Blank Check with Griffin & David - Stoker with Emily St. James

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

Remember when the star of TV’s Prison Break (Wentworth Miller, “human map”) wrote a screenplay that landed on the Black List and ended up serving as the material for Park Chan-Wook’s only English film to date? What a time to be alive! Mia Wasikowska superfan Emily St. James returns to Blank Check to offer her take on 2013’s Stoker, a movie that is not NOT about vampires. Join us as we fawn over Park’s stunning directorial choices (that shot where Nicole Kidman’s hair transitions into grass!), go long on 2000s TV series (Prison Break obviously, but also In Treatment), and listen with delight as Emily shares some crucial David Sims lore. This episode is sponsored by:  Indeed (indeed.com/check) Zocdoc (zocdoc.com/check)  Mubi (mubi.com/blankcheck) 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

He used to say, sometimes you need to podcast something bad to stop you from podcasting something worse. Very good. Yeah. Hello. That was my best Mia Wasikowska impression, which was just very quiet and delicate. I am happy to be here. I'm your Mia Wasikowska expert now.

If you ever do Crimson Peak, I guess I'm locked in. That's the thing. Fuck. Yes. Wait a second. Alice. Alice and this.

I fucking love Mia Wasikowska. Have we covered a third Wasikowska? Has there been a Wasikowska you weren't talking about? Isn't it Wasikowska? I'm trying to adjust in real time with each additional time I say it. She's from Australia. I feel like it's been anglicized to some extent.

That is true. That's why I thought split the difference. It's Wasikowska. But you think it's Wasikowska. I mean, that's true. I think that is like the Polish. I don't. Look, look.

I'm Polish. This is a mini series of us not pronouncing names correctly. I also have some Polish ancestors. Right. But, you know. Right. Which in my defense, I don't pronounce gremlins correctly. I also have some Polish ancestry, but you know. Right, which in my defense, I don't pronounce gremlins correctly.

How do you pronounce it? I'm going to go a little hard on the R. Gremlins. Gremlins. So let's see. Okay, so you're saying we did Alice in Wonderland, of course. We're doing Stoker. Is there any other movie she has appeared in that we've covered on the podcast? Or is Emily two for two right now? Two for two. Which I hope she is. Yeah, I think yes. I think those, is there any other movie she has appeared in that we've covered on the podcast? Is Emily two for two right now?

Which I hope she is. Yeah, I think, yes. I think those are the only two. Of course, if we do Cronenberg, she's in Maps to the Stars, I believe. Jarmusch confirmed, 2024. Right, if we do Jarmusch or Del Toro. Oh, right, yes. No, Crimson

Peak would be an early, right, that's what you said. If we did Mira Nair She's in Amelia Young Mia Really? She's playing one of She's like one of the sort of Female aviators who are inspired

You know like who she meets She plays one corner of the Bermuda Triangle That's right yes Please don't land here. Please. I guess we could do Gus Van Sant. She's in Restless. Right.

That seems like a stretch for us at this point, Van Sant. Yeah. We'll do Psycho one day and then maybe we can talk Van Sant then. Yeah, we could do Van Sant through the franchises. What other franchises does he have? Well, he... Hmm. That's a good question.

Has Gus Van Sant done any other franchises? Wasn't, like, Elephant part of, like, a trilogy? Yes, he... Hmm. That's a good question. Has Ghostman said that any other franchise... Wasn't, like, Elephant part of, like, a trilogy? Yes, the Death Trilogy. Yeah. Do the Death Trilogy. Elephant, you know, Last Days and Paranoid Park, right? I had a weird dream that there was a new Elephant. Like? Like

Elephant Legacy. I was sitting there watching and I was like... I don't think there's any funny way to pursue this conversation. No, but my dream was me at a screening and I'm like... I don't think there's any funny way to pursue this conversation. No, but my dream was me at a screening and I'm like, critics liked this? No, I guess it's Jerry, Elephant, Last Days is the death trilogy. Correct. I would do that. Well, Elephant would be a really tough hang as a commentary.

Jerry and Last Days would be more fun. Sure. Elephant is less fun. You always call it the death trilogy. More of a walking around. It's a putters and murmurs trilogy. It's a lot a walking around. It's a putters and murmurs trilogy. It's a lot of walking around. It's a lot of puttering.

Yeah. Yeah. People do die. I should not be dismissive. It's a tough movie. I haven't seen that movie in 20 years. Which one?

Oh. I think it's a masterpiece. I thought it was a masterpiece when I was a teenager. I've also never watched it again. I'm terrified to ever watch it again. At the time, I saw it and was like,

this is one of the best movies and I've never watched it again. I mean, Emily, on Oscar watch, a lot of people had elephant yeah what it's sick ciggies signatures remember we called them ciggies ciggies ciggies because you would have your avatar uh-huh right that was your little profile fake selling yeah uh exactly but then a lot of people had signatures that they would custom make no no i'm you you you hit the forum you try to big dog me as if i'm not big dog it's not like that's the only forum that had that.

The Palisades Toys forum had that, David. And I was posting up a storm there. The collapse of Twitter and other social media platforms. You guys need to start a forum. Let's go back to the sports. It's time to bring back V Bulletin. Yes. Maybe it is.

Yeah. Oh, God. I wonder if I still have the like... We disowned the subreddit. You know, if I would need to like do some cardio again i just saw david's eyes light up at the idea of like fuck could i still post the way i used to am i still so supermod on oscar watch i believe so every time every time i there's an election i go there because it's the one place i know how to process bad news for some reason

uh and you're they still talking the nba thread that you started in like 2012 so that's your legacy that's your legacy nba thread that will be the headline when you started in 2012 yeah damn i mean i did a lot of stuff on that forum most of it embarrassing um none of it not embarrassing um i do i do want to say at the time I knew you as someone from the UK and so when I started talking to you on AIM you mentioned at one point that you had grown up in New York and I literally said wait what so

used to be the opposite I was the UK boy who actually had a little New York going for him he's using it I'm using the tape measure I left a tape measure on David's desk And it's now been worked into the episode I know

I know you've retired the bit But at the time I didn't know I was doing the opposite of the bit So I feel like it was a really great Like long lead set up You know Yes that is true Emily just to sort of explain to you things That have changed since the last time you've been on the show

And this is stuff that has not been released on main feed yet So you couldn't know That is true. Emily, just to sort of explain to you things that have changed since the last time you've been on the show, and this is stuff that has not been released on main feed yet, so you couldn't know. David doing a prop sound, like Foley work with the tape measure is clearly him reacting in insecurity to the fact that Ben has now become a slapstick guy. Yeah, that's true. Is the slapstick gone? No, no, no, no, no, no. Keep it away. Keep it away. All right.

Introduce our podcast. it away. All right. Introduce our podcast. All right. All right. Put it back. He bought a literal slapstick. Also, Ben got his ear pierced. You guys are fucking on the bleeding edge of this shit. I think people are really going to put together how out of order this series is by the amount of which episodes have a lot of Ben earring discussion on them. I feel like this is a little bit later. And so the earring will evolve. Ben, do you have your earring in?

Can I see it? Yeah. Oh, shit. That looks great. That's so good. I love it. You look great. I'm glad you love it.

Bad Boy 2.0 era. You're saying that, David, as if I'm not going to bring up the earring every episode to every guest. But what podcast is this? This is Ben's earring with Griffin and David. a disastrous rebrand we've settled on for some reason i'm griffin i'm david it's a podcast my earring that's ben's earring it's a podcast the title's changed but still a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers

and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce, baby. And sometimes they get pierced. I was going to say the exact same thing. We were both rushing to the same finish line there. This is a mini series on the films of Park Chan-wook. It is entitled, I'm a podcast, but that's okay.

That's right, you losers. We overruled losers. Democracy. Yep. And today we're talking about Stoker, his to date only English language film. Yes. He's done English language television, but this is the only film he's made in English language. Yes. And returning to the show.

Yep. Returning champion. One of our favorite people. Hello. Emily St. James. Yes. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad to be here i'm i'm

thrilled i had i had the thing going of bad movie or good movie bad movie and now i'm thrilled to break it with i just come on for me i watch casca's shit yeah that's the one thing i do now yeah yeah you need a hook you need a hook this it it does fascinate me how divisive this movie is yeah i love this fucking movie i love this movie too but like the people who how divisive this movie is. Yeah, I love this fucking movie. I love this movie too, but like the people who don't like this movie are still angry about it 10 years later. Like fucking Stoker. Yeah.

Don't get me started on Stoker. This was a very polarizing movie. I think very, very, very stylish movies are always that kind of polarizing where it's like, well, I can tell this is stylish. Right. It's doing a thing. Right.

And so if the story doesn't vibe for you, you can really easily lean into kind's like, well, I can tell this is stylish. It's doing a thing. Right. So if the story doesn't vibe for you, you can really easily lean into kind of like, all style, no sub, all sizzle, no steak. It's almost your Malkovich sun-dried tomatoes analogy. Yeah. Please remind me. Oh, yes. Or I called him a sun-dried tomato actor.

He is a sun-dried tomato actor. Right. And you're like, sometimes that's not the sandwich you want sun-dried tomatoes on. And it's going's gonna overpower you might just want one or two on your sandwich yeah and sometimes malkovich is gonna put 40 on your sandwich right this movie feels like the speed racer of abusive family movies like that's fair to say yeah the editing is so similar to speed racer i was watching it last night with some friends and we were like yeah richard roundtree does live commentary over most of the

dialogue scenes. And look. What? In the hands of someone. I like this movie a lot. I love this one. But I do think in the hands of somebody else this movie could be just the purest nonsense. Like just so bad.

Maybe not so bad, but just like a real bit of twaddle to use an english like the script but you're also you do watch it but it's it's a bit of a genre exercise and you watch it and you're just like god they were smart to get him to do this yes yes i just think of you know whatever i i don't know who your replacement level director is no i always i used to cite ratner but i feel like Ratner is now like too problematic. Yeah, to actually. Right.

Who's the non-problematic Ratner? Your C-minus director. Louis Leterrier. But like Louis Leterrier makes action movies. Like Louis Leterrier is probably not going to make a tense Hitchcockian thriller. But David, hear me out. What if Louis Leterrier made this movie?

Made Stoker? Don't think it would be very good. Made Stoker Legacy. I think the Russo brothers would make this movie made stoker don't think it made stoker legacy i think the russo brothers would make this movie yes they would and it would be i don't know what it would be and be something but i'm now convinced that they are terrible filmmakers unless they have uh really really strong other stuff around them yes you know what i mean like not just replacement though i think they're bad yeah but that's but that's what's wild as you're like they are the directors of like the most successful movies of all what's wild as you're like they are the directors of

like the most successful movies of all time basically and now we're like are they competent i mean i genuinely like their community shit was so well directed this is the thing i think there were just i'm really starting to feel like there were a lot of other people helping i think i think beyond the fact they had a good script on their hands with that stuff. I think it's the showrunner thing. I think it is like, I think they are very good if someone else is giving them the vision. Anytime they're like, who are we as filmmakers? You're

like, they have nothing to say. Also, now they've become moguls. Yes. The mogul thing I hate. Right. But I'm like if there is a Feige, if there is a Harmon, you know, if there is a Hurwitz or whatever. They broke through under Soderbergh. So Soderbergh was shepherding them.

And then they kind of had a dry period. They were welcome to Collinwood. They welcomed us. And people said, I'm busy that day. Can't find it on the map. I'm going to go somewhere else. Stoker. Yeah, sure.

If the Russos made Stoker, I don't know if it would be very good. No. I was thinking about the script was on the blacklist. It was really high. I love this movie. I think it's a good script. I can't imagine Hollywood executives reading this and being like, yeah, fuck yeah, that's great. This is the thing with the blacklist. You have to think about it's being voted on less by executives and more by readers, right?

Sure. Who have to read every fucking thing that comes through. So if you read a script that is just compellingly weird, it's going to jump straight up your list because you're like sitting there fucking like falling asleep at your desk, reading a million scripts, even if they're functional, they're all probably a little bit similar. They fall into clean silos. And if you read something like this where you're like, what the fuck is going on? You're not going to forget the Stoker script. It's also a script where you have three roles where you can just imagine, you know, like three opportunities for a zillion different actors to pop.

Because this was very nearly. There is no like bland role in Stoker. This was very nearly Carey Mulligan, Colin Firth, Jodie Foster. Oh, yeah. Care mulligan colin firth jody foster oh yeah carrie mulligan colin firth that's what's wild and you're like it's too old for that three very different all three of them are older than the three people who ended up in the movie it ages the whole thing another like seven or eight years if not ten yeah that would be like post and educate that carrie mulligan's in her mid-20s yeah but you're like right you could do this exercise where you could just keep on coming up with three people to play those parts is this

is this the best movie that was big on script that was big on the blacklist that wasn't all like social network was big on the blacklist but that was already being made like it's kind of like this and passengers and the fucking what was the juno lars and the real girl i'm trying to think of other ones that were like the top script all right some famous blacklist scripts yeah oh there's too many though give me the number ones give us some highlights of the number one we also just give people a sense of what the blacklist is it is what i what i was sort of explaining it was this thing that was started by this guy franklin lennard that was like we should make a list of the best unproduced screenplays to give them like their flowers. And it was,

it started as a poll of like an email list of a hundred assistants and readers at studios and production companies and going like, what are the 10 best scripts

you read this year? And then the list is which ones got the most votes. Okay. And it started like mid-2000s and then it became a thing where like, if something is the number one

blacklist script of the year, it gets produced. but that's honestly not true at all for a moment it was here this screenplays on top of the blacklist starting from 2005 the 2005 number one was things we lost in the fire which was turned into an honestly underrated movie but not a hit obviously yes then something called The Brigands of Rattleborge. Big L for the blacklist on that one. Then Recount, which of course was turned into a TV film. Then The Beaver, a famous blacklist number one. You can't believe how crazy this thing is. A perfect example of you read that script and you go like, holy fucking shit.

I certainly haven't read anything like this. That was a period where I was auditioning a lot not to humble brag uh when people still wanted me to be in things or at least were interested in considering me and i remember reading that script being like holy shit this is the best script i've ever read and in retrospect you're like it's just weird yeah it's very weird he's got a beaver he talks through the beaver but in a year where you're reading like a hundred scripts No, a hundred percent I remember hearing about that script and being like This could be such a great movie

And then it came out and I was like This is actually kind of fucking weird And I don't want to see it at all But also it was an example of like Every single fucking pairing of director and actor possible Before they landed on Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster Wow Okay, next

The Muppet Man Which is a famous Jim Henson biopic Which has never been made Horrendous landed on Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. Okay. Next, The Muppet Man, which is a famous Jim Henson biopic, right? That's never been made. Horrendous. Have you read that script, Emily? I have. So the guy famously was like, yeah, I didn't do any research.

I just like wrote a narrative of what I thought his life might have been. That sounds good. Yeah. It's really bad and people read it and they were like, what an interesting life Jim Henson had. And I'm like, bullshit.

And not even like a creative reimagining. Just sort of laziness. Then, okay, a script called... But to say, Muppet Man, Disney bought to prevent it from getting made. We're going to keep moving. Okay, College Republicans, which I believe is like a Karl Rove. That very nearly got made.

That was going to be a Dan O'Shea thing. I forget who's going to direct it. Sure. The Imitation Game, which was made. Wins an Oscar. It did win an Oscar. For the screenplay. Stoker's better than that. Incredibly bizarre screenplay winner.

Yes. A little movie called, I'm seeing here, Draft Day? Was number one on the blacklist? Yes, sir. Only reason it got made. Then the year after that was a film called Holland, Michigan, that I think is finally finally being made oh wow uh starring uh nicole kidman of all people uh then okay something called catherine the great which i think is a biopic about the queen of russia never got made but that was one definitely where like a lot of big a-list actresses were you know something called

bubbles is that about michael jackson's monkey correct yes that nearly i remember that one i remember that one floating around. Taika Waititi was going to do it as a stop motion film. That sounds just wonderful. When whatever it's called, Leaving Neverland came out. Yeah, they were like... They were like a month away, I think, from starting animation. There is a film called Blonde Ambition that was a Madonna movie, I believe.

That's the one that she was going to direct. Right. I'm sure that's definitely going to happen still. No, it's never going to happen. A movie called Ruin, which I think was like a World War II movie that Gal Gadot was attached to at some point. Okay.

A movie called Frat Boy Genius. Don't know what that is. It's about a frat boy genius. Oh, it's about Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel. Something called Move On. Something called Headhunter. I just want to shout out Cauliflower, which was on top of, I think, the 2021

list written by my friend Dan Jackson. And Pure is the most... Obviously, most of these scripts have not yet been made because that's how it works. But some of the other ones, I guess... There's lots of others. Argo was a Blacklist script. Blood Diamond. Charlie Wilson's... I don't know. There's a

zillion Blacklist scripts. You know, like you said said i feel like they're a combination now of like now there are a lot of films that i feel like the scripts are written they don't put it into production because they're waiting to get the blacklist pump even though it's gonna get made yeah and then there's a couple per year where you're like this is an actual discovery this is a movie that would not have gotten green lit if not for the shine yeah yeah and stoker was sort of like a real discovery people are like what is this well and then it has this you know whole narrative of like well wentworth miller you know him from prison break the prison is tattooed on his body but he wrote it under a pseudonym like so when it's on the

blacklist that's when people found out without his got it up there without his name. Yeah, right. That's how good it is. Now, I love Stoker, but I'm glad we can do some prison break talk. Let's just pencil that in. Now, we once, Emily and I remember... Emily just unfurled the blueprints of our prison, by the way. Wait, have you introduced her guest? Emily St. James. Yeah. That's not my name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.

Sometimes I just lose track. It's like brushing your teeth every day. At this point, I am best known for doing this podcast. There's so many people who are like, I love your blank check appearances. I should list your credits, of course. No, that's fine. Alice in Wonderland, Silence of the Lambs. A few others.

Yeah. Why am I forgetting the other ones? Munich. Munich. Yeah. The Thing and Christmas Carol. That's a good. Christmas Carol.

That's a chaotic. Those Zemeckis episodes are just like a blur to me. I don't remember those at all. Some people say those are our best episodes. Okay. I guess you want me to lose my mind. One of the best moments, the standout moments in the Back to the Future

episode where I forgot to cut out a 10 minute bathroom break. People were like, this is funny that they did this. The ultimate Ben bit it I remember we used to say that the pilot of prison break was the best thing Brett Ratner ever directed I might stick by that

yeah prison break season 1 no not good prison breaks episode 1 to 13 good I think after 13 where they had gotten the pickup and they were like fuck okay we can't have them break out till the finale like they clearly built the story to be like well if we get canceled they can break out at 13 sure yeah and then at 13 they were like we're gonna do it right and then there's like a pipe in the way and they're like

fuck you know like i remember there being like eight more episodes of them being like how do we get rid of the pipe and you're just like okay how many seasons did they ultimately do and did they do a reboot or did they threaten to they did four in the original run that's right did a fifth season reboot i also did a movie called the final break oh wasn't there a threat of doing like prison break legacy a couple years ago and Wentworth Miller said like, I will never go back. I think so. Yeah. He seems like a, yeah, someone who maybe doesn't love everything about the process of making television, right?

Beyond that, I think he hated the experience of being famous. He's talked a lot about that. Because he was also obviously in the Flashiverse. Yeah. I feel like he. He seemed to enjoy that more. Enjoyed it, but it would be like He was a lead in Legends of Tomorrow And then very quickly he was like

I don't want to be a lead I'll recur He was that weird thing I think we invoked this in some episode recently Where they gave him a series regular deal Across all the series And they were like in totality you will end up doing A little bit under a season's worth of episodes

But we'll spread them out over different shows. The thing about TV right now is that Prison Break would be like an eight-episode limited series. It would probably be a stronger story, but I feel like we're all nostalgic. Maybe just speaking for myself, for the time when you get to episode 13, there would be a pipe because they have to keep going for an indefinite period of time. You and I, I'm sure, are very nostalgic for TV scheduling, which no longer matters. But, you know, back... No, you too. 100%. Emily and I just used to talk about this a lot. Just because I wasn't on the fucking Oscar watch. The whole, like, you know, who's gonna

get Tuesday at 9? Yes. You know, like, you know, whatever. And, yeah, Sweeps Week. You know. Yeah. Do they still do sweeps? Do they do sweeps? Yes. But, like, it's just kind of, we don't know about it anymore because who cares? When my baby was born just before November, I was so fucking mad that she wasn't born in sweeps month. I was just like, would have been a big event.

Sweeps baby. Like I watched when I had a child. Yeah. Those really dazed first six months. I watched like. During the Zemeckis era. Six or seven seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Like, you know, we just put it months. I watched like... Yeah, during the Zemeckis era. Six or seven seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Like, you know, we just put it on.

I watched ER. Well, I... It's medical drama time when you have a baby. 100%. And like, I remember just some, you know, episode of Grey's, like, was very dramatic. And I was like, this must have been a sweeps episode. Yeah.

And my wife was like, what are you talking about? And I was like, God, this is so boring to explain. But, you know, like, you know, then like, yeah, I just feel like I guess that probably still does. Like, I'm watching Abbott Elementary and they kiss. I should be putting together like, oh, this is a Sweeps Week episode. I think it happens on the procedurals more than anything else. Right. That's when you do a crossover.

I think CBS hits sweeps big. David, you started to say this and I shut you up Because I said you need to save this for Mike But you just built the transition point Oh, my wife Your wife This being the weirdest miniseries so far Of your wife walking in and saying What are you watching?

Well, it's more like, look I only have so much time So yes, sometimes I'm like, look, I have to watch this movie Tonight, like, doing a podcast on it. Sure. And usually either she will watch with me or she will like look at her computer, you know, or whatever and sort of like pay some attention. But with Park Chen-wook, with Stoker, actively disturbed, obviously. It's not a chill movie at all.

Was she actively watching or was she coming in and out? She was with Stoker. She was paying more attention. I would say, it's easier to grab. It's like, hey, that's Nicole Kidman. Hey, you know, I know Matthew Goode, blah, blah, blah. And then yesterday I had Oldboy on, because we're doing Oldboy soon. And at one point,

not spoilers for Oldboy, but she just looked up to see, you know, a hammer claw in someone's teeth. And I was like, you might not want to, and she was like, what the fuck is this? And you were like, hey, don't worry, don't worry. It has a very unhappy ending. teeth yeah and i was like oh you might not want to and she was like what the fuck is this and i was and you were like hey don't worry don't worry it has a very unhappy ending it has one of the most famously fucked up endings of all definitely looked up for the octopus eating the hammer

tooth removal and then she's like you know what i'm going to i got it i'm leaving the room um but anyway no stoker i was like that was the thing. I was like, honestly, Stoker, one of the more watchable Park Chan-wook movies in terms of just chillness. It's kind of gripping. Oh, it's very gripping. It's hard to look away from once you're watching it.

It's so, so sexy to look at. It's the fucking, the style. The style of this thing. It is grabbing. Emily, you're a big Park Chan-wook fan in general. Love him.

I feel like you were stumping big for him during March Madness.wook fan in general i feel like you were stumping big for him during march madness very often in fact the person you stump for has won i just have my finger on the pulse of america i gotta say yeah but demi was when you were pushing really hard yeah i i pushed uh demi and zemeckis and then uh the right you were also a big zemeckis yeah yeah yeah then the year of the the whatever it was, the four brackets, the thing where I picked Joe Johnston. Without that year, I got everything wrong.

Well, you knew Joe Johnston was. I knew Joe Johnston wasn't going to win. I mean, I would love to do Joe Johnston, to be clear. Sure. Did you also sort of like shift your votes over to Carpenter at the point Joe Johnston was eliminated? You're going to go pee? You got to pee.

You guys talk. Yeah, I did vote. I did push Carpenter. Sorry, quickly. What is the worst thing that David ever posts on the Oscar watch? Can you think of the worst prediction he ever made? Oh, my God.

Let me think. He was, oh, God. He very much was like, there's no catastrophically bad, like me turning to my dad and saying that pay it forward is going to sweep the big five no the thing about David was he was always like very detached and like kind of above it all and even back then

yeah yeah I will say this he at the time hated the Lord of the Rings movies hated is strong but like he was like these are three out of five you know I feel like he boosts them hard Now he loves them He's like of course they're classic

Yeah I've seen that But yeah at the time Was he dismissive of it The prospect of them Like winning Best Picture Kinda yeah He was like When it was clear

Return of the King Was gonna win He was like You know I'm not happy about this But it's happy That's a beautiful manga Anyway so yeah

The thing we were talking about I had to pee I forgot to pee No of course Yeah Joe Johnston Wait oh, the thing we were talking about. I had to pee. I forgot to pee. No, of course. Yeah. Joe Johnston, wait. Oh, no. What were you guys talking about?

I shifted your votes over to Carpenter, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like this year, I think I was boosting Satoshi Kon at first, but then I was like, I was also very big on Park Chan-wook. He's one of my favorite. He was on my long list of people I thought about picking in 2021, whatever year that

was. And then David was so excited about Joe Johnston. It was a fun, chaotic pick. Yeah. It was chaotic in its normalcy, you know? And it's also just one of those things where you're like, Joe Johnston, like, what are you talking about? And then you look at the filmography and you're like, huh? I watched Nutcracker in the Four Realms

for the first time last year and had a blast. And had a blast. David, thank you for the residual payment. I hope you liked your two cents. Joe Johnson, just to be clear, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Big guarantor. Yeah.

The Rocketeer, great bounce. Yes. Good movie, underrated, blah, blah, blah. Vindicated. The Page Master, I think he might be a co-director On that one or something But that counts We do that on Patreon

Jumanji, franchise starter Took a while, but yeah October Stick Eye, underrated gem Jurassic Park 3, unfairly maligned Good movie, fun I agree, the best of the sequels I think I agree with that, too. I think I do.

Hidalgo? Okay, whatever. But also, like, colossal bomb. Big bomb, post-Lord of the Rings, failure, sort of a thing, if or vigo. The Wolfman, famous bounce. Yes. You know, disaster. Captain America, the first Avenger, sort of becoming, like, maybe the best

Marvel movie, like, in retrospect just for it's smallness It's going up there Something called Not Safe for Work is tough Don't know what that is Is that one of the mini movies About like killing people in an office park Correct Some kind of auction

Office set Action thriller And then Nutcracker Ben's just bored He keeps on threatening to retire Office set action thriller. And then Nutcracker. Yeah. Ben's just bored. Ben's just fucking buying candles online right now. He keeps on threatening to retire and has like a couple times called what his final film would be.

And then every time he does that, the movie doesn't happen. So he was supposed to do the fourth Narnia movie. There was the announced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids reboot that didn't happen because Moranis pulled out when the pandemic hit. I feel like there's one other one where he was like, I'm making this. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. You said kids for shorthand.

And I got really excited. No, Ben, I'm sorry. The rebooting kids. Good news, but Joe Johnson. Ben, I'm very sorry. He was rebooting Harm news, but Joe Johnson is on it. Ben, I'm very sorry. He was rebooting Harmony Korine's kids with Rick Moranis. What if he did Honey, I Shrunk Harmony Korine's kids? That would be, that's the fucking, Emily, if you went and pitched that tomorrow, Disney would give you $20 million. I think they owe the rights to both.

And then hire AI to write it. But that is the exact fresh take we need on both franchises. Which, let's just say, kids has been really fucking up as a franchise. Are they going to do a fourth? I guess there's no way they can do a fourth Narnia because, like, all the kids are old now. They would have to just start again.

Now they're saying they're going to hard reboot. I think someone just announced they're fucking rebooting it. Don't do Narnia. Just don't do it. Impossible Netflix reboot. The three worst words in the english language wait i can't fucking lie lion the witch in the wardrobe is like the one of those books that's like vaguely adaptable like the rest of them are just like what if the bible was

weirder and had more animals and they don't flow into each other normally so like they don't it's never it has never lent itself to what were they going do The silver chair next Correct Joe Johnson was gonna do The silver chair There's also like Not strong continuity Of protagonists No they're always Swapping cousins in and shit

Yeah Horse and his boy Has a ton of racism Magician's nephew Is like my favorite of those But it's just like What if this guy Just made a bunch of stuff

That's like That's like the prequel right It's like the creation myth Yeah Right Alright So We're rebooting Narnia Yeah, it's like the creation myth. Right, right, right, right. So, we're rebooting Narnia.

So, good news for us. No, Stoker. We're doing Stoker. I remember you, in one of your very impassioned, well-written sort of Twitter threads, making the case for Park when he was proceeding along. You made the point of just like, he is one of the few people who makes movies that are still genuinely sexy and sexual. Yes.

And yet, not in a way that is off-putting to people. Like, The Handmaid's my favorite of his films and it's one of the few movies about queer feminine desire

made by a man that does not feel lecherous or male gaze-y in any way, really. Yeah. Which is fascinating. I love that he is interested in sort of our lizard brains and how affected they are by violence and sex. Yes, extremely good way to put it.

He's very good at not making that, salacious is the wrong word, at not making that feel exploitative he's like interested in examining that and giving you the joy of violence and sex but also like making you pull back and be like wait why am i why am i into this right the the quotes of like you know movies make violence look cool you cannot make violence that isn't somewhat cool and whatever i do think he is this guy who is able to leave that bad taste in your mouth in the way he wants. But I had the thought, I was thinking about your thread, sort of making that case for the way he's able to depict sexuality cinematically

in a way that's kind of unique, especially amongst living directors. But I kept, while watching this movie, thinking, like, directors um but i kept while watching this movie thinking like he can literally make any single thing feel like a sex scene there's the scene in this movie where um india stoker mia wachkowska's character steps into the stiletto heels and is simultaneously extremely sexy and extremely creepy and i feel like that's the park chan workook Venn diagram. He can make someone peeling an apple feel like it's watching hardcore pornography. But you know, this is also a movie where someone does a murder

and then jerks off in the shower. Correct. Who hasn't though? Sort of. Witnesses slightly participates in a murder. Be shy, do crimes. So Stoker, let me give you some background on Stoker Which is Park Chan-wook's follow up to Thirst Correct? Yes

Thirst is before this? Thirst is certainly before this We're jumping ahead in our report Just trying to remember if there's anything No, it goes Thirst to Stoker Okay, so Post-Thirst Park's sort of like,

I don't have anything in particular lined up. Maybe I'll chill. You know, take it easy. Watch Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, maybe I'll throw on some sort of mid-season, mid-run greys. Yeah. You know, once Kevin McKidd shows up.

Ex-team-y years. The Axe is then announced as his next film. A remake of a Costa Gavras French thriller. Interesting. A sort of political genre film. But then that gets dumped. That remains a sort of like, I'd like to make that in my lifetime project for him. Like he talks about it.

Like he was like during the Decision to Leave first tour. I think he was still like, I still like make the acts okay um who knows uh in between thirst and stoker he also makes short films he's made a lot of short films i don't know if you've sort of dived into this yes a lot of like sometimes in anthologies sometimes like basically as sort of ads like yeah like in partnership with some you know like apple or something you know he'll make'll make a little thingy. Three Extremes, is that the omnibus he's a part of? Yes. Okay.

The things he made first was called Night Fishing. He made it with his younger brother. Right. Shot it on an iPhone 4 about a fisherman who catches a dead woman. That was a big, like Apple gave him money to prove you could make a good movie on an iPhone thing. Correct. Right? Yes.

Correct. I remember Yes. Correct. I remember that making a splash. It won a short film award at the Berlin Film Festival. Okay. The second is part of an anthology called 30 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero. So I guess that, oh, that's like where every film is a 60 second movie. Cool. 60 Seconds of Solitude.

Did I say 30? Yeah. So he did Snapchat Okay so that barely counts Yeah And then something else Also with his younger brother

Is called Day Trip It's an 18 minute short Developed for an outdoor brand Colon Sports Okay Stars Song Kang Ho Okay His frequent collaborator

It's actually the last time They've worked together Wow Unless they work together again Uh huh I don't know I don't know Does he only work With his younger brother It's actually the last time they've worked together. Wow. Unless they work together again. Uh-huh. I don't know. I don't know much else.

Does he only work with his younger brother on the short films? Possibly. A little condescending. Hey, I'm doing a shorty. Yeah. So, over to Stoker. Mm-hmm. Written by Wentworth Miller, a Prison Break fan.

Captain Cold himself. And I heard he got the entire script tattooed on his chest first. Young Anthony Hopkins from The Human Stain. We all remember. Look the same. I just want to note that in the second season of Prison Break, there's a character named Haywire, very sensitive, who looks at a painting of a boat and then decides to sail to Europe. I absolutely remember that.

But the whole thing with the second season of Prison Break was they broke out a lot of people. And some of them, they were clearly like, okay, these guys aren't going to be in the core Prison Break group. So they had to do things like that where Haywire's like, I think I'm going to get in a sailboat. He just never appears again. That is probably a show that has aged poorly.

Terribly. I can't imagine Teabag Is a character That like resonates now Teabag How did he Earn the name Teabag I mean Teabag is sort of like the

He's the arch villain in a way Right like he's a White supremacist he's a psychopath I feel like people pitch a lot of guests You should have on the show let me just make my pitch for Robert in a way, right? Like he's a white supremacist. He's a psychopath. I feel like people pitch a lot of guests you should have on the show. Let me just make my pitch for Robert Knepper, T-Bag from TV's Prison Break. I think he'd be great.

In character as T-Bag. Wentworth Miller. He is known as the, what's the character called on Prison Break? Lincoln Burroughs. No, that's Dominic Persaud. Michael Schofield. Right.

They had different last names despite being brothers. The human map. He was a human map. And then in season two, they did try to be like, there's actually more to the tattoo. We got to take I-95 or whatever. You know, like it was like the earth was on it. We never checked the butt crack.

Spread those cheeks. Take out a magnifying glass. It's done in smaller. It's just one of those classic like the reveal is in the pilot oh the tattoos are a map and everyone's like great reveal how do you do that long term the writers were like we have ideas don't worry we got plenty of ideas he was wearing socks the whole time that's the bottom of the feed. So, Wentworth Miller attended Princeton University. Nice education if you can get it.

He apparently said he did a creative writing program there. Okay. And was rejected. And sort of, you know, this convinced him, like, I'll never be a writer. Like, I shouldn't even think about that. So, into his 30s, he was sort was sort of like down on himself as a writer and then he says late in one night when my dvr was tapped out remember when your dvr would get tapped out yeah the original reached the end of netflix exactly i thought what if i write a scene like you know he'd always had

this idea for this movie you know what if i write I write a scene? Who's going to know? Four or five weeks later, I had the whole thing. Wow. And he's like mid-Prison Break run at this point? Yeah, I would assume so. What are the years on Prison Break? Prison Break's like 2006 to 2010, I think. 2005 to 2009. You were close.

Okay. And then, of course, 2017 for Prison Break Season 5, which we all waited for. It's ended at this point then? Yeah, maybe it's like... Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure exactly when he wrote it.

But his idea is, what if I mash up Shadow of a Doubt, the Hitchcock film, which this film is quite obviously sort of connected to, The Stepfather, the classic 80s trash masterpiece With Terry O'Quinn A very fun movie about a bad stepfather Remade with one of the Nip Tuck guys?

Yes The fucking other one Not Doctor Doom What's the other one called? Dylan Walsh From Congo Let's all retire And then a sprinkling of

This is the problem when you come on the show emily is it's three people who all have this same stupid knowledge base yeah um and then a sprinkling of dracula essentially a sprinkling of like oh what if we give it kind of a vampiric you know bit of a hat tip in the title down to the stoker title exactly it was funny though i remember just even when this was announced as like the thelist breakout, people were like, so is it secretly a vampire movie? And they had to keep on being like, no, it's just it's just the tip of the hat. But even throughout all the marketing, I think people were like, and he's going to turn out to be Dracula at the end. Right.

Right. Some people wondered if it was that. But of course, Wentworth Miller, who's one of those guys who have always felt and I say this in a nice way, feels like kind of dumb smart or smart dumb, you know what I mean? It's not about vampires. It was never meant to be about vampires, but it is a horror story. A stoker is one who stokes, which also ties nicely in with the narrative.

All right. You can't say he's wrong, David. Nope. Nope. There's stoking happening in the film. The person who got me into this movie is David and my mutual friend, Genevieve Valentine. How is Genevieve? She fucking adores this movie. This is a very Genevieve Valentine movie.

Her read on it, she has a very cool read on it as a vampire story specifically, but I'm not going to. I don't remember all the ins and outs. Sure, but I'm obviously right. There is sort of just a gothic air being lent to everything anyway and so i think you like that title he writes it pretty quickly um uh and he's sort of at that point was kind of like i just wanted to hand it off like i don't you know i don't want to direct it or anything or act like i just sort of wanted to hand it off uh he says the soundtrack for writing the film was Philip Glass's The Hours score. It makes sense.

Classic score, Morning Passages. Uh-huh. The Poet Acts. Just naming some tracks from The Hours score. Script Gets Hot makes the 2010 blacklist. So yeah, this must have been right when Prison Break was over. Sure. Gets a distribution deal.

Scott Free signs on. Ridley and Tony's production company. And then he is revealed as Ted Folk, the sort of pseudonym. And that's sort of when I feel like the hype on this thing goes like supernova. Yes. Where it's like, what?

You already have the buzzy blacklist thing. Then like huge producers are attached. And then it becomes this like, did you know that he This is actually the map guy from Prison Break? Yes. Now if Dominic Purcell had written it, that would have blown my mind. Big potato man. and then it becomes this like did you know that he this is actually the map guy from prison break yes um now if dominic purcell had written it that would have blown my mind big potato man smart smart um uh he has also written a prequel script called uncle charlie yes that has never been made right probably because this film made like we know two million dollars at the box office or

whatever so it's not like people are like stoker pre prequel. But that's like, I'd read it. We're going to say Emily. This is a Fox Searchlight picture, which means that Disney now owns it and they're big on IP. So Uncle Charlie could get made. Stoker origins. Yeah.

No, it's true. Stoker, the rise of Uncle Charlie. Okay. So Park Chan-wook, obviously at this point, fairly major international name, has never made an English language project, but I imagine he just had gotten to that point where a lot of scripts would probably get sent his way.

Hollywood's trying to tempt him over. But I don't even remember there ever being like whispers of like, they're trying to get him for this. He's in talks for this. It felt like he, up until this point in time, seemed like a guy very happy working in his home country, not being lured by Hollywood, doesn't want to fall for the bait. He says kind of a right place, right time thing. It comes in as he's finishing Thirst. He likes the script. He thinks it's in his comfort zone.

So it's like, yes, I'll be trying something new by making an English film, but like it's the kind of story I make. Yeah. And, you you know he's just intrigued he also likes much like I'm a suburb but that's okay this is going to sound demented but he likes that the protagonist is sort of his daughter's age and he's like oh make a film that she could relate to

we've already found this narrative of Park Chan-wook trying to relate to his daughter through movies and her being like, Dad, what do you think of me? I mean, the thing with I'm a Suburb, but that's okay. He's like, I made a movie for you. And she's like, thanks. I was more of a fan of like Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes. Anyway,

but no, he likes that the protagonist is a young woman around the age of his daughter. Sure. So even though it's an English language script, it is heavy on image, light on dialogue. Yes. And so that's another reason he's sort of like, well, this is a quiet script. I can bring in a lot of visual

elements. I mean, of course he forgot to do it. This film's lacking in visuals. Yes. The camera never moves! It's like my dinner with Andre over here. It's stuck in molasses! When this movie opens... You never crossfades. When this movie opens, basically, with Mia Vasekowska

explaining that she's, like, especially, like, extreme responses to her senses, sensorial experiences, you're like, oh, this is, like, his perfect material of just, like like someone who like

everything feels sounds yeah you know more extreme yes because he's so good at that sort of like um psychological tactility of like uh this the surface of something you know the actual texture of a material of a touch i think look i don't know to what extent the Scotts were involved too, but that's also kind of a Tony Scott thing. It's the same thing where like Tony Scott will shoot just a fucking street scene and you're kind of like, why is my chair rumbling? You know what I mean? Like it's just that the mere atmosphere will be enough

to kind of set the noise machine off. Park can like have a character in hyper close-up like touch a piece of paper and you're like, why am I coming? All right. He's a sexual filmmaker. He absolutely is. Arguably one of his most sexual films in a very sexual filmography. They're all pretty sexual. Yes.

For not being that, For being less explicitly sexual Yeah There's like two kisses in it Yes It's wild True There's not a lot of actual sex One post-murder shower jerk-off

Yeah Yeah So obviously this is a very Hitchcockian movie He claims Oh no, that wasn't really what interested me But alright, pardon And you know The other deviation is This is probably the first movie He doesn't have a writing credit on no that wasn't really what interested me but all right pardon um and uh you know uh the other uh

deviation is this is probably the first movie he doesn't have a writing credit on because he would usually have a writing credit on his movies uh but uh you know whatever perfect script no notes he did work on the script a little bit he did talk to wentworth before it he had a round of notes uh he also worked with uh his his co-writer for the rewrites Was Aaron Cressida Wilson Who wrote Secretary And then ends up writing the Didn't she write something weird recently?

Let's look it up She's a playwright as well I think she's written a lot of plays She wrote Chloe Remember that one? Oh she wrote Snow White The upcoming Mark Webb Snow White Yes

She also wrote The Girl on the Train Oh, she wrote Men, Women, and Children It's a mixed bag over here Yeah, yeah But yeah, he says that his revisions were small Okay But whatever I don't know

All right, so as you said Original Three, Jodie Foster, Carey Mulligan, Colin Firth Some cursed rumors about Johnny Depp as Uncle Charlie here. I don't even know. What would he have had to go off of in this character? There's just nothing

popping on the page that he could latch onto and take. Where's Depp at this point? I mean, I don't even know. Is this sort of like post-The Taurus? Well, yeah. No, this is not a high. This is like the same year as The Lone Ranger. Oh, sure. This is him...

Because 2010 is Alice. Yeah. And The Taurus. Highest grossing film ever? Well, and then you have 2011, Rango, Stranger Tides. Right. You know, Rum Diary. Right. Then 2012 is Dark Shadows 2013 is Lone Ranger

2014 is Transcendence And Tourist is 2010 as well? Yeah But no Mia Wachikowska She's been in Alice in Wonderland She's in The Kids Are Alright Sort of a forgotten film

Good movie I haven't seen it She's in the Carrie Fukunaga Jane Eyre Never Forgotten film. Yeah. Good movie. Totally good. Good movie. I haven't seen it. Solid. She's in the Carrie Fukunaga Jane Eyre. Yes. Not a good movie. I like it.

So she's just hot stuff, I feel like, right? She's just... She has a fascinating career. There was a semi-recent IndieWire piece about her and how like did you notice that she quietly stepped away

from the industry? Yeah, I feel like she took a few years. I mean, there was just a lot of her. That was the tone of the piece. Right. There was like eight years where she was non-stop everywhere and kind of was a bizarre movie star for someone who was so quiet, reactive, delicate.

Yeah, she made the Alice money. she made those two alice movies she made a bunch of money and she was like i'm she kind of did the robert pattinson thing yeah she was like i'm gonna just make weird indie passion get their things made but she you know she was the runy mara of her of her very micro period where it's like if you want someone to play a wounded bird. It wasn't that micro though. It was like five years. Yeah. And then she basically was just like, I spent five years just living out of a suitcase. I worked nonstop. I did six movies a year.

I was exhausted and I didn't know who I was. And she moved back to Australia and she's just like, occasionally something gets me off the couch. I will do Bergman Island. I mean, she's incredible. That comes to me. I'll do it. But she's like, I'm not really seeking out jobs anymore. I dropped most of my representation. I'm back home in Australia.

It has to really be a special thing. I have no interest in being a movie star. Yeah, she really does not work that often. Yeah, she still. Every time she starts back on the court, she kind of nails it. She had a film at Cannes this year, Club Zero, Jessica Hausner film, that was very polarizing.

That was why I think she did this piece. Right. Yeah. So, you know, she's obvious casting, I feel like. Yeah. Park's very into a short film she made called I Love Sarah Jane. Yes. Apparently that was a big one for him.

That's the fucking... She's very good at minimal, like not overt expression you know kind of like beneath the surface is that the hesher guy that was a thing that was it was a big fucking splash and it kind of made her career and made his career that both of them off of that short which went viral started getting big deals was that before in treatment what year was that i think it's the same year basically i think, yeah. I obviously remember she was on In Treatment. She was one of the treaties. Yes.

She was the best part of season one. Right, and everyone was crazy about her performance. That was the springboard, really. I don't know. You keep on reading. I feel like there's now constantly a stream of actresses doing press for new movies saying that they also auditioned or tested for Alice in Wonderland and really wanted that, weirdly.

Right. Burton. Voskoska kind of came out of nowhere to get that part, even though, like, Entreatment was such a good performance and that short had gone viral. It was like, oh, you've never been in an American film before and now you're like the star of a humongous fucking thing. She nailed the Futterwacken is what happened in the audition. They did a Futterwacken

test for everyone and she's the only one who was able to do it without CGI. She's the only one who was able to react to the Futterwacken with anything but disgust.

Yeah. She held her vomit in. She swallowed it. Nicole Kidman, I feel like just part of her long run of working with interesting directors.

It feels like one of those that she says she was just offered the role like, you know, that they saw it makes perfect sense she's the obvious knew who the director was and was like sounds great yeah um uh she said in their first meeting he said to her about the script like about the character like ever since you've held this baby this baby's never wanted to be held go from there good shit yeah um she'd seen like uh the vengeance movie she said uh she said i do think i only saw half of old boy because i was like oh my god forky vibes yeah

yeah happy ending though right yeah and she was like i'm sure it ends fine turning this off um uh and then matthew good where's matthew good at this point? I feel like he is the least known. He's looking pretty hot. He's pretty hot at this point. But he's getting kind of hot. But he always, his career is so... I guess Watchmen, the whole thing was that Watchmen kind of tanked him in a way. Because everyone was like, you were supposed to play the perfect man in that movie. And like, that's tough to live up to.

His career is so oddly stop and starty where he just like, every five years would get heat again. And they'd be like yeah of course why haven't we figured this out yet and then he's never totally like gained the full head of steam I love him I don't know how you feel about good he's so good and he's so hot I think he is

good and then sometimes he is incredible and when he's incredible you're like why isn't anyone figuring out how to harness this regularly feels He feels very similar to Dan Stevens to me. Yes. He can give a performance where you're like, yeah, you're fine. You're doing an English guy. You're fine. Right. You're handsome. And then he'll give a performance where you're like,

he understood the assignment. You're clapping between every word. Very annoying. And something like Match Point, a movie I know you hate more than anything, but where you're just like, no, I agree. But he's like, arguably the best part of it. And it's one of those things where you're just like, no, I agree. But it's like arguably the best part of it. And it's one of those things where you're like, this is very easy,

just off the shelf, British rich asshole character. And he somehow comes at it so specifically that you're like, who the fuck is this guy? Um, he's not to go off on a whole tangent. He is incredible on the fucking offer. He is the only actor who understood the assignment in that.

Everyone, everyone who watched that show, all 12 people, had that takeaway, at the very least. They were like, if nothing else, good is good.

The whole show's a cartoon. He's playing the guy who was a living cartoon character. And you're like, he found depth to Robert Evans. He subbed in on The Good Wife. Yes. He was your Josh Charles replacement. And he was good.

He was good. The show was kind of falling apart at that point. Tough moment for the show. He subs in on Downton Abbey, not to bring up Dan Stevens again. Right. But he's another mid-season. He's the rock doing Journey 2.

He's like, I'll swing in. You need another English? You need another charmer? And prestige TV Viagra. He'd swung in on The Crown. Man. Just maybe for one season. Yeah. He's not in it very much. English you need another charmer and prestige TV Viagra he'd swung in on the crown man just maybe for one season yeah he's like the Earl of Snowden or whatever

I do I think you're right that the the Watchmen thing a there was that weird thing where it felt like the industry didn't understand Watchmen as it was about to come out where they were like what's the 300 guy making a superhero movie it's gonna be fucking humongous it's the most beloved comic book of all time.

Right. And people acted like every actor getting cast in that movie was about to have a Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man moment. Yeah. Well, like this is going to make you iconic. And you're like,

it's Watchmen. It's like a dead end. Yeah. There are no sequels to this. And it's like, it's not asking for someone to give a movie star performance. It's asking for someone to give a dramatic performance. Yeah. Um, and in my my memory he's pretty blah he's the worst he's okay yeah he's fine but i just i you know what i just fucking hate that movie i will never come around

on that movie fuck you but i know who you are mad that i'm saying that. It's also like... I tried to watch the mega edition of it too. And I was like, sorry. I like the opening credits sequence. That's the one thing I like. I think the opening credits sequence is overrated. I know you do. It's okay. That really works for me and the rest of the movie I think kind of sucks. What do you think of Watchmen? I don't like it.

I like the opening credits and then I think the rest of it is badly understanding the source material. Yes. I have always felt the same way then I think the rest of it is badly understanding the source material. Yes, I have always felt the same way. I know some people like Watchmen, and that's okay. We can all live in harmony together. Much like being a cyborg. It's okay if you like Watchmen, the movie.

Much like being a podcast. I feel like his costume, his visual translation from the comic is the worst. Yeah, he kind of looked dorky when he was supposed to look like the perfect man. That's the thing. The design was bad, and then I remember just being like, he looks uncomfortable is the worst. Yeah, he kind of looked dorky when he was supposed to look like the perfect man. That's the thing. The design was bad. And then I remember just being like, he looks uncomfortable in the costume. This whole thing with this guy

is that he should be like so supremely confident above it all. And I was like, they gave him a bad costume and it looks like he can't move in it. Yeah. Who was... Tough role. Who was the person...

I'm trying to remember who the obvious fan casting was at the time. I don't know. That didn't happen. There was the person? I'm trying to remember who the obvious fan casting was at the time. I don't know. That didn't happen. There was someone where everyone was like, we all agree who should play Ozymandias. I don't know. Like Tom Cruise?

Like, I mean, I don't know. That was an earlier version of it, but whatever. Yes. Post that, I do feel like he's floundering a little bit. But this was the one where I was like, yeah, this is what I want from this guy. You know? Sociopath hottie uh you

know wears a pair of sunglasses and a polo shirt like nothing else or whatever right there's something about him that's dead behind the eyes but in a good way like normally when an actor's kind of dead behind their eyes that limits them and but there's something about him that's just unapproachable makes sense for this character perfectly obviously the other i mean a single man is the other thing that's invoked about him, where he's the dead partner, right? He's the only in flashback

kind of, again, like sort of an ideal or whatever. Yeah. I forgot, right, he does Leap Year right before this, which was a real, maybe we finally sell him as like a... I think Leap Year is okay Leap Year is fun

it's a nice little movie they're in Ireland right? is he Irish? he's very Irish in that movie that movie is alright I watched that during my gentle movie run I had a great time it looks nice it's well shot

it's not cocky you know what also Amy Adams is fucking good. Amy Adams? It's fucking good. What's she doing? It's not a great run. I hear she was the lead in some fucking movie where Griffin Newman played a chipmunk, which is like career death. Well, she was good in that.

But that, you know, it's always... Well, how was I in it? You were good too. You were amazing. I'm just saying, don't only shout out her. I was also a cat in amazing. I'm just saying, don't only shout out her. I was also a cat. But, look, it is tough to go back and Arrival is the last one where you're like,

that was a really interesting, exciting thing. I will say this. Biases aside, I think she is incredibly good in Disenchanted, but it's also kind of damning that that's the best movie she's been in in six years. Easily the best movie she's been in since Arrival, unless you sort of count the Snyder Cut. Yeah.

Like where like maybe you just are kind of like, well, that's sort of an interesting object. Even if you like the Snyder Cut a lot, he did not know how to use Amy Adams. I don't remember her really mattering in that movie too much. Once again, neither of those should be the best movie she's made in six years. And like, I would go like Arrival,

Disenchanted, and then I'm like, like, let's set Justice League aside for now. I'm like, um, uh, Vice? I'm like, wait, does it have to be Vice? You get why she's making the choices. I'm really excited for her Marianne Heller thing.

I think that's going to click. Are they putting it on Hulu? They might change their mind, but that's the intent. Stoker. Stoker. Bit of a learning curve for our director here. He is making his first American production. How fluent is he in English?

I don't know. Okay. As far as I know, he in English? I don't know. Okay. As far as I know, he talks through a translator when he's being interviewed. But I'm not sure. He wasn't given a lot of pre-production time. He says shorter than he usually gets. He's a meticulous storyboarder, unsurprisingly.

This guy? Feels like he's kind of just like running gun, picture it up. He's like a Duplass brother kind of protege, i don't know just put up on his feet he's a puffy chair and he's like that's a movie let's film the rehearsal um yes he shoots with editing in mind fuck that's what the puffy chair puffy chair wait a second what if there was a puffy chair sparks flying um i think he also does beyond beyond doing a lot of pre-pro, like a lot of storyboarding stuff,

he also does a lot of rehearsals, I think, does a lot of talking to the actors. Thirst, shot for 100 days. Wow. Fairly long. Stoker shot for 40 days, which I would say is fairly typical for a movie this size. If anything, these days, possibly long for a movie this size.

But it also makes me understand maybe why he hasn't made another English language film in 10 years of like, this is luxurious. Yeah. Well, he's giving me 40. In Korea, what I do is I watch the playback of each take with all the actors and spend a lot of time discussing the take. That does not strike me as what goes on on a Fox Searchlight movie set. No. I don't think that happens on any American director's movie set. Right.

And, you know, he's got, like, his usual thing is like, he has an on-set assembly person, like an editor, basically, who's cutting takes into sequences as they're shooting them. That's his usual process. This is different okay he's also working with different producers you know he's got less clout you know unsurprising like i think in korea at this point in his career he can

basically whatever he says goes right here there's a conversation for everything Probably you know what I mean You know what Hollywood's like guys Is this the last movie Tony Scott is alive For the production of He's I think they dedicate it to him It's dedicated to him but that's why I was trying to He must be alive for the production He died in August 2012 so I would assume yes

He's still alive but maybe just And this comes out early 13 It premiered at Sundance 2013, January. So, yeah, I think this was the last kind of scot-free production that he was hands-on with to some degree. Apparently, Fox Searchlight's big thing was they did ask him to push the violence sometimes in ways he thought was sort of over the top. Interesting.

Like, for example, like when, you know, he approaches Jackie Weaver over the top interesting um like for example like when you know he approaches jackie weaver with the belt yeah he wanted to cut really fast they were like you know cut out before he's even in the phone booth they were like no no no like shoot some stuff in the phone booth sure you see it from far away in the movie but still like you know what i mean like i don't know why they wanted it to be more lurid but they're it's probably also just that classic hollywood thing of like well let's just get everything and then we'll figure it out later. I think there's that. And I also just imagine they're like,

it's easier to sell this movie the more we have conventional horror moments in it. Even if we're not going to use them in the trailer, it helps us to have them. Right. He also didn't like the title and Fox Searchlight insisted on keeping the title. He wanted to call it Prodder.

Do you think, yeah, do you think Wentworth Miller explained to him that a stoker is one who stokes? A stoker is one who stokes. Yes. I am the one who stokes. What do you call this movie? It's not like I'm like, yeah, stoker, bad title.

It should have been called The Lonely Girl Murders. Like, you know, Saddle Shoes. I kind of think stoker's a good title. Great title. Yeah. My uncle is a serial killer and that's okay. Yeah, that's a good title too. Although it does give up.

It does give up. The premise a little bit. You could call it Uncle Charlie. I know that's what this supposedly, like I suppose, but like that's kind of a boring title for this. Yeah. Yeah. I cannot imagine how uninteresting the Uncle Charlie script is. Not to be rude, but I'm like, that sounds like the kind of thing where that's a good writing

exercise to have all of that in your back pocket as you're writing this movie. But like, this movie has two flashbacks to Uncle Charlie before he arrives at the house and you're like, everything I need to know about this guy. Now the other thing I will say, and this is a critique, but a sort of understanding critique, is this film was shot in Nashville.

The story is clearly steeped in Southern Gothic storytelling. Doesn't feel Southern in any meaning. The cast is almost exclusively Australian and British. A lot of the references to like geography are California references. Very much. Bizarre. He seems to be setting it in

nowhere. Even though like when you're watching the movie you're like this isn't set in like the bayou or something. Middleville High School or something. Right. Where are the the gators so i feel like there is a bit of a push and pull where he says like i was going for more like timeless nondescript you know uh which doesn't make sense to me because i'm like this story screams like you know fucking crawdad should be singing or whatever there is like big maybe this is just the presence of me i watch costco but there is like a big bronte vibe to it so you could see this being

set in like the scottish highlands or something but i think it would work almost in any location rather than no location right right but that's the thing about this which is why i think it rubbed some people the wrong way it's all stripped out So it's just like all style and it's all like archetypes. Right. And that vibes for me fine. Yeah. But I think I imagine some people were just kind of like, what can I grab onto here? Well, it is like, you know, she, you realize she goes to high school, which seems like a weird thing that she goes to.

But like, then she shows up and she's just in Riverdale. Like she's on cw series riverdale karate riverdale if reggie wanted to punch women yeah like jesus relax but it's also like anytime there's a character from outside of this house who comes in they're just coming in from another movie which is a vibe that i like i like that too right i mean i right if i were bullying um jesus what's her name? India. Yeah. I would, yeah, I would be like,

what fucking novel did you just walk out of Saddleshoes, girl? Like, what is this? I can't believe you forgot her name is India Stoker. Very normal name. Yeah.

Yes. You know, but he's turning it into more of like a general fairy tale, I feel like. Yeah. You know, dark fairy tale.

Well, I think, look, massive spoilers ahead, right? Yes, go ahead. The thing this movie does that is so interesting to me is it basically plays this game of like, I would not say it's a twist film, right? No, because it's pretty obvious that something is afoot immediately. Right, but what it's playing with is this expectation of like, which person in this house is the problem?

Right? You sort of start off the movie with the like Ice Queen mother. Right? Then Uncle Charlie comes in who's a little bit too good to be true. And you're like, so are they up to something together and is our lead character in danger? And then you get to this point where you're like, no, it's about

the fact that she's also kind of a problem right and i like that it's like the clues are kind of there from the very beginning the opening the hunting all that sort of shit but he's sort of using against you the idea of like you know the thing that gets fucking jumbled in stupid film twitter discourse all the time of like if if the character is the protagonist, we must like her. She must be relatable. I'm going to ignore all the warning signs, much as Nicole Kidman says, right?

I'm going to ignore all the warning signs that are clearly there because I want to love her because the movie is putting her at the center of the story. So clearly she must be the hero, the victim, the person I need to be rooting for and looking out for and everything. And then you get to this point halfway through where you're like, she is infected with the same shit that he is. Bad blood. Right. Bad blood. They both have

like the curse. Right. And then as the movie goes on, you're like, oh, Nicole Kidman's the hero of this movie. Right. And she's also been sort of aware the whole time. Right. Rather than like the, you know, Gertrude. Right. At the beginning, you're like, oh, it's Hamlet. You know. Yeah. Uncle came in, knocked off the dad. Right.

He's just like getting in with the mom. She's Hamlet. She's going to figure it out. There's even though a point where like, once again, Voskoska is like, maybe he's like a problem. Maybe I actually do need to. He's so much worse than I am. I need to get away. And then at the end, she comes out and it is like, maybe he's like a problem. Maybe I actually do need to, he's so much worse than I am, I need to get away.

Sure. And then at the end, she comes out and it's like, oh, she's just fully a serial killer now. She loves doing this. And her, and like the thing is, even when you see her dad,

who's this beloved figure, he is like training her to kill her uncle because he's Dexter's dad. Like he's, I'm coming in to like give you the serial killer. Yes. Knowledge that you will need. The outlay. Dermot Mulroney,

who plays India's father in this film. In flashbacks. In flashbacks. Is 14 years older than Matthew Goode. Yes. What's going on there? Well, look, it was supposed to be Colin Firth at first.

I think this part was supposed to be younger. Yeah, that would make more sense. Goode is actually weirdly too young. They do set up that the kids have a pretty large age gap. They do. Which I think does work for that flashback scene of there being this relationship to like, he's a little bit more

of a co-parent than just a big brother. Right. And so he really wears the responsibility of I let the other kid die. We're going into deep spoiler territory. Spoil the movie, Eric. My bigger thing with the spoiler territory. Yeah, we're spoiling the movie every week. My bigger thing with the Dermot Mulroney casting

is for so much of the movie, they're implying that he's this disgusting old fat guy, right? They basically do this thing of like, you're so much younger than your brother was.

Like, Nicole Kidman's getting so turned on by this like more virile version of her dead husband. Right. And they make all the jokes of like, his clothes are a little loose

on me, this belt is oversized. And then you see Dermot Mulroney, the ultimate silver fox. And he looks good? Yes. It's not like he's hideous in this one. No, I feel like they're making you think that the dead father's John Pulido. That would be funny. And then it's like an hour and change before

you finally get a flashback to him and you're like, yeah, the guy who famously has aged better. Fucking MTV Movie Award Best Kiss nominee oh that hair look and quilt um i i like dermot mulroney i do too i'm just gonna throw it out there i just think he's a fucking steady presence um although have you seen scream sex yes have you seen scream no i have not one of he spills a tub of paprika In that movie I mean it's It's a bold performance He's interesting in that movie Right he watched other actors in Scream

And was like this is too subtle In like the Scream series But anyway I do generally like Dermot Mulroney But yes okay the plot of Stoker is You got India she's always got in a pair of saddle shoes On her birthday She's very feely she's always got in a pair of saddle shoes on her birthday. She's very feely, she's very quiet, she's very weird. She feels things intensely.

Yes. She's got Nicole Kidman in sort of like frozen face mode as her mom. That's always going to be, you know, it's a Stafford wife mode. Right, emotionally distant. Right. Right. Her dad is now dead in a car crash inexplicably on her birthday. Yes.

And guess who's in town? Uncle Charlie played by Matthew Goode. Who has never even been spoken of before. Right. Who claims he just came in from Europe. Yeah. And is an international businessman of great renown. And he's crazy.

Not to be, you know, too blunt about it. No, this is... He's crazy and does murders. Yes. I think you could have given this movie the title, My Crazy Uncle, and, like, the poster could have been Mia Wajikowska, like... Head tilted.

Gerard Depardieu behind him like a jet ski or something. Yeah. This is a movie where I'm like, it feels incorrect to say, like, he is suffering from mental illnesses. You're like, no, he is movie crazy. He's, he is,

he, or in the grand literary tradition of crazy people, he's one of them. Crazy is the only way to describe this. His reaction to problems is to murder. This is not how a human brain works. Right. This is movie crazy.

There are human obstacles. He will, he will remove them with murder. Yes. And a belt is always involved. He's very fond of strangulation with belt. Yes. And, you know, five minutes into the movie, we're all like, well, he killed her dad.

Right. And she's piecing it together. And you're like, is this what the whole movie is going to be about? Not really. That's what I like. It's that sort of like magic trick thing of like he's making you look at the wrong thing. Yes. Right. You're watching him being like, why are they taking so long to like unfurl this guy?

And it's like, right, because it's about her. It's about distracting you from the fact that all the warning signs are there. All the red flags are there. Yeah, he's it feels for a long time like an inversion of Lolita in certain ways, and then he is grooming her, but grooming her to be herself in some weird way. Right, he sees the whatever, the crazy in her. He's removing

the sort of, the blocks that Dermot Mulroney has built around her, the blinders. And he, to spoil the film, I don't know why I'm worried about the film jesus it's a 90-minute movie you can rent it on amazon that's good um and it's good but uh he's not an amazon company sure i agree with you uh he is explicitly asked to be released from the mental institution that he was actually in not europe sure on her 18th birthday because he's decided

in his head like when she comes of age she can can become his, you know, the Bonnie to his Clyde or whatever. You know. He's been obsessed with her since she was born. Right. Despite being kept as far away from the beginning. He just has the sense of, like, you're a mutant, too. I feel like serial killers needing protégés is, like, a harmful stereotype. Like, actual serial killers.

Plenty of serial killers are perfectly self-sufficient. stereotype like actual serial killers plenty of serial killers are perfectly self-sufficient but i do like that there's sort of this like we need to talk about kevin thing where this girl's born and everyone's like oh fuck she's a killer how do we like as a baby you get the sense that everyone dirt mulroney was like okay i have to create like a real regiment around like not letting her murder other human beings and matthew good is locked up in an institution he can just feel it the second she's born right somewhere another killer yes right um so okay so richard shows up he's hanging around the funeral being cute charlie shows up richard sorry charlie not richard uh charlie uh argues with the uh the maid played by Phyllis Somerville,

the great Phyllis Somerville, great stage actress, I think recently dead. Yes, 2020. She, every year, Dermot Mulroney would... Get his daughter a pair of saddle shoes. There's this crazy fucking, you know, shot sequence of the shoes shrinking. Beautiful box with a bow on it.

And this is her birthday. Her dad left her, which is unlike him because he loves her and he's such a doting father. And she checks. The best sniper rifle teacher of all. The box, it's empty. Phyllis Somerville's like, you check again. There's a key inside. And she realizes, like, the presents weren't from you?

Weren't from dad presents weren't from you from dad they were from you right and I guess the implication is the maid has been sort of Charlie's sort of avatar correct in the house like his go between yeah and so the saddle shoes I don't

there's this whole thing with the saddle shoes with the saddle shoes represent innocence and not being a serial killer and putting on high heels represents embracing one's womanhood and becoming a serial killer high heels are like the knives of the feet when you talk about this movie

it does sound like an F-1 star piece of shit I love it but no yes I get why certain people are like fuck this I feel like this is one of those movies where like the people who didn't like it were loudly scoffing in the theater. Like, oh, come on. So, but yeah, he argues with the maid.

Guess what happens to the maid? Gets belted. She gets put in the ice cream tray. Ice cream freezer. Yeah. You know what flavor of ice cream she was surrounded by? Belt. What else is going on she's being bullied at school by a lucas till yes who is crazy yes and keeps threatening to punch her yeah like and like i just like this is one of those things where i'm like what is going on

where like it kind of has the dynamic of not to be gendered about this, but like a boy picking on a boy. Yes. I'm like, it feels less common for the jock at school to be like, let me like, you know, threaten to beat up the emo girl. Yeah. But also maybe he's smart.

Maybe he's like, I'm getting huge murder vibes from her. We need to put her in her place. Guys, I'm not like punching down. I truly think this is self-defense for the entire town. Right. And then you have alden aaron

reich who i forgot was in this movie his name's whip playing whip taylor whip taylor uh who is um presents as a more like-minded student a more sympathetic sure yeah another outsider another outside motorcycle boy wrong side of the tracks um Who kind of helped her Whatever Deal with the bully Although she really deals with the bully herself By stabbing him with a pencil What else is going on

Nicole Kidman's there She's just going like Isn't Charlie so nice Jackie Weaver pops in Everybody in this movie is somebody And they come in for like two scenes And they're gone Jackie Weaver, high off

her second Oscar nom? Yes. Good for her. A wild double nominee. One of the great two double nominees. Who then Hollywood has never quite figured out how to use. She still does stuff. She works constantly. Yeah. I love her. Yeah. I feel like she should be the boss in a TV

show or something now. She should be the fucking chief on the next CSI or NCIS. The FBI Memphis or whatever. She should fall into the good wife universe. That feels like where. She could be a wacky lawyer, judge. She could be. They could give her her own show.

What's this good wife spinoff with the wacky. Elspeth. Yeah. Yeah. Is that a good character? I mean, sure. spinoff with the the wacky elspeth yeah yeah is that a good character i mean sure one of those characters that's very fun on that show yeah you know like comes in you know has a fun episode every so often you're like ah crazy i don't want to speak ill of the kings because i think they make good television but i do i do think you know. Has Big the Tortellis energy?

Let's put it that way. There's a certain point in which the minecart might fall off the track. I'm just saying. They're taking some wild curves at this point. I've never watched Wife Nor Fight. I saw the trailer for that when the pilot got picked up. And I was like, this feels like New Girl Detective. This is a spinoff of this like August, deeply respected two series run.

The Kings, Evil, one of the great shows on TV right now. But the Kings should have made Wife Fight. That should have been their next show. The Wife Fight. The Wife Fight. With Glenn Close. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Aunt Jin shows up. Jackie Weaver. Hi, how are you doing? Here's Uncle Charlie Aunt Jin's like, well that's weird Can we talk? Nicole Kidman's like, sure, let's talk later

She's like, okay, okay, I'll go back to my motel She also says we can talk only in front of Charlie She's not like, hey Nicole Kidman Can I pull you aside for a second? At dinner she's like, Nicole Kidman Can we make plans later to talk privately about this guy who I don't want to hear what I have to say to? You?

Does Nicole Kidman know about the dead brother? That's my question. This is exactly my question. If Nicole Kidman is aware of something being wrong, why is she then like, yeah, I'll talk to you later, Jackie? I don't know. She seems like she's sort of condemning her to death there.

Yeah. Yeah. She's probably just not worried about it. I think she's not. I think she doesn't know. Right. She maybe doesn't know the extent of this. Or she's willfully blind to it.

I also think she's more suspicious of India than she is of Uncle Charlie. I think that's sort of the explanation is that she's just like, my husband's dead. Did my daughter do this? is that she's just like, my husband's dead. Did my daughter do this? I mean, and this does have that movie thing where like the quote-unquote crazy guy does such a good impression of a normal person

that in the reality of this film, you wouldn't necessarily think, well, he's clearly a serial killer because he's acting in a very heightened way, but in a movie that is heightened. I suppose that's true. I might have my suspicions. I don't want to sound like Sherlock Holmes over here.

Sure. So, Charlie kills Aunt Jen at the motel in a phone booth with his belt. She says, I'm going to the motel, gets in the car, maybe he says, where else? Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that cut to him saying, where are you saying the belt more? Gets in the car. Are there any other hotels in town? The belt's more. A little Easter egg.

She does. Staying at the murder inn. She stays at a different hotel, but she still does get more of the belt. David? David? That's the door, right? That cut from her saying,

are there any other hotels to just wide shot of her in this horrible motel room sitting there waiting to be murdered is really funny to me it look i also just think jackie weaver is really funny like yes just her sitting is funny yeah there's just something she's got that crocodile smile yeah just kind of inherently like very heightened about her that i think is good i agree i'm very pro jackie weaver um but she's yeah i don't know she probably can play subtle actors subtle characters just not in hollywood this movie is just fast like you describing the plot of it i makes me it's just a person Enters the movie they are killed A person enters the movie and it shouldn't work But it does It shouldn't really work

What happens after that Well what happens after that is the whole encounter with Whip Where um Well the piano scene Okay so the best scene in the movie you're right And that's the scene That's the scene Does that happen before or after Jackie Weaver?

Pretty sure that happens after the murder of Jackie Weaver, but before the murder of Alden Aaron Wright. Cross-cut with Matthew Goode belting Jackie Weaver in the phone booth is Mia Vostokowska finding the other dead body in the freezer. So she now kind of has all the information and um he the day before had been getting piano lessons from nicole kim in quotes and been like i don't even know how to play the piano and then you have this scene where india is sitting at the piano playing uh philip glass diddy an original piece of composition for the film yes who was

originally hired to score the whole film and then ended up just doing the piano pieces. According to JJ, that may be a misconception based on the fact that Glass wrote this one piece of music. That maybe there was a thought that he was going to do the whole movie. Clint Mansell does the score.

Yeah. But look, the film was written to the hour soundtrack. You got to get glassy in there. You know, you got to throw up a pain. Got to shower some glass. Got to double glaze it. How many more of these puns can I do?

Throw up a pain. And there's this scene where he joins her to play double piano and it's like they're bucking. Yes. I don't know how else to put it. He tries to like, it's like he's trying to absorb her. It's like... And he's like challenging her. it's like they're bucking. Yes. I don't know how else to put it. He tries to like, it's like he's trying to

absorb her. It's like. And he's like challenging her. He's like, what if I do do do do do and she's like, oh, I know how to do this. And their feet are getting tangled around the pedals. They're sharing the bench. You know. So sexy, so creepy. Everything we're saying sounds like its own euphemism.

These two sharing the bench. This whole movie is a euphemism. These two share in the bench. This whole movie's a euphemism. Push the look pedals. And obviously, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, director Park's favorite, was the king of, well, they won't let me show fucking in the film. So I'll instead, I'll make a scene

where it's like they're fucking. That's what he sounded like. David? Yeah. Wonderful. That was an incredible impression. I've seen enough alfred hitchcock to know that's what he sounded like they should reboot alfred hitchcock and have you

i saw there is a play called hitchcock wand uh which i think had a broadway run okay um that is like a very strange play by terry johnson that's like a double narrative of like alfred hitchcock meeting a woman that he's casting to be in psycho okay or something like that he's casting for something uh and a media studies professor and his like student on her thing oh no that's right meeting a woman who he shoots a test reel with okay and the this media studies professor unraveling the test like you're finding it and it's all about hitchcock was that made into a movie or am i remembering a thing from the four but you're absolutely right i think but no no because there was at least there was the movie with his hopkins that i never saw it was right right yeah but then wasn't there there was the

girl was that what it was that's another thing that was a tv movie right? But wasn't there, there was The Girl? Was that what it was called? That's another thing. That was a TV movie, right? That's the Tippi Hedren. Right. That was about making Marnie and the birds or whatever. And Hitchcock is about Psycho. Right, no, this is the girl abstract. The Girl is more about the complicated relationship

of the Hitchcock blonde. And Rosamund Pike played the Hitchcock blonde. Okay, okay. And David Haig played the media studies professor. But William Hootkins played Hitchcock Bond and David Hague played the media studies professor, but William Hootkins played Hitchcock, who everyone may know best as Porkins from Star Wars. Which, speaking of...

Who just had a great Hitchcock vibe. They didn't have to do much work. The name William Hootkins, already you're like, this guy can play. First, you think that he's probably someone who can turn into an owl at will. William Hootkins. Or produce many owl babies. But I just remember walking

out of there being like, so who's that plane? Let me look at the plane. You know, I'm like probably like 16 years older. Yeah. And I was like, wait a second, that's Porkins, the guy who dies one minute into the trench run. Well, you speak about the deep southern fried veracity of this movie. Old Texas style

sheriff shows up in this film played by rick olie uh yes uh ralph brown fighter pilot uh who is uh the the i believe he's the one in phantom menace who delivers the classic line uh we didn't do anything when when fucking anakin's blowing up a entire base yes we didn't hit it uh Yes, Rick Olea, you're right. He plays the southern fried sheriff who gets garden sheared at the end of the movie. Which, like I'll say...

Worst sheriff of all time. I don't want to say he had coming, but he really fucked up. He shows up to their house being like, so, what's up? This kid got murdered. You were last seen with him. She's like, I don't know.

I was here. And Matthew Good's like, I was. I was here too. He's like, see you later. Sounds good. By the way, the maid that disappeared, any word on that? They're like, no. And he's like, yeah, you know, people go missing all the time. My car's running. What's wild about him is he actually, you watch

him ask all the right questions and then ignore the answers. He's like, okay, I'll see you later. Matthew Good saves her by having memorized TV schedules. the right questions and then ignore the answers he's like okay i'll see you later matthew good saves her by having memorized tv schedules so that's true he comes in with a pbs uh you know fucking moliere was on or what i can't remember what it was there you go yeah yeah charlie on the oscar watch forums was he was he a television without pity like i'm not sure about this guy but uh yeah but they don't say what channel pbs on because, of course, this is not set in a specific place.

No, of course not. It's a nebulous PBS. Emily, I feel like we're moving through the plot quickly. Are there things we breezed over that you want to touch upon at all? No, because I feel like my whole vibe on this film is I'm going to come in at the end and give a wild reading. We have to summarize what happened.

It's the classic Emily move. Okay, you have a wild reading. Okay, well, so alright, so Whip, you know, there's the whole scene where he kind of saves her. Yes. They wander out to like a diner. They make out. She bites his lip. Well, no, he saves

her. Then she goes to the diner in the middle of the night after she's solved that her uncle is a murderer. Oh, yeah, after the ice cream revelation. She goes there. He's basically like, what are you doing on the wrong side of the tracks? Right. And it's like, I'm here to fuck in the woods. She bites his lip and he's like, you know, wow.

Right. And he makes some comment about like, everyone says you're weird. I didn't know you were that weird. And she says like, don't blow this for me. She says something like. Yeah, like, right, right. I didn't know you were that weird. And she says, like, don't blow this for me. She says something like... Yeah, like, shh, shh, shh. Yeah, right, right. I'm not actually interested in you talking.

No, and also, like, I don't want you to be into this. That's not the juice I'm looking for here. It's just like men are evil. Like, men don't... Men don't go from zero... Men go from zero to 60. You can't throw them too far. You know who else are evil in this movie?

Everybody. Women. Except for Nicole Kidman. Well, Nicole Kidman's bad. Two thoughts that the movie is making you think, is she the are evil in this movie everybody women except for nicole kit well nicole kitman's bad two parts of the movie is making you think is she the worst person in this film and at the end you're like she tried yeah she got dealt a bad hand she should probably just not have she did try maybe she's got some character defects but she tried with uh she did her best she did her best mixed up with the Stokers. I have a friend whose maiden name is Stoker. It's a cool name, Stoker.

I think if I married into the Stokers, I could have handled it. I think I could have made some things happen. This is a classic Ben proclamation. If I were the lead of the movie, it would have worked out. Yeah, Ben, if you're in Stoker, you're like, Uncle Charlie shows up and you're like, alright, I'm gonna buy a plane ticket. I'm outta here.

What are you doing? What's your move? If I... You're India. Right, I'm going to buy a plane ticket. I'm out of here. What are you doing? What's your move? You're India. Right, I'm India. So you're probably not a serial killer yourself. Yeah, no. You haven't been activated. No, I haven't been activated. I guess I would turn him into a killer for hire on the internet

and make money. Oh, you would be like, hey bud, I like your moxie. Let's make some money. Listen, let's do something with this talent. Is anyone repping you? I can make a website, no problem. I know how to use Squarespace. Let's also call out, there's this art

class scene where they're all doing a nude figure study and they go to her painting and she's doing truly just like cubes. They're just painting flowers. Oh, right. She's painting the interior of the vase. And then this other guy does a naked drawing of her. He's like, this is you. I want to do this to you.

Shoots rings out of his chest. Lucas Till, I want a movie about that guy. Just like the bully who also is like a good artist but uses it only for evil. Hey, I'm the king of the campus. Gonna sit on this abandoned chair.

And also like only bullies people who maybe need to be cut off at the pass. Lucas Till's performance is havoc in the rebooted X-Men trilogy is one of the most insane performances ever. He seemingly gets younger with every movie, even though the 10 years are between him. He's somehow supposed to be Cyclops' younger brother. None of it ever makes sense.

My second Dexter reference because I keep making them, but they should turn this into Lucas Till being a bully who only bullies other bullies. That's how he gets it. He's only 32 years old and he's met Creech. He's got a whole life ahead of him. We gotta shout out the art teacher, though.

This is why I brought it up. Ben, who is playing the art teacher? Mr. Feldman. Largely out of focus. My boy, Harmony. It is Harmony Kareem. Kareem, Kareem, Kareem. Correct. Yeah, Kareem is the of focus. My boy Harmony. It is Harmony Corrine. Corrine, Corrine, Corrine. Yeah, Corrine as the art teacher. Not really sure why. Weird collection of acting roles. He did

that season of Girlfriend Experience. He's in Minglehorn where he's one of the leads. The David Gordon Green Al Pacino key maker drama. Wow. Yeah. Pacino plus Cap. I have not seen that. Ben, if you thought the key maker in wow yeah pacino plus cat i've not seen that ben if you thought the key maker had a lot of keys in the matrix oh boy okay wait till you get mangled wait till you get

mangled dang um yes he is in this film i don't i mean it's not a major role no ben who would you cast harmony as in like a one scene cameo? I mean, because he's done so many great ones. Taylor, make a role for Harmony Corrine. Damn. I don't know because he's, it's like the more recent cameos he's done, he's like playing against type. And I like when he pops up as just a fucking weirdo and says one weird line. You want him to be like in a John Wick as like Mr. Crazy? Yeah.

Wearing like a garbage bag? His character name is The Creep. Mr. Crazy. King of the Creeps. I'm the Creep King. You know what? He shows up in some fucking Star Wars thing. Oh, sure. And he plays the type of character that I love in

stories in general, which is he's a little head attached to a bigger guy. stories in general which is he's a little head attached to a bigger guy a little guy and he's like smoking some kind of futuristic sort of tobacco weed like sort of yeah future it's a future sig what if what if like michael shannon is is the big guy what if we attach harmony cor Corrine to Michael Shannon? Yeah, I love that. Yeah. The two creeps brought together. Yeah, I hate this guy.

Look, we have to just acknowledge that. She makes out with Whip. Yes. It's all going okay. Right. But then... He bites his lip. He gets very aggressive all of a sudden.

Right. And is basically about to rape her when... Because he's like, you can't open the door and then invite me in or kick me out. Whatever. Right. It's a total heel turn from seemingly nice Alden Ehrenreich. Yeah. And Uncle Charlie shows up and first like hog ties him.

Yes. And is like, all right, have your fun, Mia. While he's still on top of her, like straddling her. And she kind of kicks him a bunch or whatever, but she's not going to kill him, probably. Yeah, they show this later, but then he like grabs her and tries to, Alden Aronrock grabs her and tries,

and I feel like at that point I would have just given up. Yeah, if Uncle Charlie's hogtied me, I might be like, okay, I'm out. He's like, I still might be able to make this work. I'm this close to getting laid. He's the fucking knight from Monty Python. He's like on one leg and he be like, okay, I'm out. He's like, I still might be able to make this work. I'm this close to getting laid. He's the fucking knight from Monty Python. He's like on one leg and he's like, I don't know. Let me see.

He's just reaching for his zipper. And so he, Charlie strangles him with the belt and then breaks his neck. You see the head kind of jerk back in a natural manner. And then India takes a shower and whacks it which is the real moment where you're like okay she is not some you know sort of innocent in the middle of a spider web who's trying to navigate all this stuff she is she is perhaps like you know carrying the same curse and then that's basically when she has the conversation with Nicole Kidman, I think,

when she's brushing her hair. You have that amazing fucking transition where it goes to the hyper close-up of Nicole Kidman's hair with the brush running through it and then, like, so gradually that you don't even catch it. I re-round this three times

just because I was stunned by the craft of it. It turns into, like, fields of grass. There's so much stuff like that in this movie that is mind blowing. The one I love is when she's reading all the letters and it turns into her face. Yeah, this is why this is the speed

racer of abusive family movies. But she basically like admits to Nicole Kidman like, I'm the bad guy of the movie. What's your move here? But she says that like, I always thought my dad took me hunting because he loved it he was trying to sometimes you need to do something bad to stop someone from doing something worse because you're in uh india's point of view for basically this entire movie

there's a few scenes without her it is like it does feel like the uncle charlie is like the scenes that would just be him is like him on his phone reading the wiki how on like how to activate a serial killer because he has this very like methodic process he's going through of like this is how I'm gonna get her to be also like me well I like that this movie it feels supernatural and that it treats the idea of being a serial killer like it's like being a werewolf yeah right what's a vampire movie yes yes and you basically have this father who has like seen it in his brother couldn't stop it right spent the next decades of his life trying to make sure his brother was just like contained and off the map right and then from the moment his daughter is born he like sees it in this fucking baby's

eyes like she's renez me like she's got these like yeah nightmare adult eyes from the moment she's born and he's just like well she's my daughter i will love her no matter what i need to create the circumstances that somehow prevent her from ever being triggered no one can ever utter the code words that activate her right you know right and then matthew good just like unlocks it and she's just like oh oh, right, this is who I fundamentally am. To be fair, he, like, puts a corpse in a freezer and, like, leaves it for her to find, which seems like, uh, yeah, like, pretty triggering.

And then he just slips her a note that says, did you like that check, yes or no? Big yes. So, um, when she uses that key, which has been sort of lingering, that's when she finds that it opens Richard's desk drawer.

It's filled with letters that Richard, I'm sorry, that Charlie wrote her from his mental institution. Well, it's these like wildly sort of like romantic looking like gothic letters. Yes. Which we're seeing them in sort of the opening credits, but you don't really know what they are. Right.

And then it's like, right, here are 18 years worth of letters he's written about the connection he has to a person he never met. And they're all from like one, two, three, Looney Bin Road,

you know, Savannah, Georgia or whatever. Well, at first he's talking about all his travels and his journeys in this country and that country. And there's the thing

earlier at the table where like when Jackie Weaver's there. When she's like, Europe. Right. Nicole Kidmanman says like it's so nice of him to take his time time out of his busy libertine lifestyle in europe um and right jackie europe is the thing that like triggers jackie weaver into like red alert red alert so then you're reading these letters that are like is he was he doing what he says he was? And then after she reads all the letters and gets kind of like enchanted by them,

only then as she's leaving the study does she turn around and go like, what's on the back of these envelopes? And every one of them has the stamp that's like, as you said, one, two, three, Looney Bin way. I just love that. I do too. There's a gun in the drawer too,

which implies that whoever gave her the key is intending her to kill Uncle Charlie at some point. But she reads the letters and is not freaked out. She's like, hmm. And I like that you have, as you were saying, the Speed Racer editing is happening. You also have, it's going between his voiceover and her voiceover. Her hearing his voice in his head and her kind of like falling into the narrative right which is confusing i would say initially you're kind of like wait is this some secret correspondence

that they had and you're like no right did they have a relationship that he's forgetting about right but she's willing to tap into it i also love when she turns around and sees the the looney benway address stamp she like looks at it like wait a second and then she flips to the next one as if like well maybe this one's actually from france he was just there for a week you have her flip through every single letter to be like all of them i'm like yeah it was right yeah one is postmarked from nice yeah just different crazy like right yeah He moved around. He went to Switzerland. Asylum to crazy. Look, at this point, I guess,

the sort of dilemma of the film or the hook for audiences is like, okay, so is she now just all in going to be his apprentice and that's what the rest of the movie is going to be about. And the hidden twist. Is he so much of a threat that even she's scared. Right.

And then of course the hidden twist is no, she is going to, you know, kill him off. Like she, she, this is, you know,

she's, she, she perceives the threat. She knows what he wants and she knows how to manipulate him. Yeah. She does want to like protect her mother on some level, but also doesn't want to be her mother's daughter, which I think is a fascinating dynamic

to explore. Is this when the flashback is? Yes. So, layered into all of this are the revelations that Charlie murdered Richard with a big old rock in the car. Yes. You know, he rocked him. The only reason he would miss her birthday is if there was something more

important that he needed to do. And he had to go pick up Uncle Charlie, and unfortunately he forgot to bring his rock shield. He forgot to bring his paper. Good point. He's like checked himself out of the institution after seemingly like Harley Quinning, one of the women who works there. I mean, he's stuff for old

Charles. Yes. I would get Harley Quinn. Yeah. I'd be like, sure, buddy. Let's get you out of here. You gotta get old again is good, you know? With an E. And then, of course, the deeper, darker revelation, which I feel like we see initial flashbacks here, and then we sort of see the final flashbacks a little later of, they had

a third younger brother. What was his name? Jonathan. Jonathan. Right. Yeah, Blasicast got asked him, what happened to Jonathan? And Charlie was jealous of the attention Jonathan got from Richard, so he buried him in a sand pit. It's the one move. It's Park Chambers' move.

It's like, you got to kill somebody. It is a creatively brutal way to die. Very disturbing. And so that's the story of the Stokers. What could go wrong when you have a deep child-sized pit, a sandcastle right in front of it, and a bunch of digging tools? Don't let Charlie near the digging tools.

He does like to bury people because he buries someone in the ice cream, you know. He puts it right at the bottom of the slide and then it's like, hey, Jonathan, come down. I feel like even a two-year-old is like not going to slide into him. But this is where I do think the age

difference helps. Yes. Is that it's like his jealousy of the brother paying more attention to the younger kid makes more sense if the oldest brother is a little bit of an adult. I also love the tension of the lawnmower is just running. You know that, you intellectually know that Richard has

run very far away from it, but it seems like it's going to come and like mow off one of their feet or something. And there's another kind of speed racery moment where you're watching the flashback and then the camera pushes into the shed where it's adult Charlie at his typewriter watching. Yeah, right. Like the memory as he's sort of

writing the tale. He kind of like tail his head on a little boy's body and then you go in and oh now it's the little boy it's so yeah i think it's pretty movies fucked up good but this is i just think this is like an okay script where park correctly is just like let's lean into the sort of mania of it right at every turn like let's make no moment uninteresting in this like lean yeah you know thriller like already lean very sort of like over the top and silly thriller you mentioning the uh sound of the lawnmower the the sound mixing in this movie is unbelievable yes yes i noticed sound a lot because you know i work in in fiction podcasting where we have to listen to fucking

sound design all the goddamn time. And it is unreal how good this movie is at evoking the way it is to kind of just hear everything, but not pay attention to any of it. He is one of those filmmakers where you watch one of his movies

and you go like, why aren't most filmmakers using sound as this much of a tool? Yeah. I think most people just use it as like just functional means to an end. Just get the clean audio on the day. The Coen brothers are like this as well, where it's like they pump up the unreality of every

sound an additional 10 to 15 percent in a way that really makes you feel it. Yeah. That feels like it gets it some ecstatic truth. And I think this movie has this very flowery score, but it's really smart about when to like pull back and go totally silent or focus in on the sound of one bug. There's that moment after the fucking piano sequence when it's like they get to the climax moment and then she turns around and he's gone

and then it cuts to her knee and there's the spider slowly unfurling on her knee. And it's like, it's so quiet you can hear the legs of the spider brushing against her stockings it's good yeah the the use of sound is impeccable but also the use of silence which obviously is a sound design choice in and of itself um is is that he's so good at that in all in just the way that he creates the sense of being imprisoned by that sound in a weird way it's great and even the way he uses silence you're like his like silence is amped up yeah it's like he turned up the volume on the silence

everything in this like the use of color in this movie is astonishing the use of blood splatter the way that mia fascia kowska is always dressed in very off color outfits until kind of the very end yeah she's styled as like a child out of time basically yeah yeah in fact well i watched this with some friends who i thought would dig it and they really did and they were they assumed the movie took place in the 70s until somebody mentioned that it was technically taking place in the 2010s sure it does it does have that feel. It does. She dresses a little bit like Annabelle.

The doll? The doll. The killer doll. Yeah. The doll that just sits there and you die. My favorite thing in the Annabelle movies is when they are looking to escape the house. And they go into this crawl space. And Annabelle's just sitting there. Yeah. And it cuts them going, whoa. And then it cuts to Annabelle. Well, they just were like, they're looking to escape the house and they go into this crawl space and Annabelle's just sitting there.

It cuts them going, whoa. And then it cuts to Annabelle. Well, they just were like, here's the role. She can never come to life. Yeah.

So what is the crux of these movies? She just shows up in a different place sitting still. Love Annabelle. Right. Um, Annabelle is cool. Um, and I support her.

Um, I did hear that Matt Healy is going on Annabelle's podcast. Which is not a great look. All right. So the final act of the... So we have the shoe moment, which we've mentioned. Like, clearly, Charlie thinks this is his I'm speaking the kill phrase. Right?

You know what I mean? Where he's like, once she puts on the shoes, then. Where we've locked in serial killer or protege. An MKUltra like agent. The thing is it works. He does finally complete activating her. She needed just another five inches

of height. Those are good shoes. They are good shoes. And she seemingly is like, cool bro. Yeah, let's go I'll pack a bag Let's go on a murder spree around the country New York City, baby

Right, exactly If you could just, you know Kidman for me, that'd be great And he's like, will do, see you in a minute And while he's doing that Is sort of the big turn And you have all this stuff that's layered in of her with her dad. Before that.

And Nicole Kidman's giving her big speech. Yes. Her big speech happens before she sends Charlie into the room with her. After the shoes. Right. I believe. It's sort of the following morning. It's all right in the moment.

Yeah, right in the middle. She goes to her and Kidman sees everything. She's like pieced it all together. I think one of my favorite shots in the movie is for some reason this room has two doors i don't know why it has two doors in but uh uh charlie standing in one and it's open and you know that evie is that her name is behind the other door and it's closed and he and when he crosses behind the closed door you know shit's about to happen it's so it's such an economic way of of creating menace. Yes. I just think Kidman fucking kills this monologue. She does. Because Kidman does have

the character in this movie where you're like, huh. Like, Oscar winner here. Yes, of course she can do this in her sleep. And Nicole Kidman. She disappears kind of for 45 minutes. But after the first 20 minutes where she's not really in the movie and you're kind of like, eh, she's just playing the patsy. She's playing the dumb.

This is like obvious casting. What would draw her to this? And it's all this monologue. It's that she gets to be the turnkey for the entire movie, really. This movie got four Fangoria Golden Chainsaw Award nominations. I looked this up. Was Nicole Kidman one of them? I feel like she wasn't. Because she got a lot of, like,

she was one of those people who got hype at the end of the year as like, this is one of those overlooked performances. I hope Fangoria recognized her. Let's see. I do feel like there was this run of Nicole Kidman doing really interesting work in performances that people were like, in a cooler world, she would get an Oscar nomination for this. And between whatever it is, between The Hours and Rabbit Hole, she's just never getting the Oscarcar nomination that she wants clearly she did

not get nominated i'm sorry lily taylor won best supporting actress that year for the conjuring great uh julianne moore and the carrie remake uh tristan risk and something called american mary uh amber childers and something called we are what we are i do like that uh the golden chainsaws do do swerve and then julia garner, also in We Are What We Are. Nicole Kidman got a Fright Meter Award nomination, I'm seeing here. Good, good, good. Yeah.

Deserved. Very deserved. Worst film of the year went to Texas Chainsaw 3D, Rude. Conjuring really swept the chainsaws that year, that looks like. I get it. Good-ass movie. I love The Conjuring. Yes, okayaws that year, that looks like. I get it. Good-ass movie. I love The Conjuring. Yes, okay, so

Nicole's big monologue is basically... Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. David, this is very important. The International Online Cinema Awards gave Nicole Kidman the win for Best Supporting Actress for their halfway awards. They can't wait till the end of the year, so they do an award for just the first half of the

fucking year. Now, have you heard of the International C they do an award for just the first half of the year. First half of the year. Now, have you heard of the International Cinephile Society? No. It's very... It is a hoity-toity group that gives lots of movies to international awards. David's leaning back on this tangent and I'm leaning in. Do you know who started this organization? Emily St. James?

David Sims. What? Why are you bringing that shit up? It was... It is insane that it still exists and now they have like pr and they get written up everywhere what there was and on the on the oscar forums there was a thing called inoka which was the yearly awards i've never seen that much shame on us and david and a mutual friend of ours named Learned, Learned Foot. Your old roommate.

Learned Foot? Learned Foot. That is too deep a rabbit hole to go down right now. That is his name. He was created by Wentworth Miller. He kind of was. Learned Foot does feel like, if I told you his life story, it does feel like he walked out of

a Wentworth Miller script. The unproduced one. Learned and I did start the ics as as a as a um as a rival fuck you to the inokas and now it is like this huge thing i know like fucking justin chang is in the ics and i'm not i cannot believe i didn't know i think i stopped submitting my ballots years ago you're speaking about this like you're robert oppenheimer and this was your comic book. You hate that you brought this into this. I'm glad they do their thing. I mean, it's totally great.

I was there for a long time, too, and stopped submitting. And now I looked at it last year and was like, how are all of these people in this? Good work, David. You did it. Yeah, I don't know why that came up. Did Stoker get an ICS number or something? No, somebody said International Online Cinema Society, and that like pinged my David Sims radar.

Yeah, I was halfway at words. So you're actually father to three children. I was like 16 years old. That was your first child. Maybe I was old. Maybe I was in college. The whale you adopted and abandoned. You and Learned had shared custody,

and eventually you both abandoned the child To be free I was like Nicole Kidman in this movie being like Look you know You gotta do your own thing But I've always wanted to watch you suffer No I'm happy the ICS

Exists You think I'm embarrassed by this I'm not embarrassed exactly It is just bizarre that it still exists I don't think I'm embarrassed by this. I'm not embarrassed exactly. It is just bizarre that it still exists. I don't think you're embarrassed at all. I did start it when I was a teenager. If I reveal when I was 15, I accidentally created fucking

CSI Miami or something. And I'm like, I don't know. The ICS is not as successful as CSI Miami. I don't know. It was a mistake. I feel like you'd be getting a lot of residuals if you created CSI Miami. Do you get any residuals from the ICS? No. Is there money to be made?

I don't think so. Someone holds the copyright, too. Well, it ain't me. I'll tell you that much. I didn't do any work on that. Who's this guy, Cedric? He's an ex-board member. He was on the boards? What was on the what was his name on the board uh herman ross i think maybe maybe i don't remember uh i think he eventually changed

to just cedric because that was his first name right and then i think you remember jesus alonso yes how's he doing you know what i'm sure he's fine. Okay, good. Talk about that later. Alright, so. We gotta get you added to the about page. Yeah. Listeners. Oh, I see us? Yeah, throw me out there. Flood their damn mailbox. FYI, creator emeritus, David Sims.

The end of the film. It looks like Charlie's gonna kill Evelyn. Goode's gonna kill Kipman. Right. Then he and India will go off together. Yeah. The first time you saw this film, did you assume the twist was coming?

Like, did the sort of intercutting with, you know, her and German Mulroney looking through their guns, like, was that enough for you to kind of be like, nah, it ain't this? Like, this is not just like, you know, the dawning of Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie. I think what I like about this movie, and I think Director Park is particularly good at this. Handmaiden's another one that does this where you're like, he's going to keep upending this so frequently. Right.

That I cannot predict. It can't just be like what I think is going to happen. What the landing point is because it's not like he constructs movies around one twist. He constructs movies that keep on fundamentally changing your sense of the reality. So I just, I didn't think I could get ahead of this movie because I just didn't

know what he was ultimately leading to. But I like that Kidman's sort of like, it's the, we need to talk about Kevin thing. You know, there's that early moment when, after the funeral, you hear the two women joking about, like, and who's going to take care of her now? Her mother? Mm-hmm. The coldest woman alive?

Yeah, and they're talking about when she's right there. Right. And it's like, I do think she is inherently a somewhat cold person. Yeah. But also, it's like like she just kind of immediately isn't just like, I hate my child out of like some weird brokenness. It's just like, I've been scared of you forever.

Yeah. I could not allow myself to get close to you and I was terrified by everything I saw in you. I think everyone should have just benefited from some, you know, group therapy, family trip to the ice cream parlor. They should have brought in Gabriel Byrne. Bring in, right.

Get everyone in treatment. Because it was four different episodes. Yes. Like a week, right? So you got Mia, Nicole, Uncle Charlie, and Richard. You do them all. Or maybe Auntie Jen, whatever. It would be funny if season three of In Treatment

was just Stoker. Just in treatment where he's like, my toughest case of all. The last episode is him with his therapist. So it's just every week he's like, no, this family's fucked up. And his therapist is played by Wentworth Miller. And he said, her name was India? Let me get that down right.

By the way, where are we? I just woke up in this room. I don't even know what city I'm in. There's that premise in so many movies where like a psychiatrist is like going to write a book about their crazy patient who then kills them. I feel like that would be a perfect fit. Oh, if Byrne just at the end of the day. Stoker, yeah. I love how Gabriel Byrne in Hereditary

is secretly playing a sitcom dad. Nothing goes right for that dude in that movie right the whole time he's just like what the fuck is the matter with you to like everyone they're like what he's like jesus christ you're all crazy and then finally tony collette's like we are crazy a demon cursed us and he's like will you shut up i just need you to relax and then he gets lit on fire he accomplishes nothing you cast like inherently intense gabriel burn to basically play lydia's dad in beetlejuice like when i'm surrounded by we really do re-watch hereditary and are like this is a dark comedy his character is the one

who is the most like you know befuddled comic character absolutely um anyway uh love gabriel burn who's not in this movie no instead you Goodish shot, which Nicole Kidman is relieved by Because now she's not going to get murdered by him And then she has to kind of look at her daughter with terror And be like, I guess you're just Let loose on the world now Thanks, but right Like, you know, see you later

Right I never want to see you again There's a really good cut back to Nicole Kidman Lying on her bed where you're just like she's catatonic this woman is just broken and then she leaves and the sheriff pulls her over it's like she lures him in by speeding right she's like the hurry is to get you to pull me over and he's like what and she's like she's got the fucking like cool hand luke reflection in the sunglasses great Great shot. Yeah.

It's Praxis. And the cop in the neck with pruning shears for no reason. In 2013, people were like, what a dark action. And in 2023, you're like, yeah, I,

I, I will say if I'm heard like serial killer advisor, I might not be like, don't kill the first cop you see. Sure. But I guess she's like, that'll tie up any loose ends. If I murdered the sheriff.

Uh-huh. I would love a movie where you were a serial killer advisor. Like, you were not a serial killer yourself. Right, before they do anything, they're like, I was thinking about killing this sheriff, and I'm like,

no, uh-uh, that's not the move. I think that's cleaning up loose ends, but also, I just imagine with the ending of this movie, she is about to murder every single person she talks to from here on out. Let's play the box office game.

I'm sorry, before we play. Weird ass reading. David, main attraction. So, obviously, I come into these shows and tell people how everything is about being trans. Not this movie, though. This movie has some weird gender shit um i am very drawn to uh movies about abuse that don't

really make logical sense but make sense if you start thinking of them as movies about someone who is part of an abusive family dynamic metaphor yeah yeah yeah i like i i love all of ari aster's films for that reason like people who are watching them being like, Beau is afraid didn't make sense. No, of course, that's the fucking point. He's trapped in this cycle. Yes. No, and I was going to say the way that abuse alters your sense of reality, your sense of memories.

Like, a sober, removed depiction does not get at the emotional truth. And the problem with telling a story about abuse is that there's this book by Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life, which is literally just very blunt about these characters were all abused and like goes into such detail. And the problem is once you start reading that much detail about abuse, it becomes a thing you detach from. You just fundamentally cannot appreciate it or understand

it. So sort of like talking about it through genre, a genre exercise is the way to do it. And like, this is really a movie about the grooming and sexual abuse and violent abuse of this girl that turns her into an abuser herself. And her father's been grooming her and her mother has been turning a blind eye to all of this and her her brother comes in, and I don't know how much that's intentional on the part of Wentworth Miller, but Park Chan-wook certainly seems dialed into it, and it's a movie about trying to sort of understand the ways in which the family that you were raised in

is fucked up and failing, and getting trapped by that. I like movies that make sense in terms of trying to understand them as the character basically dissociating from themselves throughout. And that really feels what Indy is doing here. So I read this movie as a movie about

coming to terms with the fact that you don't just live in a dysfunctional family, but you live in an actively toxic, abusive one that is creating violence and horror throughout the world. And that really plays into all of park's strengths like the editing the way that things blend together the way that nothing makes sense the way that time sort of gets dilated the way that um flashbacks are intercut almost like having repressed memories come back is just it's it's really uh astonishing i. I think it's a great take.

It's very interesting to think about this because that all makes sense. And yet I'm also like, did Wentworth Miller, who may well have written this, is like a deep expression of these things, these sorts of thoughts. Or did he write it as like, no, I'm going to write a pure fucking Dracula revampy

kind of like the visitor from out of town, like, you know, genre exercise. I think Park really tapped into deeper things but I think you do have to give Wentworth Miller credit for this script he has said that he hasn't been able to write again because like this just kind of and I wonder it was like the one thing in him

where he's expressing like he did write one other film the Disappointments Room I've forgotten which he wrote with DJ Caruso now I haven't seen it. Yeah. So I don't know much about it. He did some interview recently where he was like,

I really struggled to write since, you know, the early. And I wonder if he just like had this thing inside him he had to express, which often is like a lot of my writing before I got into like trauma therapy was literally like if you listen to season two of Arden, it's just me processing a bunch of shit that happened to me without realizing I was doing that. And all the people I worked with on that show were like, well, we assumed you knew.

I just, I wonder how much art is created out of a space of like, I don't want to look at this thing, but I'm going to write about it anyway. I think a lot. And look, he's been. He talked about suffering from depression. Yes. He's been through a lot of his mental health struggles.

And it's very tied to why he has increasingly stepped back from the entertainment industry, first from being on camera and even then from writing as much. Wenty. Wenty. Write a script. I think he's a good guy. Give it a shot. I think this movie's like, and that's interesting to think about in terms of how this movie presents mental illness,

which is like a prison you can't escape from. Like, you are trapped in this way of thinking just by virtue of how you were born. And it's impossible to fix or deal with. And sometimes you just have to stab the sheriff. What's the final message then? Is Stoker, is old India about to have a great life? You know, has she made some breakthrough? This is okay.

Now I'm going off of what you're saying, right? But a thing I've been stewing on a lot lot recently is like how doomed are you to become your parents or not right and i classic a classic demon right but i think almost all children are either uh whether consciously or unconsciously living in the shadow of the model that was presented to them by the adults in their life or trying to be the exact opposite of that right uh and this is a movie in which everyone from the moment she's born whether they even are present for her birth is sort of like fuck i see who she is and everyone is trying to kind of shift her away from her innate being right they're sort of trying to like don't replicate my sense bomb before it goes off. Right. Charlie's like spiritually trying to affect her from a distance.

Her father is trying to find the outlet for that. And Nicole Kidman's like, I just need to disengage. And all three people fuck her up equally. Yeah. In different ways. All trying to find some way to control her behavior, make her in her image, push her away from who she innately is, whatever it is. Right. Yeah. I do think that's the thing it's more speaking to. Not like we're all inherently cursed, but the sort of like, as much as you try to control the outcome, the more you actually probably push along to an inevitability.

The problem with parental abuse is that it stems from, you know, I have a child now, so it stems from this idea of like, I need to help you do this thing. And abuse just becomes, I am going to turn you into the person I think you need to be because I think I know what's best for you. Like, right now, I do know what's best for my daughter. I'm the only one who can feed her. She can't do it herself. But like, you know, 10 years from now, that's not an appropriate way to treat her. Yeah, I can't handle that.

I don't like thinking about that. I'm always going to know what's best, right? Okay, yeah. You'll be the first 100% successful father. That's why you're India's advisor. Right. Yeah, exactly. No, that's the thing I think this movie is really getting at.

That, you know, it's this sort of like, much like shit like werewolf stories, a lot of supernatural fiction is tied in this sort of like sins of the father, the bloodline, the familial trauma, the cycles that you cannot avoid. There is something nestled deep inside of you. Try to fight it as you might. It's there. And the problem with the trauma plot as presented by Hollywood and has increasingly turned into a series

of tropes. I think you have written very very well on over the last couple of years. I find really disquieting as somebody who's been through a lot of trauma therapy. The thing about it is, you know, you turn it into a thing. The Marvel movies all do this. You can punch it at the end. And I think that's fine. There's a catharsis to that in a certain way. But I love the way, because I think a lot of Parks movies are about this way that you get trapped in an experience you can never escape. And I think that's why i love him i remember when decision to leave was coming out it got a lot of oscar buzz because

bong joon-ho of course had had huge success with paris like bong joon-ho is very good at catharsis like i'm not trying to say that in terms of like he makes you know less like less good movies i think catharsis is an important thing i think the thing thing that will keep Park Chan-wook from ever being as big as he is in America is he just makes movies that leave you feeling really unresolved and gooey and weird. His endings are unsettling. He sticks you in the place you hoped you'd get out of.

He puts you in the hole and starts to dig the sand on top of you. India cannot escape her family. I mean, I can tell you it's really fucking hard to escape your family. You have to work really hard. You have to consciously work really hard. Most people don't want to do that. And most people have pretty good families.

So like you pick up a couple bad things from your parents and then you maybe think about them in therapy. But there are some people who are just raised in hell and never escape. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, you know, it's scary. and never escape. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, you know, it's scary, which most good horror is tapping into something so innate in our being,

some universal sort of element of the human experience in that kind of way. And I think this movie, through everything you're saying, does that. I mean, and talking about the trial plot thing,

not to spoil another movie, and I'll speak about this as vaguely as possible for a 10-year-old film I've talked about a lot on this podcast, but I'm like, Babadook's a movie that does that fucking well, where it's like, you have to live with it. Yeah. You can defeat it in a way that resolves the movie, but it's never vanquished. I do, yeah, I think that a lot of what we call so-called elevated horror is about this, is about realizing that trauma is unresolvable. Right.

And to a certain degree, you can learn to live with it and you can learn to be a better person that has it lurking inside of you. Right. I do think there's an alternate read of this movie that is in essence like all vampire stories about the ways that rich people are perpetuating trauma on the world. So it's sort of like succession, Park Jin-wook's succession. But yeah, I think this movie's fundamentally about abuse and the ways that abuse

replicates itself. And every character in this movie is abusive on some level or another. Yeah, yes. And also it's just like the fundamental tragedy of this movie is like Not Aunt June. She's alright. Yeah, she's the one good person. She never did anything. I feel like Jackie Weaver should just play the one good person a lot of the time.

Obviously, she isn't in some movies. The fundamental tragedy of this movie, in my mind, is that no one ever figures out how to talk to her. Right? You're like, the thing that really dooms her is everyone is, as you're saying, going, I think I know what's best for her. And you get the sense of, like, no one actually is really listening to her. No one really knows how to talk to her or relate to her. They're only viewing her as a problem or an accomplice or, you know. The tragedy of parent-child relationships is how often you cannot see your parents or your child as a person until it's too late.

Yeah. Well said. Stoker premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. Released in March by Fox Searchlight. Didn't expand beyond 275 theaters. Nobody really saw it. This is very much the kind of movie... Fairly mixed reception.

I think people thought might have, like, breakout potential in a sort of post-Black Swan, this is arthouse horror kind of world. And had this very, like, you know, welcome to the family. You know, these sort of posters of them all standing there. What is the twist in this thing? You imagine

if A24 released this today, it would make $10 million easily. This is the exact kind of movie that, like, there is now a model for that they know how to market where even if people were mixed on it,

the fact that, like, men gets to $10 million domestic is like, well, they made it a conversation piece where Stoker people are just like, eh. Babadook's 2014 and that's kind of the start of that wave so this just fucking missed it

yeah yeah i don't know if there's a version of this movie being a hit but i want to repeat that men made 10 million dollars domestic well you know fucking angus t jones showed up for it to sing the theme song i don't know men. Men, men, men, men, men. That will be stuck in your head for a week now. Yeah, and review. I assume they were hoping there would be raves that could help propel it. And instead, the reaction was very mixed. Right.

So that probably didn't help. I remember this getting very bad reviews. And instead, it got very... There were people who fucking loved it. There were some raves and a lot of like... You know, a lot of that. But once again, I think people who disliked it got like very there were people who fucking loved it there were some raves and a lot of like you know a lot of that but once again i think people who disliked it were like fuck you yeah there was a lot of like flipping over a table like this is bullshit uh so what was the widest it went 275 screens wow not very good so obviously on this box office game on March 1st, 2013, it's opening number 33. Seven screens, 160 grand.

Number one, though, it's just one of the most forgotten blockbusters in history. March 2013. Yep. Is it... It's not 10,000 BC? No. But it's close?

10,000 BC is like fucking Citizen Kane compared to this thing. Fuck. No, it's... Yeah, okay. Directed by a sex offender or alleged, I should say. Alleged sex offender. It's not a Burt Ratner? Nope.

Is it Jack the Giant Slayer? It's Jack the Giant Slayer. Yes. That was, people went and saw that? Like an anemic number one, right? $27 million. Right, which was like a calamity because it cost $200 million.

It was expensive because they had to make all them giants. Yes. Have not seen. You know what's wild about that fucking movie? Didn't make 200 worldwide. I know, and they were like, we're all going to lose our shirts on this.

Yeah, because, yeah. You're like, how badly do you miscalibrate a fucking Jack the Giant Slayer movie that $200 million is a calamity. Not just an underperformance, but a calamity. Divisions are going to get completely shut down at Warner Brothers because of this movie. And it also feels like Jack

and the Beanstalk is one of those stories that people have kept trying to make into a thing and it never works. Who gives a shit? It feels like it should work. He climbs up a beanstalk and kills a giant. It's golden. I just feel like anytime someone's like have i got a pitch for you yeah you know that fairy tale i'm like no get the fuck out of here that's not a blockbuster i've definitely said this before on the podcast

but just everyone knows jack and the beanstalk so what so what it doesn't mean they're like i gotta see that right i don't do wanna see a big beanstalk. Everyone also knows diarrhea. We've all met diarrhea. We don't wanna see a fucking movie about it. A lot of bad things we all know. Speaking of diarrhea, number two at the box office.

I just wanna, I wanna say the one thing that is insane to consider. With everything we know now. What? Bryan Singer attaches himself developing Jack the Giant Slayer. And then he's like,

I'm ready to return to X-Men. I'm going to do X-Men First Class. They wanted him to do X-Men First Class. And Warner Brothers was like, we will sue you if you leave Jack the Giant Slayer. We need to make Jack the Giant Slayer. And we need you to do it. That movie could have been shut down so easily. Everyone could have gotten out of this.

Right. And two studios were fighting over who got to make a $200 million movie by a guy who doesn't like showing up on set. Number two at the box office. Yes. A comedy hit. In its fourth week, it has made $107 million. Is it Identity Thief? It is Identity Thief.

People forget how robust the McCarthy run was. And Bateman, right? Yeah. Bateman's era of, what's the title of the movie? Playing the guy who's like... Well, that, obviously. Yeah, playing the...

Basters. Hiya, little Lucent. Playing the me that watched a Costco on the My Crazy Uncle poster. Yes. Bateman, despite never feeling like a comedy A-list movie star,

had a surprisingly solid run in comedy movies right before they ended and he just went to prestige streaming TV before anyone. And then he won the Emmy for directing Ozark and made the identity thief poster face when he won. Best director of life. Smartless. Yeah.

But I was going to say, it is funny, you look at the title of the Jason Bateman hits, and they are all just first pass titles. What's this movie about? Horrible bosses, an identity thief, game night. So good in game night. Office Christmas party. You're not wrong. There was not

a lot of focus groups. I think he kind of cracked it, though, where it's like, you know exactly what this movie is. The title is describing the thing, and Jason Bateman's head tilted he's a couples therapy he's a good straight I want to see that guy struggle around that thing yes we're moving on to number four at the box office sorry number three at the box office new this week

teen comedy or not teen actually because it's about people turning a certain age this is a forgotten well man of a certain age was a TV show not a bad one 21 and Over 21 and Over Yeah

I forgot that movie John Lucas and Scott Moore's directorial debut One of the Starring the big three Miles Teller, Skylar Astin, and Justin Sean Yeah What if the men from Men of a Certain Age Start in 21 and Over?

I wish Bruce Brower, Romano Right Work Too old I think 21 and Over With a sort of supernatural Big style twist of

they've been waiting to be old enough to drink their whole life and now they're getting it in middle age. They all wake up and they're 47 but their IDs work. How much do you think 21 and over made domestic? 25.

Number four at the box office is maybe Dwayne Johnson's best film performance That's not like Pain and Gain Best starring role Highly underrated film I think you like this one It's not Southland Tales which is a good movie But I feel like he's sort of supporting that

It's an ensemble piece The film is Snitch Rick Roman was Snitch John Bernthal is fucking unbelievable that is an early burnfall where you're like this guy right like what the fuck you know the guy from the class is going off here yes no that's that's this house is not well built yes i was like it turned into a bodybuilder should be winning an oscar for this performance he's quietly the lead of the movie and he's unbelievable um yeah uh snitch snitch fun all right number five a horror sequel uh with a hilarious title hmm hilarious sort of an oxymoronic

title uh uh oxymoronic uh is it because it has like dead and alive in the same thing no something like that what horror sequel is it a two it's a two it in the same thing? No. Something like that. What? Horror sequel. Is it a two? It's a two. It's a part two. And it's a subtitle. No.

Is it The Last Exorcism 2? Oh, okay. The Last Exorcism Part 2. You told me it was The Last Exorcism. They should have pulled the marigold and call it The Second to Last Exorcism or something like that. You just own it. You know?

That's number five. Opening number five. Not a very good job. You've also got something called Escape from Planet Earth. What the fuck is that? That's a Brendan Fraser Weinstein company animated film.

You are correct. Yeah. Jesus. Something called Safe Haven. Is that like a... That's the insane Lassie Hulse from Julianne Hough, Josh Duhamel. Correct.

Lassie Hulse just directed it. It's a Sparks. It's a Sparks. It's like a weird twist. It has quite a twist. What's that? 9-11. Yeah.

All of them. Haven wasn't so safe after all. Right. Josh Duhamel was 9-11. She fell in love with the embodiment of 9-11. What is the thing? No, it's a thing. Kobe Smulders.

Someone's a ghost. Someone's a ghost. Kobe Smulders is a ghost.ianne huff moves to this town and kobe smolders is her like best friend in the romantic drama giving her advice on dating this guy and then you find out it is uh uh dumel's dead wife right who's nudging her towards like make my husband happy right nicholas sparks wrote it he saw the sixth sense and woke up in like a blind like panic and just like wrote this book in a morning Yes Safe haven

She's nudging him to a safe haven What if a haven was safe? Also you've got A good day to die hard Bad Or like a bad day to die hard Okay I agree

Silver Linings playbook Still hanging around after four or five months That movie was a big hit It was People just wanted to see Robertson You're going Hey, Connor Campbell Unbinding's playbook. Still hanging around after four or five months. That movie was a big hit. It was. People just wanted to see Robertson. You're going, hey, I got a gamble. I bet the Eagles again.

I remember my dad being like, that's really not working at the box office. After it had been out for like two months. And I was like, watch. The second it gets the fucking Oscar nominations, Weinstein's going to like throttle this thing. He's going to hit the NOS button. He did it. He hit the NOS button. And suddenly it then made like another 110 million dollars

and you've also got Dark Skies the Keri Russell alien horror movie I think it's come up on this podcast before and you do not know it it's not a good movie but I like it it's not good I feel similarly about it to the fucking Dreamcatcher

movie where like that's David's favorite I feel similarly about it to the fucking Dreamcatcher movie. Dreamcatcher's good. That's David's favorite. I've seen that movie like six times. I don't know why. Like three times, but still more than once. Stoker, we're done talking about that. Yeah, it didn't really go anywhere. And Park takes a few years off, I would say,

because Handmaiden is what, 2018? Yeah, 2016. You're right, it's 2016. So it doesn't take that long off. And also... And that's a real Amazon in their sort of like, we're patrons of the arts. We're giving good filmmakers more money than anyone else would give

them to do weird things. And the thing about that movie is he adapts what people thought was an unadaptable book and totally changes its context. Right. He completely messes with it, which is probably what was the move. I agree. And also,es with it, which is probably what was the move. Makes an masterpiece. I agree. And also, to your point, maybe the only

part-time work movie with, like, a happy ending for how fucked up most of that movie is, it does kind of leave you on a good note. That's the one movie that has catharsis because the only way women can be happy is to be with each other. Yeah. It's true about murder.

Murder or lesbians. Emily, don't tell them that on is because the only way women can be happy is to be with each other. Yeah. It's true. Let's do a bit of murder. Yeah. Murder or lesbians. Emily, don't tell them that on mic. I'm single. I'm trying to... If they know that other women are an option, what chance do I have? Emily, I feel like you have a thousand things to plug.

I do. Can I tell you an Aaron Sorkin story? Yes! I feel like I save up anecdotes for when I come on here, like I'm fucking somebody going on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and just like my random encounters with celebrity culture. I like to imagine

Ben like pre-interviewing you and being like, that's a good couch story. I, a couple years ago Being the Ricardos was about to come out. It was the day that the trailer dropped, but also the day that he gave an interview where he was like, I couldn't find someone Cuban-American to play Ricky.

You know, that's just too hard. By the way, Being the Ricardos being released is like Nicole Kidman letting India Stoker leave her home. Just be like, just go out. I can't control the damage you'd cause anymore. Hola, Lucy. It was just weird that he was like, I'm going to play it like Salazar.

And Sorkin was like... His face was deteriorating. So I... But I did a tweet that was basically like, I can't believe Aaron Sorkin is redoing Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, but about I Love Lucy. So this idea that this TV show's that important

is actually true. Right. So he gets to be like self-important about it. Anyway, I just did the tweet, forgot about it. That afternoon, Aaron Sorkin emailed me and I like confirmed this with other people who've emailed with him. And he just writes to me and he's like, wait until you see the movie. You never know.

And I like agonized over how to respond to this. So this is the thing that I write back to him. Think about this all day. Mr. Sorkin, I am a trans woman, and I worry not infrequently about if the world actually sees me as a woman, which is to say getting a random email from you in response to a shitpost tweet I made in about five seconds was an incredibly validating experience.

Best of luck on the movie. Did Mr. Sorkin reply? He wrote back, indeed. And I had mentioned at the end of that, I like Jessica Chastain in Molly's Game. Incredible. And he said, couldn't agree more about Jessica. Be well, and I hope I get to meet you one day.

We haven't actually met, but I was like, You should meet him. There's two resolutions to this story, which is one, I start dating Aaron Sorkin. Or two, he writes a movie where a trans woman falls into a pool. And I'm like, that was me. I inspired that. I think the latter is better for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't wish for you to date Aaron Sorkin, I would say. I feel like Aaron Sorkin and I would have a real great contentious relationship. The banter would be great. The banter would be amazing. Well, you nailed that email. Thank you. That was my

plug. Yeah. You're one of the best writers out there. Everything you do, be it email, be it long-form writing, journalistic writing, be it fiction writing. It's all excellent. Yeah, I'm... Yeah.

I didn't start the ICS, which is too bad. I wish I had a plug. Anyone who started that, if you could turn back time, maybe. Anyone who started that would probably be so proud. They'd be bringing it up at all times. Cinephile society. I mean, honestly, sounds like something a teenager came up with. You can

find me on Twitter still at Emily St. Jams. I'm also on Blue Sky if you're on that, at that name. It's good. It's a good site. Yeah, I'm on the co- if you're on that at that name. It's good. It's a good site. I, yeah, I'm on the co-host of the podcast

Podcast Like It's 1992 where we're talking about the movies of 1992 having a blast. Yeah. Yeah, having a blast on that show. I write on the TV show

Yellow Jackets. I worked there one day. Hey. So, but it counts. It counts. They paid me. It counts.

And, yeah, you should go watch that. It's on Showtime. Arden still exists. I'm not on that anymore, but you can listen to it and enjoy it. It counts. And yeah, you should go watch that. It's on Showtime. Arden still exists. I'm not on that anymore, but you can listen to it and enjoy it. It's fun. We're recording this far out enough in advance that the hope is that maybe by the time this episode comes out,

the writer's strike has resolved itself and you'll be back in the writers. It's possible. Yeah, this is coming out August 20th. Yeah, by then everybody will be on strike. The country will be on strike. It'll be great. Joe Biden's on strike. I also. But Zaslav still just is like, no, like, everybody will be on strike. The country will be on strike. It'll be great. Joe Biden's on strike. I also... But Zaslav's still just

like, no, no, no. Max, though. Max. Just kind of perfect at first. The one where you watch HBO. I also sold a novel that's coming out in January 2025, which is when I will next be on the podcast. Hey, no. I'm calling my shot. Sooner. I forgot to mention, Ben and I went out on

Sunday night and went out. It stayed out too late, but missed the Sunday night. So just to really carbonate this episode. Oh, yeah. You guys couldn't even watch the fucking Succession finale. My marathon last night was back to back to back watching Succession finale, Barry finale, Stoker. It left me in a very specific headspace. Stoker's kind of chill compared to those other two. I still haven't seen the succession finale because I

came to town to see Taylor Swift. She was at the same time as the succession finale. I'm going to get her on this show. I promise. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Come on, blank check Taylor. Yeah. Should we bleep all of that out? Yes. And we should probably commit suicide.

Yep, absolutely. On Mike. We're doing the best we've ever done. And this has been a great episode in our great series about Park Chan-wook. Thank you. It's been too long. We'll have you on again sooner. We're not going to wait for the book.

You know what? 2022 was the year you didn't have an Emily on this podcast. And if you're not going to have me or Yoshida, you got to get a different, you got to get Blunt, you got to get Nussbaum, you got to get somebody. You got to get an Emily on this podcast. And if you're not going to have me or Yoshida, you gotta get a different, you gotta get Blunt, you gotta get Nussbaum, you gotta get somebody. You gotta get an Emily every year. I saw Blunt on the street the other day. She fucking looked unbelievable.

She did, but she looked at me sort of like she was trying to figure out, she was trying to find the entrance to Italy. There's so many entrances. And she couldn't find the right door. And then she was looking around and she like clocked me directly in the sort of like, do you know where? And I just like withered. But not even, I'm not even saying like, oh, she looked really hot.

She looked like the coolest person I have ever seen. My friend. She's very cool. My friend, Crystal, co-creator, Ar-creator used to work at the Arclight and would serve her and John Krasinski often and they'd just be like totally chill going to see a movie Very beautiful people

Come on the pod I get Emily every year Part 2 recently It's okay Alright, goodbye Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media

and helping to produce the show. Thank you to JJ Birch for our research. We had to shift the schedule around wildly because Emily was going to be in town last second, so JJ had to pull this dossier together very, very quickly. Thank you, JJ. Thank you for the fast turnaround on that. Thank you to AJ McKeon and Alex Barron

for bleeping out the thing that David said that we definitely don't want going out over the airwaves. Thank you to Leigh Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon blank check special features where we do commentaries

on film series and other sort of bonus stuff. We're going to be doing the little drummer girl over there. The aforementioned is only other English language work, the AMC mini series and schedule wise. Ben, at the time this is coming out, are we tail end of oceans? Are we onto the next thing we're doing?

Let's see. I'm looking ahead at our schedule, and I am seeing that this comes out on August 20th. And that means that we are now in the midst of our oceans. We're traveling. We're swimming across the oceans. We're traveling. We're swimming across the oceans. We're doing laps. As far as the

archive of Patreon that we opened up. Yes, our free Patreon membership where every 10 days we unlock an episode from 3 years ago. We are now into Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol. Oh, wow.

We're Zooming. Yeah, baby. Literally. Those are episodes we're on Zoom. Tune in next week for The Handmaiden.

I cannot fucking wait. One of my favorite movies the last 10 years. Can I shout out something? Please. The Blankies Discord. One of the nicest places on the internet.

I never go there. Just chill people in there and compared to like every other thing yeah just you know anytime a thing gets a fan base the fans are like whatever

discord's really nice really chill that's very nice to hear yeah yeah yeah that's well that's keep it up

yeah good work everybody but also let's not give them too much praise then they'll start to get cocky and they'll turtle and turn to an awful place but don't yeah keep it up but don't keep it up too much praise. Then they will start to get cocky and I'll turtle and turn to an awful place. Yeah. Keep it up.

Stay humble. Stay humble. You could always be better. And as always, remember to flood the international cinephile society inbox to get David added to the about page.