to the seaside towns. It's so rude, but it's so true. And pretty quickly, it was kind of like, well, now they have air travel. And, like, you know, Spain is like an hour away.

Yeah, sure. So, like, there's good, you know. And so places like Blackpool and Margate, you know, like, yeah, they have their charms. but it's a little bleaker. But I love that. Yeah, I think there's so cinematic. It's a fun.

The grittiness and yet they're on the ocean. Well, they're on the sea. Also, some bygone, like, holiday options for people who, yeah, couldn't get on plane or whatever. Like, I went to the remains of the... You've seen Carnival of Souls, the horror film. One of my fair movies of all. Yeah, I mean, same.

Like, but that salt air resort that's on the Great Salt Lake. is still, like, the main structure of it is still there. And I, like, made a pilgrimage to it. It's just like, can you imagine going on vacation to the shores of the Salt Lake to, like, this sort of Moroccan style, like, have it. The old, the boardwalk and all that. It's so strange, yeah. Yeah, I mean, kind of a vibe, though.

It's such a vibe. I am so sorry. I must interrupt. Oh, no. I just, I have made a terrible discovery. I was like, there must be some Melissa McCarthy thing she's promoting, right? Her last movie was unfrosted. her next film is an animated film

co-written by Ben Falcone called Margie Claus where you won't believe that she plays Santa Claus's wife. I mean that I'm just kind of like auto-f, let's ignore. Do you know what the actual next upcoming The John Bona-Ramsie thing? A Paramount Plus Jean-Beney Ramsey show in which her and Clive Owen are playing the parents

shut that shit down. Well, luckily, can we swing Zaz-Lav in there and start Zaz-Lavving other companies' projects? That's fast. So it is essentially shut down already. Who's going to scale that mountain? I'm just like, that's the last thing anyone should be doing. I would agree. Her top of the list.

I just want to say, since we're talking about the seaside town thing, I think snow and movies good. Oh, yeah. Always good. Especially when it's real. It's real snow. But I especially love a beach snow situation.

It is a very stark image. I'm so obsessed with this, and I've been saying to Nellie, have been threatened. Nellie. For years now, I'm like, we need to do a snow beach situation. I want to have like a cabin, but that's on the beach that has a fireplace.

Eternal sunshine. Until that moment, I have wonderful news for you that Taylor Swift actually wrote a song called Snow on the Beach featuring Lana Del Rey, and I think that might be the song for you. I have so many mixed feelings about this news right now. I'm going to need to see that's already got in a reality.

I know, for dance. For dance. No, it's true. Like, I will say though. In the winter. I mean, there is something about going... Sorry, Emily, please, please. I mean, the first part of this film in Oban, I guess,

like, you know, the squalor of these, like, miserable-looking house parties also, like, deeply familiar to me. It's like, I feel like I grew up going to these parties, jumping through the bonfire. This is, like, such a thing. But then it's like... Anything to feel alive. Yeah, and smoking a zillion cigarettes and slithes.

being on breaking your neck in the kitchen because of like spilled jello shots or whatever, like all very familiar. But like, then you go outside and it's fucking Scotland. And it's like such an insane effect of like, yeah, the kids are doing the same thing. They're doing like basically everywhere in the world right now like they're partying the same way. But then you step outside and you're like in this like stark, like almost overwhelming splendor and the snow and the mountains and shit. It's like it's wild. But if you grow up there in this is your life, you present it just as much as wherever you're. I mean, this is the thing. Like I've been thinking for a while. Like I grew up the first part of my childhood

in Washington State. Every single day, I saw Mount Rainier, like on my way to school. And I totally took it for granted. And then like only recently when I've been looking for things like little, vacations that would be easy to go or like easy flights out of L.A. or whatever. It's like, huh, you know, it is actually really pretty up there and people like it. But like to me, it just represented just this really boring, like, you know, I did not. enjoy my childhood there at all. And like I would never, but yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's sort of wild to be experiencing complete, like, torpor while you're in the majesty of nature.

Right. Yes. That's what it's about. And then, I mean, like, they shot this film chronologically, which is interesting, but I think often suits, especially, like, a non-professional actor just to be, like, in the story. Also, a movie like this that isn't plotty where it's, like, you need to be able to really chart emotional movements because they're so,

subtle. And it's like, Samantha Morton is like barely kind of, this is a real like the camera can see you think performance. It's so internalized. She is an actress who feels translucent, you know, is not like emoting overly.

And so, yeah, it's like the continuity of that is really hard to track if there's not clear like, oh, in this scene, I'm reacting to this thing and I can just stay in the moment. I just do not, as a director, like, I just, I mean, you have to be like, yeah, you have to basically be like telepathic with your

actor, like, to get that sort of continuity and to have, have this like legible, readable, readable thing that's like more interested and open than any voiceover narration or whatever it would be that to follow. I don't know. I just think it's like, it always awes me. It's interesting when, I was thinking about this while we were watching it, that like, when directors have specific acting styles, when directors have like established, this is what their movies are like and these are what the performances are like in them, it feels like, well, first of all,

if you become successful enough, if you become Wes Anderson and it becomes so known that any actor signing up, any actor auditioning, any actor offered a role is like, I think I know what he wants. I think I can guess how he wants this performed, right? But for someone like Lynn Ramsey on her second film, but even now when it's her fifth movie,

but like she's not super ubiquitous, how much of it is like a rehearsal process, meeting discussions with actors to tune, attune everyone to the same wavelength, versus how much of it is a kind of tone setting on set, a kind of like maintaining of mood, and like, I think a really careful curation of the people, how you like staff the entire movie and music and, yeah.

I mean, I can imagine, like, I would probably cheat and use music if I'm thinking about how I would do, like just like if you just know that this is going like you kind of like have this Pavlovian response to these different music cues and stuff that that but yeah I don't know it's it's it's wild I will say I I feel like Jen Lawrence and Rob Henson and at this point knew there's a kind of performance that you do in a in a Lynn Ramsey movie and I sensed that a little bit not a negative at all by the way but like that was the first case of that and

maybe of her reputation preceding her in that kind of way and I read an interview with Jennifer Lawrence just the other day where she was like, the thing that's like crazy about working with her is there's a seven-page dialogue scene and we've like worked it and we're word perfect and we get on set and she's just like,

I don't think there should be any words in this. Let's just jump up and down, take off our nose and yeah. There's no safety net and she's like if it's not good, I won't use it. And if there's three seconds of a good piece in there, I might use it in a different place, you know? Like that's part of it, I think sometimes is not

establishing an environment where everyone is so locked in that everything is perfect but more creating a space where people feel free to sort of explore stuff and then knowing how to identify the pieces you need. So the first chunk of this movie, we've discussed some, but there are things we want to talk about in the Scotland section before we go forward. Well, I mean, that I always kind of forget that it's really kind of split in two. Like basically at the halfway point. Right, I was kind of like, right, it's only like 15 minutes in Scotland.

Like, no, it's not. Like, it's actually... It's like 45, 40s. Right, not a movie about someone clubbing the entire time, right? No. It is her kind of like pretending to be normal, quote, unquote, or, you know, like, whatever, just kind of like acting like nothing's happened, I guess. You don't see the suicide note and have her put her name on the book until like minute 30?

Right. She doesn't come around... Well, you see the suicide right away, but... You see lines of it. You don't get to read the full... I suppose that's true. But yeah, you see her make the active decision. It's not like, this happens, and then she just gets up and is like, I'm going to print out

the novel, put my name on it, and send it out. She comes to that decision. Like, it's so earned by the time she does it, because it's a pretty extreme thing to do, but by the time she does it, it's like, okay, we're ready, and we're ready for some action. It's like, we've been in hanging man mode this whole time, and finally we're ready to, like, go somewhere. And it's been several days with the body, and you're seeing her be like, fuck, let me just put this somewhere else.

like, I'll deal with this tomorrow, but you're aware of the fact that you're like, there's a ticking clock to when this starts rotting. There's a quick and clicking talk. Well, it's just deodorizing in the apartment. I can't even imagine. Right. But it's only going to become a worse problem. Oh, does she burn the pizza on purpose, you think?

No. To cover up the smell. I don't think that was like it. Oh, that's an interesting take, though. I like that. I think she just got distracted and fucked it up. Has anybody in a Lynn Ramsey movie ever cooked anything, like, successfully? I'm just thinking of the...

This is a good. The macaroni and cheese. Yeah. It's just bad. It's just, yeah, I love it, though. I'll also say as a connoisseur, I think oftentimes a frozen pizza benefits from being a little over-overcooked. Yeah, I would say I would always go over versus under with a frozen pizza.

And it gives it a little extra flavor. It gives a little punch. I love punch. Okay, well, I'll say I think there's something weirdly sentimental about her transporting the body and picking this beautiful location. It's so fucked up. But it feels like she's giving him a proper burial with like respect weirdly.

Yes, yes. I also, I said when we were watching this, that's a pretty fucking good Halloween costume. It'd be tough to do in public. But Morvorn Toplis, with the Walkman taped to her torso, the sunglasses, the necklace. The cognac glass. And then the cognac glass and then like just increasing blood splatter.

It's so good. It's pretty unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah, it is funny. It goes from that, which feels so, I mean, clearly she has to get completely wasted in order to, like, do it, like, actually do the physical act of it. But then, yeah, you're right. Like, once it's the burial, it feels like the complete flip side of it.

Okay, like, now this is past the actual physical unpleasantness of this dead body. It's like, okay, I can actually put this person to rest. now. And then there's just this moment of total allation after she does it, where she's like running down the hill. And that's like when you're like, oh, wait, this is somehow a ticket out for her. Like this whole thing has been just going to turn it into that. And there's almost this like three women thing of she has almost magically become a different person now. There's at least in real time she's starting to process this like new identity of, well, I have to maintain some I'm here with my friend.

But, like, I'm changed by this event. And also, what if I start molding myself in a new way to meet the person who has written that book and has submitted it and can't even talk about what it is or where it came from? Kind of also a nice location for jeans, if I'm being off. Oh, wow. Okay, this is what we're getting to. Oh, he sees something being buried in his mind goes right to jeans. Wow. What if you did, like, a limited edition, like, single.

malt scotch buried with the jeans. Oh, interesting. So you're sort of like... Or what about... I mean, I don't want to give you too many ideas, but what about like barrel-aged jeans? Like a scotch.

Yeah, yeah. Damn it, you guys. See, I unfortunately knew you might like that idea. I love that idea. Yeah. You know, maybe I like, you know, kind of toast the inside. Yeah. Sure. Like a frozen pizza. And Nellie's like, Ben, what are you rolling up

the stairs? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I was saying, I was talking about Ben being worried that this movie was going to be too emotionally devastating. But at one point I turned over and he was crying Kiki's delivery service style. And I said, Ben, what is it? And he just went, it's a shame she took those jeans off his body. Right.

Should have left him on there. Let him ripen. Yeah. They just look like nice jeans. We both laughed at the bit when she decides to go out to the pub with her friends and she reaches into his pocket for money. That is the kind of like gallows. that I just adore, where it's like, it's also like, oh, she's not going to take

all, like, 40 quid or whatever. She's going to put the other half back in and then say, sorry. And also, like, he's not going to use it. Right. This isn't his inheritance. What if it was, like, like, Egyptian times, then you needed, like, money.

Oh, is it prolly river sticks? Yeah. No, but I think it, like, I mean, the reason it's, it's funny because it is, like, it speaks to this total in between the state of, like, whatever pre-stage of grief she's in. Or it's like, I don't even know if this is real yet.

Like, it's this, yeah, it's so good. The subject matter of every one of her films, which is fictional, feels like the kind of bizarre human story that would then become like a news item and they get turned into a shitty Netflix documentary or a Paramount Plus series starring Lissa McCarthy, right? Where you're like, this story is so bizarre and the twists are so weird and the twists are these little details of things that are often retold to us in these very dramatic,

salacious, kind of like, scandalous ways. But in the moment, it's just like a woman standing over a dead body being like, I don't have money on me. He has it in his pocket. Yeah.

And then you could just imagine an FBI detective, like, straight to camera going, like, when we searched the body, we found fingerprints inside his pockets and 45 quid missing. You know, and it suddenly feels like,

this fucking. monster. It's weird that these American cops are trying to solve this strange thing. I mean, yeah, there is, like, this is a movie, and I think this is why I liked it originally, like, it's about a scammer.

It's a, it's a movie about a scam, and it's really hard to think about this now after this wave of sort of millennial scammer narratives, your Anna Delvees and all that, which are told in that fashion, or this sort of dishy, like, whatever fashion. It's like, no, this is actually about

the psychological state that drives one to scam. And it's a lot different than, you know, the Dishy New York Mag story or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And right, we now live in a world that regurgitates those stories and spits them back out to us 10 ways. We are like so inundated with the same narratives being repeated over and over again. Yeah, I love how like incremental this is. And also that, not to jump ahead, but it like knows exactly when to get out of

of the story, which is like she has gotten the check, and we have no idea what happens next. I feel like she plays the slow dawning on her face that 100 means 100,000 pounds. It's so well. It's so funny. She doesn't do like a big laugh or like a sort of crazy face. It looks like she has to fart. Like she does this thing where she goes.

I love it. It makes me laugh every single time because she goes like, can I go? Like, like, it's just this, it's such a great way to play. It's also like a Shanty Gardner moment where they keep asking her questions and her not knowing how to answer makes them go like, fuck, we're dealing with like, this is a genius and like a master negotiator. She doesn't have reps. She says 100,000. She doesn't even respond. She works at a supermarket.

Oh my God. Right. And they're like, oh my God, we're going to be able to sell this so well. The like, fucking like tabloid interviews with supermarket novelists. Let's talk about the Joe on holiday The what holiday? Isn't that the meme? Nothing beats a jet two holiday

I think it's Jet 2 And you can say 50 pounds per person Was that like an omnipresent commercial When you were growing up? No, no, no, no, no, I think it's a more recent commercial Because I've read interviews with the lady Who did the voiceover And apparently she's as amusing any of us

But right, it became a TikTok meme, you put that over some hilarious footage of someone's, you know, whatever, holiday going wrong. But I feel like it's now become that audio over footage of literally anything. Sure, right now it's any catastrophe, really. It's 6-7. It's all this shit feels like the point is that the meme doesn't mean anything and it doesn't make sense. I think nothing beats a jet two holiday. Okay, nothing beats a jet two holiday.

She goes on a jet two holiday. Have you ever been on a jet to holiday, David? Yeah, definitely. I mean, like, that was the, like, the budget airline. Uh-huh. And then there's just all these kinds of, I mean, where they're going is like club country. Yeah.

I mean, like, they're in Spain. They're in Spain. It's Almira is where they shot it. I mean, there's lots of place, which is, Elmira is on the coast, I mean, on, but on the continent. But obviously, people go to Ibiza and like the other islands and all that. I never did that. That's kind of like going to Cancun, right?

Totally. I mean, spring, right? It's like, you're going to club city. Yeah. But, like, I went to Eastern Europe where you can, like, basically just, like, drink like a fool. You can take a, you could take a plane that cost one pound. Oh my God.

Like back in the Easy Jet Days. I don't think that really exists anymore. Actually, it sounds like nothing does beat a Jet 2 holiday if it's one pound. What about Vanga Airlines? I do. The Vanga Bus is, is, fuck, I don't know the lyrics. It's coming and everybody's jumping. New York to San Francisco.

Wow. I feel like the whole thing with EasyJet obviously is you would get on. It was like one pound plus airport fees. So it would be like 30 pounds. But it would still be so cheap. And you have to bring. your own seat. I mean, that was basically

the body. It was certainly, there weren't even like boarding groups. It was just like, all right, everybody on. And like,

the people getting on weren't like, you know, passengers in three-piece suits. Sure. Like, this is a party plane. Must contribute one cup of fuel.

It comes with a little measure. It's a paper cup of fuel. I mean, and so, and there would be these cities like Tallinn in Estonia or whatever where,

you know, they'd opened up post Cold War. and then they joined the EU. And then they were basically like, fuck, like, we're happy to,

like, have people from other countries just come and spend money here. Like, the beer is cheap. We'll have some, you know what I mean? You know,

like, my friend had a stroke in Bradislava to relearn the English language. He's doing okay. Oh, my God. I mean, speaking of,

do you know that, like, Samantha Morton had an insane stroke? Yeah, that happened later. Like, plaster fell on her head from a set while she was filming.

And it happened, she like took 18 months off and basically had to relearn how to like speak and walk and everything and then Synecdochia is the movie she makes right after that. She's amazing. Incredible in but she said like that's 18 months of therapy

straight onto that set and then you see like her career after that is very different. Yeah. I feel like she's become right a much more erratic presence. She directed a movie that I think is quite good but is incredibly difficult. What? The Unloved? Yes.

It is a film Obviously about her It's a reflection of her Very difficult childhood Interesting And she's continued Doing stuff She's doing stuff

Yes But yeah More supporting roles and stuff These things What did I just see her in? Good question Well of course You loved her in the whale

No it was an enemy Oh sure Which she plays a similar The role as the whale See this is the shame I feel like this is often How they deploy her I'm excited for her to be in the Odyssey

Marie? Bet you she's playing someone normal. Marie Barty, Party, Party, Salinas did call out that this is a little mini Euro-Samantha Morton for us because we're starting off with this. We have The Odyssey, and I will say there is an unnamed

third Samantha Morton movie already on the schedule. A third Samantha Morton movie? And of course we've discussed Minority Report in the past. Is that the only other year? But we're going to have three Samantha Morton movies

in the first half of this year. Yeah. How many Fantastic Beast episode did we do? Six or seven? We did seven on the first movie. That is a crazy thing that she plays. We need to talk about Kevin's mom, basically, in that movie.

Isn't she, like, an evangelist, too? She has, like, a weird kind of, like, Bible-thumping vibe in it. But she is, yes, Ezra Miller's in those movies. Those movies are a real kind of, like, faded dreams. Playing Dumbled Bullsbrose brother? It is kind of none of anyone's business. Yeah. Don't, yeah.

And the third movie with what Mads Mikkelson is now the third Grindelwald, basically. And he's like, I will rig the magic election. And you're like, he's doing what? Can he just try to take over the world already? Like, what is this? Is Fantastic Beast the ultimate, like, I'm sorry for you or congratulations? I ain't reading all that. True.

I know something needs to be said. Like, okay, so I know that there are crimes of Grindlewald, but are they like, There are some. Are we happy for him about them or are they bad? No, he's bad. He's not good. He's not good. He's a bit of a rascal.

Okay. He's like a wizard Epstein. Unlike a more vernacular type, he has done a few things wrong. He's not like a fun scam goddess. Yeah, you do not in fact have to hand it to. You don't. In fact, we should stop handing it to Grindlewald. He's so sneaky though.

It's just, what? I rant about it all the time. You know, they do the first movie. The movie's a success. though. Like, great, here comes more. The second movie is called The Crimes of Grindle. What happens in it? He begins to inch towards debuting some crimes.

So it's like, well, okay, well, you guys need to move it along because this movie didn't do very well. His plans for crimes. Right. And then, like, they're like, okay, okay, okay. Third movie, we've recast him. Deft's gone. Mads Mikkelson. It's called The Secrets of Dumbledore.

And you're like, and I'm like, wrap it up. You guys aren't going to make a fourth. Just wrap it up. Whatever your plan was that was supposed to be, what, five movies? I think at some point it went to six. Let's compress it to three. And they're like, what if instead he and Dumbledore kind of have a knowing glance at the end of the movie and there's way more to go? There's an exclusively game moment.

So the end of it, like a secret is only hinted out at the very end of the secrets of Dumbledore. Basically. He tries to rig the magic election, which involves some sort of magical moose. It's like the magic moose like kneels at like the winner. And he's like, I'll do a spell that rigs the election and they like stop him. It's not like he tries to take over the world and they stop him. The other secret. And then when they stop him, he's like, well, I'll be off, Dumbledore.

Who I maybe am gay with. See you later. Right. Like Grindlewold exists in like deep Harry Potter appendix shit as like, this was Wizard Hitler. He like predated Voldemort. He was the worst of them all. And then after the books and the movies are over, J.K. Rowling's like, and by the

way, of course Dumbledore's gay. And then starts pointing towards the idea that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had some hidden romance when they were young. So then the third movies that. people are like, oh shit, and the movie ends with them looking at each other. I'm like raising an eyebrow. I'll just put it, I'll put it this way and then I'll stop talking about this. No, we're going to keep talking about it.

In the Harry Potter franchise, yes, in the seventh book you learned that Dumbledore had a deeper relationship with Grindlewald, who you've sort of heard about as like a wizard Hitler. And yes, in fact, they were very close before his famous 1945 duel with Grindlewold that defeated him, which is in Harry Potter, obviously, the analog to World War II, right? So 1945 was their big show day. Fantastic Beast 1 is set in 1926. Fantastic Beast 2 is set in 1927. Fantastic Beast 3 is set in 1932.

It's like they're not even close to the big showdown. It's even crazier than what you set up because when they announced it, they were like, a fun idea, a standalone adventure in the Harry Potter universe. Different time period. A guy with a suitcase chases a bunch of creatures. Then everyone sees the first movie. It's a hit. but people don't love it

and they're also like, it's weird the second half it just kind of dissolves into Harry Potter deep lore prequel shit and Jakey wrong is like, eh, don't worry I've planned five more movies that are going to get all tangled up in that and they're like, what about the Fantastic Beast guy and they're like, don't really worry about him.

He's still here and then he points at shit that's happening. So true. Wait, I just want to make sure I've got this right because I've been so out of touch with that whole franchise. So Grindlewold, he both does crimes and is gay. Correct.

Okay, incredible. Go off queen, some might say. Okay. But we don't have to hand it to him. No, no, no, no. I would never suggest that. No, I just, let's just draw a clear line here. Morven collar. We do have to hand it to her.

The movie changes film stocks when she gets to Spain. Absolutely. That's the big visual move. Yeah, she tells her friend, we're fucking going to Spain. Don't worry about money. I booked us a place. We're going for like two weeks.

I already booked your... I'm going to tell your boss you're taking time off. Her friend is like, by the way, I did fuck your boyfriend. And she's like, well, let's go to Spain. Don't go on the trip.

Right. Dissociation is not paused. I mean, she offers it up as the like, I'm sorry, I can't go on the trip with you because I betrayed you and you're going to be so angry. She's like, okay, no, I've got even worse plans for this girl now.

Right. And she has shipped the book out? Yeah, before she knows. She mails the book and then calls them and it's like, I hope you got it. I'm going to Spain click. And then the latter half of the movie, I would say,

is even lighter on plot than the first half. Not that it's plotless, but like it is a lot of vibes. Well, speaking of vibes, can we just talk a little bit about the soundtrack? We should. Because it is such a part of the film. It is like a motivating fact. If there is ever no plot, at least she's still like listening to the next track on her dead boyfriend's

mixtape. And she's almost experiencing and processing her emotions exclusively through the music. It's sort of a garden-sea galaxy situation. I think kind of a garden state situation. Absolutely. I want to get through like 15 minutes without like mentioning a Marvel movie. A Harry Potter.

Wrong podcast. Wrong podcast. Okay. So, excuse me, that's really rude of you to say when our president is right there on our top shelf, President Red Hulk. We must obey him. There he is. And we are contractually obligated to mention a Marvel movie every 20 minutes. The crimes of Red Hulk.

What's his like agenda? What's his, uh, what are, what about? More pills. Nothing good. But yeah, I, I was, I feel like I have hallucinated this because I, I, I, I know that at some point I have seen an image that is the insert on the, on the, on the, on the, mixtape. I was trying to pull it up on the Amazon version and it is so blurry that you can't, yeah,

but it is in there. Okay. Yeah. It must just be. in that physical release of the... There's a handwritten track list. In the inside. Yeah.

But like, because I wanted to know like what is actually, you know, canonically on the playlist and what's diageetic. Yeah, what's dietic? But like, my feeling of, like, once you're like, are they playing wean at the pub? You're like... Hell you. No, we're not...

The whole thing is, whether it's diagetic or on the soundtrack, it's all the mixtape. Is my personal theory of it. Yeah. Except maybe the techno music is probably not on the mixtape. Because then at the end, they reveal that she was listening to. Yeah, yeah. Although, is that a flashback?

Or does she just go back to the club? I like to think she goes back to the club. I think she goes back to the club. Oddly dedicated to one of the album is not on the soundtrack, despite being an iconic final needle drop. Is that possibly just because the llamas and the popas are annoying to negotiate? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But yes, what are something? We got can. A lot of can. A lot of can. Heavy on the can. Because there's can and then there's a can member named Holger. Yeah, Holger Sukai, yeah.

Suu Kai. I've never listened to his stuff. It's so good. I got to fuck with it. Oh, my God. The thing that fragrance is on, which is like an incredible track is like 10 minutes long or whatever, that album is amazing. I can't remember the name of it right now.

I'm going to find it. Can of, I think, Crout Rock guys, right? They're like, I've listened to some can because when I got into radio, had, you know, the cool kids were like, well, you really should listen to Cannes if you're like radio, because they're just fucking doing Can. No, I totally remember that. I think I had a friend's,

a roommate's boyfriend who burned me of all the Can records on a CD. Oh, she's one getting back to CD? I'm going to be burning. I'm so embarrassed. They're going to call 911 on my house because it's going to be burning. What's the song you mentioned? The, the, uh, fragrance. Fragrance. Yeah.

I'm so embarrassed to admit that I actually started listening to Cannes after hearing about them for so long being this like quintessential band, that LCD and the song shouting them out. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. Because that finally got me to do it. Well, that's a while back.

That song came out in like 2005. So I think that's fine. That's probably like... Oh, yeah, that right. I know. Yeah, yeah. Or no, that song was even earlier than that. So, you know, you're good.

You're still cool then. Yeah. Yeah. When you're on. Oklahoma. No, you got, you got Goon Compass of Apex Twin, which I love... I love Apex Twin. Who is Goon Compass?

Goon Compass is the name of the song. Goon Gumpus. Okay. I was like, that's not the name of some band I don't know. No, Gung Gumpus is also a name that we have given my dog, and the joke is that the track Gung Gumpus is playing in his brain at all times. And so occasionally I'll just play it on the phone when he's acting really stupid, and it's really fun. Goon Compass is what you hold up at a red pill convention. And it was followed by the subtle goon knife. I don't know.

Yeah. Boards of Canada. Spords of Canada. Scottish. So important. Yeah. Massively important to me. Isn't it insane how both them and Aifex twin have continued to feel so just. Yeah, you don't listen to Aethics twin and it feel like, oh yeah, this is the 90s or whatever.

It feels like now. I got to say, they feel certified fresh. Thank you for saying. You heard her hair first. Red tomato for Affects. Well, there's also the crazy thing of Lonely Island sampling AX Twin for the Iran

so far away thing in an era where they were like, these are like dumb videos that era and SNL one time. Right, right. And we're sampling it. And it doesn't matter. And it never replays.

And then they put it on YouTube and it got like eight trillion views. And NBC had to pay them so much fucking money. Good days. Yeah. Broadcast. Yes.

Broadcast, stereo lap. This is just like the coolest shit. I'm sorry, it was like my music. So why? Broadcast was such a band for me in high school. RIP, man. Who's doing this? Is it, you know, is it Ramsey?

Like, who's got such a, like, finger on the pulse taste? I wouldn't put it bastard because the soundtrack of Die My Love is also fantastic in a totally different way. But, like, is there a listing of the tape in the book? No, I know. I don't think. I think there's music here in the dossier. Like, broadcast.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. So it's just Lynn Ramsey being cool as fuck, which, like, shocking no one. The vibe I get is that it's her. Yeah. She wanted Mamas and the Poppice at the end because she wanted the final needle drop to be emotional in the way that the rest of the soundtrack is not. And to be just a swerve. In the book, Morvern has.

tapes that are made up already. It's not something he leaves her as a present. That was a new invention. I felt the tape was like a letter to her. The music's great because it's part of the narrative. I saw her boyfriend as Alan Warner really. Oh, I love that. An intellectual who's also a muso seeing this less academic girl. It was important to start the

feeling early on. It's a new one. They have a muzo. Yeah, they don't name the tracks in the book. And I used electronic music that was very cinematic and sound design in order to avoid the MTV pop promo feel. That is what's effective about it.

It's a very hip soundtrack that also doesn't feel like that's what I call copy it. It doesn't feel like a bunch of labels where like, hey, can we get our cool song? No, or even like just pulling the NME chart or whatever. What label is going to be like and she does what to the body? Okay,

no, you can use absolutely any tracks. And also from a playlist curation standpoint, I love that it also has a mix of older stuff and eclectic stuff. Like the newest stuff. Like, Lee Scratch Perry. Yeah. No, Velvet Underground. Now, the two, you would make a lot of mixtapes, right? Oh my God. Are you kidding?

I know. You're, yes, but I'm sure you're, I'm just saying, like, was it a mixed... Our mixtape. Your favorite Coelio songs? I throw a track or two on them. I feel like, Griff, you and I also made mixtapes, but maybe they probably curated them in very cool ways. Like, right? Like, you guys were probably good at, like, having your energy go up and down.

Oh, yeah. And then, like, in the days of actual tapes before the CD thing, because that was, there was a couple years where I was still doing that. you would like, you know, hook up the tape recorder to the TV and do a little movie quote in there in between songs. This is what I'm talking. This is bespoke tape making. I have no doubt that Emily and Ben's tapes were cooler. But I was doing that kind of intentionality. So what I want now I want a Griffin, a teen.

I would have to dig in and see if I could find it. Yeah. But I was very into the ordering and cutting things up with skits and a fucking other shit. I would. Or movie quotes. I would like get. movie quotes from fucking like Kazan. I would be taping off the radio

and I would have like my thing like I plug my guess my ox cord ready to go like and I would hear the song starting like okay perfect like I would do that I remember that. I guess that's pre-burning. Yeah, I would have one like a tape.

It wasn't even a mixtape. It was just like I have this one ready to go if like a song I like is playing on the radio and I just like hit record. I also made music video mixtapes. Did you guys do that where like I would have a blank tape in my VCR because I fucking watched MTV and shit all day.

And then when something I knew I loved was coming up, I would, I had like two tapes of like compilations. See, I was the person who got those because I never had MTV growing up. So, like, my friends would take pity on me and be like, here's all the cool shit that's up here on MTV. Like, FYI, this is the last year of cool music videos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would watch, you know, like a Buster Rhymes videos, you know,

or whatever, like anything where I was like. Coolio. Yeah, coolio. Yeah, Kulio. Maybe like every single thing Kulio had ever done. Like, let's try and see if we could do. up maybe one of our mixed dates. I know. That's a good challenge.

And we can like put out like the the track list. I'm just I'm, I must have a listing somewhere. I mean, I really had a, I did a lot in high school. Then when I was in college and I was, I did, I did radio at at LMO at KXLU, 8.9. I got much more into it as like this professional endeavor and I would do my own art for it. I would make mixes that I would send out to a bunch of people that, like, had a title and were, like, a quarterly mix or something. Would you, Griffin, this is for you? Would you get the taste certain girls? Genuine question.

No, I was looking through. It's kind of like, you know, putting yourself out there. Yeah. There was, I'm going through a thing right now, I'm feeling very annoyed at the fucking Apple Corporation. They're no good. Who had this whole, like, iTunes match feature where it's. like, oh, if you take the time to upload something that isn't on the Apple music server, we'll save it here.

You are talking about why I am saying things like maybe it's time to get back into CDs. Like, all of these services have failed us. All of them have failed. Yes. There was a big high school crush, long distance, on-off person, young woman, where we would mail each other CDs with very long letters. How postal service of you? It was.

But that's how I first heard of Dentel, like one half of postal service was on a mixed CD sent to me from, he was a senior when I was a freshman and he was like at here in New York at school. And I would like get cool music sent to me by this like, it was. Yeah, it was so fun. This was, yeah, we like lived a state apart and we would have like, you know, three hour like Sunday night phone conversations AIM. And then like the big love language was the mailing of these CDs. and I had them on my phone forever, and I'm looking now when iTunes has, like, gutted them where it has, like, three out of 18 tracks left

because of just whatever fucking licensing agreements they have. So I still have a drive that's basically everything I ever burned like that and, you know, got indexed or anything. But, like, it's on its last legs. Like, any time I've plugged it in, I'm like, oh, God. Yeah, it's, it's like this. I lived that way forever, and the promise of iTunes match, I fucking fell for it.

Yeah. I fell for it. I fell for their fucking award. I got to say, though, even now, giving it to Apple. I have just had another, you know, and it's like from, it's a lateral move. But I finally was like, I just can't, I can't. And this is a big move for me. I had to get off of Spotify.

Like, I just could no longer in a good conscience be on Spotify. But like, my life was on Spotify for like, basically from the day they started. I had like a premium membership. I had so many. I make a playlist every month. Same. And I've been doing it for so long. and it's like almost a journal of my life.

Me too. I can't give it up. But I did the shift. They have a thing called song shift and it's okay. But I shifted everything to Apple Music, I guess, because it was like the other one. This is my problem. I made that move and then I just started to get annoyed with Apple Music. So now I'm withdrawing.

I downloaded something called Doppler. I'm creating an iPod back on my iPhone. There you go. And that's right. And so those day corporations don't have their grips on me at all. I was like methodically buying CDs through like, 2012 and like importing them and then choosing

like the best high quality version of the cover and everything and I was just like it's all saved here and then there's a backup and then I got rid of the backup and then it's fucking cloud. They got us. They got this with the cloud. You want to hear about it really sad like going to Amoeba music on

Sunset Boulevard. Well it doesn't exist there anymore. I mean it exists but it's not the same thing. The main one still in San Francisco exists. I think the Berkeley one yeah. But going there, loading up a stack this high of CDs that cost between like

$5 and $6 a piece, burning them all, like, ripping them all. And like, it came out to like 20 cents a song. And it's like that's sustainable. As like a college student who like, you know, was constantly broke. That was still sustainable compared. And like everybody, like, I feel like we all do Spotify and shit now because it's like,

oh, 1099 a month. You can have like the entire music catalog. But it's like, no, it doesn't, it doesn't. By the way, we're buying you CDs at Amoeba. the musicians have already made their money. But it's just also just that, I mean, whatever. Now we are, we're getting, it's Andy Rooneyifying in here, but just like, the vibe of like,

you would, I would go to the record store. I've definitely done this rant before. I would have enough money for like one to two CDs, right? And so, like, I would take forever on my choices. And then the choices I made, I had to listen to them to death. Because I was like, I spent the money. Like, I'm not just like putting these on a shelf and I'll get to it. No, you're like, there's three weeks.

of this being the one PD I'm bringing with me in a disc man every day. You know the album backwards and forwards. My semester

and change of Cal Arts was defined by convincing a friend to drive me to a movie I wanted to see at the arc light and then going to Amoeba for like

an hour afterwards. Oh my God, yeah. That was the great one too. Like I, for my first couple of years, I was at Loyalus, so I was like clearly all around the town. So yeah, I was like

going to Hollywood, was like, I think I did it on the weekend. And it was like, those were the spots. It's like Fred 62, Arkline. And, yeah. Well, even beyond that, like, even when I stopped sending mixes to people and I was never on Spotify, I was just like Pock committed to the fucking Apple Corporation. But I used to, like, make a playlist for every year of my life to be like, I can look back on this and this will be the 12 tracks that like evokes the feelings of what I went through that year, whether they're like songs linked to specific events or.

moments or people or it's just what I was into or discovered. It was less like songs that came out that year and more just like what was in my rotation. And at a certain point, just fucking stop doing that. I never listened to music. It's a goddamn podcast. Well, I think, like, I think a loss art, in addition to making the mix is to be, is the interpretation of mixes that are made for you and like reading all sorts of shit into it that you want to be there.

But to steer us back on topic a little bit. Let's go back to more in color. James's mix. for more Vern, I think, is a more interesting suicide note than the one he actually leaves. If this is what it is, absolutely. The guy who wrote a whole book that she doesn't even read. And if it truly ends on dedicated to the one I love. Yeah.

Which is a great ending for a, like, yeah, email. It's heart-ripping. Like, for a guy who's trying to express himself, this feels like the words that he can't say, which is also very twinned with, like, Lynn Ramsey's approach to storytelling, which is like, these people can't say these. things themselves. These things, like, are bigger than words. Yeah, and it's clear that that is a language that they actually did share. Like, he leaves her his music and that's what she packs up. Like, that is the priority when she finally leaves the apartment. She takes all of his record

collection with her. And it's like that more so than his pursuit of writing seems to be the thing that, like, they connected with on some sort of spiritual level. Keep the music is like his ultimate, I love you. Yeah, truly. More than saying, I love you. And I'm sorry. We don't really know, right, what Morvern's interests are or whatever. She is, she's so opaque, right? Like, it's hard to understand what, like, you know. Well, her bluff with Dolly Wells of like, isn't that what's great about being a writer that you can kind of piss off?

It doesn't feel like her trying to imagine what a writer would say. It's her testing out this life for herself. Right, totally. She's like, if people buy that I'm a writer and they give me a bunch of money, then what do I do? I sit around all day and I smoke and I go, like, I'm coming up with something. 21 or whatever. I mean, it's like, it's not like more of her needs of direction in life.

No, but she likes ants. Right. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think her dream is just to, like, float. Sure. Yeah. At least for now. She is disassociating.

Well, this is the thing, though, about, like, I don't know. I always am turning this over my head when I watch this movie because it's like she talks about she likes the ants. And, like, she is, I don't know. I think it's kind of funny watching this so close back to back with Die My Love, which has a lot of very physical performance, very. very, and like, very external performance of, like, boredom. Or, like, I keep using the word torpor, but, like, I feel like that's what she's really, really good at expressing.

And, like, Jennifer Lawrence is doing that in that film as well. But it's, like, here, like, there's sort of the built-in excuse of everybody's on ecstasy all the time. So you can kind of, like, you know, be feeling the branches of the trees all the time. There's, like, an excuse for that. But, like, I don't know. But it still feels like what we're picking up is. that there is some kind of internal poetry in Morvarncal,

even if it is not this studied kind of thing that her boyfriend was into. Like, she is, she wants something. She, there is a lyricism. There is like an artist's spirit in her somewhere just doesn't express itself in the way that like, you know, it's typically legible. And like, you can imagine if she is ever called upon

to, like, make a second book, it's probably not going to go so well. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't, she's not in some way tuned in. Right. Yeah, or like living an emotional, lyrical life in some way or another. I also think it's fascinating in the meeting with the book publishers. I mean, they're like hitting it off.

They're like loving her. They're buttering her up. They're offering her the money. And then you cut to like the sun has set and they're still drinking, right? This is gone beyond business deal. She's seemingly already literally signed the contract. And yet they're here still talking. And she mentions the supermarket thing.

and they're like, oh my God, supermarket novel. That's unbelievable. hilarious, like, sells itself. We got to get a picture. And she holds the, like, champagne glass up to her face. And she almost looks embarrassed in that moment. And I don't read it as a, oh, fuck, if I get attention, does that, like, does the spotlight on me increase the possibility of being revealed to be a sham?

I think it's more that, like, the attention isn't really what she fucking wants. This is, like, means to an end to buy an idea of, freedom. But what you're saying of there is some internal poetry in her, but she doesn't seem to have any need to have that validated by the outside world. Even her closest friends. But it's even still, it's like the, she is experiencing being perceived perhaps in a way that she never has been before. Maybe it's because of like false auspices or whatever. But like the idea that somebody would look at her and say, project this idea that she has depth, that. there's, um, that there's something really interesting there. Like I, I feel like what, because I know exactly the moment you're talking about. And that's what I read from it is like, is like, oh my God, somebody thinks I'm like, I'm sure that her boyfriend loved her, but I'm sure her boyfriend was like, oh, this is my working class girlfriend or whatever. And like, and like now she's having these

eyes on her thinking of her as being somebody who like, wow, she's full of ideas and feeling and depth and all these things. And it must be like, yeah, it's just an interesting suit to put on, I think. Well, yeah. And in her like, the Lynn Ramsey canon of outsider, she's the only outsider who is like given a path to the inside. And the fact that the movie ends before we see any of the results of that, all we know is that the door has been open for her. It creates like really, really interesting ambiguity of like,

what the fuck happens to this person? Well, you know? There's always Sasha who got left in reverb and lived off oranges and juice and burgers. Like, I truly. think that's her future. But maybe that's the darkest reading possible. But I just like, because I do think she goes back to the club both spiritually and literally at the end.

Right. Right. And just, you know, becomes like Sasha. He's a laugh. But I also, yes, I think there's the larger, like, the indescribable desire to escape oneself, right? My favorite fucking ass and all sketched the last 10 years, which I cite all this, the time is the Adam Sandler, Romano Italy Tours one.

I fucking love that sketch where he's like, we will take you to a nice place, you will eat good food, that will not make you a better, a different person. If you're sad where you are now, you will be sad there. It is one of the greatest, like, genuinely pieces of art about depression I have ever seen. It is one minute of slow burn where he's just straight up naming the sights and the experiences. And then he goes, but I must restate, you will still be the same person you are at home just in a nicer location. So funny.

I love that. And he's like, you know, sort of like, we can give you activities to do with your wife. We can't help you know how to talk to each other, like that kind of stuff. And there's this degree of like, if I'm perceived as a novelist, does that make me a different person? If I have money, does that make me a different person? If I go to a different place, if I take different drugs, if I'm with different people. And the thing she can't escape is, like, actually her inner life. The thing that Lynn Ramsey knows how to bring, like, about cinematically better than anyone else is just, like, her headspace.

Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's really interesting, like, her last conversation with Lana is, like, you know, when she's saying she's going to leave again, ask her to go with her. And my whole life is here, and it's like, there's the same crappness everywhere, so stop dreaming. And it's like, I always think, like, I will always remember this time. I hope my mom's, my mom's not listening to me. I went to this music, I went to this music festival. Or not music, it was, it was the Matador Records 21st birthday party in Vegas in 2010. And I had, you know, I had my equivalent of this in Vegas with like my, the launa of my life.

And, and, you know, had this mountaintop experience seeing like guided by voices. and all these fucking bands and stuff. And then got back to, I was living with my mom in Seattle at the time. We're outside of Seattle. And guided by voices was on tour. And they were going to be playing in Seattle, like, the next weekend. And I was like, I think I'm going to go. And my mom was just like, you can't just do what you want all the time.

Like, otherwise you will become a hedonist. But even like, you might be a bad one, though. I mean, because it's like, she is something of a hedonist in that she goes, she clubs, she has sex. she takes drugs, but like, there's no real sign of pleasure. Yeah, but she's also searching, like, the way, like, Lana, you could say Lana is the same thing, but Lana is also very much.

Lana has a good time. Lana has, yeah, she has a good time, and she also has, like, a community. And it might, but it's, like, absolutely not what Morgan wants her life at all. And there's a balance. For something. Yeah. In Lana, there's some sort of, like, okay, but at some time I got to, like, resume real life. I understand I have to like play the game.

She has that self-enforced, right? Yeah. At some point I got to grow up. It's holiday for a reason because you've come back from it. Right. And then and then it's Monday. Yeah. Which Morvern is like, how do I destroy Monday? Yeah. I mean, it's, she's the original Spring Breakers. Like, you know, is what of Spring Break, but forever.

This is a better movie than Spring Breakers. Although that is a great film. It's a great film. But I do, I would do a total double bill of the, like I would be. be a really fun double feature. They pair up, like, absolutely. It was in one of the earlier quotes you read that she literally, like, talks about Lynn Ramsey, hedonism as, like, this kind of defining cultural shift of, like, the use of drugs across

generations of it being this idea of, like, counterculture, political statement. She says this, right. The 60s you do. Psychological expansion versus, like, self-punishing, internalized. Yeah, and it's not about, you're not really, there's something to rebel against. Someone? From Warp Records, though, who saw this film, they screened it early for them, said it was like, this is like a modern day Easy Rider. And I do love that.

Because Easy Rider is the sort of, you know, 60s version of the like, hey, man, let's just tune in, drop out, you know, drop asses. But that feeling of like whatever they were fighting for in the 60s and 70s has settled into something else and everything feels wrong, but it's not really clear what we should be pushing back against. There's not a clear target. She thinks she should have pushed to black comedy more, although more recently for Die My Love, she was interviewed. And she's like, I rewatch it now. I saw it with an audience, like a young audience. And they were laughing and enjoying it and made me feel good. This movie or Die My Love? More in color.

Oh, okay. But she was interviewed like four, you know what I mean? Yeah. A retrospective screening while she was on the Die My Love Press store. And she thinks like, oh, you know, I pissed off the financiers. They wanted a different poster. I love the poster. Poster is like incredible poster.

Like, you know, they kind of dumped it. I was pissed off about it at the time. But it's a classic Lynn Ramsey thing of like, it got a bad release because they didn't like working with me because I didn't want the shitty poster and it was all worth it because the poster's on my wall and I like it. And honestly, yes.

But I mean, yeah, I do think it's probably the funniest movie of her filmography. It's got the most jokes in it. And I think a lot of that is because it's so, in touch with like youthful folly I guess which is like the oldest person way to say what I mean but like you know the thing with

the dollar bill out of the pocket like these sort of just like you're just sort of figuring out how to scrape through life and it's all embarrassing everything is mortifying for some reason and it's all funny it's like it's inherently funny um the

so the film stock change happens when she goes to Spain and you know hinges on that cab ride. And she said they had to reshoot the cab ride seven times because they couldn't figure out the right way to process the foam stock and working with the new material. Does it change as soon as they get to Spain or is it when they get on the cab and then go to the village? We changed the film stock. I'm sorry, you're right. We changed the foam stock for when Morver decides to leave the hotel. That's right. So it starts on the cab ride when they venture

outside of the resort. It's so funny when her friend is like kind of high on E and it's like rush to leave and doesn't even put her clothes on. But then it's like, what are you looking at, pervert? Yeah, that's like, I mean, that is the funny shit where it's just like the shamelessness but also, you know, like, yeah, everything is embarrassing. And there's this

very like MTV Spring Bake style like party scene where there's a woman there who is just like blotto, right? Who just like is not catatonic because of depression, but is clearly just on 10,000 things. Yeah. And you keep having the camera like pan across her,

against, like, guys, like, jirator. Yeah. And then, I mean, there's the swimsuit swap thing on the pool, which is just like that long, like, push on your face. It's so good. I also love where you see, like, across the balcony, like, there's two guys on the balcony. Like, there's two guys on the balcony being like, I'm trying to sleep. And I'm like, why are you trying to sleep? Why are you here then? Go anywhere else.

I know. I feel so bad for all the old people. They show in the lobby of that hotel. I'm just like, you are in hell. You should leave, right? It does feel like you can just go down the road. But in a movie without a lot of dialogue, the whole kind of, like,

all the core things are talking about are summed up in the exchange in the back of the cab between Morven-Nalana, where she goes, where are we going? I don't know, somewhere beautiful. And it's like, it doesn't matter. Like, I don't know, we're going to find a place that's beautiful. Like, the next place will solve it.

The next adventure will, like, solve it. You know, I just need to keep going forward to the next experience. Do you think, I see my understanding is always that when she does that, leaves with the intention of leaving Lana wherever they go, like from the outset. You think that's planned, like, leaving her on the side of the road with the note? Yes.

I don't know. That's always been my understanding of it, which is extreme. But, like, I think it's like she makes some decision at some point. But it also could be that, like, the third time that Lana brings up fucking her boyfriend, she's like, okay, fuck this bitch. I think it's, like, all improvisational. I think it's all, like, instinctual moment to moment. And I also love that you imagine there's going to be some like bigger blowup with Lana if they reconvened at the end of the movie.

And she's just like, of course we're all like on spring break. You leave me by the side of the road. I found my way back home. Yeah. How much longer were you there? It's like everybody bounces back. It's like your bones are still soft. You can kind of like bounce back from these fights with friends or or, you know, your friend can tell you that her boyfriend is dead.

And you're like, yeah, stop being so crazy. Like, you know, there's something. I was thinking about this in that conversation. there's another part I wrote it down somewhere in this film and there's some of this in Die My Love too where I think that's so much of like it's sort of her

Lynn Ramsey's approach to comedy but it's like it's also just kind of really good at conveying alienation is like there's so many frustrated like non-responses to things like things that should be these peak admissions

or revelations or something they never get the reaction that you think they should and there's something that's so frustrating but I think also very real about that. You rarely ever get those big cathartic moments where you finally tell somebody

a secret you've been keeping for so long and they react appropriately. Well, she keeps telling people like, my boyfriend fucked off. And she wants people to ask follow-up questions. And they never know. And they just go like, yeah, sounds like the kind of thing, you know, he'd do.

And then in the bathtub with Lana, there's like the real, like, I got to tell you. It's a funny subtitle moment because it's like translated phonetically into like something that's bad happening. But she goes like, what? And she was like, he's gone.

And Lana, like, won't hear her say it. Yeah. He's gone to another country, the undiscovered country, you know? Because Lana is just like, fuck, fuck, fuck, it's something to do with me. Like, you know, everybody is so, you know, narcissistic. Yeah, yeah, that it never comes to that. No one will, like, let her confess, which I think helps push her to being like, then why do I fucking have to live with guilt or trauma or. grief about this.

Yeah. I was just going to say shooting the cab ride so many times, Lynn Ramsey said that, like, the taxi driver was, like, one of the highest paid

people in the entire movie. Because they had to keep bringing him back. Oh, my God. When they would, like, develop the film and be like, oh, we fucked it up.

Yeah. And then go back and reshoot it again as they figured out what the visual look was for that final chunk of the film. That's so wild. And then the sex scenes, she had never shot a sex scene before

and, like, got in there with them and had all these ideas of, like, you know what I don't like in sex scenes. And I'm trying to avoid that. More crying.

Everybody should be crying. Once you actually get in the room, she's just like, it's so awkward to like figure out and step through and you find yourself falling into the same ways of shooting it. And she just sent every, like, the whole crowd of the room. And she was just like, it's just us in the camera and just like try shit. Just try stuff and like feel it out. Oh, my trying shit with that, dude.

Yeah. Handsome guy. It is a laugh line of its own where he opens the door. And it's just like, oh. I lost my mother. I lost my mother. Okay. Let's fuck.

Oh, my God. This premiered at Cannes, but in Directors Fortnight. I was going to say, it was going to be, rack hatcher up in certain regard. This was also put in insert in regard. Ramsey was pissed off by that, so she moved it to Director's Fortnight. She somewhat iconically married Rory Stewart Kinnear, the guy she co-writes, we need to talk about Kevin Woods later,

at Cannes in prompt due, just, I guess, because she was a little sick of being at Cann. They had to get out on a boat so they could take advantage of maritime law. It had to go far enough out. It did the festival circuit. It gets distributed in the UK by Momentum. It released 2002. America, it got released December 2002 by a company called Cowboy Pictures.

Yes, right. Really know much about them. It got great reviews, but made zero money. Can I read this quote about the wedding? Because it's really good. So the captain does the ceremony. This is like a thing they offer it can. But you are legally required to be 12 miles out international water.

Not sure we got that far. During the ceremony, we hear screaming coming from an island. and think that someone is being murdered. We look over and see a couple of naked ladies and a camera crew making a porno film. Oh, my God. International Waters porn. To ring the boat's bell to get them to shut up,

it's absurd straight out of a Polini film. That's incredible. That just sounds like what her life is like on a daily basis, and I might enjoy it for a week and then be like, this is a lot. And I think she just, she's chaotic, especially back then. Yeah, yeah. This film, this is very interesting to me,

because this film came out Christmas time 2002, Griffin. And I was like, oh, a Christmas box office for a we've done this one before. I don't think we've ever done this one before. Is this not? Catch me if you can? No, it is not. Okay. I guess that comes out the following week later.

It comes out literally on Christmas Day. Correct. Okay. This is the first weekend of a little film that's a sequel in a fantasy trilogy. What could it be? It's called the Lord of the Rings, colon the two towers? That's right. Never forget.

Treebeard. Yeah, he's there. Now, Emily, you like the Lord of the Rings movies. I do. That's the best one. And that's your favorite, right? That's the best one. Is that you'd claim that when we do PJ?

Oh, absolutely. Well, I mean, I- You want a different PJ. I put in- Oh, yes. But I also would take that one as well. But you enjoy Aragorn throwing open the doors and going like this. Gondor calls for aid.

Wait, no, that's return of the king. That's true. You like putting on a pair of PJs. I like the last March of the ends. That's fun. Some may say we mark. to our doom. I like that one Ent who kind of like puts his head in the water.

Yeah, and douses it. You know, because it's on fire. It's so good. All about the Ents in that movie. Yeah, anytime I rewatch that and I, the Ent sequence comes up where they start my... I just start falling. It's like it gets worse every time. Like with age, the ants make me cry.

I think I'm just like growing up into being an Ent eventually and I just see my future in front of me. Tree Bird hasn't really worked recently. What's the last movie here? I heard he was on the Epstein list. Epstein list. Oh, really? Don't even. I'm joking.

Also, it seems like he did 17 seasons of NCIS Miami. Yeah, he's right. He's the chief. No, he's great. We love tree beards. Yeah, he's in a step. He's never

copsh. Clearly, he's still thinking about what his next film is going to be. Right. He's been in decisive. Yeah. You know, Lord of the Rings the Two Towers is opening to

$102 million, which is very good. Wow. In like a five day, I think, like, at least, but still. Yeah, okay, that makes more sense. Pretty hefty.

Yeah. Was quite a big hit. Number two at the box office is a film that I very much enjoy. A romantic comedy. Oh, it's not Gangs of New York. It's Kate and Leopold. Incorrect. Games of New York, however, is number four.

We'll get up to that. It's not Kate Leopold? No, it is not. Oh, because that's O-1? I don't know. Well, David. You don't got to give me that attitude. Then is it two weeks notice.

Yeah. They're the two you always cite. I love two weeks notice. Mark Lawrence's two weeks notice with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock and Donald Trump, unfortunately, is in that movie. In which Hugh Grant says, the word, Pokemon. Yes. Beautifully.

Also quietly, quite a big hit. Huge hit. That movie made $200 million worldwide. That movie is, I really recommend. I really think that is the height of Sandy rom-coms. I think it's a really, really funny movie. And Hughes, obviously, you know, doing his thing very well. I was going in a Simpsons Hole last night, and I re-watched a fish called

Selma. Sure. Incredible episode. But there's the moment where the Jeff Goldblum agent calls Troy McClore and is like and you got an offer

for a buddy comedy with Christian Slater and Hugh Grant and he goes Those degenerates? It's funny. It's a very funny snapshot. It's Christian Slater

Rob Lowe and Hugh Graham. Yeah. Anyway. Number three of the box office is a less successful romcom in my opinion. Okay. Falling from number one.

Hmm. It's also set in New York City. It's made in Manhattan. Also, Quite a big hit. Yeah, big hit. Not, not, yeah, no slouch. A robust December.

Do you like Maine in Manhattan? Yeah, the thing I always remember about that is like when I first moved to L.A., I knew somebody who worked on the crew in Maine Manhattan. I was like, wow, I really know some like people who are. Glit. Showbiz. Glamma! That's also like one of the most quietly stacked cast movies.

Sure. Hit me. I mean, after Ray finds. Like Bob Hoskins. Hoskins is there. Two cheese there. Tucci's there. Chris Eigman is in it.

He sure is. Francis Conroy. Yes. That's about it. Okay. Well. No, Amy Sedaris. Well, well, well.

I'm sure she's funny. I've seen the film. Don't really remember it. Number four at box office opening new this week. You guessed it Griffin, the disappointing opening of gangs of New York. There we go.

Which was much hyped and opened to only $9.4 million dollars. It did stretch all the way to 77. Yeah. Domestic. And like 200 worldwide? Correct. How much? It costs like a quarter of a million dollars.

Oh, okay. Like, I mean, but like at the time, that was a lot. And obviously, it's like a close to three-hour, very violent epic. Like, I adore that movie so much. I love the Mr. Scorsese stuff on it so much. Yeah, it's clear that he does not really want to talk shit about it. It is mostly like, I'm mostly happy. No, the part where he's like, I had to like convince myself to stop thinking about it.

I was like, oof. Right. I can't even imagine. Mr. Scorsese is great. I wish it was a year. year long. I agree. I could have done with so much more. Four episodes per movie. But it's really well done. It is. It is. But it is interesting. There's always been this question of like, especially now that Harvey Weinstein is so thoroughly out of the picture.

Harvey Weinstein. Uh, that like, does Marty not want to go back and like recut gangs of New York? Because there was infamously so much interference there. And his thing has always been like, you can't rewrite the narrative of a movie. The movie that comes out is the movie the culture meets. I don't want to revisit my work. Yeah, I somehow feel like, you know, if it's possibly your last project you're working on, maybe you would rather make another movie instead of, but that's how it came off to me, is that he was just like, got to force myself to move on. It also has always felt, yes, beyond that, that even like in the immediate aftermath,

he was just like, I spent 20 years of my life tilting at this windmill. I'm proud of enough of it that I can't keep obsessing over trying to get this perfect. Movie rocks have seen it so many times. It's an okay film with incredible stuff. Huge masterpiece completely rocks. Number five at the box office is a sort of a counter-programming solid hit for teens. It's been out for two weeks. It makes $56 million domestically.

And an additional $713 internationally. Is it not another teen movie? No. When you hear about the disparity, what does that suggest to you about the lead of the film? Is it perhaps primarily a film with an African-American cast? And it's young. Yeah. Oh, it's one of my favorite movies of all time.

You want to say it? Drumline. Nick Cannon and Drumline. What a perfect movie. I have not seen since 2002, but I remember being lost. Oh, I've watched it. Quite good. A few times.

Number six of the box office, making only $3 million less than the opening weekend of Gangs of New York, is the opening weekend of the Wild Thornberry's movie. Here's a box office dad I love. I think it, when box office motion, Stoll, stood tall, and there was the chart for David's saluting Red Hulk. Maybe he'll bring it back. There was the chart for

lowest second weekend drops of all time. For a long time, Wild Thornberry's held the record because it went up a historic amount. 22%. Wow. Kind of a soft opening, and then the family's just waiting. They waited for school to be out.

Totally, totally. Oh, my God. Yeah. So it did okay, but the second weekend jump was crazy. Number six is Number seven of course is the hot chick Number eight we covered it recently on this podcast is the underwhelming Star Trek nemesis Number nine is the somewhat underwhelming

Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets And Star Trek Nemesis dropping horror It was number two the week before? Yeah, it dropped 76%. I saw like every single one of these movies except for Wild Dornberries That's like a good one. And number 10, die another day

which has been out for a couple months And we've also covered on our Patreon Yep. So, you know, things are going well at the box office. Morvern is obviously a little lower on this list opening number 56. Okay. But, you know, three screens, 4,000 screen average. Okay, so not amazing. It did feel like...

It didn't... It made less than a million dollars worldwide. It felt like there was a feeling of Morton having an outside chance for supporting actress this year for Minority Report. I feel like she wasn't getting precursors, but she kept being on the bubble list. She was on a bubble list, but yeah, you're... mean, like, no significant awards for it. And she hasn't been nominated since in America, but I feel like Control and the Messenger were both similarly bubble performances where she got on precursors.

She's good. I think her biggest performance post-that boom is Longford, where she got an Emmy nomination, which is a TV movie, which she's fantastic in playing Myra Hinley of Serial Killer. And, you know, she's in the Messenger. I said, right. She's all right in that. She's really good in that.

she's really good, Anne. Sure. You don't like that movie? I have mixed feelings about that movie. I love that movie. I think she's really good, no. What else does she kind of pop in? She's in Cosmophilus.

I can't say I really remember that. Signatiki, we shouted out. She recently did that TV show, The Serpent Queen, which she was the lead of, which about Catherine Diomedici, that I think was supposed to be kind of cool. And she did Harlitz, an early Hulu British co-production.

And she is in Annami, which is not a film I liked, but she's totally fine in it playing the character's mom. And yeah, she's still working, but yeah, she's, you know, it's a different kind of vibe than

what you might have expected. But then, like, this is one of the best movies of the 2000s, but I don't watch it going Samantha Morton is about to be a Hollywood movie star. I watch it going, like, what an interesting actor she is, and I hope she continues to do interesting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Which she kind of did. Yeah, she did.

Yeah. But you agree with what I'm saying of there was that feeling of that wave of UK actresses. And then I'll add Cape Blanchet into the pot in the late 90s in the early 2000s, whereas a feeling of like, is one of these Meryl Streep? Yeah, totally. Right. Is this the start of the next Meryl Streep and which one is it? Right.

And it does feel like Kate Blanchett won that race, at least in terms of. To Krova, yeah. Duration. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was in there.

Emily. Thank you so. Anything is, Emily, do you wish to shout out? Well, yeah. I don't know. It was funny. Like, this is, like I said,

it's a very, very special movie to me, and I never, I realized also going in, I don't think I ever wrote anything about it. Right, because why would you, I guess,

like, on the anniversary maybe? Yeah, but no, it's still, like, not on anybody's radar. So I don't know. I feel, I feel,

I feel very glad to get to finally talk about it. On the record. Somebody. Yeah, yeah. You jotted down notes while we were watching the movie on my Fargo replica no pad.

You'll have to rub on it to see what I wrote. Yeah. It's just, yeah. It's a picture. It's a drachy treehorn drawing of a guy's dick being bit. Yeah. It's the guy from the hotel room. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I sit this off mic and I just want to make sure I get this on the record. This movie really made me miss being young, tripping on LSD so badly. Because old tripping just don't hit the same. When you're old, trip and it's because your fucking shoelaces are untied. You know what I'm saying? You said it by it.

The Walker gives out. You said it both. You know what I'm saying? It's very different. It's a different animal. That was so solid. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And we also should just say, if you're struggling with depression out there, if you're having, you know, thoughts about hurting yourself, contact somebody. There's 800 numbers. Reach out to a family member or friend. Yeah.

Look, these are going to be more emotionally intense episodes. Oh, or. For this run, I feel like we would try to... Every single one is a trigger warning, I would say. Yeah, yes. And this whole's filmography. Yes. Yeah.

But thank you. And thank you for being here. I wish I had something to plug, but everything that I'm working on won't come out until we're all like in our 50s. Shogun will arrive on our screens. Shogun is who is about to start filming. People will be happy to hear.

I think it won't be filming whenever this comes out. Right. And if you haven't watched season one, it's there for you on Hulu. And it is incredible. And Emily's episodes are incredible. You can also plug the mortal engines, the abstract idea of them. They are Mienjis.

They're always there. I mean, they're actually not. They're made up. They're also always there. They're also always there. They're not going to be there. That's part of the tension. Yeah.

Tension, that's what we like. It's London. Tune in next week to hear us talk about, we need to talk about Kevin. That's right. We need to do it. We got to do it. We got to do it. need to talk about. We need to talk about Kevin.

And as always... Wait, hold on. Oh. Over on Patreon. We recently did an episode covering 28 years later, the bone temple. Oh! I can't wait to see them bones. We have so excited. Good, thanks. I can't wait to enter.

I hear it's good. That's the Patreon franchise. No, we're just doing that because we've done all the other 28. Oh, okay. You're catching up. Yeah. And you might as well. Yeah. You've become a member at patreon.com slash blank chat.

Please do. Yeah, and we're also doing the Oz movies. Correct. We're in the middle of our Oz commentary series. It's a funny contrast to do Lynn Ramsey and Oz

at the same time. I think it's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. What we're doing here is good and important. Tune in next week for Kevin.

Well, now it's like hard to figure out like a good upbeat note to end on. I know we were trying to dig ourselves out of this hole. Maybe we just dig the whole deeper and put some G's in there. Oh, I'll let David.

Prayer for you, my baby. It's the best. Cheeseburgers and orange juice In the club