Blank Check with Griffin & David - Slumdog Millionaire with Siddhant Adlakha

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

Danny Boyle is about to win the Oscar. How did he do it? A) He Cheated, B) He’s Lucky, C) He’s a Genius, D) IT IS WRITTEN. Critic Siddhant Adlakha joins us to dissect the improbable success of Boyle’s 2008 Dickens-by-way-of-Mumbai hit SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. We’re getting into everything, from the film’s reputation in India to the 2009 Oscar ceremony with Hugh Jackman, from UK teen TV sensation “Skins” to the unexpected success of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” in primetime. Jai Ho! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com or at teepublic.com/stores/blank-check

Blank Check is one episode away from winning 20 million rupees. How did they do it? A. They cheated. B. They're lucky. C. They're geniuses. D. It is podcasted. Good. Sure. Great. Thank you. You could have said anything there and I would have been happy.

Written. I think the poster for this movie is so bad. It is. It's wild how chaotic it is. Please weigh in on this. Hi. Just what do you think of the poster? Well... Before we introduce you. We will introduce you. I promise.

Your screen went dim. Hold on. Hit the... Yeah. Look, it was 2008. It was 2008 and that was when floating head posters were at their peak. His head be floating. It's like four different bad trends at the same time. I feel like it's also a poster that

has multiple taglines on it. It does have a couple taglines. It's the multiple choice structure but it's different than the opening line I just read. Right. It's got the sort of simplified who wants to be a millionaire motif. The font is bad. Font looks really trashy.

Can you read what the four, the questions? What does it take to find a lost love? A, money. B, luck. C, smarts. D, destiny. Yeah, that kind of sucks. All of the above?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a bad poster. That's all. I'm just saying it's a bad poster. It is. It's an incredibly busy poster. And the British one sheet was this, which makes it look like it's like a comedy about a couple who

gets married. Yeah. Calling it the feel good film of the decade. It's just wild how different the two posters are because the American poster basically feels like it's hiding both of its actors' faces Right Even though it is a giant floating head poster It is a floating head that is so dim

Yeah, in shadow Right It's like he's a Sith waiting to be revealed He does look villainous He's a little Sidious-y, I think Absolutely, yeah You know what's wild? What?

This movie made $150 million domestic? It made $141 million domestically and almost $400 million worldwide. Yes. So I was interested in this stat because I think this is a thing we'll probably talk about a fair amount. This movie won a Best Picture. Yes. talk about a fair amount. This movie won a Best Picture.

Mm-hmm. Yes. But it was like maybe the last time there was a Best Picture winner that was this popular with the general public. And this is the year

that basically breaks the Oscars. This is the year of no Dark Knight. Right. Dark Knight not getting nominated. And no WALL-E. WALL-E and to a lesser extent also Gran Torino,

I would say. You had these three movies that were like populist favorites that all failed to get nominations in lieu of Frost Nixon in The Reader. Had to get Frost Nixon in there. Slipping in there. Yeah.

And the Academy loses their fucking minds and changes everything and keeps changing everything to try to solve that problem. Meanwhile, this is the highest grossing Best Picture winner of the last 15 years. Like nothing has eclipsed it. King's Speech beats it by a little bit overseas, but this beats it domestically. And that's the only one that even comes close.

Yes. This is the last time a Best Picture winner basically becomes a blockbuster because of it winning Best Picture 2. That's the other thing. Like 40% of its gross comes after the win. Wow. Yeah, and the stat was that that was the largest percentage post-Oscar win

for any movie since Titanic. How many Best Picture winners have we covered? The Hurt Locker. The Silence of the Lambs. Yeah. The... There are other ones. Titanic.

The Titanic. The Titanic. The Forrest Gump. The Forrest Gump. Ang Lee won Best Director twice, but lost two times. He didn't win Best Picture. The Terms of Endearment. The Terms.

That might be So this is our sixth But we've covered a few We've covered a few I think that's it We never covered I don't even know what the funny answer is here We never covered

Cimarron Yeah funny I don't know what's funny. Yeah, no, look, who knows what's funny anymore? I mean, you can't say anything these days. Comedy is illegal. You're not allowed to make a joke about doing an episode on the Cimarron. Introduce our podcast and our guests, and then we can talk about it.

This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It is written. It means... It is written. Then I will say that. It is written. It is written. It is written. It is a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy

passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they win 20 million rupees. This is a miniseries on the films of Danny Boyle. It is called Trainspodcasting. There are many people who were disappointed it was not called this is a miniseries on the films of danny boyle it is called train spot casting that's right there are many people were disappointed it was not called slump pod million cast including me oh really okay all right call us out i mean you need the indian perspective on this i would have been

okay with it that's the only opinion you need that wasn't my problem here's my thing okay so i'm very outspoken on this show about i like to go for the sweatiest combination of podcast and movie title possible. And then anytime we land on a title that is not sweaty enough for our listeners, they're like, I guess Griffin lost the argument. They didn't like that it was podcast away or whatever. Right. Which I want to do as part of the cast and you push for podcast news. Yeah. And your argument was, if broadcast is in the title, you have to do it.

And I felt similarly, train spotting, pod is basically in there. It's stupid not to do it. I understand Slumpod Million Cast is funnier in terms of sweatiness. But I was like, definitively, it's this. But that is what it's called. It's called trans-spodcasting. Our guest today, overdue on the show, Santa Alaka,

here to talk about Slumdog Millionaire. Best picture winner. Can I speak? Yes. Okay, good. Just in general. Yeah, you are. Oh, you have infinite permission to speak.

No, no, I'm going to do that from time to time and be like, wait, is it my turn to talk? Anytime. No turns here. No turns. It's a turnless game. Just a lot of talking over each other. Yes. Yes. I mean, some people don't like that, but that is how it goes here. Welcome to the podcast. We're here to talk about the film that won Danny Boyle an Oscar.

Yes. And as you said. In the middle of his career. Almost by accident. It feels like this guy won Best Picture by accident to some degree. A little. I'm just, I'm sure he was not rolling up his sleeves

on this project thinking like, you know what? I want an Oscar. And you know what? This is the movie to get it. Yes. Like, you know,

this is such obvious Oscar bait. This is such obvious box office catnip. Like, this is the kind of thing Americans will eat up. You know, it's just, the way it took the sort of

movie world by storm, starting with Toronto, I think came largely out of nowhere. Yeah, well, infamously, this movie was originally going to be released by Warner Brothers, who had recently shut down Warner's Independent, their specialty

arm, and they looked at this film and they went straight to DVD. And they were like, we can't release this. This is going nowhere. And they were going to put it straight to DVD. And I think Danny Bell and his team said, can we see if anyone else wants to buy it? Fox searchlight picked it up for a song,

put in Toronto, it exploded. And then suddenly it became like the juggernaut, the unstoppable. Andut, the unstoppable, and as I was saying, a populist favorite. Like, this is the movie that everyone wanted to see win Best Picture in the public. I guess so,

but there was so much Where's the Dark Knight talk. But yeah, of the five nominees... Of the nominees, unquestionable. I think so. I was more of a curious case of Benjamin Button guy That's fine Look, it's a movie I prefer I think I prefer that movie too

Of the five nominees, Milk is my favorite Milk would probably be my pick of the five nominees Right, I don't really care for Frost and Nixon or The Reader I cannot stand The Reader Frost and Nixon is, you know, whatever That's like a can of seltzer Reader, I cannot stand The Reader. Frost Nixon is, you know, whatever. That's like a canon seltzer. Reader, I think, is an abysmal film. Sid, have you read...

Sid Honth. Yeah, thank you. Have you read The Reader? I have not read The Reader. I've seen The Reader. Okay. But I... I read the book.

I read like the title of the movie. Sure, sure. So I know what it says. So it's The Reader. Do you like The Reader? Do you remember? That's the Hugh Jackman year, right? I don't remember.

Yeah, that was funny. But I don't really remember The Reader. That was the first or the second year that I was really getting into like, oh, these are Oscar movies. I have to watch them. So a whole bunch of piracy because none of this had released in India at the time where I was living. But I don't really remember much of The Re other than, does she kill herself at the end? Maybe? Possibly? You know, I've read the book. I've seen the film.

Couldn't tell you? Couldn't tell you. Couldn't tell you? I believe it. Yes, she kills herself. All right. I just had to scan the Wikipedia page there. Sorry for being a horrible guest so far. No.

Because of her complicity in the Holocaust. Yeah, no, that book is good. That book is sort of like an acknowledged, you know, major work of sort of like post-Holocaust German,

like what, you know, how do we confront and deal with, you know, our feelings about this and the legacy of this. Because I'll acknowledge the movie as a piece of dog shit

about dealing with the legacy of are we really going to nominate Stephen Daldry every single time? It's not a very good movie. He makes a movie? I'll acknowledge the movie as a piece of dog shit about dealing with the legacy of, are we really going to nominate Stephen Daldry every single time? It's not a very good movie. He makes a movie? I was trying to remember, like, okay, what was that Oscar year? But right, that's the Hugh Jackman year. Yes. Where everyone was like, oh, is that going to work?

Like, you're hiring a non-comedian to host it. And then he did a good job and everyone sort of had a good time. Yeah, and pretty much every year since then, people go, why don't you just hire someone like Hugh Jackman again? Yeah, has anyone... Forget Dopp, does anyone come close to Hugh Jackman as a host so far? I think...

Well, no. David? Look, I mean, I'm going to sound ridiculous saying this right now. Yes. Uh-oh. But Ellen did a fine job as host. I think Ellen did a good job for two years.

Yeah. And that was after Hugh Jackman. Ellen is not a perfect person. No. A kind person, but has some other faults. But I remember those shows being fine. Generous. And her being, you know, like,

she's a pretty seasoned. Yes. I guess only one of hers was post-Jackman. The first was pretty good. Okay, she was the bread in the Jackman sandwich. Post-Jackman is Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, which I remember being kind of a dud. Yeah, but the Martin solo years were good. Those were amazing.

Franco Hathaway obviously doesn't work. The Crystal Comeback. You think that didn't work? The Franco Hathaway? It didn't work, but it's aged great. Yes. The Crystal Comeback. You think that didn't work? It didn't work, but it's aged great. Yes. The Crystal Comeback,

obviously, was sort of like, everyone was like, oh, right, this is why we actually didn't want this. We took some time away, yeah.

Seth MacFarlane. Uh-huh. So it's getting really, maybe that's also with Ellen came in, you're like, oh, right, a comedian who hosts a show.

Neil Patrick Harris, another problem. Yes. Which felt like them trying to replicate the Hugh Jackman thing Get someone who's more of an entertainer than a comedian But is light, can be funny But then they did

Chris Rock's second stint Which I remember being quite funny And then the two Kimmel years which were like Fine And then three years of no host And then the Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes Trifecta. Yeah.

Last year. Which, it's funny, you don't even remember that they hosted the show last year. No. How memorable that show was. Will Smith's right hand hosted that show last year. Yeah. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, he slapped Chris Rock.

I forgot all about that. And did you hear? They're going to have Oscar cops this year. They've assembled an emergency task force. That's what we need. To make sure no one gets slapped. I just love the idea of them running scenarios. Yeah. Being like, all right, okay,

maybe Tom Cruise is going to pour soup on someone's head. Like, what do we do, right? They're throwing out scenarios. They got a contingency plan for everything. You had an Oscar cops take... You seem like you were gearing up to say something about the Oscar task force. I was just going to say,

huh, I wonder if they're going to bring up the slap at all. Oh. Yeah. No, they won't do that. Kimmel? No. No.

He's going to be respectful. Yeah. Look, it's been almost a year. He's going to ride out on a plaster cast of a hand. Right? Like, he's going to go all, you have to.

Yeah. No, Kimmel, it's been a year. It's been a year. It's been a year. I don't think this is too spicy a take. It's been.

I don't think it's too spicy a take, but this is a thing I It's been a year. It's been a year. I don't think this is too spicy a take. It's been. I don't think it's too spicy a take, but this is a thing I've thought for a while, okay? How did this happen? How could this happen? In what universe could Willard Smith think it was a good idea to get on stage? That's his full name. I did not know that.

We fucked up in a Men in Black episode and people were dragging us for calling him William. I didn't realize it was Willard. I knew it was Willard. I can't believe I called him William. It might have been a self-aware joke by me. Willard Smith slapped Christopher Rock. Okay.

Is it Christopher you show? I hope it's not Christian. It's Christopher! Great. Who? Imagine if his name was Christian Rock. I know. That would be really good.

I'm sorry. No one? I've never heard that before. That's so funny. That would be good.. I'm sorry. No one, I've never heard that before. That's so funny. That would be good. Five comedy points. Damn. The fact that he's called Chris Rock,

that's just his name, is pretty great. That's like a performer's name. Incredible. Yeah. Right. His dad, I think, was called Julius Rock. Yeah.

Which really is a good name. Both of his brothers do stand-up. Tony Rock. Right, but Chris is the best one. It's a great name. Rock's a great last name for a comedian, but like Chris Rock is the best combination. The Rock. great last name for a comedian, but Chris Rock is the best combination. The Rock.

One of our funniest. He should have called his kid The. Anyway. Kid Rock. Look, you know, there's a lot. Soft Rock. You could call your kid Yacht. Yacht Rock. You could call your kid Yacht Rock. It's been a year. People were like, how could that happen? Yeah. No, you saying that the task force

is going to have to like, how do you create the scenarios? Prog. My kid, prog. Yeah. I mean, you're like, what are the scenarios you run through with them

of what they need to anticipate? Right? Mm-hmm. When the whole point is, last year, I think the slap, there are obviously a lot of factors

that go into that moment playing out the way it does. But one of them is, there were three months of the producers of that show and the Academy in the run-up

to the broadcast continually saying, we want to, like, bring back the spontaneity and crazy things happening. There was a little of that. And then, of course, there was also, like,

we're going to sit people at tables with stairs leading right up to the cabaret seating and all this sort of stuff and i'm like i don't think that was in any way planned or orchestrated of course but i think they consciously like nurtured an environment an intimate environment and tried to like be like and follow your impulses like if a moment takes over, you know, I don't, I think that's the last thing they wanted to happen. But now, basically, like, if you're leading an Oscar task force, how do you define what are the spontaneous moments you want to have happen on the broadcast and which things you

need to stop, like, nip in the bud? Here's the thing. I think the Oscar task force should be aimed at like just letting spontaneous things happen. Yes. Letting problems happen. Yes. Like this is my point. Maybe even like manipulating.

Absolutely. Push them. What are the two biggest Oscar moments people talk about from the last decade? It's the slap and it's the Moonlight La La Land. Yes. But then and in both of those scenarios, you just wish like with the Moonlight thing. Yeah. You wish there'd been maybe just sort of because I know it's the end of the night so they really just had to like rush everyone on stage and be like

okay well you say your speeches now because we gotta wrap it up but they should have just been like all right guys 10 more minutes yes everybody settled down air it out you guys go sit down yeah we gotta give these guys their due and with will smith the weirdest thing was that it happened and then there were 20 unacknowledged minutes Yes They just kept doing the show Amy Schumer was apparently backstage being like, can I come out? And they were like, well, there's nowhere for you in the run of show

And no one knew what to do Will Smith was just sitting there And there's the ticking bomb of being like, he's gonna win He's gonna win! At some point, this guy gets on stage And then what is he... We were at Marie's party at her old apartment.

I was just at home, yeah. I was covering the house. The slap happens and everyone for like an hour is debating was that real or not. And like, you know, strong arm... And there's the tweets of like, Denzel is talking to Will Smith right now. Like, you know, all that stuff is going on.

And like the tension in the room was just building and building and building until the moment he gets on stage and starts talking and everyone realized like oh he's real and he's it was real and he's having nervous breakdown right now right right but like no one knew what to make of it until that moment i wasn't watching the oscars i wasn't at home at the time i was on my way back from somewhere and then all of a sudden i started getting these messages from other people who aren't watching either, but have heard what's going on in these clips and all that. I'm like, now I have to tune in for the first time in years to see if Will Smith wins after this. That was the reason I tuned in.

I mean, like the Oscar task force should exist, but it should be led by Andy Cohen. And all the members of the task force should be creative producers on different housewife shows. Right. And they should be like, we're going to keep everything in line. And then they start going to audience members and whispering in their ear like, You said you suck. Yeah, Kristen Dunst said you farted. All right.

Let's get on to Slumdog Millionaire. Best picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire. Runaway hit. A film that almost went straight to video and then becomes a career defining film for Danny Boyle that now he almost lives in the shadow of its success because also a guy who did not feel like well he's obviously on an Oscar track next in line right he was not someone it's like one of these days he's gonna have his best picture break one year earlier he had finally released the movie he said was like his biggest

challenge to make sunshine it went it didn't make a lot of money and his whole press tour for it was basically just like i'm so tired and then one year later he just is like best picture winner his most successful film of the 10 years previous had been a zombie movie shot on a game boy camera right you know and like his beloved early films were like so angry grungy nihilistic how do you feel about danny boyle what's your boyle relationship generally pro danny boyle i'm sort of hit on hit or miss on some of his recent stuff i mean it would be hard to be total hit yeah yeah i don't think danny boyle's hit on the recent stuff but really really. Which was that movie where it had like a twist

every five minutes? Trance? Yes. Trance. That's the one. Yeah. It'd be funny if you were about to say, which was that movie that had the I don't know, the tech guy who creates Apple products? What's that movie where there's a world of which the Beatles never existed? No, it's, yes. You're talking about

Trance. Trance. Yeah, trance. I'll tell you about Slumdog Millionaire. It's my second favorite Danny Boyle film where someone dives into a toilet. You know, that's, in a way, it's the most damning thing

you can say about this movie is it's not the best film in his filmography. With the toilet dive. With the poop dive. Yeah. That's a fair point. I forgot how coded this kid is.

In poop? Yeah It's really like Swamp thing It's like Full on Top to bottom Yeah It's an exosuit

And it's because People are suddenly Blocking the door? They put A door They put a chair In front of the door Right

To prank him Oh good Because he messed with Yeah right It is my favorite moment in the movie, I will say. Is it the poop? The guy is outside the outhouse. He's like, I gotta go, I gotta go.

And they cut to him inside. And he's saying like, look, this is a slow one. No, no. Okay, what's the phrase? It's the wording. He says, oh, it's a shy one. It's a shy one, which is funny. I think that is one of the funniest ways to describe a turd yeah like a yeah sort of a long relaxing session yeah oh it's a shy one and that's just in the subtitles too

yeah he actually says is basically um i'm shy or i'm embarrassed or something like that oh but i guess in context like that's the implication of it so the subtitle is yeah like giving you the implication of what he's saying but no but see i think that's i implication of it. So the subtitle is like giving you the implication of what he's saying. But no, but see, I think that's, I, I,

I would relate more to the kids saying I'm feeling shy or self-conscious. It's a shy one has such a different meaning behind it and is so funny. I mean, the other thing with this movie is like Simon, before he wrote the script in English entirely. Right. And then when, especially, they start working with the kids, the woman who was credited as the co-director on this movie,

who was the casting director. Lovleen Dundon. Yes. She was like, you should do more of this film in Hindi, especially with the children. So she was, like, translating the scripted dialogue in real time to the kids on set. But that's interesting that there's the disconnect.

Yeah. It happens a lot throughout the film, but that's sort of with every subtitle film. Yeah. But especially if it's something you have to translate like very in the moment and you can't think of, like, I wouldn't be able to tell you off the top of my head because I'm not a translator. Like, what's the Hindi equivalent of it's a shy one, but specifically when you're referring to your poop?

It would take me a bit to get there. Yeah. Okay, this movie comes out 2008. As you said, like a fucking hurricane

out of the... Yeah, debuted at Telluride. It won the TIFF People's Choice Award and, you know, comes out

basically Christmas time in America, but I think that was a tw's choice award and it you know comes out uh basically christmas time in uh america but i think that was a twide release so you know limited release mid-november uh i saw it at the angelica i saw it at the angelica as well i remember seeing it opening night i was so amped for this movie because it was just that feeling festivals and danny boyle's back and all if you're like a film nerd and you're not a professional film critic like you two esteemed gentlemen are, you're hearing like the festival buzz on these

things for like two or three months and you're like, when do I get to fucking see this thing? My friends and I went to go see it. It was sold out. It was on like four out of five screens at the Angelica opening night. And we were like, what's the next showing that isn't sold out? And they Angelica opening night. And we were like, what's the next showing that isn't sold out?

And they were like 1030. Oh, yeah. And we were like, we're going to wait in the Angelica cafe for two and a half hours. See Slumdog. I want to see this

with the hottest crowd possible. And we sit there and I'm like, this thing is a fucking triumph. This is undeniable. What a like emotionally overwhelming like tour de force. Like Danny Boyle's

like Honda style perfectly. And then as the season goes on and it becomes the sort of de facto frontrunner, and there's the inevitable backlash of, like, is this thing corny and manipulative and sort of cliched and everything? I was like, come on. Don't be cynical about this. It's

Slumdog. That movie's undeniable, right? The week of the Oscars, I was like, I should go see it a second time. And I see a second time and immediately felt none of this works for me. Oh, no. I now completely, like, all of the charm has disappeared for this movie now. I feel like I see all of the sort of

strings. Had not seen it since then. My second time in theaters that year. Sure. Watched it again. Like, none of this movie was working for me this time really yeah i was surprised i thought i would be more generous to it but it was like one of the wildest first to second viewing shifts i've ever had so now what's your relationship to this film so um i liked it the first time i saw it And I liked it This time when I saw it

Earlier in the week But I've hated it for years Okay so I'm with you Yeah That's fairly similar to me I didn't love it as much as you did On my first viewing But I was like

I can see why this is so bad Sure And then I soured on it quite quickly Probably like you're sort of describing As the sort of you know the as it became such a big deal i was like wait wait wait i i didn't sign off on best picture here right you know like i don't know i don't know and then i remember that oscar year like it wins a lot of awards and you were sort of like oh it got a little boring like it felt a

little sort of and my opinion of it had really soured. I re-watched it just now. But then I've now been watching the Boyle movies. Yeah, yeah. I re-watched it. The first hour, I was like, this is fantastic. And then I remember the second hour loses me more,

and I did kind of... You know, I sort of evened out on it. But it came out positive. The youngest... It's a fought film. The youngest group of the three actors... The little guys. Are so good. The youngest... It's a fought film. The youngest group of the three actors... The little guys. ...are so good.

The little slum ducks are so good, all three of those performances, that it does kind of... Like, the movie does shoot out of a canon at the beginning. My other main takeaway is Dev Patel is pretty incredible in this. It is interesting to watch it now knowing what a

sort of like variety of performance he's going to give. He is excellent in it. I feel like at the time I was dismissive of him because I loved the kids so much. And his performance is more subdued and natural. And I was kind of like, is he just kind of being himself?

The kids are so charismatic. Is he just sort of a blank slate The kids are so charismatic. Right, right. Is he just sort of, yeah. A blank slate. Do you like Dev Patel in general in this film? I do. In general, yes. In this film,

emotionally what he's doing works. Yeah. Every time he opens his mouth, it's a little bit weird for me. Just because, and I'm sure we'll get into like, Let's get into it. What this movie sounds like to me as someone from India.

But I will agree that the first 40 minutes of this movie are just a firecracker with the youngest kids, with the whole thing in Hindi. It all, it doesn't just sound authentic, but even like outside of that, it's so propulsive and it just keeps moving. And like every second scene is them running. Yeah.

You know, the camera work is i i love like the colors i love like the sort of switches to the handheld camera and all that basically peeks at the paper planes train sequence that's when you're like this thing is really humming and then it also just I feel like a lot of weirdly, like a lot of Best Picture winners. The movie then from that point on starts to become pretty obsessed with punishing its characters. Like making them go through like biblical trials.

This is why that British poster that calls it the feel-good movie of the year. Obviously, it's a film with a big happy ending. Yes. I get that it sends people out of the theater feeling Obviously, it's a film with a big happy ending. Yes. I get that it sends people out of the theater feeling good, but it is a really dark, miserable movie in a lot of ways with a lot of, yes, like over-the-top Dickensian punishment. Yeah. Like children, orphans being blinded and, you know, he's being electrocuted in the first five minutes of the movie, you know,

by the sort of like ostensible kind of nice cop. Like, you know, like a lot of this shit. I forgot that like him winning who wants to be a millionaire is immediately intercut with his brother being shot to death. I forgot that. I remember the bath.

I remember how that sequence. And even my first time watching that movie, I was like, this is maybe not totally working. Yeah. I forgot that they cross-cut it so instantly. Like, he has three seconds of celebrating that he's won

before you cut to the brother. Yeah, it just, the entire adult Salim part of it doesn't seem to work for me, just because I can't seem to trace how he goes from, like, I'm a gangster to, oh, I'm gonna redeem myself and shoot people. It's very quick.

Yes. I remembered more of him and he's actually barely in it. Yeah. Like, he really is a minor presence. It's also the worst performance in the movie. He's not a terrific. And I remember being like, oh, he's really dropping the ball. But I also, yeah, I remembered it being a bigger chunk of it. Like, I remember more Frida Pinto in this movie.

She's really not in it much. No. I think the uh adult salim at least in my estimation some of it has to do with the lines he's given because again he speaks english but like the actor speaks english but he's mature metal yeah speaking it in a very stilted way as if these words aren't familiar to him and and a lot of the script seems to suffer from that except when it's dave patel because you know he speaks british english to begin with yeah um but

with madhur mittal it these are not words that he would say so it sounds very like and it's it's not words that at least you know me as an indian who would be used to hearing coming out of someone's mouth like it is our destiny brother and sure stuff like that I know it's you know meant to be this thing of like are they speaking English are they speaking Hindi or we're gonna this is for western audiences so they can just say whatever yeah the lack of authenticity unfortunately sometimes impacts the way it's performed and I think so emotionally some of those moments don't connect because I don't think the actors are necessarily connecting with them. He's got a good look.

He's very like sort of the hair, the kind of like, I don't know. He looks kind of cool. Yeah. I forgot that he was in Million Dollar Arm. Oh, that same actor? Yes.

Okay. Same actor is one of the two baseball prospects in that movie. Okay. I think that's the smaller role, but still. I even think, though, that the middle age version of

that character... Sure. The sort of 12-year-old. Right. Also doesn't work as... In the same way that in the final part they make his redemption shift happen way too quickly, in the midsection, I feel like... I understand what they're going for is

this is a desperate kid in desperate circumstances. He's doing what he needs to do to survive. But I think even in that middle section, he is played a little bit joyfully nihilistic. He's getting some charge out of it. And it just feels like very quickly the kid becomes like addicted to being bad. You know? Like I just think that character is not particularly well written to begin with.

On top of the dialogue maybe being a little dodgy. The first time you saw this movie were you living in india or did you see it later in like did you see when it came out so um the u.s release was sometime in late 2008 yeah yeah i was still in india at the time i ended up moving to new york for college in 2009 but when this came out in the u.s there was already a lot of buzz around it uh from like festivals and this and that. And a friend of mine who used to pay attention to all that told me like, hey, this award season, there's a movie that takes place in India that seems to be like picking up a lot of steam. And I was really interested.

And I didn't know whether or not it would be getting an Indian release. So I ended up like either downloading a pirated copy or buying a pirated dvd or something like that and watching it uh around the time it came out here in the u.s certainly and uh yeah i i i liked it yeah but um i think you know being an impressionable impressionable 16 or 17 year old at the time um a lot of the opinions and conversations that happened afterwards made me feel like, oh, this is exploitative and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, there is that element to it still. But

I've never watched the movie and disliked it. Even though there's parts of it I dislike. I would agree with that. I feel closer to disliking it this time, whereas my second time seeing it in theaters, I more just felt like bloom is off the rose a little bit.

It's lost some magic to me. But I was, I don't know, dislike isn't even the word. It's just like I was not connecting with it. But it's, I mean, it's one of the weird things about the lives that movies have that are outside of their own control

where I feel like so much of the souring on this movie is that there was this sort of like, in so many eyes this film was viewed as like, oh, what a triumph of like the Academy becoming more international and more global. Sure.

By awarding this British film. Exactly. This British film made by white people. Right. And then I think people were like, oh, I love Indian movies. Like Slumdog Millionaire, where they do Jai Ho at the end. Well, you know. And it starts to turn into like, right, a shorthand, you know? I mean, I just think about the amount of like,

trailers for bad American comedies in the 10 years after this, where someone uses Slumdog as a joke title to refer to an Indian character. Yeah. It definitely happens in the Jason Bateman Spelling Bee movie. Yeah.

I think it happens... What is the Jason Bateman Spelling Bee movie I think it happens What is the Jason Bateman Spelling Bee? Bad Words, his directorial debut It happens in the Canadian Hayden Christensen comedy Little Italy Well, look, with Emma Roberts, correct? Is that not set in New York's Little Italy?

I'm not sure, I haven't actually seen it I've just seen scenes from it. I think it happens in 30 minutes or less. It just became one of those really crappy shorthand jokes. Not funny. No, never. And I don't mean that in some aggrieved way.

It's just a boring joke. Oh, it happens on Oh, Hello, which is the John Maloney and Nick Kroll. They are supposed to be ignorant fools. Oh no, I enjoyed that. Right, right, right. But I guess that, yeah. I want to open the dossier

for this film. Quick question. Sorry to interrupt. You can interrupt me literally anytime. I'm not joking. No, please, feel free. Like Best Picture winners since it like the artist has Slumdog Millionaire do you think it's been sort of

memory hold as in like a movie that people don't really talk or think about a little bit do you not agree like I do think it's I mean the artist is a more extreme example where that almost feels like a collective hallucination like not just that it won best picture, but it won, like, a lot

of Critics Awards. Yeah. You know, like, it was sort of this, like, universally like, yeah, that's whoa, yeah. I remember that film, like, the first responses coming out of Khan and people being like, I'm gonna sound crazy, but this thing might win Best Picture. And people were like, how is a

fucking French silent film with actors that Americans don't? And they were just like, I'm telling you this thing like hits people, it's down the middle, whatever. Magic cinema, baby.

But whatever critic that was, was like... There was a dog! There was the dog! From Frasier! Was it the same dog? It was. It was the second dog.

Oh, oh. The second Eddie. It wasn't... So it was a career Oscar. It was Augie or whatever? Yeah. It was a career Oscar then. Yes. or whatever yeah it was a career Oscar then yes

well that's right that was the thing it was it was that dog's true grit everyone had worked everyone had worked with him yeah no but that same critic

was like that having been said this film was gonna win zero critics awards they were like this movie is like too broad everyone's gonna turn

their nose up at it and then it won like every critic award best picture and now as you said I think feels like a collective hallucination because you're like...

The Artist is the biggest one where you're like, what happened? That wasn't a crossover hit. It remained pretty niche. And critics don't seem to think back on it fondly. Well, and also he,

the director, Harzen Avicius, has not gone on to make other masterpieces. No offense to all the garbage he's made out of these films. Yes.

Whereas Danny Boyle may be like... films. Yes. Whereas Danny Boyle may be like, I mean, Danny Boyle has continued to make sort of interesting and, you know, different movies. Yeah.

Like, you know, maybe has struggled a little bit under the shadow of Best Picture win, but like he's, you know, he's a well-known director. I think this film

has like very little standing in like critical, serious-minded film communities. I do think just because it was such a big hit, it's the kind of movie that you hear people's mom saying like, I love Slumdog Millionaire. It's so romantic.

People forget that because it was the runner-up for Best Picture at, no, sorry, it was third place for Best Picture at the New York Film Critic. Okay. And Danny Boyle was the runner-up for best director, I believe. Okay. And, like, you know, it won best director at the Los Angeles Critics.

Mm-hmm. And so on and so... You know, like, it was in the mix with critics. The sort of other big critic movies that year were Rachel Getting Married. Right. And WALL-E. Yes. Which, like, surprisingly won the LA award.

Right. It felt like critics were trying to push WALL-E over the threshold. And it was championed by, you know, by many critics. It was certainly, like, well-received at the time. I think that has totally been memory hauled. That is what, looking back, I was like, so what were the big critical movies of the year? And I was like, oh, this was one of them, right?

That I had sort of forgotten. What is your opinion? I think it's like an evergreen $5 bin at Walmart movie in a way that keeps it in the collective consciousness, maybe. No, for me, it was a little different just because it comes up in a very specifically Indian context for me, but again, only from time to time. And it's and it's like oh this was it felt at the time like a watershed moment for indian talent on a global stage and of course you know the last year or so with the

success of rrr i keep thinking like i haven't seen something like this from something indian or indian adjacent in the west since slumdog millionaire yes but outside of that i don't think about it as a movie as a piece of art as much as i do uh about everything around specific cultural phenomenon cultural curio yeah but like right not exactly an influential movie in a way although it's like but then again like it launched dev patel who who is a fairly enduring star. Yes. It launched Frida Pinto. Who had a couple years. Who is in movies. Right.

But then you look at both of them and it was like, look at these two huge Indian stars that come out of this film. And it's like, Dev Patel was a British actor. And Frida Pinto famously had not gotten any work in India. She was basically an unknown. Yeah. And then there's other smaller things like, you know, Anil Kapoor being in Ghost Protocol. Yeah. And, but then, and then there's other smaller things like, you know, Anil Kapoor being in Ghost Protocol.

Yeah. And in 24 as well. Yes, he was in 24, which was weird. And then, in my memory. And then he acquired the rights to remake 24 in India.

Right. And he played the Jack Bauer role. I mean, no offense to the guy, but a little long in the tooth. I guess Kiefer was kind of in his sort of late 40s when 24 came along. Early 40s? I don't know. I'll say that was

the other huge surprise for me re-watching this movie. I think that performance is incredible. Yes. I remember at the time thinking, like, this guy is so charismatic and transfixing, but I don't think I gave him enough credit for the actual like, dramatic craft of that performance.

He's such a scumbag. It's so good. Which is great. And he never drops it. No. You're never like, oh, you know what? He kind of came around at the end. You're like, no, fuck that guy.

But he's so good at turning it off and on. And the Regis thing, like at the peak of real American who wants to be a millionaire. For me, but yeah. Sure. Where it's like you're constantly playing the line of like, do you seem like you're about to deliver bad news or good news?

You want to throw people off. And like Anil Kapoor is doing that in his performance as a performance on the show. But he's also playing the subtext of he doesn't want this kid to win. And he's trying to psych this kid out. And it's fascinating to watch from the perspective of someone who grew up with Anil Kapoor's movies because he's like a quintessential nice guy hero. Wow. He's like a face.

Yeah, he played this character called Mr. India who was like one of our big superhero. That seems great. I love it. Yeah, and then seeing him play a villain in this and then play a villain in Ghost Protocol it was a bit strange but like, you know, good for him getting temporary Hollywood

recognition. Did you ever watch the show in India? Which is, obviously, it's not called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but I forget what it's exactly. Kaun Banega Karotpati. But there's nine versions of it in India. Wow.

But doesn't Amitabh Babjan present it? Or had he at some point presented it? Yes. I swear to God. Well, we are talking about it. We are. I think this is adding to the audience. It's good. Which is what I wanted to ask. So you mentioned Regis Philbin. Yes. Was he the host in the US?

He was the original host in the US. And he was, I would say, fairly crucial to its success in the US as Chris Heron was in the UK. You needed... It's so much host in the US. And he was, I would say, fairly crucial to its success in the US, as Chris Heron was in the UK. You need it. It's so much host, that show, compared to most game shows. Like, you really need someone who's going to hold your attention. And Regis kind of played it similarly to this.

I'm on your side, but, you know, what are you doing? And that's sort of shaking his head. Are you sure that's your final answer? B with this one? I mean, it could be A or C. No, I mean, the thing here was it was a huge show in the UK. They bring it over as a summer replacement series.

It's like, who's going to host it? I don't know. Who do we have already under contract? It was an ABC show and he worked at ABC. Throw it to old man Philbin. And then the show airs and becomes like humongous. Okay. And very quickly it became

Who Wants to Be a a millionaires on five nights a week. They famously so popular revived ABC, which was a, uh, like at the bottom of the ratings. Yeah. And so they were like,

well, you know what they want this every day. Every, every day. And they burned out the public's interest in it too quick. Like it was a summer show that then became a fall show. What year was this? This was 98, 99?

That sounds right. 99. Because the British show launches in 97, maybe? Yeah. Or 98. Yeah, it was... I can't look it up. But it got so overblown so quickly.

I think the first guy wins the show... The first person to win the million happens within two or three months. And that was, like, the fever pitch of the thing. And then they do it, start doing it like five nights a week, and then it very quickly becomes like, we need to do celebrity episodes. We need to do special event episodes to keep it fresh.

But Reed just went from being this sort of like, obviously incredibly famous, but a little bit like taken for granted as like perennial, he'll always be on TV, to being like the hottest man in broadcasting again. Like once again went to being like one of the most famous men in America

and everything was parodying who wants to be a millionaire. Yeah. So it had a huge moment, but like... It burned out fast. Yeah. By 2001,

it's daytime syndicated. It got moved to syndication. So it's never been like a big movie star who draws eyes to the American version. Not so much because then it was Meredith Vieira

who was another talk show. Cedric the Entertainer. Yeah. Like, but the bigger stars Michael Strand maybe? Maybe. Yeah. They start hosting it

deeper into its syndicated realm where they're like, we need someone bigger to boost the ratings. Okay. Yeah, because the Indian versions have always been hosted by enormous

names right like to the point that like these are people that you know non-south asians in the west have probably heard of you have yeah amitabh bachchan who hosted it originally who's you know referenced pretty heavily in the movie uh after him the the hindi version was hosted by sharukhan oh wow it was like one of the most he's one of the most famous people in the world. Yes. These are two of the most famous Indian actors of all time. Right?

I mean... It's like if Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt had hosted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Yeah. And I was going to say... Aren't they busy? I guess you can kind of knock a lot of them out. But the show was so popular that like...

It was worth it. Yeah. And interestingly, the Telugu version has been hosted by Chiranjeevi, who is the father of Ramcharan. Oh, yeah. And after him, N.T. Ramaraj Jr. So both of their dads... Oh, no, no. N.T. Ramaraj Jr.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, from RRR. Yeah, yeah. So it's a big deal. Yeah. And it's still a much-watched thing. Yeah, the non-Hindi ones are still... I'm not entirely sure if there's any Hindi version that's still on the air.

But at the time, especially when it first began in 2001 with Amitabh, it was enormous. It's obviously a very durable format. It's very easy to understand. Yes. And you can just revive at any time. You don't have to tweak it. It's just funny that when...

15 questions. When this movie came out, it almost felt like it was nostalgic for American audiences to watch a movie about who wants to be a millionaire. And then I think

they revived it again in primetime with Regis after the film. Just because there was such a bounce. Yeah. I understand that because... So, the music that plays

in, you know, the movie, the music that plays in you know the movie the indian version i believe that's from the american yes absolutely of course i've never heard it on those versions interesting i've never i don't think i've ever watched clips from any of those shows but for me this music conjures such a distinct feeling of time and place and intensity because it was so enormous in Indian households as well. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, the music was 50% of the success of that show. You guys

both know that Stephen Knight was one of the creators of Director of Lock. Yes. Guy loves his hot seats. Yes. Incredible. But it was just like the pitch on this show beyond just like the stakes of here's how big the prize is going to be. Here's how simple the format is.

It's just like some guy's going to fucking perform the hell out of these questions. Right. Like he's in a David Mamet play. And then you're just going to have the most dramatic set and music of all time. It's incredibly dramatic to the point that when it launched in Britain, there was that, you know, a lot of the reaction was like, I can take it. Like, this is insane because the classic British, you know,

game show energy is much more like you're having a cup of tea. Right. And it's like, you're going to win a dinner plate or something. It's not like you're going to win a million pounds. But that's like what Jeopardy is like. It's like sophisticated but muted. And other American game shows are like insane,

over-the-top bananas. And this one was like, no, no, this is a serious intellectual exercise. Your life depends on it. And it really launches like the weakest link and deal or no deal.

Yes. All of these shows that are so host-dependent and like vaguely antagonistic. Yes. And they have... Fiberglass sets and searching lights.

The host kind of being like, look, I'm your friend here, but also you're in trouble, buddy. You know, like the weird energy there. Yeah. Anyway. The banker told me your wife is thinking of leaving you. The whole banker thing in Deal or No.

Banker's one of my favorite characters in all of fictional media. All right. Okay. So, Slumdog Millionaire. Danny Boyle gets Simon Beaufoy's script. This is how this begins. And the only preface is, this movie's about who wants to be a millionaire

Danny Boyle is like I hate that preface I hate being I hate hearing that I don't want to make a movie about who wants to be a millionaire and is basically like I don't want to read it and this is what Danny Boyle said he's like they could have maybe told me like set

in India, you know Anything else It's a love story But, you know, he eventually decides Because Sam and Boyfroy wrote it He's like, well, you know, I've heard of him He wrote The Full Monty I guess I'll crack it open

And once he read a scene set In an outdoor toilet He was like, I'm in. I want to make this movie. The man likes his poop. Sananth, you read Q&A. I did. And you were telling us it is barely anything like this film.

Q&A is an Indian novel, correct? Like it is not a British novel or anything like that. No, it's written by Vikas Swaroop, who's an Indian author and diplomat, who had is had stints in south africa yeah china canada it looks like yeah yeah yeah and like i know the book was you know popular and won various prizes but man by the time it was done i i just i threw it across my couch like i i think it is such an awful book like it has a couple of ideas that i really like that i wish were explored more in the book but also explored more in the movie but just it is such a disjointed non-narrative with like three out of nowhere plot twists on the

last three pages that simon beau like, he made it a story. Like, it's not a story without the screenplay. Boyle obviously did not read the book. He read the script. Yeah. He's like, I maybe read the book later

and he was like, my movie is not particularly inspired by the book. It is a pretty ingenious structure for dramatic storytelling. That's why I really love the first half because I feel like the movie lets go of the structure in the second half. I want to go all lets go of the structure of the second half.

I want to go all the way with like, tell me how every question relates to his life. I want to stick to that. As someone who's read the book in which that happens, let me tell you, it's a huge improvement

that they don't do that. Really? Yeah. Because it keeps going. It just, it kills any sense of tension, any sense of momentum. But a part of that has to do with just the way the book is written yeah um first of all i can't tell if vikaswaroop is

a bad writer because because the thing is the entire thing is written in first person from uh the perspective of the main character okay and so i don't know if because i haven't read anything else by swan is it is it starting with the interrogation as well uh or is it mostly in the moment okay yeah yeah so the the broad structure of the game show in the interrogation is the same but it has almost nothing else in common gotcha um so it's it's all written in first person. And so I can't tell if he's writing purely 100% from the perspective of the character or he's just a bad writer. But also what's confusing is

it's all narrated in the present tense even when it switches in time. Right, right. That's irritating. And like if that was just between chapters, I would be fine with it. Sometimes mid-chapter, it kind of,

it feels like you're reading the thoughts of Dr. Manhattan. Yeah, yeah. He is existing in all times. Yeah. And it's, God, where do I even begin

with this book? It's also much darker and much more grim than anything in the movie. Interesting. Like, the prologue with the interrogation yeah he gets sexually assaulted by a cop jesus the first question he remembers because

of something to do with sexual assault oh geez the third one it's because someone gets molested and like that i think that's like the first four or five questions so you're saying this movie is far less grim and intense than okay okay and okay. And this movie is some grim stuff. And I will say, like, there's a narrative reason for all of this, which is fine. Like, you know, I'm not one to say what should or shouldn't be depicted in a book. Sure, sure. But it, no matter where this book ends up in time, if you can even tell, it just feels completely disconnected

from everything else. Yeah. Yeah. And also, there's no central love story. There's no, there's like one or two recurring characters. Salim isn't his brother. He's just like a friend who appears

in a couple of chapters. Yeah. All right. Well, whatever. That doesn't sound good. No. Boyle says, I like this quote from him. You read scripts, they're really good.

Technically, they're excellent. They do everything they need to do, blah, blah. But they never glitter. They never really vibrate for you. This one did. So he loves this script. Yeah. He loves how Dickensian it is.

And he is, like, you know, patronizingly or not, drawn to, like, you couldn't make a Dickensian movie about, like, life in modern Britain, like, you know, patronizingly or not, drawn to, like, you couldn't make a Dickensian movie about, like, life in modern Britain, maybe, because of, like, you know, but, like, in India, it makes more sense.

Now, I don't know how much Danny Boyle knows about what he's talking about, in a way, but, like, he's drawn to, like, depicting the sort of, like, you know, the wild swings between wealth and poverty, right?

Yeah. You know, that, like, being on a game show could represent things like that, right? You know, that like being on a game show could represent things like that, right? You know, like very, it is very Dickensian. Dickensian always, Dickens always has these, you know, people being suddenly elevated out of their circumstances and like what that means

and all that, like that is such an obsession for him. Yeah, I talked about it in the Millions episode too, but there's that bizarre, or I think it was on the Trance, whatever. I've talked about both of these episodes because we've been recording them in a weird order. But there's this special feature

on like the Trance Blu-ray that's Danny Boyle doing a career retrospective and like speed rounding all his movies. And he talks a lot about Slumdog through the framework of like, he felt intense lingering guilt over the damage that the beach

production did to that actual beach oh no both short term and long term uh and that it was like part of the challenge for him on this movie is can i make a film in a culture where I am not disrupting that culture itself? Right. There's still, obviously, you can debate the levels of cultural tourism in him making the film, but I think a lot of it was like, this film had a very small crew,

the way they worked with, like, children who were not professional actors. I mean, there's this very... During Anecdote, that they basically set up a college fund for all the young kids in the movie to make sure they were set for life off of this rather than giving them like you know all this sort of stuff

but I think that was a big part of it for him too is like can I go to a different place and not ruin the place by making the movie there almost as a self challenge it's interesting he's kind of self-aware about what he's doing here because he says like if you think about it that's not really a very good idea white guy going and making a film in a place he's never been you know uh like uh i'm not a big fan

of films that go and show white guys going around india that kind of film it's not my kind of film i think culturally that kind of film has lost its place we want people's stories from their own countries so i think it's not a good idea to make it but then i just at the time thought oh i love this place and i loved being there and i love the energy of the city it felt like new york in the 80s he said like it's just danny boyle is always doing this where in retrospect he's like i don't know how i feel about that movie a lot of flaws yeah i don't know, where in retrospect, he's like, I don't know how I feel about that movie. A lot of flaws. Yeah.

I don't know why I made it, but he's like, at the time, I was filled with energy and excitement. I think the movie, J.J. thinks the movie he's talking about is The Darjeeling Limited. This is in J.J.'s research. Oh, interesting. Which is the year before.

Yeah, no, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, the other big thing with this movie is 20 Days Later is obviously the first film he shoots on video, but it's a very, very primordial form of video, right? And the advancements in digital video

have been humongous in the six years between these two movies. Millions and Sunshine are both on film in between. And he and Dodd and Sunshine are both on film in between. And he and Dodd Mantle are basically getting, like, was this shot on RED camera? I think it was. But there's this anecdote I always think about with this film that's really interesting,

where they, like, this was at the point in time where the RED camera was being presented to all these filmmakers. It was a Silicon Imaging camera, actually. It wasn't a RED, yeah. All these companies that had tried to make these revolutionary high-def digital cameras and tried to lure filmmakers

like Soderbergh and Boyle in to use them. They show him this camera and they show him the image capabilities and everything. And then he went like, is there any reason it needs to be this shape? And they were like, what were you saying? What do you mean? And he's like, well,

like a camera is a certain size and a certain shape because it has to contain like the room for film canisters. And you've built this like a camera. But if you're basically telling me like it's a lens connected to a sensor and then like a battery, none of this needs to be in this like block, right?

And they were like, I guess technically you're right. And he and Dodd-Mantle basically unscrewed the camera and just figured out a way to put most of the guts of the camera in a backpack. So Dodd-Mantle was basically just holding a lens

connected to wires. And they had like amazing flexibility in terms of being able to literally just run around with this thing. And I thought that's like such a smart thing to go like, oh, we're holding on to the idea of the shape and weight of a camera

based on what historically has been a camera. If you're telling me we're shooting on video, then we should rethink all of that. What are the things we could never do with a film camera? And I feel like you feel that in just even his freedom of being able to like go into these spaces without traditional lighting setups, without a camera apparent,

you know, being seen by all the sort of citizens on the street. Like I think they were able to be a lot stealthier and how they shot this film. And if I'm not mistaken, this was also the, try to bring it back to the Oscars again, the first digital shot film.

First digitally shot film to win Best Cinematography. I imagine that's true, yes. Because it was still, you know, pretty new. And looking back, ooh, it is a very digital film. It so belongs to that era where people had just discovered digital color timing. It is, I think maybe outside of

the first Magic Mike, the yellowest movie I've ever seen it's very yellow orange it makes your teeth hurt sometimes I do kind of love how vibrant it is yes but it is yeah because right like I'm trying to think of what the next well I guess Avatar wins the next year

so right real quick speaking of the Oscars I did some a bit of research I think this is the first movie to win best picture without a significant white character. That has to be true, right? What even comes close? I don't know. Yeah. There's The Lost Emperor, but that has

It's not Sam Watterson, who is a season of killing. It does have a white character. Yes. It's Martin Sheen, right? Who is it? No, it's not John Hurt. God, I looked this up just a few times. Peter O'Toole. Now I have to remember,

because Sam Waterston is in The Killing Fields. Yes. What is Martin Sheen in? Martin Sheen is in one of those sort of like Tony 80s films set in a foreign country, but I can't remember which. Anyway.

Yes. But The Last Emperor is, of course, largely non-white. That is true. But yeah. No, Peter R. R. Tull is like the third Bill guy in it. There's no doubt. But look, semi-tellingly, it falls into a similar category with that film

and also with Parasite, which is rare Best Picture winners with zero acting nominations. Although that does happen. It does happen. Look, it happens with Return of the King. It's not like it's without exception but it does feel like you know what else happened with Gigi yes that's

one reason Gigi won nine went nine for nine because it didn't have to lose any acting which is so weird that it didn't I don't understand how you like that movie and don't nominate Leslie Carradine who I think is the most undeniable aspect of a film I don't like it's very strange. It's because she

didn't sing, is my guess. Her singing was dubbed, and I think it must have been some weird judgment about that. But her performance is great. Here's the other weird thing about Gigi, and then I'll shut up about it. I just did Gigi on Scott's podcast. Scott Ackman's podcast. David just saw Gigi for the first time. A film that is demented. It is a bizarre movie. Yes. Maurice Chevalier

obviously is the, you know, the old guy who sang, Kevin, 40 to the girls! Yeah. That's the song he sings in the movie. It is a bizarre movie Maurice Chevalier Obviously is the You know Saint Kevin 40 to the girls Yeah That's the song he sings He was nominated To a neighborhood watchdog list After that performance

He was given An honorary Oscar That year Okay So they essentially were like We're not nominating you for Gigi But here's an Oscar For your whole thing

Okay Your whole Maurice Chevalier Rich French guy thing Yes 30 years from now you'll be a candle You'll be Lumiere Anyway

I'm sorry I was just trying to find Oh it's Gandhi Gandhi obviously Best picture winner But that has more white characters Evil English villains I just think very often When you have these films

that have a largely international or exclusively international cast, none of the cast members end up breaking through to nominations. Dev Patel came close. And Dev Patel, there was the weirdness of whether he was lead or supporting. That was his fault.

He was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award. I am, to this day, not sure if he's a lead actor. I think he's not. He's not in a Screen Actors Guild Award I am to this day Not sure if he's a lead actor I think he's not He's not in a lot of the film The kids are so crucial to the first half Yeah but It's sort of Hopkins Silence of the Lambs Thing where it's like

The movie is so much from his perspective So I would err on this But also because he was not a well known actor They will often just sort of be like, well, put him in supporting. He did get the BAFTA nomination. Yes. They put him in Lean? I believe so.

Yeah. Let's find out. And I believe he got a SAG nomination. Did he not? SAG was supporting, though. Yeah. Yeah. It's also just wild that his one Oscar nomination he does get is like the same situation as this,

where it's like, well, multiple people played the part in different ages, so he's nominated and supporting for what is the lead character of the film. Wait, he wasn't nominated for lead in Lion? He was only supporting for Lion, which I think is capital bullshit. It's the same thing, though, because there was a kid.

And that's how they got away with it. It's just wild that it worked on that movie, and he couldn't break through on Sundown But it was partly like them being like Sorry we stumped you for a second It was a little bit of that He's very good in Lion and it did feel like a mea culpa A little bit

Remember Lion? I love Lion That feels like a movie that's been totally memory hold Again that director has not made another hit. No. What did he do? Didn't he do a Jesus movie with Joaquin Phoenix? Oh, yes.

Yes, he did the Joaquin Rooney Mara Jesus movie. Did that ever come out? Not really. Like a little bit. It snuck out? It was a shy one. It was a shy one? Yeah, it was a shy one.

All right. Boyle likes the script. He also keeps citing a non-fiction book called Maximum City, Bombay Lost and Found written by someone called Suketu Mehta. I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong. Which apparently he brought up so much in the press store that he was told to stop bringing it up

because they were afraid that the person who wrote that book would be like, am I owed some money? Are you adapting my book all of a sudden? Am I wrong in thinking that after Slumdog, he straight out optioned that book to maybe develop that into a film? I don't know.

Okay. But that sounds possible. I'm going to look up this thing. He also cites Titanic as a huge reference point. He loves the narrative structure of Titanic. And he says he's borrowing from it. Cutting back and forth between the timelines. You know, the person

reflecting, all that stuff. Even though, of course, his main character is like 18 years old, not 100. And, of course... Danny Boyle buys film rights to Maximum City, Bombay, lost and found June 2009. I wonder if he bought the rights just so he wouldn't get sued for taking so much

from the book retroactively. He talks about, and I don't know if you have any perspective on this, that apparently the game show is more difficult, he says, in India than it is in America or Britain. Like, he says, like, the questions are really hard, really fast on that show. Right. Because in this movie, they make the comment that, like, oh, professors and scientists don't get past 16,000. Right, because in this movie they make the comment that like, oh, professors and scientists don't get past 16,000. Right. And in America

the first like eight questions are always kind of like fluff. Yeah, I think it's in India the first few are generally easy to get you to that first tier. Yeah. But then after that they grow increasingly difficult and eventually a few people won the big jackpot but

yeah, I have no point of comparison because I've never watched the American version. Film was funded by Pathé and Warner Independent. As you said, Griff threw in $5 million. And then, obviously, later, Fox comes in and takes some of that. Because Warner's like, this isn't big enough to be a major studio release. And we no longer have a specialty division.

We'll have a fire sale. Does anyone want this movie? We see zero value in it. So Gail Stevens cast the film in Britain. But most of the film is Indian actors. Yes. Not British-born actors. cast the film in britain but most of the film is indian actors yes british porn actors so loveline tandon uh who had worked on monsoon wedding and vanity fair from your nair yeah

that's the connection apparently that she gets uh brought in uh and she said she's first assistant director of monsoon wedding as well impossible i was looking at her imdb last night yeah uh and she is this sort of like super integral member of the team and that's why she gets this co-director credit that was so possibly inadvertently controversial yeah sure because then people watch the movie i think and are like well wait a second this movie has two directors which is the weird thing about giving someone a co-director credit well same thing happened with the city of god city of god yes yes because co-director is probably not the word no to use because it sounds like it just sounds like the movie has two directors i was reading interviews with him i mean

i'm sure they're in the dossier as well but basically he was like we needed someone to function as an intermediary with the kids and because she had done the casting and had found the kids and then she's writing the dialogue and had found the kids. And then she's writing the dialogue. And then the dialogue has to be translated. So he was like, she was sort of there every day in a nebulous position and then at some point, I think in post-production, he goes to her and

said, what if we call you the co-director? But the title basically came about much later. I think somebody on the production said it was a title that came up over a gawk. Right, yes. Christian Coulson, the producer. Right. I want somebody on the production said it was a title that came up over a Coke. Right, yes. Christian Coulson, the producer. Right. It's just like, I want to give you some better credit for what you did. And then, so there were people

going to bat for her, saying that, you know, she should also be nominated alongside him. I believe she came out and said, like, this is a bit embarrassing. She was like, right, do not, I don't want to be considered that way. That is not not What is fascinating to me She has not a single film credit

After this film I know In any position Wow That is weird Isn't it? She's the one who convinced You know

Boyle that All the child acting Should be in Hindi Not in English A master stroke Right Yeah But then apparently

Boyle says like He called Warners and Pathé And was like So we think like Like kind of half the movie Is not going to be in English. A masterstroke. Right. Yeah. But then apparently Boyle says like he called Warners and Pathé and was like, so we think like kind of half the movie is not going to be in English. And the way what he said is the silence when I said that on the other end of the phone. You can tell they had thought he's gone insane. Like, like clearly like his impression is like they're like, oh God, you've gotten to the set. Yeah. And now you're going to produce something.

Because I guess in 2008, that was just a much more aggressive concept. Now I feel like it would be almost, like, assumed. Like, well, yeah, sure. Right. The film's sent to another country. Like, it'll have subtitled dialogue. We can handle that. The year after this is Inglourious Bastards, which I think quietly is kind of revolutionary on that front of being like,

every character is speaking the actual language they would speak realistically in that situation. Right. And you have a film that is in French and German and English

almost in equal parts and became a big hit. But I think until that point, it felt like box office poisoning people. And, well, the thing about Slumdog

not being entirely in Hindi is like, I don't, i don't think that in and of itself is a bad decision just because you know even if you look at the story it makes sense for them to be speaking english beyond a certain point you know when they're interacting with tourists and you know at the end on the game show um that's all fine i think the bigger problem is that it is written the the English is written from a very British and Western perspective. The way they're talking.

The way they're talking and the way the movie is cast. Because you have a lot more authenticity for the younger kids, but for the middle kids, you cast these, you know, anglophone kids who have gone to like posh British schools who don't sound like they'd be speaking the way a slum kid learning English would speak

sure you know like these are kids that I knew I come from a relatively privileged background I Tanay Chedda who plays

the middle Jamal, like I grew up doing theater with him. Oh, really? Ashutosh Lobo, he's a friend of a friend. Okay. And as soon as you start casting people from my social circle for slum kids, you've made a bit of a mistake

because we're not going to be able to, you know, at that age, especially bring that kind of authenticity. And that's not what was asked of them to begin with. Right. And I do think the middle kids are the least successful parts of the movie. And the movie sort of spends the least time with them. Yeah. And also

their faces are browned up, which is its own thing. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. They're definitely lighter in complexion than what's presented in the film. Okay. I think there was... Right. The middle kids were where they were...

They had the biggest problems. What age are the middle kids supposed to be? 13, which is what they were sort of anxious about. They were like, you know, there's sexual elements to this part of the storyline, especially with the female character. Like, what do we do there? How much do we sort of emphasize that? Yeah. Apparently

the... Sorry, what's his name? Tanay? Tanay Chetna. He recommended the guy they cast as Salim, so they must have known each other. Okay. Okay. Like, he said we went to school together. Like,

meet him. They had no time, so that's when they cast... Like, they cast those we went to school together. Like, meet him. They had no time. So that's when they cast. Like, they cast those kids at the last minute. The only thing I know about the casting of this movie is that Danny Boyle's... Dev Patel is cast off of Skins.

Well, Danny Boyle's daughter is a huge Skins fan. He gets this script. He's developing it. His daughter reads it. She's like, oh, you should cast Dev Patel from Skins. And he was like,

I'm not casting some guy you have a crush on from some T4 show. Right. And she talks about, or he talked about like how for like two or three months she kept on being like, have you seen Dev Patel yet? And he's like, no, I can't find the fucking lead of my movie. And you keep on recommending

Dev Patel. And then one day he actually watched Skins with her and was like, oh, this guy is incredible. I should have listened to my daughter. He's good on Skins. He's really good on Skins. Yes. It's one of those things where you're just like you rarely see teen performances that are that unselfconscious. He's kind of like just

the goofy friend on the show. He's very like, it's very different than this performance, which I think is another reason that he was resistant to casting him because this character is so much more internalized. But he's incredibly good. That guy was just like always good at acting.

The way Boyle puts it is that he had a very clear opinion on how things should be as well, which impressed him. Patel did. Yeah.

He was coming in being like, well, no, I think, you know, he wasn't just sort of like, I'm a teenager. Tell me what to do. He seems like a very serious-minded guy in a good

way. Right. Dev didn't want Jamal to turn into a smiler. He didn't want to earn people's love for him in an easy, cheesy way. Dev's got a cracking smile, Danny Boyle says. Could have been an easy option, but he wanted to play him simply with great dignity.

And Boyle was just like, that's when I was just like, this is a star. This kid, like, understands things more than I do. Like, you know, I'll do whatever he asks. But he is pretty much the only British actor in the film playing an Indian character, right?

Like, he's the only British-born actor, I think. That's right. Yeah. I think the incredible calculation on his part in his performance is that he plays the entire thing being incredibly uncomfortable on camera.

He seems uncomfortable. Right. And it feels like it sells the idea that this broadcast becomes like a national phenomenon that everyone's tuned into. Because it does feel like that kind of weird thing that happens once in a while on television where you're like, what's going on here? This is lightning in a bottle.

He never warms up, you know? Riz Ahmed auditioned to play Salim. Oh, I didn't know that. Well, that would be a much better movie. Apparently gave a great audition, but, I don't know, whatever, didn't, you know. Interesting. He got in his face

apparently, like, ripped open his shirt, you know, went real. Okay. Brita Pinto indian model had never appeared in a film before uh and boyle just cast her like you know right away he talks about that like that she's one of the few people he just sort of cast like the minute she walked into the room yeah she's very beautiful can she act i have no idea i've never i've seen her in a couple of other things and i'm not really sure. It became one of those... I felt a little bad for her.

Yeah. Because she almost became a bit of a butt of jokes of sort of like, you know... I mean, there was that movie that got delayed. Fuck, what was it? Night of Cups. Is that the one? It might have been Night of Cups,

where you're like, that movie was shot so long ago, Frida Pinto is in it. That was Lex G's joke. That was pretty damning. And like... Yes. I guess I've seen...

I mean, remember she was in the Woody Allen movie? Yep. That was the first thing she did after... Right. She has that, Planet of the Apes Immortals, and then her sort of two big... The Winterbottom,

Trisha, which is the Tess adaptation, right? Sure. Yeah. And then she does the Julian Schnabel Miral movie. Which is the Tess adaptation, right? Sure. Yeah. And then she does the Julian Schnabel Miral movie. Yes. That was another one that kind of got delayed.

Right. But those were like two like serious-minded directors who cast her as the leads of their films. And it was like, let's really test her dramatic chops. And both of them felt kind of inconclusive, I would say. I remember she's in

the Andy Serkis Mowgli movie. Yes. Is she? One of the human... Yes, don't remember much about that. Me neither. And then there's the, when she popped up in Ron Howard's Hillbillyology. She's in that. I was... As the, you know, because J.D. Vance married

an Indian woman. Uh-huh. As J.D. Vance's wife. J.D. Vance, now senator woman Uh-huh As J.D. Vance's wife J.D. Vance, now senator from Ohio Good Have you heard about that guy? Great I hear his opinions keep getting better and better That's what I heard

He's one of these guys who just sort of keeps getting wiser and more thoughtful I remember her popping up and being like Oh shit, Frida Pinto And like, I don't think she's bad in that movie at all. Like, it was not one of those things where you're like gritting your teeth. But she's playing a supportive partner. Sure.

She doesn't have much to do. What's interesting coming out of Slumdog Millionaire is that, yeah, it led to an increased presence of Indian talent in the West. But in India, unless the actors in Slumdog were already popular, it did practically nothing for them. Like, no one really had

a career in India after that. I still couldn't get hired for Indian films. It's odd. I mean, it is like there was four or five years there where even if people weren't sure if she was a good actor, it did feel like she was everywhere. And it was if she was a good actor, it did feel like she was everywhere. And it was like she was the spokesperson for different brands.

She was constantly in press. She was everywhere. As we know, Dave Patel was everywhere. The two of them were dating for six years, which everyone loved. Anil Kapoor started showing up and stuff. And I think the thing that makes me so mad is that, yes, Irrfan Khan started getting roles in Hollywood movies. But like the worst,

most horribly wasted. Right. Because he's one of, was, he passed away a couple of years ago. Which is incredibly sad. One of the greatest screen actors maybe ever. And Hollywood would give him like Guy in Helicopter in Jurassic World. I mean, he

plays basically the same part in Jurassic World and Amazing Spider-Man. Yeah. He's like rich guy who's maybe evil. the same part in Jurassic World and Amazing Spider-Man. He's the businessman. And in Amazing Spider-Man, he dies off-camera in a limo, and in Jurassic World, it's in a helicopter. It's like the same non-arc. The best

Hollywood role he ever got was Life of Pi, and that is not even a plum role. It's just that he's so captivating in even his limited scenes there. And you were just like, my God, this guy is so obviously, I mean,

that's how it always feels in shit like the last samurai or whatever, where you're like, Hey, why don't we tap some of these guys from, they've got a whole movie industry over there. Let's bring a couple of them in. You know, this,

this guy has like six lines, but we'll get a big star. Cause this is a Tom Cruise movie. Right. And you're just like, this guy's blowing me off. Cause're like well yeah because he's a fucking superstar like it's just not you don't know who he is like and i mean we're playing cons obviously like also just right he's like one of the great actors of his generation right not just star

and could kind of just do anything yeah yeah not just like you know uh charming leading man thing like he was a chameleon not chameleon but like he could do anything he could do a lot and like very few actors um you know are able to touch you in such a deep way that's such amazing like i'm exactly that's what my mom always said about him and like i'm getting emotional just thinking about him like i haven't been able to watch any of his movies since he passed it it would probably be a bit too much it was one of those things too where he was surprisingly young obviously you knew like oh he shouldn't but he was only like 53 like yeah i think i would have assumed oh he must be in his 60s or something he's been around a long time yeah and it happened like weeks apart from chadwick boseman yes right. It was 2020. Bad time.

Oof. Well, nothing else was going on. Oh, you're right. No, no, no. Thank you for putting that in perspective. Right. He wanted Shah Rukh Khan. Is that how it is?

Yeah. That was Boyle's first. He wanted the guy who actually presented the game show. And he was like, I'm busy. He was nice about it, but he was like, I'm busy. I'm not hosting your fake who wants to be a millionaire. Anil Kapoor's son, apparently, loves train spotting and was more interested

in Western films or whatever. So maybe that was part of the push that helped get him. But yeah, you know, Irfan Khan Boyles basically just says like, it's not a big part. He didn't really want to do it he'd done that part in a mighty heart remember that oh yeah yeah sort of a similar like police inspector role

and boyle basically just like begged him and like said like i just have to have you in this movie you're the best and he thinks he kind of saves the movie i mean the fact that the movie basically opens with him like he really does an incredible job of just setting the stakes of the thing. You know? You need, like, you need that intimidation provided by a real masterclass actor rather than just some guy who's scary and tough. You also need him to be at the end like, no, you're not telling me.

You're not lying. And you're like, yeah, he knows. I just get that he knows that now and he's also part of my favorite like small little moment in the movie that is both funny and it tells you so much about the character where i think dave patel makes fun of uh the other cop in the room i don't remember exactly what he says but so that was a hefty fella yeah yeah comic character so they uh start a fight i think i think uh dave patel's character jamal he attacks him and like i think maybe other cops get

involved but like irfan can't barely react because he's like all right this is not my problem and he's like hey you know like like as if to say like come on just just cool it yeah he barely moves and it's so funny because that's everyone up exactly what would happen in real life where this guy's like, all right, these people are going to like fight. This is my desk. This is my space. I don't need to do anything. I saw this in theaters, even when I had cooled on it the second time. But it really stuck out to me here. I feel like this film is like, has a slider on Dev Patel's, specifically the character at that age, his intelligence. And how intelligent they want him to be or not to add the tension to the scene.

And I feel like there's obviously a difference between the whole premise of this film, which is like, here's an uneducated person, right? The basic general knowledge that would win you a trivia competition, this guy would not have gotten from a school. So it is defying logic that he is succeeding so wildly. But I also just think in some of his answers, in like the interrogation scenes,

the bit almost seems to be, oh, he's like entirely glib. He is almost unaware. When the characters present it as being pretty savvy in all of the flashbacks. There has to be this weird thing of like, he's like, no, you don't understand. I only know the answers to questions

that completely relate to my life. Which I get, and I get him being like, I don't understand i only know the answers to questions that completely relate to my life which i get and i get him being like i don't but sometimes it makes him seem almost alien like you know it's a bit odd right yeah right answer simple questions right because it's right the the gamut of this film is he knows all these answers because he happens to have experienced the exact right series of things to plant these in his head but then the movie wants to have it the other way by saying like and he knows nothing else other than these 16 answers he cannot answer his name you know i i don't remember if this was from the book but the fact that he doesn't know that gandhi is on india money but but but he knows who gandhi is right and he's on he's on not just the thousand rupee notes,

he's on all of India's money. That's the thing. I just, I kind of call bullshit on that. Like, if you pointed a gun at me, and was like, who's on X Indian money? That's your first guess. I'd probably guess Gandhi somewhat ignorantly. Right.

Just being like, he might be. Fair enough. Right, right. And it's like, I understand I'm saying like, well, I had such a clear burned-in memory with an American $100 bill that I'll never forget that. But like anything that wasn't an impactful moment in his life, he is completely forgotten. Like this character almost feels like he's like Sammy from Memento, where it's like he's got the tattoos of 16 things he's experienced.

I will say I do like that when the cricket question comes up. So while I was watching, I was like, oh, is he going to remember this because the game was on in the background? I'm glad he didn't. I'm glad that the scene that takes place with Latika in the kitchen and there is a game in the background, that's just something he tunes out. So I'm glad there was one

answer along the way. That's the one where he basically guesses it, right? He does the 50-50 and guesses. And the Three Musketeers payoff is good. And the three musketeers payoff is good. Yeah, the three musketeers payoff is good. You front load that. You just feel like, of course, that's going to be the question. Then they flip which one he has to answer. Right.

Yeah. He gets bonked on the head. He gets bonked on the head with a book. That's going to leave a lasting impression. But also remove information. Yes, that's the problem. You'll only remember two musketeers I couldn't

If you were like, name the three musketeers Aramis, Porthos Oliver Platt, Chris O'Donnell I know it because of this movie I think it's chocolate, nougat Okay, Ben Caramel It's a good chocolate bar

I'm just not sure I could name them all but if you gave me those four names you know like one of the you can pluck out the not him I do and I'm like that's the fourth guy I do like the movie captures that in the early questions where there would always be that cheeky thing where for like the first three or four two of the answers

are comically bad yes initially that's what they do yeah and it's it's that's why the show was well designed because it got the um contestant to loosen up yes because the show is so intense yeah but they could be like all right all right so you know you know the united states of what you know like whatever. They shot on location. He used Indian crews, which I think is partly, like you say,

informed by the beach. Yeah. He was like, I don't want to bring my own crew. Yeah. Like, so they... And obviously, like, India has such a robust film industry. Like, it's not that hard. But apparently, it was unusual for them to shoot in the slums,

which they did. Like, that was frowned upon by the... They were like, you don't want to go in there. And he was like, no, I do. Come on. It's got to be authentic or did, like, that was frowned upon by the, they were like, you don't want to go in there. And he was like, no, I do. Come on. It's got to be authentic or whatever. Like, that was the thing that was different, I guess, about his approach. Yes. I don't know.

In Bollywood, like, are they mostly shooting on stages? Like, is location shooting less common? That can't be true. No, there's plenty of... I've seen plenty of Bollywood movies that are, like, gorgeous. Yeah, there's plenty of location shooting less common that can't be true because i've seen plenty of bollywood movies they're like gorgeous yeah there's plenty of location shooting that does happen i mean there's you know stage work too of course yeah but um no there's location shooting to the point that the norm in uh bollywood for dialogue was adr every movie would

be entirely right because you couldn't capture all that sound out in the real world, even though you'd be shooting in the real world. Am I incredibly wrong in thinking I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. That film shoots are much longer on average in

India as well. That it's a more sort of, I don't know if relaxed is the right word, but there's just like the sort of almost Kubrick approach to like, you take the time you need to get it right rather than crunching yourself into an arbitrary schedule. Right. Yeah. Because for the most part,

um, you, you don't have to hit a release date that's decided before the movie. Right. Right. That's like three years in advance. This must come out Christmas. Blah. Yeah. Right. It's like three years in advance. This must come out Christmas. Yeah, right.

I just like I imagine him coming to Mumbai with a crew that's a lot more run and gone on a slightly more strapped budget must have been also very odd. Probably. Shot at the Taj Mahal without receiving permission.

Uh-huh. Nice. And they had, because they didn't want to show the indian government that the scene was about kids running scams sure at the taj mahal i guess because they were afraid the indian government would be like well we don't want people to think that's what goes on here probably would have yeah right uh so instead they just kind of rushed in and sort of messed around and then they were almost caught and pretended to be like a documentary crew.

They were very afraid, essentially, that the footage would be impounded and the movie would be doomed. Like that was their gamble there. The torture sequence, however, gained police approval with one small note. The torture of him, the superstructure. You know, linking him up to cables and electrifying him and all that. And the note was just no one above the rank of inspector could be involved in the torture. Okay.

They were like, you know, that's fine. But just it has to be like whatever. More low level guys. It's the right height as far as, like, where you're hanging them from the ceiling. That all looks good. Yeah, they, like, apparently showed them around, and they were like, here's, like, a police cell,

and here's an interrogation room. How many years? No, that's good. Looking great. You guys really got the details right. As much as there are things that are inauthentic in the movie, that was an image that was very familiar from, like, you know, Indian movies as well.

Yeah. What strikes you as the most inauthentic stuff in the film? There's a lot of stuff, that was an image that was very familiar from like you know Indian movies as well yeah yeah what is what strikes you as the most inauthentic stuff in the film there's a lot of stuff and you know individually nothing is too bad apart from you know the spoken dialogue right but just starting with like the title Slumdog Millionaire

the million is not how a number would numbers would be counted in India what is the title of the game show translate to in english who wants to be who will be a so so the way it works is so you know you have you know 10 100 a thousand 10 000 yeah over here you have a hundred thousand but in india you have one lakh so that's one comma two zeros and then three zeros sure then you have 10 lakhs and then you have one crore which is i think it's 10 million but it's written

as one comma two zeros you're correct that it's 10 million two zeros and then yeah right so which is why uh 10 or 20 it's 20 million in the movie yeah it's two crore yeah so it would be two crore uh so that but you know that's the thing where like fine it's two crore. Yeah, so it would be two crore. So that, but you know, that's a thing where like, fine, it's for a Western audience to translate it. Sure. And then there's these like

small little things like, you know, the kind of handcuffs that they use, the ones that like snap on, which are used in America, you'll see in every Hollywood movie. A classic handcuff. Yeah, those aren't the kind of

handcuffs that are used in India, but that's like for the understanding of a Western audience. Sure. Interesting. Because in India at the time, it was the derby handcuffs that are used in India, but that's like for the understanding of a Western audience. Sure. Interesting. Because in India at the time, it was the derby handcuffs where you would have to like screw something in. Oh, really?

Oh, that's like the old-fashioned handcuffs. Exactly. Wow. They were trying to get Jack the Ripper in those, but he's staying out of their grasp. It takes you too long to screw it in. Yeah. Look, the design of the, you know, modern handcuff is undeniable.

Could you imagine if Jack the Ripper had existed in the time of the modern handcuff is undeniable. Could you imagine if Jack the Ripper had existed in the time of True Crime Podcast? They would have nailed that guy so hard. All the listeners would have saw it. When I was a kid, this is hilarious to think about now or whatever, sort of frightening to think about now. When I was like five, I dressed up as a policeman for Halloween. A copper. And I was given

a pair of metal handcuffs. And guess what happened five seconds into my kindergarten Halloween party? Handcuffed your friend? Handcuffed my friend. Where's the key? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. And then

a huge... Metal handcuffs! Yeah. Not like now. You get like the plastic ones that are easier to break yeah so now do you feel like

that was a bad choice on David's mother's part it was do you feel like I'm just interested the first time I got to pick my costume I was Spider-Man

hey good call which I think might have been next year you saying that you feel like you recognize

some of those changes being made as things to make sure the film is understandable to a Western audience, especially since it moves so quickly. Do you feel like most of the inaccuracies...

Obviously, you have to project intent onto this. Do more of them read to you as that kind of thing rather than a complete negligence as to... I would say so. Again, intent can be hard to discern but ultimately this was i would say it's not really made for an indian audience no it was you know good for them that it did relatively well in india it did okay it came

out in january yeah um of 2009 uh it was like huge premiere and everything but um it's i would say it's sometimes difficult to watch because you know i've written down actually a couple of lines of dialogue that are just like very very british that you know we wouldn't say like oh your accomplice nip out for a piss or like the cricket is on well we would just say the cricket is like cricket we're gonna watch cricket or the match is on the cricket is a very brit, we would just say, the cricket is on. Like, cricket, we're going to watch cricket or the match is on. The cricket is a very British thing. But, like, all those individually,

like, are forgivable. But I think what affects me when I'm watching it is, like, you, if you sort of hermetically seal yourself and just watch it for what it is

without any broader context, it's perfectly enjoyable. But, also as an Indian viewer, based on, you know, what I've seen throughout cinema with, you know, American and British productions set in India or with Indian characters, and also things that I've experienced in my own life, you can't really separate watching this movie from, I guess guess the experience of the movie watching you or what you might think of how other people might feel watching the movie westerners how are they gonna perceive this how is

this gonna you know further you know make their opinions of india maybe more negative right i i think that's so much of the trickiness of this movie's legacy now is like because it was so wildly successful and beloved you have 15 years of a lot's legacy now is like because it was so wildly successful and beloved, you have 15 years of a lot of people who are like, I understand what India's like. I saw Slumdog Millionaire. And they just take everything in the film as gospel, as like for a film that, you know,

is presenting itself as being like gritty, you know? They're like, well, I'm not seeing some like fantastical Hollywood version of this. This was like a serious independent film that won best picture. And it's very much a fairly fantastical view of. I don't know about that really. I think it is like the parts of Mumbai that it depicts.

I don't think there's anything horribly unrealistic or made up about it because. Yeah. horribly unrealistic or made up about it because yeah, one of the reasons Mumbai lends itself to Dickensian stories is because you have... Some of the richest people in the country live there. Poverty and wealth living side by side but

completely walled off from each other. Some of the biggest slums in the world alongside some of the most opulent high-rises and you know there are red light districts or other things and like nothing that i was watching like from the perspective of the space the environment that never really bothered me i think it's more that the movie doesn't seem interested in anyone's relationship to the city or the space around them

other than this is just a plot device sure and and i think that's where that's one thing the book does better again i think it's an awful book but um it does have much more of a sense of what these people's identity is as it relates to the city. Sure. Like, you know, in the movie, you know, the riots, I think they're meant to be the riots of 93, that they just sort of like happen in the background and whatever. And like the book,

I don't think really covers, you know, specific ground on that. But it does do one very interesting thing. The main character's name is not Jamal it's ram muhammad thomas he has a hindu first name a muslim middle name and a christian last name and how he identifies how he refers to himself depends on who he's talking to depends on which part of the city he's in and it's not like a major overarching part of the book but it it does goes to show it does go to show that there's more of an understanding of the religious dynamics at play the social dynamics at play and fine for

whatever reason you know they chose to simplify it and just have him be a muslim character although that's not discussed much in the film exactly exactly you need to pick up on right like i'm aware of what the bombay riots were like but like the movie is not really giving you much context exactly other than other than the fact that their names are yeah salim and jamal right and with the last name malik which are muslim names it doesn't really come up other than um you know that they're attacked by hindu mob which is why they see a kid dressed as ram right um which is such a strange phantasmagorical image like yes it is incredibly effective when you like just because of what's going on and i almost like that the movie doesn't really explain it

yeah like because it's like they just opened the door and saw this like during all of this yeah like that's not something that would happen that's not a complaint right i don't know why chaotic there would be a kid dressed as ram in the middle of this riot right there's usually not a lot of like cosplay involved in political riots i feel like yeah um although the mother tell that to the q anon shaman the mother yes the mother dying and then the way he kind of blends that image With like the fire over her face As the flashback Sort of like is seen again and again In the movie is also kind of indelible

Sad Yeah So Dickensian I think that's why I think some western audiences Were also like is this movie kind of full of shit Like you're telling me like Little orphan boys are getting kidnapped And trained and like

you know you know what i mean like they maybe struggled to like dig into the reality of it interestingly that part is the only thing they actually brought over from the book other than the structure sure sure yeah yeah the thing about the kids getting blinded and all that i mean incredibly rough yeah yeah it is the danny boyle thing yeah there are never like ed the edges don't get sanded off of his movies even when they are bouncier and happier they also have this kind of like very raw you know this is like an r-rated movie this is not no it's it's the thing that makes it feel so unlikely that it's like a box of a sensation yes yeah yes Yes Is that it really dips into the darkness Have you ever gotten chili'd in the pants?

No The chili willy I keep trying to decipher What they're actually saying Because I love the subtitle But they're all yelling so much That I can't Like I've slowed it down and tried to understand

But I have no idea what they're saying It is a charming moment, though. The little kids are just so cute. The moment when he dances for her is so sweet. That kid is so magnetic. He is. He's all grown up now, I imagine. This movie is 15 years old.

Also, we did bring up recently the whole college fun thing, which reminds me azruddin ismail who plays the youngest salim yes um ended up moving back to a slum a few years ago things just did not end up panning out for him one of the things with the fund was like it would be paid out to them at the age of 18 right as long as they continued their education yes but for like a slum kid that's a very difficult thing to do sure to you know continue studying when you have to like provide for a family yeah and like him and uh the girl the one who played the youngest latika they were given like apartments sure to live in but then the upkeep of those apartments is so expensive that they

had to sell them. Or at least he did. The one kid. That's rough. Yeah. No, I mean it's like you can make these sort of gestures, but they don't often pay off unless you are actually remaining engaged

for a decade plus. You know? There was also just this sort of weird thing of like, at the Oscars, all the kids were there. And they're all on stage at the end of the night. And you're like, okay. It felt a little weird. They were sort of being toted around.

Because you're just like, who are these kids? Yeah. I think, you know, it's often the the thing gets talked about with child actors in general but like you take a very young child and you sort of whip them up into the whole like award season fervor and you're throwing them into like a ton of cocktail parties and making them talk to like adult strangers every day for months on end and then at some point you tell them like well now back to your normal life and it's like i think that's very disorienting if you're a small child and if you don't send them back to your normal life and you're like and now you just act

in more movies that's also disruptive yeah there was this one um famous incident where uh again the youngest salim um like he was too tired to give an interview to a journalist. I think this happened in India. And his father slapped him or something like that. Yeah, it's tough. I don't know. I've had kid actors. It's a tough

conversation no matter what or where. You're always kind of like, should this be allowed? Yeah. In any circumstance. It does feel like it's just been taken as a given for a very long time and i've only recently in last year or two heard more people sort of saying like is this ethical in any level yeah and like i have mixed feelings of it as a like a child actor myself yeah like it's something you know you know artistic training and blah blah blah but then there's also the argument that like, at the end of the day, this is child labor. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And you know, if someone says child actors should be banned entirely, like my knee jerk reaction is like, no, what the hell

are you talking about? But then you think about it for a second in the context of what you're demanding of these kids. Yeah. And it's like, maybe that's not the worst idea. No, it's just, it's such a psychologically complicated thing. I think acting as an adult does weird shit to your brain, let alone if your brain is still very much forming, and then you throw all the weird I don't know, the social elements on

top of it. Slumdog Millionaire. Is there anything else specific in the movie that you want to talk about? He doesn't really, he talks about this in the movie that you want to talk about he doesn't really he talks about this in the notes like that he doesn't really distinguish between the periods and any

the time periods and sure he didn't want to like throw a filter on or have like a whooshing sound or whatever like do anything kind of you know like now we're going to you know five years ago he's like I wanted to be fluid. I wanted the memories

to kind of just be as memories really are. Yeah. Which, like, it is like that. He showed the movie to MIA

very early because, of course, he uses her song in the film. It is so funny. And she wrote another song for the film

that she was Oscar nominated for with A.R. Rahman, right? Osaya. She was nominated for Jai Ho and Jai Ho 1. I think Osaya is the better song. You don't like Jai Ho? I'm okay, but I think it's fine. It's a rousing anthem.

Yeah, you know, it's fun. I don't know. Well, it's not A.R. Rahman's best work Yes I think it's so fascinating that Paper Planes comes out In 06 or 07 Maybe earlier than that

Let's see yeah 06 maybe 06 No 08 Really? Yeah, February 2008. Okay. So that year. It just, like, it obviously, the song comes out, it makes whatever impact. And then, like, five or six months later, it's in the Pineapple Express trailer.

It explodes, right? It's, like, one of those few trailers that, like, made a song. But it had already been in circulation for a bit. Did they know that? The trailer, like, explodes it. It didn't know that. The trailer like explodes it. It is not in that movie. Oh, okay. But like that trailer makes it like the number one song in America.

And then this is the movie it's actually in. It is actually in it. Yeah. But I think people, a lot of people still think of it as the Pineapple Express song. Is it not in it at all? It's not in it at all. She basically watched the movie and said,

you need a scene where you explain how he got onto the show. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. And Bo was like, Oh, we shot that scene. I'll put it back in. Yeah. It was a good note from her.

Good call. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But she was obsessed with E.R. Harkman. And that's why she wanted to work on the movie. Gotcha. She was basically like,

I idolize him. Great, great choice to get Raymond to do the music because he's one of the greatest composers in the world. And I'm glad that the West was sort of exposed to him through this movie, even though if you made a list of his best compositions, I don't think anything from Slumdog would be in like the top 100.

Sure. Even though I like the music. Sure. No, but right. You're saying like for him, it's like, yeah, you know you know he helped out he did a little stuff for you but also so wild is this for indian viewers to see rahman and other uh indian names and faces on stage at the oscars because that's not something that happens very often and then seeing rahman and the lyricist gulzar who's a legend and he's like 90 something at this point

you know winning an Oscar for best song it was it was you know huge that these big names were getting recognized by the west but it's also huge that lesser known people were getting recognized too like how many sound mixers can you name off the top of your head i can name one and his name is wrestle poketty because he won an oscar for this and then he just became like a huge celebrity in india overnight pretty much see that's so that's cool it's so interesting because i feel like it's like india has an you know incredibly busy film industry that is gets lots and lots of attention within the country it's not a niche thing and this movie you said you said, you know, this movie did do well in India, but it wasn't like the biggest film of the year.

No. But I do feel like there is that thing with the Oscars where that does give you some sort of weird celebrity in your home country if you win an Oscar for some reason. A lot of it is also Western validation. Right. There's a sort of two-edged thing to it. But like that they'll, especially if you're,'re you know if you win best foreign film maybe for uh you know a smaller

country you know not like france or whatever the japan the big one like that that you're suddenly like elevated to like this like sort of you know massive artistic start that's so interesting that it would be like yeah sound mixer or sound editor it's also just interesting to me that like as films more and more slip away from being like the center of american culture right what used to be seen as sort of like the apex of the popular arts you know being a movie star and things getting adapted into a movie that was like the biggest that's the top of the pyramid. And like, it's definitely sliding here.

And then also, I think even just in terms of industries, uh, overseas, uh, you know, like the, the domestic film industry has become less and less important, uh,

as films become less and less important in America, but also like other countries are starting to outgross us. Their films are actually crossing over here more and more. During the Parasite season, there was that Bong Joon-ho quote where they were asking him how much he cared about Oscars, and he was like, it's a local show.

It would be nice, but like, I don't care that much about winning the American Film Awards. Kevin O'Connell, but I couldn't remember his name. Sound Mixer? Because he was the guy who got nominated for 21 Oscars Before he won once He would get nominated every year and never win And it was one of those things where they're never going to bring that up on the show

Because he's a sound mixer Then he finally won for Hacksaw Ridge And I remember when he won I was like He finally got an Oscar Skip leaves a mixer or an editor He's an editor Yeah that's what I thought I was going to throw him out and I thought I'd seem stupid

So stupid of you The only dumb thing I've said this episode The only Oscar nomination This movie did not win was best sound editing It won sound mixing Because it missed on two Oscars But it was double nominated in song Did it lose sound editing to Dark Knight?

It lost sound editing to Dark Knight? It lost sound editing to the Dark Knight. Yeah. You know what I'm saying, though? It is interesting that, like, even with, like, Bong putting that out from the get-go, you did feel when that movie won all those awards that it was like, oh, shit, this is

huge. This is huge for South Korea. It was the last good thing that happened in the world everything was downhill from it was so nice david and i were texting throughout the whole thing and i'm like i'm not giving myself credit here but i was like i think it's gonna win i think it's gonna like sweep and david was like i don't know and if if it does it's gonna win one of but it's not gonna win everything and we were just texting throughout the night of like oh shit he's winning all of it and it just suddenly felt you were like maybe good shit can happen yeah and that was a little

sense of optimism that was not only the last time i watched the oscars i woke up at 5 a.m because i was in india i woke up early in the morning to watch the oscars and um the times when it's been you know i mean since then i've been in the u i think um and i just i haven't bothered just because i don't think anything can top parasite winning best picture well i'm good i know a certain movie star and a certain right hand that would disagree with you all right oh good you said good things yeah i missed that part of this so yeah the film got good reviews it won the toronto people's choice Award and was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Can I spell it?

Did it not win Golden Globe Best Picture? Is that what you were saying? Did it not win the Golden Globe? I didn't say that. No, okay. The director was James Cameron. No, that's the following. No, it won all four Golden Globes it was nominated for.

Picture, director, screenplay, and score. The big... It was partly that the big competition that year was Benjamin Button. Which was a movie that did well and got a bunch of Oscar nominations but was immediately regarded as a disappointment. Because the hype was so massive.

People were like, oh, is he about to make his Forrest Gump? Is this going to fucking run the table? And then it was... It lost to the Indian Forrest Gump. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, they're similar films in a lot of ways in sort of their spirit. Wasn't there recently a direct Indian remake of Forrest Gump starring Amir Khan?

It was pretty good. Is it good? Yeah. Should I watch it? I love him. How does it compare to American Forrest Gump? It's not as polished. Sure. How does it compare to American Forrest Gump? It's not as polished. And the VFX are so strange because when Amir Khan's younger, they de-age him and they slim him down a bit.

But the entire background warps around him as well. But it's pretty good. It's like blurring. It's pretty good. Also, wait, I forgot to mention this. Q&A is actually a lot more like the indian forest gump uh because that makes sense he's he goes to like war against right yeah that's interesting okay right whereas this doesn't really do that no yeah apart from the

bombay riots i don't think there's like a lot of like real world moments that he's interacting with, right? Very few. No, I can't seem to recall anything. Like there's just some random cricket match on that's like… It's not like the most famous cricket match of the year or whatever. It's not like he suddenly has to sub in and play the match. Do you care about cricket? Yeah, I do.

Do you watch a lot of cricket here? Like is it easy to watch here? It's not easy to watch But also I tune in Like when I'm here I tune in only during the World Cup Once every four years It's the year after the FIFA World Cup

So it's this coming year I know I know Oh sorry No no I wasn't saying I just I know yeah But I don't know I've gotten completely disconnected from cricket Since I came back here

From where? England Oh you don't know that I grew up in England? No. He actually doesn't know. I didn't know that. This is a bit they used to do that they pretend they didn't know. For years and years, he's very defensive because we would always pretend we were hearing this for the first time. And now when someone actually has that reaction,

David tends to... Oh, that's why you were doing the I know, I know thing. Okay. I apologize. No, it's fine. I grew up in England and I loved cricket as a sport to watch. One of the best sports to watch. Depends on the format, though. Yes.

I think I would agree with you on that. I don't know what you think the best format is, but... I'm torn. I'm so torn between ODI and 2020. Because I'm a 2020 guy because that was kind of what was hot when I was living in England.

I'll say this much. Generally, 2020, World Cup, ODI. Uh-huh. Yeah. But I also,

yeah, I love a leisurely, you're checking in with it, you're eating lunch. It's on. A test match. I love test matches or at least I used to.

I don't know. But I don't, there's no way to keep in touch with it anymore. Yeah, even, I think like, Sling TV might have a package or something like that but i would have to like devote a lot of time yeah i'll i'm gonna worry about it when you care about domestic cricket

at all or no not really not what do you mean domestic cricket like like do you like indian i assume oh i thought you were okay yeah okay In Britain, you would call it domestic cricket. In India, the domestic scene isn't really big, but we have the IPL, the Indian Premier League, which is basically club stuff with cricketers from all over the world. Right, sure, sure, sure. I haven't paid attention to it in like 20 years,

but it's still really huge. I haven't thought about cricket in a while. I love cricket. Next World Cup is in India, so I might find myself going back at some point because I flew back for the 2011 final in Mumbai.

And? And we won. Yeah. But I mean, like, was it cool? Oh, it was so cool. Yeah. One of the best moments

of my life. Ben has been holding the mic right under his mouth for two minutes waiting to share some cricket opinion. What are your opinions on cricket?

I think that the stick Yeah, that's what we call it. is pretty fucking good. In fact, at any point you could have anywhere between eight and ten sticks on the field. Nice.

Yeah. The wickets and the bails. The bails too. So you'd have up to like 14. Wait, so what am I forgetting? The two bats, the wickets, the Bales. You can have up to four bats because each batsman could also have a runner. That's, that's, that would,

sure, that would be an unusual, but right, I suppose you're right. Ben, as a man of fashion, I think, from the perspective of someone who's not as fashionable as you, but also doesn't give a shit about sports at all. Yeah.

I think cricket uniforms are far and away the best uniforms in professional sports. Are we talking about the white ones or the colored ones? Uh, either way. I just think the basic cut of the thing. That's fair. You like the kind of sweater thing. I like the sweater thing. I like the high socks.

It was a very proud moment for me when I was 11 years old and I started playing cricket. And I was good at it. And I remember my teacher old And I started playing cricket And I was good at it And I remember my teacher pointing at me and saying The American's good at it It's a way to shame them That I took to bowling really well For some reason And I just remember that

Well you've talked a lot about how you were forced to play basketball Because you were tall Yeah and I lack hand-eye coordination for it or something I've just never been good at basketball And also it's too physical and i wasn't i just never had the killer instinct to like bash into people you know like to to really get physical can i call out one scene that we didn't talk about yeah sorry but that i think is like sort of the most interesting scene the cricket scene the cricket scene uh no the scene in the bathroom with anil kapoor uh the scene in the bathroom with Anil Kapoor.

The scene in the bathroom with Anil Kapoor. In the middle of the taping. Right. Where he writes. He's in the wrong answer. Right, right, right, right. Where he's messing with him. That scene and the following scene where he has to figure out, is this guy psyching me out, getting in my head,

or is he actually trying to throw the game? And the tension of, like, is this guy trying to rig this for the sake of the show? Because this is his job and if this kid keeps on winning it's going to be a big news story versus what the scene ends up being about which is like what you're talking about is kind of under explored in the movie which is like the class tension of everyone you know in major cities like that where people are right next to each other but yet these divides are so large where you understand suddenly, like, the interrogation, all of that stuff is just about, like, this seems too good to be true.

There has to be some scam running here. Yeah, but what I realized while watching the movie this time is that even though that's what the cops are meant to figure out, I don't think at any point anyone on the show, especially the host, really believes that he cheated. No, I don't think at any point anyone on the show, especially the host, really believes that he cheated. I don't think so. No. They're with him. Right.

Yeah. By and large. But Anil Kapoor is revealing in that scene, like, I don't want you to cross this line. There has to be a division between you and I.

You cannot suddenly jump up to my level of fame. Yeah. And he keeps referring to him as Chaiwala. Yeah. You know, the person who serves tea. Which, you know, at the time was meant to be like a put down.

Although now Chaiwala has a completely different connotation. Because even though it means the same thing, it is part of the creation myth of Narendra Modi, our prime minister. Because he was famously, you know, a kid who sold tea on railway platforms. And look at him now. He's a totally not fascist prime minister. Sorry, I shouldn't. No, you can laugh. It's fine.

That's interesting. I didn't realize that. That's his, like, folksy origin story that he's mythologized. He's very different now. Because, like, yeah, the whole, immediately, this kid sits down, he says he serves tea and you can tell the Neil Kapoor character is like, great. This is my bit with this kid.

We found a dog that stands on a tiny ledge. Yeah, right, right. Love Anil Kapoor's just audacious enunciation from Chaiwala to like millionaire. It's incredible. He's an incredibly transfixing actor. Yes. And that's the thing with him in Ghost Protocol. That's sort of the weirdest part of the movie.

Yeah. Where you're just like, everything in this movie has been so high energy and now suddenly we're, okay, we're doing more of a dialogue focus and then, like,

he's like, you know, flirting with Paula Patton. Yeah. And she hits him and he's like, oh, I like it. And you're like,

whoa, this is so, like, but it works for the, like, sort of, yeah. Anyway, I like him a lot. As you you said there was the whole crazy thing with uh it almost going to dvd essentially and

then the festival starts sniffing around and warner brothers is like oh do we actually own something that's worth something like and then so when fox searchlight is like we want to pick it up warner's is like well we're not going to give it away for free. Like there was like a little bit of... Sure. But basically Fox Searchlight was... Peter Rice was in charge there. And he was the guy who just like,

was well known at the time for... I could see the Oscars taking this. Like, you know, like just sort of knowing what to go for. And still to date, their highest grossing film ever. The film did get a huge backlash in India From some corners at least I'm talking about Bob Chon sort of condemned it right

And then kind of backed off Like maybe There was sort of a weird thing around that Confusion about that because some comment on A blog of his Was highlighted Like what's he writing his blog Someone else had written something

that was then i don't know highlighted or pinned i i really have no idea but but yeah so there's there's a lot of you know mixed feelings about this movie where it's like you know it's you know exploitative or it's poverty born and you know i'm not going to say anyone who says that is wrong because you know i i kind of feel that way myself sometimes about it. Whenever something like this makes it into the spotlight, obviously there's going to be more conversation about it. It's not the only film to deal with themes and locations like this. There are Indian movies that have done it as well, but maybe done it in a more nuanced way.

I know one big point of contention was the phrase slumdog, which is, I don't want to say it's a slur, but it it's kind of a nasty word. Yeah. It's sort of like an insulting way to refer to someone, even though like it wasn't like, you know, commonly used in India or anything. But I believe

Danny Boyle said something. He wanted it to be like the apportmento between slum and underdog, which definitely does not come across. It should be slumder dogs, obviously. Yeah. That would have killed. Yeah.

That's an extra hundred million, right? Yeah. Yeah. But too poorly. Yeah. I think, again, the issues that people have with it have at this point been like, you know, talk to death. So there's nothing that I can really add to it. Also, it's also it's look if you're gonna win best picture and be a

huge you're going to paint a different size target on your back like no matter what movie you are yeah yeah you know like there's gonna be much more discourse about you that's gonna be much more sort of like critical and look when that discourse happens now it feels like it's happening in a fairly small marketplace of ideas and you know the best ideas win right it's like it's happening in a fairly small... In the marketplace of ideas, and, you know, the best ideas win. Right? It's like, yes, no, absolutely. It's fair and balanced. No, it just...

Now these arguments seem to feel more like they're happening in an echo chamber, whereas, like, with a movie like this, you're like, oh, they're actually, like, there are people who are going to see this at malls, and there are Oscar voters, and there are critics, and there's, like there's like a national, international,

ongoing discourse about this film that isn't just 20 accounts on Letterboxd or whatever. I just think it's... Letterboxd is the greatest market. I was looking at

the run of Best Picture winners over the last 15 years starting with this and like, for so long, either the film that was the highest grossing at the time of the Oscar ceremony would win, or what then wins overtakes what was previously the highest grossing film.

It was a big deal. It was usually like either it's a final sort of anointment at the end of a successful run, or that is the Kingmaker itself. And you're like, King's Speech has a bit of that. And then it really just starts to like, obviously, Hurt Locker at the time is the lowest grossing Best Picture winner ever.

Yeah, and then things like The Artist and Birdman and stuff, it became more common for like, oh, yeah, that movie did well. It made $40 million. Right. It did fine. Right. Like, Parasite getting up to like,

whatever it was, 65 or 70, was kind of humongous. Whereas Best Picture used to basically be an automatic $100 million domestic, whatever it was. And now it's like, right, Coda, Nomadland, Moonlight. It's what's interesting about this year

where like I was saying to you right before we started recording. Coda made $4 billion at the box office. That's it? I forgot. Yeah, yeah, it did. And that's only because of the pandemic. It would have made $8 billion. It box office. That's it? I forgot. Yeah, it did. And that's only because of the pandemic. It would have made $8 billion.

It was one guy who bought this really big ticket made of gold. A giant gold ticket. Yeah, right. No, we were talking right before the record that at the time of this record, I guess the Oscars are happening right around when this episode comes out, right? Yeah, that's a good point. The Oscars will be... March 12th.

They will have just happened. Okay. It was so crazy when Ram Charan fell off the stage while doing Nandu. I don't know how Will Smith got back in there. And Will Smith caught him. It was like a hero redemption moment. He used his hand for good. He caught him with just the one hand.

It landed on his feet. Anyway, I mean, I thought it was nice after the way of water won best picture for James Cameron to be like, as a special treat, let's watch Avatar 3 right now. And they just pulled down the screen and sat there for three hours. And it was like a rough automatic form,

but it still played. It was good. I couldn't believe he would show it. No, it feels like if everything everywhere all at once wins, which seems to be the presumed front runner at this moment, we are recording a month out, that will be like the highest grossing best picture winner in a good couple of years.

Seven or eight, at least, if not more. And like an actual crossover populist favorite. Yeah, a film that people saw and did pretty well at the box office in the US. Yeah, and then you were like saying like, oh, well, the outside disruptor pick seems to be Top Gun Maverick, which is the highest grossing film in years.

Yeah. So it does feel like for the first time since Slumdog, you actually are going to have a movie that I don't know, people give a shit about outside of our nerdy circles. Yeah, since then, you've had this sort of gulf growing between, I don't want to reduce it and say between art and entertainment, but the kind of movies that most people go out and

watch in theaters versus you know the more critical darlings but also not so much critical darlings as it is its own category of award darling yeah because if i'm not mistaken david you might be able to shed some light on this please Thumbdog was, I think, the film that began or at least strengthened the trend of fall film festivals being a pipeline into awards season. Maybe to a greater degree.

The true beginning of that is American Beauty. That's where the sort of Toronto to best picture pipeline becomes a thing. Now it's a constant thing. It was the first time it really worked. It was the first time where a movie exploded out of the festival circuit.

I would say by Slumdog, that's a good question in general, because I do feel like there's not a lot. I feel in the years in between, you had a lot of movies that would launch at Toronto and would become close contenders. Like a nomination. Like Juno or Sideways or whatever.

But this, like, it being... Like La La Land. Right. It being a winner and it basically staying in like number one position from Toronto till the Oscars. Yeah, it doesn't really happen because, you know, Crash is that weird scenario where it's at TIFF,

doesn't hit. Right. Comes out many months later and then builds Steam. So, yeah, Slumdog is kind of the second time that happened. Yeah. American Computer being the first. And then after that, it's an easy way to do it. It's become the easiest path.

Get your buzz going in the fall, you know, and have everyone salivating. Let's play the box office game. Real quick, before that, I do actually have another Oscar-related question. I'm sorry. So at the time when this picked up all its oscar steam so in india a lot of us were theorizing that you know why has this movie taken on the life that it has in the west you know uh why is you know why is it getting all these awards and some part of us felt like is this because of

like the 2008 terrorist attack that had just happened in mumbai right kind of put which was shocking the city on the map and a global map in a way was do you over here having been here at the time do you get the sense that that had anything at all to do with it no i don't i don't remember i do. Like, that was one of those, like, global terror incidents that was not just sort of, like, one-day news. That was a very, very massive, shocking event. So maybe a little bit. But the movie is not really, you know, too connected to...

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe mildly. I think it might have strengthened the emotion behind it, but I also, I just remember that film feeling unstoppable from September on.

Okay. You know, as David said, there was sort of the lurking in the wings, like, what if Benjamin Button is a masterpiece? And the second people saw it

and they were like, it's kind of cold. It was like, done. Done. Nothing else is winning. If Dark Knight had gotten nominated, then maybe there was a thought that it could have, like, just's kind of cold. It was like done. Done. Nothing else is winning. If Dark Knight had gotten nominated, then maybe there was a thought that it could have like just pure like juggernaut

populism won. But then I just think everything only seemed to help Slumdog the more and more that season went on. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I think it was also a bad competition. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. Do you like Benjamin Button? I do.

I think out of those five, it's probably my favorite. Although, Ross Nixon did introduce me to, you know, what the whole deal was with Nixon. That crazy guy. He was not a crook. I know. I know. I know. I heard him say it.

This film came out November 14th, 2008. Limited. Limited. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What's going on? We're going to play the box office game. I'm sorry. Ben wants to put me in the hot seat. I mean, we have to. Absolutely.

There's a quiz in our show. We've been talking about this for six months. What is that? The Home Depot thing? Okay, today's contestant. Griffin Newman Hi So Griffin, this film comes out It really does make everything feel more intense

It's very intense November 14th, 2008, limited release On 10 screens it makes Half a million dollars So it does not become a millionaire Yet It obviously will expand slowly and in much steam.

And Han just hovering over five different buttons right now. Number one. Yeah. Box office. New this week. Okay. Action film.

Okay. Franchise. Major franchise. November 2008. Bit of a disappointment from the last entry. Major franchise. What number. Bit of a disappointment from the last entry. What number entry is it? Well, that'll give it away.

Fuck. Because it's a deep number? And the last one was really big. It's 2008. And there was a peak. You said action? Action. Can you tell me what distributor?

I'd like to use a lifelink distributor. Sony Pictures. It's a Sony Pictures. It's not a Spider-Man. It's not. Oh, it is Quantum of Solace. Quantum of Solace. Good job.

So you got $32,000. I filmed the Frida Pinto audition for it. Oh, sure. For the main role? That music has lyrics in my head, but they're in Hindi. You could sing it. Do you remember what the lyrics are? Just the title of the show.

They just keep on singing the title. No, that's just in my head. It doesn't actually have lyrics. Okay. Number two at the box office. It doesn't actually have lyrics. All right. Number two at the box office. It was number one the week before. Also a sequel.

Also a sequel. But a family film. It's also a sequel, but it's a family film. Animated or live action? It's animated. It's an animated sequel. Made $180 million. It made $180 million. The American box office. Is it a two? It's number two.

It's an animated number two in 2008. It's not an Ice Age, so I think it's not a blue sky. You need to like fuck with them more. Is it a DreamWorks? What's the matter with you? uh is it a dreamworks what's the matter with you you think you're so smart in your shirt he's not that aggressive

i'm surprised you're able to button it up okay wow is it a dreamworks film uh yes it's a dreamworks is it oh actually it's from Paramount. I'm sorry. I believe Paramount had a distribution deal with DreamWorks at this time. It's a DreamWorks film. This film, I believe, is called Final Answer. Madagascar colon Escape to Africa? Correct.

Madagascar Escape to Africa. Wow. A false title. A false title. That movie's about them trying to escape from Africa. They land in Africa. They're trying to escape from it. But they wanted to put two in there.

It's a Back to the Future thing. Absolutely. Yeah. Number three at the box office. Should have called back from this. Yeah, okay. It's a comedy. R-rated.

R-rated comedy. In 2008. Yes. November. It performed fairly well, but not maybe on the level of, say, some of the big, you know, comedy hits of that time.

We're talking your peak Apatow. Super bad. And this isn't an Apatow film? Was Judd Apatow involved? It has these role models. Was he involved? No. But like it has the... Yeah, yeah. Adjacent.

Good movie. Yeah, fun. Now number four at the box office. Okay. Is. We should do this every time. It's kind of good. A number three.

It's a number... It's a lot of sequels in this box office. Number four is a number three. Number four is a number three. Number four is a number three. It's a number. It's a lot of sequels in this box office. You said number four is a number three. Number four is a number three. Number four is a number three. It's a teen. Oh, it's High School Musical 3 Senior Year. That's right.

There you go. A huge hit. Yeah, a Halloween release. Yep, it's been out for a month. Yeah. Makes $90 million. Also, modern American masterpiece. And number five is a film from a great American filmmaker

who makes a lot of movies. This film was Oscar nominated. I don't think it's one of your favorites. But not for Best Picture. And what do you think you're doing wearing a red hat? Poor jerk. You're never going to get all my money. I'm Mr. Billionaire billionaire should be like that uh what

was the question sir what i'm just trying to be like you know an antagonistic game so let's start home wearing a red hat oh you think you are not a make america great again uh oh fair enough yeah yeah i forgot right it doesn't have any text on it more of a life of quality thank you yeah all right steve's is much better i'll take that burn what'd you have onions for lunch you ski cap. It doesn't have any text on it. More of a life of quadrate. Thank you. I'm wearing a Z-Zoo. Yeah, alright, Steve Z-Zoo. Much better. I'll take that burn. What, do you have onions for lunch? You stink. Okay, well now it's just back to this. Attacking my character. Ben's really

swinging a hatchet. My breath. What was your question? I'm on your side. Was it not only for Best Picture? Thank you. No. But it was Oscar nominated. For acting. For acting. It's a director. You said you like what we both like. We both like, but not one of their better films.

I think you don't like this film. I don't think it's one of his better films. You don't think it's one of his better films. Can you tell me which acting category it was nominated for? It's a number three. No, no, no. It was nominated for. That was High School Musical.

Oh, okay. It was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role. It also got two design nominations, Cinematography and Art Direction. Wow. And is this, did you say what genre? Drama? It's a drama. It's sort of a crime film.

Is this Changeling? It's Clint Eastwood's Changeling. A movie I really don't like. Yes. But an interesting one. Sure. Remember how the poster, her head's all big? Yeah.

She's looking at the kid. The kid's tiny. It kind of looks like she wants to eat the kid. Honey, I ate my kid. Sure. Remember how the poster, her head's all big? Yeah. She's looking at the kid. The kid's tiny. It kind of looks like she wants to eat the kid. Honey, I ate my kid. Yeah. Changeling! It's one of the only Clint's that wasn't made of Warner Brothers? Yeah, it's a universal.

And I remember that was another sort of like hot-tipped Oscar project that kind of sputtered out. Yeah. Although it got some attention. Mm-hmm. So what was the final winnings? Oh, boy. For him or for Slumdog Millionaire? Oh, for

Griffin. A million dollars. Okay. Great job. Slumdog only beat me by 140. Sure. Yeah. Some other films in the top 10. Zach and Miri Make a Porno. They did. Slumdog only beat me by 140. Sure. Yeah. Some other films in the top 10. Zach and Miri make a porno. They did. Hanging around. Soul Men.

Is that Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson? It is. I saw that film. It was disappointing. Malcolm D. Lee. The Secret Life of Bees, covered on this show. Yeah.

Saw. V. No, V. No, never mind. Oh, bad one? Yeah. VI is the good one The one about the American healthcare system I believe Saw V is heavy on Luke Danes

From Gilmore Girls though so Probably pretty good And number 10 at the box office Beverly Hills Chihuahua A big ass hit Barking its way to 94 million domestic That movie Eat at the box office

But yes Slumdog Millionaire is waiting in the wings To take them all down And be one of the biggest hits of 2008 Yeah that's what's wild It ends up being one of the Obviously the biggest hit of 2008 Was The Dark Knight

And you had you know your Indiana Jones Your Kung Fu Panda Your Wally Your Hancock, your Indiana Jones, your Kung Fu Panda. Your Wally. Your Hancock, your Wally, your Iron Man. Sure. Pretty big. Yeah, you know. What happened to that series?

Iron Man? It's weird a couple of them. It's weird that it's just sort of like fallen away. You know, it feels like you'd really want to run that thing into the ground. Sananth, I loved your tweets about Ant-Man and the Wasp. Oh, which one? You had a series of tweets before you had seen it about like,

I like this movie. It's a shame it doesn't tie into anything else in the universe. I'd like to see more franchise building. Really just a standalone character story. I was doing the Ben Mackler thing because Ben was getting a massage at that time, so he had kind of tasked me with doing that. Right.

Jonathan Majors is really good in this film. It's a shame. They totally waste him and they're never going to bring him back in anything else. It was just a nice glimpse into an alternate universe

where I could believe that was the case. Ant-Man versus Wasp-Man, Quantum-Man. Hey, and if people want to see tweets like that, they should follow you.

They should. I'm at Elon Musk. Yes. Parody, parody. Parody, parody, parody. No, I'm... You can find me at at Musk. Yes. Parody. Parody. Parody. Parody. No, you can find me at at Sidhant Adlako.

And you have a bajillion bylines. You write all over the place. I do, yes. And I always love to read your writing. I was telling you right before we recorded how much I liked you did a series on, I guess it was all the Marvel films through to end game.

That's right. In 2019 for Slash Film. Yeah. Where you really examine them from a lot of angles, but especially within sort of the American military industrial complex. And I think hit on

a lot of points better than I've seen a lot of other people. Thank you. I appreciate that. I do. You're just being nice because I was nice about your performance in the He-Man show. You were incredibly nice about my performance. You weren were just a little nice. It was, it's the exact review you want to read

when you play Orko. Yay. We're both Nepo babies here. Oh, absolutely. Yes. The whole thing with He-Man for me was like, I don't know fucking anything about He-Man. So all of the messing with the canon and all that,

I'm just like, that's over my head. I grew up on He-Man. I knew there was He-Man and Skeletor. It is weird with that show how it's like there are people who grew up on it and love it and like what we did with it. There are people who had no prior knowledge who liked

it a lot and then there are people who care about it too much who are furious. But anyway, thank you for being on the show. Long overdue. Thank you for having me. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. I've been a producer of the show.

And for her apartment, which became a de facto recording studio today. I feel like I'm losing Regis and I don't know who I'm becoming instead. Thank you to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Thank you to Leigh Montgomery and The Great American Novel for our theme song. Thank you to J.J. Birch for our research. A.J. McKeon, Alex Barron for our editing. And you're welcome for not recording in the studio with the jackhammer. Thank you to Ben Shapiro for that outro.

Thank you to Ben Shapiro for the outro. Tune in next week for 127 hours. A movie about a man who was destroyed by a woke boulder. Is that what happens then? The boulder's just so woke? The woke mind virus

takes his own. Okay, well. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some really nerdy shit including our Patreon Blank Check

special features where we do franchise commentaries and stuff like that. And as always, blankcheckpod.com for links to some really nerdy shit, including our Patreon, Blank Check, special features where we do franchise commentaries and stuff like that. And as always, Danny Bull loves it when people are covered in poop. He does?