Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Handmaiden with Emily Yoshida

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

We couldn’t be more excited to talk about the film we consider to be Park’s masterpiece - the gorgeous, twisty, and ultimately moving THE HANDMAIDEN. “Mother of the Blankies” Emily Yoshida joins us to unpack this puzzlebox of an erotic thriller, a brilliant adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith. Come for the coining of a new Blank Check phrase (thanks, researcher JJ!), stay for a very crucial “touch of the Tucc” tangent. By the way - what does that octopus actually do?? This episode is sponsored by:  Babbel (babbel.com/check) Bombas (bombas.com/check CODE: CHECK) Factor (factormeals.com/check50 CODE: CHECK50) 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

reading can be learned and i don't care if you curse or steal, but don't ever podcast me. Understood? What's your favorite line, Emily? I literally just took the top quote on the page because I was searching through them, and Emily, our guest, who I'm not introducing yet, said that she had multiple options,

and I wanted to just get one out of the way so I could hear her throw her options out. I just have one main one, and then a second one that's sort of funny. Did the big podcast make her go mad? That's good. And also pain is a podcast. That's good. Here's another one I considered.

At least I'll die with my podcast intact. That's actually good. That's good, right? right because the word is cock the word is cock um with my little joke of a podcast yeah he doesn't even have a good dick right yeah no that's it's one of actually the largest strongest recurring themes in the movies that his dick sucks nagging's just negging this guy's dick. Yeah. Which is really disappointing. I think he is one of the more handsome people that's ever been on screen in the last decade. So the idea that his dick sucks is very...

Well, I think it's more like... He is very hot. We can talk about him. Ha Jung-woo. And I know he's a huge star in korea right like he's like one of the biggest he's on some netflix series too i think but yeah yeah so god bless him for just being like yeah you want me to play like creepy bad dick count fake count guy like who sucks i'll do it sounds good sounds like good role i gotta say all these ladies get one over on me this is a thing i i

appreciate about having done this mini-series already being a big uh fan of parchenwick's films and having seen the majority of them and loved them a lot uh by and large um but not really having a tremendous amount of cultural context for them and considering them within that and now like digging into all these movies and being like oh almost every time the leading man he's working with is like one of the biggest stars in south korean cinema like heartthrob legitimate dramatic heavyweight leading man and he almost always casts them as like deranged cucks and villains and creeps like he just emasculates them so thoroughly and destroys them in a way that i just like i always was watching them like oh he found

a great character actor and it's like no he keeps on making like brad pitt eat shit i feel like there must be a wait list like a secret wait list for for park movies where you know like the the highest ranking actors at any given time. Yeah. It's kind of like for a kidney, except it's like, I really want to get being a creep out of my system. And, you know, he's the number one practitioner of creeps. It feels like career S&M. Yeah, totally.

Where they're like, fucking ruin me. Ruin me ruin any parchan look destroy my image as a star right it's it's a rite of passage it's uh it's a badge of honor yeah and it's just he never lets them be cool ironically well we can get to this but he's not the one who has a weird reputation after this film but nothing to do with this film specifically no no yeah no you're right it is it is okay it's it speaks about who is coolest what who is his coolest male protagonist all the boys in jsa i suppose kind of cool yeah i think that's the answer i don't know but they're all kind of cucks to their respective militaries yeah they're cucks to their countries yeah yeah they all get cucked by patriotism national but they at least they at least play guys who are playing at being leading men if that makes sense sure yeah semi-convincingly star performances rain is is very cute and i'm a podcast but i'd be i'm sorry i'm a cyborg that's his But he's wearing like A bunny hat and shit But that's That's his sweetest male lead

Yeah But he's also deranged Right Song Kang Ho I think Is very cool and thirst But he also I think he's cool But he's not like

Yeah He doesn't get He's a broken man Yeah He's not It's like that movie That movie is almost like Can

Can you just will him To be sexy By having the movie Just be so insane And hot Right But then like I love that movie Old Boy Mr. Vengeance can you just will him to be sexy by having the movie just be so insane and hot? Right. I love that movie. Old boy Mr. Vengeance decision to leave this are just like broken men.

Yes. Where he's working with all like huge stars. Yeah. You know, I think it's great. Who's like that here? No, who like goes out of their way to break men on screen? Like you look like shit. Yeah.

Fuck you. I don't know. I don't know. Last time somebody really, really hot looked terrible in an American movie. Like a man. But like in a way that wasn't performative or stupid. You know, like sometimes they'll be like, oh, look at me. But I'm just like look shitty.

Brendan Fraser. But was like, I thought he was pretty good in will um this like thoroughly emasculated by the text of the film that's the thing right it's not just the way he makes them look yeah i still think i still think um oh god i can't i keep forgetting the name of the the hot actor but uh he, he still kind of gets out being cool. I think like if it ended in the scene before his last scene, then he would look kind of dumb. But he really has like a cool, like he has a cool ending.

I think he gets away looking pretty cool. He does, but he also like, he's able to die on his own terms looking kind of cool, admitting that he's a to die on his own terms looking kind of cool admitting that he's a piece of shit. Yeah, yeah, which is every man's dream.

Right, he just accepts that he's a piece of shit and at least he's still got his cock in his hand. And he, right, he didn't,

like, no one put him in an octopus tank or anything. Like, when the octopus shows up, you're like,

oh God, is there going to be a whole octopus thing? Yeah, you know that octopus is going to go straight for the cock, too.

That's the other problem. Not to, look, he's the one, it's his final words. Cock other problem. Not to, look. He's the one. Not the cock. It's his final words. Cock-a-cock. Introduce the podcast.

Cock-a-puss. This is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Cock-to-pussy. Cock-to-pussy. A hundred comedy points. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their

careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, emasculating South Korea's biggest leading men, and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Baby, this is a miniseries

on the films of Park Chan-wook. It's called I'm a Podcast, but That's Okay. Today we are talking what, David,

I think you and I, no spoilers, agree is his masterpiece. I think, yeah. For me, it's my undeniable number one. Yeah. And beyond that, one of my favorite films the last 10 years. It's called The Handmaiden.

And returning to the show. Retweening. Retweening. Retweening to the show for what is the 12th? Who? Who can keep count? 13th? Let me fire up blank check wiki,

which I have bookmarked on the top of my Chrome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this 12th, my feet? Is this a Yoshida's dozen? The mother blankies herself, Emily Yoshida. It's her 13th. This is 13th. This is a Yoshida's dozen.

Great. Well, hello, my children. Hi. Great to be back. Yeah. Twice in the same year. I think I went an entire year, though, not being on the pod. You did.

I really did a little mercy. I kind of just broke down into a little jog. Let some other people like think they could catch up um no one's catching up no no no emily saint james is on our stoker episode and she pointed out that there was no emily period on the podcast in 2022 which was an oversight oh i'm so excited to hear emily on stoker this has been recorded in the past but even like stefanski? There was no Emma even, I want to say? No, Emma was.

Because Emma did James and the Giant Peach. But wasn't that top of 23? Well, no. Or was that last 22? Now I gotta look at that. My memory is that was first ep up. Might be. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that was tail end. It was Coraline. That was the first

of the year. Okay, an emma snuck in but no emily's yeah yeah emma's not emma's not emily she's an emma no i know that i know that i was just i was asking an adjacent question the point is yes you'd let everyone catch up a little bit just to reassert your dominance yeah yeah it's cruel but necessary necessary. Yes. Welcome, Emily. Thank you, Emily. You wanted to discuss Park Chenwick's film, The Handmaiden. Coolest shit ever made. You asked us if you could. I did.

We said yes. We gave you man. Which is very kind of you. I didn't necessarily think I would get it because I figured everybody would want this movie. And I assume they all did because it's basically a perfect movie. Yep. I feel like a lot of people did ask, I don't know,

they would just put it on the list, right? Or just be like, well, I like Handmaiden. A lot of moving puzzle pieces and scheduling this one for a number of reasons. This whole miniseries, and there was like a thought of someone

who maybe wanted to do it where we held it off and didn't. Oh, that's right. We weren't offering it. We weren't offering it for a while. We kind of took it off the board for a while. I wanted to do it where we held it off and didn't oh that's right we weren't offering it we weren't offering it for a while we kind of took it off the board for a while i wanted to give it to someone fancy yes and who's fancier than emily yoshida someone somewhere asked me to describe my personality with one word i'm not kidding I think it was probably on a dating app or something. And I did say fancy.

But I think I was drunk when I said that. Well, you are very fancy. You and I, I feel like both have an appreciation for fanciness. Yeah, we've got some tourist placements. Don't get me started on astrology with David Sims.

Oh boy. I love astrology as a means of talking about myself i don't really love it as a means of understanding the celestial universe or whatever that makes sense just an organizational tool i am looking at my my blank check history just so i can remember the last time i was able to truly like gush over a movie like on like i have no like i have zero negative things to say about this movie spoiler alert um and i i mean i guess i really like dark star obviously it's not a perfect movie but i really like it and i was like i wanted to make an argument for it uh And then, I mean, even, and I know everybody hated this, but I really like Mad Max Fury Road.

But it's not, I don't think I feel ecstatic about that movie the way I feel ecstatic about this movie. I can't think about that episode because like an hour of it was lost. Right. We've revealed that before, right? Yes. An hour of it was lost. Right. We've revealed that before, right? Yes. Yeah. An hour of it was lost and it was like. That was in the dark Audioboom studio times. Right. And it was also one of the last in-person pre-banked.

Yeah. Yes. Because we were already having to start to do Zooms for earlier episodes. That's right. No, that's a tough one to revisit the episode turned out well Ben did a good salvage job Castle in the Sky surely you have no beef with Castle in the Sky

oh no Castle in the Sky I think was the last time I did a full on like just this is my shit I will just I know every detail of it like I can just you know wax poetic on it Babe was not main feed but i do feel like that episode was all three of us that was another one yeah yeah i will go hard for babe

yeah that's a perfect movie also babe and then criticize babe you can't he's a he's he's some good pig yeah he's he's a very good pig isn't it that's that's fucking charlotte's web but i think it still applies to baby wilbur wilbur is some pig he's also a good pig there can be two good pigs yeah i mean that'll do honestly to both pigs that'll do yes um but the handmaiden is really exciting i'm and i also sorry i don't want to get too meta on my own blank check career, but I was thinking about it. And I believe I saw this movie for the first time the same day I saw Elle for the first time. So who at TIFF? I saw I did not go to Cannes that year, but I did catch up with it at TIFF. And was Elle at Cannes as well?

I'm almost certain that it was. Yeah. So I was doing my like catch up there um that was a good can year and i was really bummed to have missed it that was like the one little gap in my brief career of going to can that i was not there for that one but um yeah i think i saw these films back to back and like what an incredible day and then maybe i saw arrival either the day before the next day which is like one of my favorite movies. Yeah.

Yeah. What a fun time at the festival. Well, when you get to TIFF on Thursday, Emily, we both know they show on Thursday morning all the Cannes movies. They do the catch-up day. So sometimes, yeah, you get just an injection of masterpiece. You'll watch, like, Parasite your name whatever you know whatever the hot you know canon sundance movies were is this your favorite park film as well emily i was thinking about it i i really likeirst a lot and I wanted to watch it. That's my number two. Yeah, I did a big park watch. I used to do this a lot.

Back in the Netflix disc days, I would just queue them all up, queue up an entire filmography. And I remember doing that for him around, I think because Thirst was his last film. And I remember just being blown away by it. And I think I've seen it once since then. But this one, just being fresh in my mind and kind of remembering how excited I was to see it the first time. And there are certain moments in it where I remember being in the theater and being like, I'm watching what will become one of my favorite movies.

And it's so exciting to have that feeling so yeah i think i think i think it's like yeah jury's out on on thirst although but this is very very good it's up there i love thirst but this is kind of like opus territory i'll say this too there in the uk they released an extended cut of this this film had different distributors in different territories it was amazon in the u.s in the uk it was uh what are they called quarzon artificial eyes yes and i think they both re-released it in theaters and then put it out on blu-ray and maybe also streaming for a period of time an extended cut that's 25 minutes longer yeah and the american blu-ray is out of print so i imported the british one which has the extended cut and i watched both

in the last 48 hours all right um and i i was like is this going to be a radical transformation like plus up of the movie i already think is a perfect masterpiece or is it going to feel like it's padded out now and this is just kind of like a for nerds like bonus stuff version and instead it's one of those things where it's like oh i think i would just like truly any version of this movie like the way i feel about like the the multiple cuts of margaret where i'm just like new world this movie is so in the pocket for me has like such clarity about what it's saying that even if you start rearranging the footage and shortening things and lengthening different things i'm just like i'm just all in on this that is surprising to me though not i mean i i haven't

seen the extended but yeah i think part of what makes this movie just perfect is the edit and it feels like every single proportion of every section every every shot is just like exactly where it needs to be so i am not that i doubt that it's also good but that's i mean that's amazing if it if it you know if it stands it sort of just works as an entirely valid different version of it sure yeah yeah well reddit mostly says extended cut is worse and reddit's always right i would default to watching theatrical yeah but i would not say the extended is not like markedly worse but sort of like you know whatever they don't seem enthusiastic about it they're like interesting yeah it's interesting yeah yeah yeah there are a couple little structural changes and

a lot of it is there's some alternate take stuff. It's more just interesting of like when a movie is this much of a Stone Cold masterpiece, it's interesting to watch like slightly different alternate universe versions of it that make you consider how they got to the choices they did in the first place. I get very scared with that. I don't like it sometimes. I'm like, no, no, no. No. I love my movie. Sure.

I don't want it sometimes. I'm like, no, no, no. No. I love my movie. Sure. I don't want the different one. I think it was also not like, oh, this was his earlier cut that then they made him cut down. No, he was asked to make it. After the fact, they were like, do you want to stretch it out? Yes. We can, I think it's probably the dossier. We can mention it.

But yeah, no, I think he, right. The film was so popular. They were like, do you have more? Could you do an extended? Yeah. And he was like, okay. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. It's still good, but it's not like a transformative thing. But yeah, I'm just like, I just think this thing is so locked in. I was going to say,

I don't even know where to begin with it. I mean, like, it, it, I feel like the stuff that I'm really interested in about it, like I've actually had a really hard time finding a lot of comprehensive writing in English

about kind of the whole setting and the significance of setting this book called Fingersmith by Susan. Sarah Waters. Sarah Waters. Sarah Waters. Sarah Waters runs deep. Like, you know, the significance of putting it there and

and, you know, what that does to the plot without ever being like it's never really didactic about it, but it's just like, what if we stuck this story in this different water, no pun intended, and let it cook. And and I that's the majority of what

i've been doing to prep for this podcast is just trying to like um have more than my like gist of what's going on um really explored but i i mean i just think well the one thing I was going to ask you guys was, do you have any other, can you think of any other films that, or I guess any kind of story that does this? That's an adaptation that resets it. And the one I could think of was Burning. But that is another, you know. But Thirst also does this is a less direct translation but uh when we were doing that episode we we right it's it's a closer more direct uh adaptation not just a loosely inspired by but totally transposed onto something else

i was thinking about this on the way in but this is the kind of thing that more often happens with like shakespeare plays right right where people are like i'm gonna recontextualize this by putting this in a different era and a different culture and whatever and it doesn't often happen with more modern adaptations uh right and and because like old boy is a pretty radical adaptation although it's not changed as much culturally than Thirst is like a very radical adaptation. I assume this was just how he likes to work. And then what JJ pulled up in his research was that like he was entirely preparing to do a more faithful adaptation of Fingersmith. Right.

And then he found out the TV version existed. Oh, interesting. There's also there's already a TV version. There's a Sally Hawkins BBC miniseries. Sure, sounds pretty good. Yes. I want to watch that. It sounds fucking good.

The book is different, though, I will say, as well. He did change the back half of the book quite a lot. Yeah, but I think he was going to do a British period corset piece kind of thing. And then I think once he found out that existed there had already been a literal adaptation then he sort of did the creative i mean we'll dig into it more but the creative exercise of how can i transpose this into a different place in time that adds some new layer to it and then once he did that he started making more changes to the story and he and sarah waters eventually landed on a

inspired by credit rather than adapted from even though it is very much from the book yeah yeah the first half particularly is very i think very close to it um i haven't read the book i've wanted to yeah the first half is the same and the second half is quite different. Basically, the big difference is they are not in on it when she gets put in the asylum. Like, he adds that later twist. Okay. Like, that happens in the book. That happens. She doesn't realize she's going to get put in the asylum and she knows that the switcheroo is happening.

Right, right. And does the book just end with her in the asylum? No, no, no. The turn happens later. But she gets out by herself. Gotcha. Finds her. And then a lot of stuff happens and it's just it's just different but um uh it does sound cool i mean sarah waters also wrote a book called tipping the velvet okay which means doing something

a bit naughty i was gonna say that's the most euphemistic sounding thing I've ever heard You mean something a fingersmith might get out of you Yes And it was turned into a mini-series For the BBC in 2002 Written by Andrew Davies Who wrote the, you know, Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice and many other

Like Tony adaptations And it was so controversial Because It had boobs Fuck In it What? And it was like Our. Because. It had boobs. Fuck. In it. What? And it was like, our government's paid for this?

Yeah. Lesbians? Also, the amount of velvet they tipped in this fucking thing. Very expensive. The velvet budget was. Oh. And so, I'm sure it was a gigantic hit for the BBC, like, despite all the country. Yeah.

And so, I'm not surprised they also adapted his fingersmith let me give you some context we're talking this stuff anyway um so yes obviously the film that park made before this is um stoker right what do you think is stoker emily i like stoker i think it's i think it's a flawed but a really interesting movie i think um i think it's unfortunately like like horny in a way i i can't even like deal with you're allowed all green lights what it's all green lights it is definitely you know somewhat unfortunately horny um fortunately it is rare though that would be a really good name for a podcast if i do like start a sexy movie podcast i would call it unfortunately horny i was gonna say though i feel like few movies tip that scale for you tip that velvet tip that velvet for you

of like yeah unfortunately too horny um so after he makes stoker uh he does make a short film called day trip which i have not seen i assume you guys probably haven't seen that either does bring him back to korea but i didn't realize how much post stoker he was in the headspace of i will continue making english language films he's planning to make The Brigands of Rattleborge, which we talked about, I think. The famed S. Craig Zoller Western that has never been made. Do you hear that sound?

What's that? It's a ponytail being pulled and slicked back. That's a horrible noise that you're making. Well, that's what it sounds like every morning when S. Craig Zoller takes out the car wax and pulls that ponytail back with all his might. I've never heard of this before. My God.

It was a number one blacklist script long ago. It was, I guess, how S. Craig Zoller emerged onto the scene. All right. Stop doing that. It's a final time. You have to stop saying his name. Well, it must be amazing. There's never been a bad script it's come from the black

list exactly um it is bangers well it may surprise you to hear filled with extreme violence which park found intriguing but also i'm sure the characters exist within clear moral lines well apparently it's about a sheriff and a doctor who seek revenge against a group of bandits who use the cover of a torrential thunderstorm to rob and terrorize the occupants of a small town i mean it sounds pretty fucking good honestly but um and also like if park chan were going to make an s craig zahler scripted western i probably would be interested yeah absolutely i probably want to see that but and that's what he said by the way was like him making an english language film in the first place with stoker was almost means to an end for him of, I want to make an American Western.

That is what interests me. You wanted to make like a Robert Aldrich. My number one reason I'd want to even set a foot into the American film industry is to be able to make a Western. So he was thinking, I will use Stoker to finally realize that dream. But this film never gets made. finally realize that dream but this film never gets made um so we have also a um crime film called corsica 72 um written by neil purvis and robert wade the bond guys yes um which uh was i don't know some other script he got linked to about best friends living on corsica one becomes an honest working man,

one becomes a gangster, and they feud over a woman? I mean, sounds good. Sounds pretty good. I just want to shout out credit to JJ, a researcher. He used the term of, found the director getting a serious case of the, quote, attachees for the first time in his career.

Attached to things. I think this is a good blank check term for when directors, the post-Pan's Labyrinth, For the first time in his career. He's getting attached to things. I think this is a good blank check term. Ooh. For when directors, the post-Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro period of just like, I'm going to attach myself to 80,000 things. Yeah. Your hot stuff. Yeah. Yes, he was also attached to a film called Second Born, written by someone called David Jagernauf.

And it's a sci-fi action film, sort of Philip K. Dick-esque. He said, we don't know much else about it. I don't know, never happened. He was also attached to, or maybe rumored to be. He was not, yeah. He said that this is not true, that he was rumored to be making

The Revenant with Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson was trying to make a very different version of The Revenant story. It would be pretty different because Hugh Glass was not black. Although, you know, sure. I think it was maybe more of a handmaiden style adaptation of the idea of someone surviving this kind of thing. He was sent the book.

He doesn't even remember whether or not he read it. But the fact that the material had been sent to him for interest somehow got circulated by the press as him being attached. Well, that's what I was going to say about the attaches. I think more often than not, it has nothing to do with the actual director. It's more like they're hot right now and anybody would like to be even rumored to be working with them. To be on this list. I think they do often do that thing where like they send a script to the hottest director

in town and then reps will leak to the press. They're reading. Blank is eyeing. Yeah. And it's like it's a script on their desk. It's a thing in their fucking inbox. Yeah. I'm eyeing my electric bill for this month.

Sounds like you got a case of the attachees, Emily. Yeah. I just think it would be really interesting to recontextualize it in another setting. Eyeing. Sorry. Stupid. Emily Inkle's electric bill. Refuses to pay.

All right. Fingersmith. Bofo Electric's bill. Yeah, go on. Book comes out in 2002. Booker Prize short list. Sure. Acclaimed Sally Hawkins Booker Prize short list. Sure. Acclaimed Sally Hawkins BBC One miniseries.

Yes. And then years later, Sid Lim, who produced several Park films, chucks it to him and says, what do you think? He reads it. End of part one with the first of many twists. He's like, whoa, i mean we've talked about park loves a good twist middle yeah that's already how he likes to structure his stories yeah so he gets to that point end of part one he must have just been like fucking hooting and

hollering yeah it's very i mean it kind of reminds me of uh mr vengeance a little bit like you know just that kind of switcheroo like kind of handshake in the middle, which is always very fun. I was so glad I wasn't familiar with Fingersmith before because I remember that twist hitting like insane. I remember people gasping in the theater. Like, it's so fun. No, I went into this, I remember just being dead cold,

knowing nothing outside of. It played really well at festivals and i like parks movies i knew it was based on this book but i had not read fingersmith yeah i have still not read it i confess hey um but so i did not know yeah i just knew there i knew there might be twists but it's sort of his thing again yeah i dare say this movie doesn't just have twists this movie is a goddamn bag of pretzels. This movie is a pot of spaghetti. A pot of spaghetti? Routini, more like.

Tangled up. Well, that's fair. I keep my spaghetti straight and separated. Right, you don't cook it. I don't cook it and I lay all the pieces out laterally

in front of me on the table and I just bite into them one at a time. Crunch, crunch, crunch. He also wanted, he was drawn to the idea of making a film where the protagonists are two women. Yes. So, you know, whatever.

Woke Mind Virus got him, I guess. Well, I think we've talked about, but like. I'm joking when I say that. I realize I should just like do clarification. And also you're allowed to say that because you have been fighting a severe case of the Woke Mind Virus. This isn't you mocking it. It's right you're a survivor you live with it every day uh it is it is terminal and inoperable um no the woke mind virus did get to him but he you know i we've talked about a lot of his career was him from old boy on trying to give his female

characters more agency center them more in the story, after feeling like he used them as sort of plot devices or story functions in his first couple of films. On top of that, he also said, like, he had wanted to make a queer film for a long time, and the thing he was looking for was a queer story that is not about prejudice, which is a thing that is really interesting about this movie. That it's like, this is a movie with a really interesting about this movie that it's like this

is a movie with a tremendous amount of tension and dramatic stakes but none of those stakes come from the fact that they are queer right yeah yeah it's never really commented on you don't really get a sense of like from um from suki like if she's knows she's even a lesbian, like, before meeting Lady Hidako, it's like, but it just kind of feels like, well, I'm super-duper horny for this person, so I'm just going to roll with it because I can't help it. And that's, yeah, it feels very liberated in that way.

And even when our, like, our villain, our cuck villain. The Count? The Count. Because the uncle is is even bigger villain right um they're like the entity in gabriel um uh modern parlance we all understand now uh even when he it clicks for him that she is gay uh it feels like he says it to her like, I realized you're left-handed. Yeah.

Like there's no judgment about it. As much as he is clearly attracted to her, it's just like, I understand you. I had misperceived you. His quote is, I was wanting to make a film that deals with the subject of homosexuality and I didn't want to handle in the way that the protagonists are pained or troubled over their sexual identity and they're grappling with society's perspective on them, they're discriminated against, that they have to fight for their sexual identity. I just want to tell a love story about the characters' emotions and how natural and organic it is.

And that's so much of what I find interesting about this movie is it's like their love is in conflict with everything else around them, which doesn't have to do with their love in a certain way. Yeah, I think it would be a little hat on a hat to have that be an issue for them just because there's so much going on politically and culturally and stuff there that, in a way, yeah, the queerness feels more like a mode of freedom

outside of this incredibly restrictive sort of setting that they're both in. It's like this one organic thing that breaks through out of this whole structure. That's like not that deep also. No, it's just like, yeah. It's like pretty just like visceral. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Sarah Waters catches wind.

The park wants an after book. She sits down and watches old boy right says i loved it because it was so gloriously excessive melodrama isn't the word really it's more greek myth which i think is an accurate read i think so i think oh yeah it's very i think i mean i think i think that's mostly what he traffics in is Greek myth. And I think that this film does a good job of kind of maintaining that. And I guess it's because it's based on non-Greek myth material. It's not an original story. but still maintains that sort of heightened reality while having characters in it that still feel extremely real and not like they are creations for the purpose of a parable or something.

I would agree with that. She said that basically her publisher, her agent, whoever said like, hey, there's like some interest in doing a South Korean adaptation of Fingersmith. And she was like, oh, that's weird and interesting. I assume nothing will come of it. And that it was only then maybe like a year in when someone relayed to her,

you know, it's Park Chan-wook, it's the old boy guy. And she hadn't seen his movies, but knew him by reputation was like, oh, I didn't realize it was like the guy wants to make this. Yeah. So, you know, park loves the book the silver thumb thimble

tooth grinding scene he says he just you know he wanted to see that outside of the confines of the type page we all wanted to see that right uh forky was like what is she doing when that scene began i think because she wasn't paying attention um so uh you know i mean there's so much here we the whole sort of like uh the way the movie plays with perception and seeing the same events multiple times and recontextualizing them he's like that's an inherently so thing. You can do that on the page, but you're never going to do it better than you can with editing. Yeah, to take an audience back to the same scene

with new information is such a delight, especially in this film, obviously. I guess there's always the fear that it will feel boring, but this film never feels boring. Also, I think that a cool thing in this one to go back and retread is is it's not just for plot purposes although that's obviously you know the plot gets thicker uh in the second section but there's also just like um like appreciating the moments that you thought you understood before have a different emotional

meaning to like you remember this one scene between the characters, but then, yes, it's different for the purposes of the plot, but also you're like, I thought that character was feeling this way here because she laughed or something. But it was totally a different... I read it wrong, like, you know, just because of the perspective that you have the first time.

It's really cool. It's a cool story. And you can replay the same footage, but just now the context of how you're viewing it is differently or you give us extra time at the beginning and end of what we previously saw that resets it or whatever. Like that it's just so effective. I don't know. He's so good at this sort of like I'm going to only let the audience know what I want them to know when I want them to know it. Right.

Yeah. And I feel like a lot of his movies, the first chunk of it, you are kind of purposefully disoriented, which is a thing that's still difficult to do well, which is keep an audience invested in a story they know they don't quite understand yet. quite understand yet to keep people hooked rather than frustrated when information is being withheld from them and then you get to the point halfway through or whatever where he starts like unraveling the thing right yeah and this is a movie where you think actually for the first whatever oh this is more conventional and straightforward than most of his narratives are the fact that you were going into this understanding basically from minute 10 on the handmaidens path into this world and what her objectives are and the count and everything to then have the thing where you think i i think i have the full deck of cards in my hand i know exactly what i'm playing with and then end of

part one he introduces a second deck it's like such a masterful trick to make you feel cocky that you understand the movie better than you do yeah and then just immediately introduce all these new wrinkles into it the only thing that would give you any you know whiff of suspicion that something else is going on is if you look at your watch and you're like this movie is however two hours and we are rich about the midpoint. Right, right. Yeah. Okay, so Park finds out, yes, there's a BBC adaptation. The producer, Sid Lim, comes up with the idea. Why don't we move the setting to 1930s Korea?

I'm going to give you a lot from Park here, Emily, that may help, you know, whatever, with context. The idea being, it was also a period of transition. The country was going through modernization here's park it was the time in history when modern cultures and modern civilization made their way into korea the idea of the mental hospital in the movie we say the mental hospital is located in japan but the very notion of it was so unfamiliar to korean society at the time everything that came from the west came via japan during that time yeah so he wants to you know the idea of like everything filtering in through japan so like there's modernity but it's also like coming in with this like cultural you know through this cultural prism that's not korean and there's sort of this like kind of almost like sharky and the sharky and the shark of this western culture

that sort of in a way not at all like i mean these are very different situations but it came to japan very suddenly in a way that was not like hostile necessarily but felt would have felt insane when if if you were there during the meiji restoration when Japan opened up and suddenly there were you know a zillion Europeans coming into the country and being like oh la la I love Japanese stuff and then you know and then you see the development of you know like western style architecture and stuff and like around that time and it must have felt crazy and then you see kind of a similar thing literally with this house being this crazy Frankenstein hybrid of Japan and Western English style. Exactly.

Like the house is designed exactly to reflect that. There's a Western wing, Japanese wing. They've been mechanically put together. It's this insane fusion of two styles. I honestly think the house looks rad and I would live there. That's incredible. I wouldn't live there because the vibes are bad. It's cursed?

Yeah. Some good shit happens. Some good shit. Where you're like, oh, this tree is so pretty. And they're like, yes, a woman died there and it took her soul. Yeah, and now it blooms beautifully. And I'm like, a lot of trees. And they're like, so many that you never see the sun. And I'm like, is everything just kind of odd? It seems good

but is actually bad? A little bit seems good but it's actually bad a little bit i love the idea of like a selling sunset type tour of this house like you know the owner has said they would let you keep the octopus for an extra 20k what did the octopus do why was it there well um so uh right right right the whole thing is ridiculous though like you know like um the way the people work on that who work in the house take off their shoes when they're in the japanese wing put them back home on the end to the western wing like park loves all of this like the library looks like in a japanese building when you put inside it's got western bookcases and then you go past that and there's japanese tatami mats on the floor, you know, like all this stuff.

Like it's probably not registering for American audiences in the same way, I guess. But like there is just something peculiar about the architecture that probably even like a complete layperson can get that this is not like what houses look like. And it's not an out of, again, it's not an out of again it's not an out of realm of possibility idea i mean you know the oldest neighborhoods in tokyo have a lot of this sort of stuff that feels like you've got you know like i was saying like you have both this western influence and the more traditional influence in it especially like a lot of fetishization of like

french stuff and and english stuff and stuff But so that idea is not crazy. I think it's just, but it is sort of, I was thinking of like, it is one of these sets, especially that big hall with the tatami and the stage at the end is like, is one of these sets that's just like so made for this story. Like every element of it is so specific to the story. I was thinking of kind of of like the

the apartment in old boy as well like which is less the one that you locked in no no not the hotel well yeah i mean that's obviously a very specific plot necessary structure but i guess like just the way that it felt so intentional the way it was constructed like kind of you know like knowing that in a very theatery way knowing that a certain kind of set of um events are going to unfold in this highly specific space um is yeah it's cool as i mean the the like the the the mats that lift out and have the water underneath and like all of that is so so interesting i love it obviously this is also reflected in the brilliant choice and this is not in the novel at all of the subtitling uh being in two languages with two colors

um and the sort of nuances which especially on rewatch you pick up more and more of when a character might shift the torture scene at the end is the one park sites with the uncle speaks korean for the first time in the film during the torture scene yep um because obviously he mostly wants to come off as this japanese you know yeah man of taste he has like aggressive self-hatred for the fact that he was not born japanese i think he's pretty chill and fact that he was not born japanese i think he's pretty chill and i think he's figured it out i think he's done a lot of work on himself he's clearly normal he knows himself i think he could say that he's comfortable in his own skin his tongue is definitely black for good reasons yes yeah gotta keep that pen uh waters you know they

pitch all this to Waters, and she's like, sounds good, bro. I think you get the novel. You're gonna leave it, you know, the heart of it, you know, intact, so go for it. Park and his frequent co-screenwriter, Chung Seo-kyung, do it all without any further, like, intervention.

They do come up with the inspired by thing. And that's when they changed the title, which is good because Fingersmith is such a specific title. Yeah. It sounds very British. Like that wouldn't make any sense is the title of this. It does sound very British. Are you a Fingersmith then?

Like, you know, I don't know. It'd be cool if they did say like, if they did have to say the word Fingersmith in English, but they had to do that accent for it And it was in like a third cover It was in like a blue She's like can you have one English kid So there's like one chimney sweep in the film for some reason

Yeah Bert's there Bert the fingersmith The novel also according to Park Has no comedy Yes So he says anything that's kind of funny is him right um and this movie is pretty it's fun yeah it has funny stuff there's a there's a quote from him it's in this uh chunk if i could find it in time but that his friend pointed out to him like you can never let a scene go on

too long without throwing in some sort of comedic subversion. And he had never clocked it. But he's like, I think it makes me uncomfortable if something is too self-serious for too long. And so the more melodramatic the events of his film becomes, the more he feels the need to, like, acknowledge the absurdity of the situation. Or throw, like, surprising behaviors in on top of what's going on, you know? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that's true for his other films simply because there's so much brutality and just like truly dark, bleak stuff in it that if you don't have an occasional reminder of a director's hand, of a writer's hand in there being like it's all like it's invented

this is like i did this for the movie like you know yes you kind of need that release every now and then to be like it's a movie it's a movie it's a movie like all these children aren't actually um dying right i think david needs to be reminded of every one of these episodes we've done yeah yeah this one i was like there's definitely no child stuff in this one and there's just a little smidge of it not great to this kid yeah yeah yeah uh forky ran out of the room literally ran out of the room when they do the flashback yeah oh okay yeah i would i we can talk about it when we get there but like i we were texting about this day right about your you know your your your aversion to child death which is really weird like

i think you should examine that yeah but i um but i i and you're like there's no child problem with it i guess no problem isn't right but it's more alarming to me in this movie for very specific reasons but we'll get there it's a very powerful movie in every way as well it's just you know you're really in it um apparently they consulted a queer friend of uh his co-screenwriter uh seo kyung uh who demanded they include the scissor sex okay because i remember like at when this movie came out some people being like did they have to scissor in the film? How much scissoring do people do? And I was like, come on.

It's all part of the opulence of this film. It's so wonderful. They only scissor, though, with the bells. I would say that. And I feel like that might be a different sort of. No, they scissor before the bells. They scissor in the middle. That's true.

When they have the meme of the two hands. When they're going like, you're natural. Yes. Their clasped hands. I feel like somebody should do the clasped bicep arm meme with that. It's, right, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers moment. Yes. What was the scene in Predator?

Was they go in for the clasped hands and then they cut out and the two of them are scissoring? Yeah, that would be amazing. Just being like, we're going to catch the predator. This dossier is too long and I can tell because JJ's apologizing for that in the dossier. Yeah. All right, so. I think there's plenty we'll get to

as we get to it in the plot. There's a lot, yeah. Kim Tae Ri, though, we should shout out, who plays Sookie. It's her first film. Yes. She was plucked, you know, from from thousands of auditions. Well, 14 or 14 to say one thing about the casting process. If you find yourself in a situation where you're wondering if anyone from the short list is the right person for the role,

that probably means that none of them are right. And they just, right. They auditioned over a thousand people and he just kept on being like a couple of them could maybe work. And then he like trusted himself. Like I'm not doing it until the person walks in who undeniably feels like they're the right personality match for this and even though it was someone who was pretty green

and untested he was just like she's got the right attitude um so she's never been in a movie before now kim and he uh is red hot when he's casting her um and uh you know so that's the he's putting a total newbie up against a gigantic uh star i feel like which is like the right dynamic perfect dynamic as long as the newbie can hold her own which she like is so incredible in this i remember reading that she it was her first movie when uh when it came out and i was like you've got to be kidding me she's just like so confident she rules and i have not seen her in a movie since she's big on tv too she's in a she's in a show called mr sunshine which is like a big netflix i'm aware of mr sunshine also set during the um it starts the annexation yeah right alice and jenny um no and also she was in that film Space Sweepers,

which was one of those Korean films that was like number one on Netflix for weeks. But I have not seen Space Sweepers. One thing in looking at a lot of filmographies, both for this film and other ones that you guys have been covering in it, is like just

how heavy a presence Netflix has in Korean entertainment right now. Yes. Like every show. And I think most of them are Netflix productions. They're not purchases. So, yeah. It feels like they very smartly saw

that there was an opening in the market and an audience that was underserved and that this stuff had the ability to cross over and just started investing money early on the ground floor. I mean, even this just being an Amazon co-production is really interesting because this is coming out of an era where Amazon is doing a lot of good in their film division. where Amazon is doing a lot of good in their film division, but a lot of it is taking 90s indie auteurs who can't get movies made anymore and giving them the money to make their thing that's been lying on the shelf for a while. There are so many frustrating Amazon productions to me at this time because I refuse to have Prime.

I will never pay for Prime. If I watch something on Prime, it's because I stole somebody's password. Yeah, I said it. Bezos, arrest me. A terrible company that's done many horrible things. But yeah, this one is frustrating. I did watch this this time around

on, what's it called? Freebie. So there were ads. I'd seen it before, so it was fine. But that's annoying. The Suspiria is annoying. Peter Lou is annoying to have it be. I want a Peter Lou disc so bad. I don't know if that exists.

I would love a Peter Lou disc. This was like Amazon's Annapurna era. Yes, it was. Like you said, there's a Blu-ray. It looks like it's a British Blu-ray, but still. Are there zones for Blu-ray? I don't know. There are.

Although increasingly more and more of them are region free. They're region free. And the 4K discs are always region free. You got to get that region free player. That's what I got for that extended handmade. Points. I feel like this era when Amazon and Netflix come in, Netflix started doing a lot of like the great unmade projects were finally going to give people the money to make

their fucking movies and almost all of them sucked when they came out and the amazon ones were mostly good um yeah yeah like the mutes of the world versus mute remember mute right that was one of those things where it was like years of being like why won't anyone give duncan jones the money to make mute and then netflix gives him money you're like oh because the script sucks right because no one thought to tell him it was a butt script right and amazon kind of did a run of really good auteur films before now they pivoted to doing whatever the fuck they're doing now well didn't didn't i read somewhere that citadel cost something like what did it cost it wasn't as much as one squintillion dollars yeah the funny thing with citadel was that they like made another version of it that they didn't air they essentially

made two full seasons of citadel shall we say um yeah yeah it was no citadel cost like like 400 million dollars yeah but it was good it was good. But this is the shit that just makes anybody who's ever tried to get anything made in this fucking industry want to rip their eyes out and quit and jump into the ocean. Look, there's the phenomenon that a lot of these places, when they're trying to get their foot in the door to be seen as legitimate, the way they do that is presenting themselves as like great patrons of the art. We are not looking to make a profit. We are looking to enrich the culture. And they hired Ted Hope, who has like a great track record in indie film,

and sort of went like, bring us the guys who are struggling to get their films made in the current system, and we're going to give them the freedom and flexibility. And then once they had their foothold, they were like, great, all we want to do now is Citadel. Everything should be Citadel. I mean, because all of these are going to be loss leaders.

Nobody's going to make money off of these. But it's truly, it's just PR to go to Cannes and have a film by Lynne Ramsey or whoever there. And then also, once you've gotten that positive goodwill, then you're able to competitively bid for fucking Dwayne Johnson's Santa Claus action movie. Which he wouldn't do unless... Yeah, because you know that Dwayne Johnson was a big Lin Ramsey head.

He's seen more of a color like 80 times. You know who's in Citadel? Who? Stanley Tucci. It's got a touch of the tip. Oh, wow. Well, that must have been half the budget. Here's something I want to float. Okay.

I was having lunch with Olivia Craig yesterday. Congratulations. And we brought this up. We had brought it up with each other once before. Okay. We think Tucci may have lost the touch. When was the last time Tucci touched? Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Ben, get on mic. Hold on. We need to dig into this because fuck. Ben, get on mic. Hold on. We need to dig into this because I know Ben's going to have strong opinions here. Absolutely. Spotlight. Tucci was great. This is a necessary tangent. Folks, please give this to us. We have to talk about this.

Since then, it's a lot of, what? It's a lot of, huh? Okay. You guys should do a Patreon miniseries on Tucci's Touches. Because obviously the man has pivoted into Italian cookbook and travel show and all that. Now I'm apron wearing Tucci. I'm making red sauce. We're talking about pesto.

Worth was his last feature, it sounds like. He's pretty good in Worth. It's sort of like a version of his Spotlight performance where he's like the nervy guy. Yes. That's about as close as I would get to like a classic touch of the toot. Jesus Christ. Can I just speed round this? It's tough.

He was in the Whitney Houston biopic. He sure was as Clive Davis. Wait, what? Okay, I didn't see that. Spotlight for me, arguably his best performance. I think he's phenomenal. He's wonderful in Spotlight. But then post-Spotlight, he does his final Hunger Games performance in 2015, okay? And then after that, here's his entire movie career. Mastro Cadenza in Beauty and the Beast remake.

Merlin in Transformers The Last Knight. Yep. The Children Act. Submission. A Voice in Snow Dogs. Patience. Most of these don't exist. Rosamund Pike's A Private War

Night Hunter The Silence What the fuck These are like All the movies That I had to review At Yes

Supernova It doesn't exist Or it's a disaster The Witches Zemeckis' The Witches Yep What the fuck is Jolt It was like one of those

It's a cola from the like Late 90s I believe Not to invoke Amazon again but it was like Amazon's You know girl boss action movie United States ambassador In the King's Man He does two promotional short films for Tengare

Yes I mean which you know look Money money money money Whitney Houston I Want to Dance with Somebody Clive Davis seven episodes of Citadel Tengere. Yes. I mean, which, you know, look. It's a touch of the cha-ching. Whitney Houston, I Want to Dance with Somebody, Clive Davis, seven episodes of Citadel, and then his most recent film is called Shalom Amore. I'm sorry. It's a podcast.

It's a fucking narrative podcast. So I'm just, it's not like Tucci, you know, can't get it back. But he has the last five years. He has the career. Actually, you could argue like the last 10 to 15 years. He has a career.

Somebody that like some producer who just never actually watched a movie from start to finish in their lives is like he's British, right? Yes. Ben, you said the touch of the Tucci about Captain America one, right? Was that when you I can't remember when you said that. of the tooch about Captain America 1, right? Was that when you... I can't remember when you said that. It's so long ago. After he was in that was truly when it started to be like, he works constantly.

Yeah. And like, you know, it's sort of like some of it's goodness, some of it's like... Are you sure it wasn't in the Devil Wears Prada episode? I mean, that's where you coined your phrase that I think is so good. That's the moment where we all decided he should be on money. That's the moment where it was like, this man needs to be on our currency. Look, we all were in love.

Here's what's most worrying to me. He's got two upcoming projects listed on IMDb. Yeah. One of them is the new Russo Brothers project. It sure is. The Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt robot movie. And the other one is the all russo brothers project it sure is the millie robbie brown chris pratt robot movie and the other one is the all quiet on the western front guy's new movie where he plays a cardinal i mean that one looks like it'll be you know like emily's saying like some kind of

you know okay boring shit with british guys going like but the cardinal said no it actually sounds really good i want want him to surprise me again. No, I want him to surprise me too. As long as the series or the show is called The Cardinal Says No! But the Cardinal! I just want the best for Tooch. I do too.

Okay, I found the episode. It was The Terminal. It was The Terminal. Which, you know, I mean, not a great film and not his best performance. But just a little. You're just sort of happy to see him. It does go a long way in that movie. Which, you know, I mean, not a great film and not his best performance. But just a little. You're just so happy to see him. It does go a long way in that movie.

Yeah, it does. And he's taking the functional role and he's just giving a little paprika. Yeah. And then he was instead giving a little paprika to his frickin', you know, meatballs again. Well, the Italian travel show got canceled, right? I mean, how much can he be doing that yeah i think it finally got canceled okay there's a lot of regions in italy david i suppose do you think there are these like italian grandma ladies who like make food on the top of a mountain

and every six months like eugene levy's showing you know some celebrities like hi i'm here with apple we're gonna fucking make some pesto on this mountain like okay here we go i heard i heard that searching for italy got canceled because the cardinal said no ah the cardinal keep the tucci out his output is so bad i don't want touch. The Pope wants him to be in something good. He can't come back until he gets another Oscar nom. The Pope is saying maybe try to make another movie with Shalhoub. If it's on a streamer, we don't like it.

It needs to work with a studio. We don't have the Netflix here. Yes, you have to touch it with the comedy. And definitely don't direct a movie with Armie Hammer in it. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. Okay, well, can Russell Crowe visit? No, no, no.

No, no, no. Oh, my God. Alright, The Handmaiden. The Handmaiden. Is set in 1930s Korea. Korea's still under Japanese rule, right? Is it 30s okay i was trying it yeah so it's never specified never specified in the film but apparently that is what uh park

says in the interviews and that seems logical to me in terms of the majority sort of that's like your one thing that you can really and you got cars you got obviously electricity you know it was like 20s on a big scale right yeah um there was yeah i mean because it the annexation happened in 1910 yes and then there was like a uprising in 1919 and i think then that's like i think i feel like things got very aggressive after that after 1919 there's a treaty where it's like formalized yeah you know i mean not with the consent of you know koreans oh no japan declares uh that uh it is in charge of korea uh and then they they you know japan eyes japan eyes i don't know how you know like the japanization of the country

starts to happen right they're building railroads and they're doing all kinds of stuff they're doing a little enforced industrial revolution in there and you know building schools and stuff and creating all this infrastructure that you know it sounds great until you're like oh yeah but it's all like with that emphasis on japanese you better be japanese yeah essentially and or at least be uh and then there's the comfort women look you look this is all like immensely complicated and that's why blank check is gonna go all in on it six part mini series no no i mean you know like read read much more about this at your own leisure yeah yeah that's what I'm saying to our listeners. It's complicated so far as like, I mean, I do think that there is like debate or whatever about, you know, the fact that, you know, you do build all these schools and whatever that do eventually after Japan leaves, like they're still there and they can be, you know, actually controlled by Korean people.

But yeah, I mean, it was not good. It was not good, but it's left all these crazy scars that linger in all kinds of ways on the country and the culture. Right? And on like ongoing relations. And there's really not much of that that we see. We don't really see the, I mean, we don't really see much of the wider world beyond the house in the film, except for like at the beginning and then near the end once they're kind of on their little honeymoon and the mental hospital and all that. sort of a little splash of cold water on everything where you kind of do remember the context of what's going on, which is when they're on a boat. What is that?

It's after the wedding, I think. It's when the count is on the boat with Lady Hideko. It's their sort of honeymoon. And you see the men in the uniforms. Yeah, they're taking the boat to Japan. And then the Japanese soldiers come and like surround them and you realize like oh yeah this is this is the context of what's going on those those men have been fucking raping women for the last you know year or whatever they were there and and they're

now like surrounding hideko and she's just obviously like incredibly uncomfortable about it and it's such a it's such a good like there's if you're going to be very selective about historical political stuff like that is such a good moment i think to you know distill everything um i i kept thinking while watching this movie of the thing george lucas always said that like his grandest ambition with star wars was that when he was in film school and got really into kurosawa that he was obsessed with the fact that those movies were meant for japanese audiences so they didn't do any sort of like cultural context setting for the audience right and that he as a westerner was watching these films like just dropped into this universe where he had to discern what the rules of culture were through their Right. Yeah. house that is like at odds with itself you're able to extrapolate so much more even if you're not coming into it with any historical perspective of like well here's the whole thing basically

contained within 10 characters in a contained space yeah and i think you know there are some sort of comps that you can look to if you're not like familiar with the specifics of this time period. But I think like, I think that the issue of, you know, like the, the, the uncle being the sort of like traitor basically, and also just kind of trying to disavow his Korean.

His Koreanness. Pretend he's Japanese essentially. Yeah. This sort of fetishization of his, you know, of this, you know, occupying force is so specific that it's really hard to think of, like, I mean, you could think of people trying to deny their own culture

or, you know, being ashamed of it for whatever reason. But there's something about it in this setting that I just think is so, yeah it's very specific i'm curious about how it even works it doesn't in the original it doesn't text no it's not yeah it's not part of the original novel there you can do you can imagine a sort of class obsession yeah but it's like a new money old money thing. Yeah. Right. I mean, it takes place during like peak British colonialism. You're like, it could, you know, because I was wondering when I, before I read anything about the book, I was like, is that an element of it? Because this is, you know, so much about colonialism. Sure.

And it's not, but yeah. No, I mean, but the thing then is obviously, you know, there are the people trying to act like aristocrats and there are people who are like we are aristocrats we've been aristocrats for a thousand years you can't fucking make it right it's the old money new money thing but there's this added element of yes what you're saying where it's like it's not even uh uh cultural exotism it's like the jealousy of the culture he was not born into. Yeah. Or, you know, I mean, in a very, very simplistic version, it's like, you know, you're being bullied and so you try to emulate your bully. Yes.

Yes. Right. Yes. I mean, he's also a dirty collaborator who got a gold mine in exchange for helping the Japanese take over Korea. That's why he's got all this. I want to be clear. I think this guy sucks. You think? And he's calling right this. I want to be clear. I think this guy sucks. You think?

And he's calling right now. Okay, he's calling. He's blowing up our phone. What do we say? What do we say? Okay, let's word this clear. Something very neutral like, what's up, dude?

Yeah. House tricks? House tricks. Yeah. Right. We don't want to appear to be too friendly, but we also don't want to put him on edge. I don't want to be on record saying anything, you know, in approval of anything he's been up to.

I don't want to condone anything he stands for. But I also don't think there's any reason to be rude for the sake of being rude. To be fair, I think it would be hard for me to do that. But nice house? No, no. Yes. Yeah. Because that's more of a compliment to the interior decorator than it is to him.

Right. But he did commission. Isn't it that he commissioned it? Or was it that it was two houses that were conjoined? I think it was. No, because they're talking about the architect did this specifically for him. Right. Including the border.

It's an insane thing he created. specifically for him like including an insane thing he created because the idea of course the trees around it is they will keep the sun from um you know hurting his precious books because he's a collector of books especially uh dirty porn yeah now these books uh suck ass no kink shaming in this house yeah exactly um But he's definitely got a bit of a weird mindset about them. I think we're allowed to kink shame this guy, at least for the way he expresses. Wait, okay. Before we get into the porn, you want to hear something fucked up that I read when I was trying to find some background stuff about this?

Along with the colonization and the neocultural takeover and everything, the Japanese introduced, like cut down Korean trees and replaced them with Japanese species of trees that were actually like, I don't know about invasive, but like really threw off the ecosystem. I just reminded that when you're talking about the trees. And I was like, yeah. So, like, that just, it's, like, so total. And so, like, that just feels like an insult on top of injury. It's so dumb. But anyway. This dude, yes.

This dude's obsessed with books. And he's in this weird position where I always get a little confused trying to parse this. but he's basically bankrupted himself on his book collection. Yeah, he's an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. He's using his goldmine money, which he barely, you know, earned. Yes. He didn't earn it. He hasn't. On all this insanity.

Yes. Like, I mean barely. Like, it's like he doesn't know how to run a goldmine probably. He's using all the money from that to build this crazy house and buy all these books. It's actually like a dirty book addiction that now he is funding by forging books and selling forged copies of the books he owns to buy more books. Can you imagine the Japanese general Or whoever made this deal with him To give him the gold mine And they like check in on him 20 years later

It's like I wonder what that guy got up to Like what did he make of himself I'm in my octopus basement don't talk to me So He Has Now Hideko is his niece Obviously right

Because he married a Japanese woman. Right. And the fortune lies with her, and he is sort of raising her to eventually marry her so that he can get the fortune all to himself, correct? Right. Normal stuff. Raised by her aunt, marries this horrible man.

Right. He basically... Drives her into insanity and kills her Yes What is presented to her as a suicide But she realizes was a murder And then he's like no problem You slot right into that position

And when you come of age I will marry you And meanwhile Will do all kinds of horrible things And so he's Sort of like a C plus d minus you know kind of person i give him enough i think he's actually about as bad as people get like okay 5.5 right yeah he's like a pitchfork 5.5 maybe the most damaging thing you could say about him is he's very mid uh he's super mid so can i talk about the eyebrows? It's a PG-13 It's a great rating

It's a decision I love in this movie so much For a film that is so twisty Right? The actor playing this character is about 40 years old I think at the time of filming this movie The uncle The uncle And they just give him big old man eyebrows

Stark white, Doc Brown wig And don't even really The uncle. The uncle. Yeah. And they just give him big old man eyebrows. Yeah. Stark white, Doc Brown wig. And don't even really like put prosthetic wrinkles on his face. It's more like theatrical stage makeup. Yeah. Like he doesn't look that much more convincing than Hidako does at the end of the film. No. When she's in drag.

Right. It feels very like archers to me yeah right where it's this owning of like theatrical communication of visual ideas that this film can exist in a heightened reality with like very honest complicated human emotions things like sexuality that didn't exist in this sort of heightened more theatrical like pre-method era of filmmaking. Yeah. But you just accept this is a fucking old guy. Because I'm watching and I'm like, is this going to be part of the twist

that he's a young guy pretending to be an old guy or whatever? You're like, no, he just cast another evil and weird thing and inexplicably I want to be old. Yes. I also just think like the first time we see him, which actually takes a bit of time because you know is with the snake no she can't yeah yeah

the first time we see the library and all of that I mean there's a zoom in on him as he's like licking his pen or whatever and it is so alarming and so I mean I remember I looked at my old review for this which um is not uh don't

read it maybe i don't know i hate my i hate my writing but uh i did i did write down looney tunes a bunch which i in general i think it's like a i think of looney tunes all the time when i'm watching park but um but yeah that that is one of those moments where you're just like, whoa, where'd that guy come from? Okay, he's a character in this movie. Well, that's... Yes, and it's like a different visual language than any of the character we've seen. Like, here comes a guy

who feels like he's out of a Tim Burton movie. So I want to talk about that moment because as a way of talking about this, or first chunk of this movie. You know what it reminds me of? Sorry, sorry. It reminds me of the bear in The Shining. Like, that shot.

Yeah, that shot. Yeah. And you're just like, oh my God, something incredibly perverted is happening here. Yeah. Right. You're going into this movie. You get this setup of, okay, that's the situation over there. Uncle, niece, you know, money. Yeah. In comes the count, a con artist who's like, I have gotten inside of this and I'm going

to marry the niece right yes and he's like i need a lady from your fagin-esque den of thieves right of you know baby farming and female pickpockets yes to come and pretend to be a handmaiden to part of my scheme yeah so if you're just watching this movie and you're like All of this is normal, there are no twists coming I get it That's what you think the con is, correct? You're watching the movie, you're with the handmaiden She's your point of view character

She's getting to know the mistress She has nightmares, right? She's getting to know the lay of the land The other maids are mean Steal her shoe, all this stuff She goes down to the basement crash zoom into the count him being like there's a snake there's a fucking snake right right and they're like get out you know they draw the bars and so you're like okay so is this movie about

they just thought they were gonna steal some stuff right and get one over on a lady the twist is clearly gonna have to do with what is this guy's fucking right and the twist is actually you don't understand all the crazy shit that's happening in here. Now, of course, the layers of twists are no, no, no. Actually, there's a lot of awareness of what's going on. But that alone is such a nerve jangling. Yes. Things are not what they seem.

Let's zoom out moment. But I agree with you. It's the first moment of true like excitement. That bear moment in Shining, it's a similar thing where you're like in a film that's setting up an incredibly bizarre reality and then fairly deep in it suddenly shifts the language of its own reality to something that feels more expansive than what you thought before and it's like yeah i think it is important that the guy is doing such also he looks insane like he looks amazing he looks insane but it's also like a very heightened unrealistic performance which isn't to say that it's not a good performance

but it's like an entirely different pitch yeah i mean it goes from this thing it feels like i mean whatever it feels like kind of hitchcock feels kind of rebecca you're like oh a spooky house like somebody died you know there's there's women's madness is haunting this house. And then you get to that and it just ups it to, yeah, something more both concrete and fantastical. And it's just the editing of that. Like, you see the room. You pan down this insane room with, like, this what's going on here. There's a library.

And then there's, like, it's Tommy room at the end of it you see him you see i know how insane he looks and then there's a fucking snake and then the gate and all this and it's just like bam bam bam bam bam and and you have to be like it's purposefully just completely overwhelming and disorienting and it's so it's such a good moment and you've already set up this thing of like uh uh literacy being a big thing in the movie from almost the beginning yeah right and then this idea of like she keeps on going with her uncle to have these like reading lessons to do these like practice readings yeah and performances and it's for that's the thing it's lessons so much the movie it's like yeah whatever she goes she goes down she has her lessons sure right and then it's pretty deep in that she starts to say

You don't understand how stressful this is And you're like, what's the weird thing going on here? What can I comprehend about what's going on here? But it is a little bit of a It's not a distraction Because there are reveals to come from that But you're like, no, but he's keeping your eye Off the ball of every scene

You've seen is actually Taking place in a different plane of reality than you think. Because, obviously, the fundamental thing about this movie is that the male characters, the men, if you will, suck. Cannot,

they cannot account for the women around them having intellectual capacity or like, you know, any kind of smarts. But at the same time they are like they're completely motivated by self-loathing whether it's about class or nationality i mean like both of the main men in this are are well adjusted normal well well said

yes go ahead they're korean men who you can forget sometimes because you know as you said uncle never speaks uh never speak screen until the very very end and and and the quote-unquote count is which oh also like his name count Fujiwara like it's kind of fun it's like very like you can't believe anybody would actually fall for this just because Fujiwara is like one of the oldest like um they had like the most noble family from like it's like if I called myself Lord Windsor or whatever. Yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, wow, he must be really important. Right.

It's just funny. It's like, oh, yeah, this guy who's this, you know, he's a working class, whatever, you know, he's trying to, you know, jump up in social status. And he's like, I pick that name. And it's great. He's Grand Old Money moneybags that's what his name is rich uncle pennybags yeah they're like creating obsessed with creating these false

sort of uh personas for themselves so the types of men they wish they were and how they were perceived within cultures right uh and which cultures they wish they uh were in but then their other obsession is like looking at women and trying to shape them into the women of fictional works. Yes. The women are just, right. You want to flatten them. There's literally a wooden puppet in this movie, obviously. And all of their sexual desires are about control and stuff like that.

But also they just can't actually think that these women might be due up to anything. Yes. Right? But then also the women can't actually think that these women might be due up to anything. Yes. Right? But then also the women can't account for each other's naivete and we can't account for their naivete at first. Like, we're getting veils lifted for us over and over and over again. Yes. And with each veil lifted, you're like, right, of course.

Of course. Of course. And the men, of course, are the last to figure it out and they only figure it out when they're smoking poison together in a basement with no windows at the end. And they're like, ah! Both of these guys. But at least I have my penis.

Sorry. Both of these guys, uncle especially, they're down bad with a horrible case of the Don John. Where they're so obsessed with what they see women do in porn. No, I know. They got porn right. David is standing up and walking away. Right, they got porn right. And they're just like,

why don't you act like the women in the porn I watch? Yeah. In this case, the porn I read on Fancy Scrolls. Yes, right. Like my favorite. Lovely woodcuts and so on and so forth. But even it's not even, why don't you act like this? It's, I demand, I shape you into this.

Yeah. And it's the irony of it you into this yeah and it's and it's the irony of it of this you know you have this japanese colonizing force and then the lone actual japanese person in this house is the one who has sort of been molded into this role and set up as this object basically to watch and to like get your rocks off about without ever touching her really there's no as far as we can tell there's no actual you know she's unspoiled technically sure yeah but i mean but there's no he's not touching her he's not being you know there's no assault or anything like that she is but that like there doesn't need to be for

him there's something about this whole kink of his that is so much about having this unattainable object basically that he's created himself and it's very um even says to the other rich guys of just like there was no amount you could pay yeah to be with her yeah It is just like aggressive objectification that is also trying... They are hitting her. Aren't they? What, physically? Oh yeah, there's like the lash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. That's it.

But yes, they're not having sex with her. No, and the hitting her is also like part of this weird power fantasy of just like, well you're watching this very proper sort of like quote unquote pure unspoiled young woman recount the most like perverse shit to you right yeah and then the only physical contact tuxedos and twirl their mustaches right and the only physical contact you're allowed to make is like essentially physically punishing her for misbehaving right

it's like if they were to then have sex with her, it would make her dirty. Right. Versus her describing the dirty thing to them and then them like she is a child, like spanking her bottom and be like, you use bad language. But I think the more interesting thing is them,

her, you know, whipping his ass. Because then you have this, I think that is more, I think that, you know, you can kind of do that is more i think that you know you can kind of do that oh you can yeah you can whip your butt her bottom for 100 bucks or whatever but then it's like the real thing is to have this again like perfect woman uh this unattainable woman that you've you've basically trained to torment you psychologically and physically in this one scene, like that this is some sort of literal self-flagellation that you are enacting through this woman.

The highest level is punishing yourself by allowing her to hit you for wanting to fuck her. Yeah, yeah. And then when you add on all the political and cultural baggage on it, it's just, I mean, it's fucked. It's just like a stake to me. I'm just like, this is so interesting. And the first time I watched it, I was like, well, this is before everybody also got all into erotic thrillers and stuff like that again. And I remember thinking while I was watching this, like, this is an erotic thrill. Like, this is exactly like the kind of movie that we've been missing for forever and ever and that nobody really, you know, certainly makes in English language.

But it's an erotic epic. Like, and it is, you know, I mean, I think what we all love and miss about the cheap 80s and 90s erotic thrillers is sometimes you could just have a movie that was like, what if a guy and a girl fucked when they shouldn't have? They could be

real nothing. This is a beautiful film. It's an incredibly complicated series of dynamics. You're just talking about one element of the film right now. I guess the one that I was thinking of

was just Basic Instinct because of the element of queerness, because of, you know, the sort of, like, incredibly tenuous relationship between a man who thinks he has this woman, you know, under his thumb, and then, you know, constantly being...

But, yeah. But, yeah, it's very complicated. And the difficulty of playing roles, which is a this woman, you know, under his thumb and then, you know, constantly being. But yeah. But yeah, it's very complicated. Playing roles, which is a big thing I think that comes up in most of Park's films is like sort of the how am I supposed to behave or what do I want to convince other people I am versus who am I really, you know, if I even am able to answer that. Yeah. am i really you know if i even am able to answer that yeah the the additional layer one of the many additional layers on top of this that's so fascinating is like as she presents to us at first it's like well this is someone who is so beyond sheltered that she is basically like stuck in a permanent state of like mental adolescence right like she has just been so cloistered off from the world she is so out of

touch with her own sexuality the count is trying to like tell the handmaiden that her job is to like quietly try to like sexually mature her right because she's not even in a state where she could be seduced to him marrying her right right so there's that whole thing but then you find out in fact and then when you get to the reveal of what's going on in the basement, the library, whatever, you're like, OK, so it's her sexuality has been taken away from her because she is forced to perform it for these other guys. So she has no sense of her own sexuality. And then you realize, no, the her not having a sense of her own sexuality is the performance to the world. having a sense of her own sexuality is the performance to the world. Well, I don't,

I don't think she does. Like I, I do. This is, this is one of the things I think it doesn't make this film not work for me. I just think it's like, I feel like I have a different read on it, which is just that like,

I think in many ways she is still an innocent. And I think that if you're meant to think, Oh, she's this, you know, saucy minx because she reads erotica to these men i what i take away from it is that you can you can read filth and porn every day of your life for the benefit of somebody else and and get in all these weird sex positions with a mannequin on stage and stuff and still not have a sense of what you want you can be exposed to sex all

all that a person could be and still you know when she realizes that she is in love with suki it's like it still feels like a revelation and there's something about it feels young because of that because she hasn't actually done anything that she wants to do but the scene where the count comes to her and says like let me flip over my cards my plan was to seduce you and then like send you to an insane asylum um but i realize now i can never seduce you because you're not interested in men basically right yeah a lot of movies would make that some like realization that comes to her later only through falling in love for real of like i never had a chance to even understand or consider my own sexuality because my sexuality has been like foisted upon me whereas instead even if it maybe hasn't been expressed it's very clear in that moment that she has some clear sense of at the very least what her sexuality is not and what it

is that has not been given a chance to express itself. Also, like, how could you not be repulsed by all of that if that was what you were getting from like age six or whatever? It's like, yeah. Sure. It's probably not going to time you see the first scene where they sleep together when you understand that this was one of her moves that it was her objective to seduce suki yeah uh that i i think that is the moment where they fall in love with each other of course that like it is they are both they're both attracted to each other. Of course. That like, it is, they are both attracted to each other and interested.

This is good. Compelled. This is fun. Like, this isn't just performance or whatever. But that's the thing. This is natural.

It's so clear both times where it's, right, she keeps on saying you're a natural, but the thing is just like, oh, this is,

you said it better. I was just going to rephrase everything you just said. Do you think this character should have one good male character? This film should have one good male character who's kind of like, I'm nice.

I'm a cool guy. I just hate the idea of little boys watching this movie and not having any character to look up to. Now listen. There are no positive male role models in this film. I just want little boys to be able to see themselves on screen. They're just not relatable. We've kind of skipped over the first part of the movie movie but the first part of the movie is not really worth the discussion after you've

seen the movie you set it up quickly you know I mean but plot wise sure but I think like when you yeah I think you know stuff like those pivotal moments like the reveal of the uncle you know like the first sex scene

the first time you see the sex scene, right. Yeah, like I, one thing I did like is that, you know, well, okay, so, so Hideko speaks in Korean, which, you know, it might just be for the benefit of the main intended audience for the movie but also like it's it does seem like she does want to separate herself from her japanese-ness just because of the way like almost in rebellion to the way her uncle she doesn't want to be the puppet her uncle is turning her into yeah but then you know so so all of their scenes together um are you know in in korean but when they are in that first sex scene when she's like supposedly like show me you know show me what a man wants on his wedding night which is like you know i just think it's in a lot of the literature i've written about various fictional characters i'm interested in you know exploring in more depth blank check press but um but you know the one like they she does slip into japanese just to you know say this is

what the count would say which i just think is so in like that is the the and it's like literally when she's about to go down on her um and that's when she switches into japanese which i just feel like i i don't even i just think it's like a very interesting choice because, you know, suddenly there is going to be this like girl sex act. And it's kind of couched in this in this language and still like the presence or influence of this man. So it feels like kind of a it is like a means to get to having sex, but I just think it's, yeah, it's really interesting. Look, to lay it out as cleanly as possible,

right, like fake count who's hired to help forge the books for this guy who drove himself into debt with the book collection, but you get to the point where they have this sex scene, they clearly make the stronger connection, and then But you still think this is all just part of a game. But Tsuki starts to feel conflicted about,

I don't know if I can put her up to this. Right. And then there's the sort of test where Hadako asks her, like, if you were truly in love with someone, would you still recommend that I go marry someone else? Or if I was in love with someone. Right.

Yes. Sorry. And there's sort of like this big test where you just think it's the offense of her not fighting for her love. Right. After a couple scenes of like, Suki is like trying to interfere with the count making moves on her,

but she keeps on jumping in and he's trying to stop her from ruining the whole fucking gambit. Right. And then when she thinks it is finally the move where they are going to get her committed to the institution. Of course. In fact, everything is flipped on her.

Right. They make them think that... That Sookie is the lady and that she is gone. With a delusion of being a handmaiden. Dottie. The thing that tips you off to the switcheroo, and to be fair i only noticed this the second time around but i did think it was weird the first time i saw it that like when

they're on their honeymoon in japan they're dressing up suki like a like a like not like a japanese maid like like she's wearing like kimono she's wearing like a nice outfit. And then when they take her to the insane asylum or the sanitarium or whatever, she's there, you know, talking about the countess and, you know, like clearly meant to be set up to sound delusional. And she's wearing this costume and they're like, she thinks she's Japanese. It's so weird and sad. She thinks she's Japanese. It's so weird and sad. They take her on their honeymoon. Like, they sort of, like, force her into this psychological throuple, knowing that she'll feel like she's the stronger emotional part of this. But if she didn't... So, Sookie actually knows what's going on, which is the later twist, right?

Yeah. If she didn't, she would seem so stupid here. Because it would be weird if you knew, like, the plan is to put her in the asylum. Can you put her clothes on for one sec? Can just uh dress like the countess though just we're just trying she doesn't know what's going on until late no she knows what's going on no she does like when we go yeah when they when they flip though yeah she knows she knows that she's going to be committed they know what's going on before they leave.

When they escape the house. So my favorite scene in the movie. The hanging. Is the hanging when she hangs herself in the tree. My question is just when that happens in the timeline. Well, but it's not. They haven't eloped. It's right. No, that happens right before they elope.

You're right. Because it's after they have the conversation on the eve of them getting. Right. But the hanging we don't see until the second part. We do not see that scene. You see the tree But the hanging, we don't see until the second part. We do not see that scene. You see the tree and the noose. You don't see her in it. After this flip, right, we run it back and now we see everything through Hideko's side.

The line at the end of part one is, I've always said she's a rancid bitch or whatever. Yeah, she's a nasty little bitch or whatever she says. And then we cut to baby, child Hideko. But I do want to go back just just i mean because yes just plot plot plot plot but i want to talk about filmmaking you guys do it i want to talk about the the running away scene because i i just think that there is um it's a cool and you can't really talk about what talking about the second time it happens but but when it goes into them leaving the house and going to meet the count in the boat and whatever, it goes to this sort of crescendo.

The music swells in a way that it has not up until this point. And it's very exciting because they're running away. And in the first part of it, we know that this is going to be very pivotal, like the whole plot is coming together and all of that. But it does feel like, whoa, whoa, whoa, suddenly this is a lot of movie. Like suddenly this is very operatic. I mean, yes, the movie has been very big up until this point, but not in this sort of like period movie, like swell of two women running across a field and, um, and all of that.

The colors popping. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I remember, I remember the first time I saw the film in that scene, just being like,

this is, it was, it was different. I guess it was about the time where I was like, this is going to be one of my favorite movies ever. But, um, but that scene also was just so i was just like this is the most

entertained i've been in so long like this is just so it's such a movie it's so great and then when you see the second time and they're making their escape and this time we've seen the hanging and know that now they're in on this plot together they are really in love and they're both you know consciously in love with each other and they are going about this switcheroo on the count intentionally then you're like oh my god that's why it felt so big the first time i just didn't have the whole picture but like their performances in that scene are so ecstatic which feels not quite earned yet when it's the first time one of them should be plotting to commit the other one to yeah both of them think they're plotting

to commit the other yeah yeah and but then when you see the second time you're like oh my god this is amazing like i remember i in a coward's move i like that this year when we did our blankie award episode i gave a special commendation to both of them instead of nominating either one because i couldn't decide which one to put in i didn't put both of them really livered truly uh and i i think part of it too is like i maybe saw the movie twice that year when it came out and watch it twice again recently but it's like twice that year when it came out and watch it twice again recently but it's like scene to scene and certainly like act to act you change your estimation of which performance is more skillful and complicated you know yeah yeah yes they're perfectly matched you because they are yeah sometimes you're just sort of like well this is the more complicated one not that they're not like totally in tandem well kim teri is so natural and charismatic and

pretty and bubbly she everything is on her face right and there is a part where in the second part painting yeah there's a part in the second section where you know that hirako's narrating and it's like why is she so like readable why she's not trying to hide any of this she's not doing a good job stomping around and being mad when we're out on our little painting walk like why why can't she just be cool and yeah but then that's ultimately the thing that's attractive about her is that there isn't there isn't all this you know ulterior motive and people hiding behind hiding behind all these different layers of and there's the scene where she grabs her

by the cheeks and says like your mother was happy to have you know like you know that's very like naked and emotional and like genuine and she's like how come a man has never been like this around me again why aren't there positive male characters in this movie?

Writing a park chat at gmail.com. If you're just a little boy watching this, who are you supposed to want to be, Kylo Ren? I mean, if you're a little boy watching this movie,

you're doing great. You're doing great. Little boys should definitely be watching this. Can I read a part of what I really like here from a film comment interview when this movie came out?

He said, everything that I wanted to say with this film is probably in the one scene where the women are jumping over the stone wall and notice how low the wall is had she ever wished lady haidako could have always jumped over that wall but the deep rooted emotional trauma inside her was holding her back and then this person suki enters her life and she's able to find love and through that love haidako gains bravery that allows her to jump

over that wall in a single breath towards freedom. She also builds a little stairs for her with the suitcases. So she does need her help, but it is still like they can do it together and it's no problem. Knowing so much of it's a matter of perspective about things feeling insurmountable. Right. So as we're

seeing things from her deck, I just want to, my favorite scene is when she tries to hang herself. Yes. But we see from her perspective, I just want to, my favorite scene is when she tries to hang herself. Yes. But we see from her perspective, yes, as we've all been discussing, that she is far more self-aware than the naive woman we know. The conversation of, would you tell me to marry someone if I was in love with someone else? And before you think she's just hurt because she's in love. And now you find out that this is the ultimate test of, I know she's trying to con me. Right. Does she care more about the money?

Yeah, yeah. Can we break this ruse together? Right, right. So then she goes from that into despondency hanging herself. You see her drop off the branch

and then she doesn't fall all the way. She has an odd reaction and then it cuts out to the wider shot and Suki's holding her by the legs. It's so funny.

Weeping. It's so good. The immediate, because you feel so hurt watching that scene the first time. Sure. The second time, it's like beyond painful.

Yeah, it's like a gut punch, yeah. Right, and you're just like, I don't want her to do something this awful. And then the fact that she can't go more than five minutes without coming in and saying, like, I need to tell you everything. But, yes, yes. But just the physical comedy of her holding her. Yes. And her being like, you know, I'm physical comedy of her holding her. Yes. And her being like, you know, I'm conning you.

Like, you know. And then Hideko being like, you don't understand. I'm also conning you. We're going to put you in this scene. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Suki drops her. Yeah.

God damn it. You fucking asshole. And then it's like, oh, sorry, sorry. And has to like pick her back up. Because of like the widest shot, you just see her like squirming and straying. She's like, ah, ah, ah. And Suki's just sort of like pouting around, stomping just see her like squirming and stranding. She's just sort of like pouting around, stomping her feet. It makes me laugh so much in what is like the critical, dramatic turnaround of the film.

But it's that balance of tones that's just like that thing that he gets at. I don't know. I just weirdly kept on thinking of Colonel Blimp while watching this movie. I get that. And I think part of it is like the vividness of like the colors and the sets and like owning the artifice. Colonel Blimp had that basement. Of the movie, yes. With the octopus. He's got that weird basement.

And the younger people playing older people and all this sort of stuff. But I also think it is that thing where like you watch those Palin Pressburger movies, which you and I agree, you watch them and you're like, these are like the best movies ever made. Yeah. And part of it is that like they just owned owned it was like everything that a movie could be yes and every single tone you could put into a movie and just having like epic emotions and stakes and set pieces and comedy yeah and danger and it's just every element everything the sound that oh my god the sound in this movie this is another thing I was going to talk about. And this is really, you start to really notice it in that undressing scene, which goes on for a long time, where they're talking and taking turns undressing one another.

undressing one another and it's not it's not sexy yet intentionally but it is just because we are hearing like every fiber on the laces of the corset coming off we're hearing that the the earrings like um like like clack in this very very noticeable very like tactile it's almost like asmr and and all these and and when she and also when she's dressing her for the first time and there's the whole thing about the ladies or the dolls of the maidens or whatever all this is for my pleasure as she buttons up every single little button

and we hear, just the sound of the foley is so amazing and the tooth filing oh the tooth filing, yeah we skipped over the tooth filing entirely there's the tooth filing and then this movie oh the tooth filing yeah we skipped over the tooth filing entirely there's the tooth filing there's i mean the initial comedy of she puts on the bra and she's like god this is like restrictive and she's like you think that's restrictive and then you cut to the middle of her just going like you know like pulling the

corset and she's like ah like you know like rather than doing that in a gentle and sexy way but no no i think he is such a sensual filmmaker in that you can, like, hear the difference in textures. Yeah. Yeah. In any scene and whatever's happening. And then I'm just going to say it. This movie has, like, the best sex Foley work. Oh, my God.

Yes. Oh, sure. Right. The best sort of squishing. There's a lot of squishing. Yeah, right? Yeah. Hey, I. Right. The best sort of squishing. There's a lot of squishing. Yeah, right? Yeah. Hey, I mean, it's a good sounding movie.

It's just a thing that most people stay far away from. Like, they're like, I'm going to put the soft music in over this and just completely remove that element out of sex. Well, this might be a good time to talk about the sex scenes in general because this was kind of the one sort of controversial element i think about it at the time it came out wait why there was some discourse there's some discourse over the sex scenes in this and i remember they did a discourse being a little ambivalent one way or the other i can see i could see the points of criticism and i think every time i've watched it since then i kind of i'm more and more like no like every decision in this movie was correct but um but yeah i mean i think but there was you know there was a an argument to be made that the sex was sort of male gazey and very you

know intentionally framed and very you know have all these full body shots and actually like this is what a lot of people said about blue is the warmest color when it came out and i think it i think that that film is guilty of that i i did not like the sex scenes in that movie but i think that there is because of the context of the story because of how much of this plot is about porn and erotica and like the um yeah the the the like you know the shunga prints and stuff um that uh that the the framing becomes kind of an echo of that that they are reclaiming in a way and i think also as you said david you need to see the acts to see the difference in their behavior and their emotions in that they are not performing and they are forming this meaningful connection.

The first time it feels that it's shown to us in a more limited way. Right. And you're still like inside of a con. And it starts out as role playing. Right. Both of them conning each other. Right. And then the second time it's like this dance sequence.

It's like beautifully choreographed. It's choreographed And it's like you're watching two dancers Who are so good at dancing together Which is obviously not you know Something you can automatically be good at Right like they're naturals Like they keep saying for each other But like not to get too horny on Mame

But it is that thing of like Are you going to bring up Alfalfa again? Yeah this guy fucks Alfalfa is an absolute poonhound. You can get his horny on maintenance if you like it. Let me cut all of that out. Nope. Here's what I was going to say.

It is that thing that is like hard to define or talk about. But when people look for like sexual compatibility in relationships, I think it is what this film depicts very well which is two people basically finding a way to communicate non-verbally right well when i have sex it looks like this yeah absolutely same i've never had sex it doesn't look like this but it's it's that feeling of like in a movie where and park talked about this this is a talkier movie than most of his films this has significantly more dialogue than most of his films which is why it's important in in movies that where he is going much longer having characters express themselves primarily through gestures through looks through actions this is a movie where people are talking around

each other but constantly lying right under like three different layers of performance right to have this moment where suddenly like they're both conning each other on top of that they're playing a role-playing game right of pretending they're you know at least one of them is a different person in this sexual encounter and then when that falls away and especially the second time when you revisit the sex scene again and it's like oh no this is the moment where suddenly they are communicating things to each other that cannot be communicated through words so i think david fincher always says where he's like, my big read is that people use words to lie. I think most dialogue isn't about people expressing themselves.

If a script is good, it's about people using words to trick each other. Yeah. I mean, the role that language plays, and it's not just the Japanese and the Korean, the japanese and the korean but the fact that um learning to read has this power that is mostly shown as being used for violence um and that there's this library that is like this like gate it's like this prison um for her like they you literally have to walk through it and there is an actual physical gate and stuff in order you know that she have to walk through it and there is an actual physical gate and stuff. She has to go through that in order

to escape. And then they have to destroy this collection in order to escape, which is... Yeah, but you're bookmarking that for a second. But that, yeah, that all of this has been used as a means to trap this woman essentially. and that in a way

though it is not enough just to get away from it to establish a life and a world and a you know sexuality outside of it but in a way you have to almost incorporate it's like you have to take a little bit of the poison in with it in order to make it your own and and and like their passion is real their love is real we believe in it we believe in the first time through like i i mean i think i think that her actually falling in love with hirako is yes you're kind of like oh come on you idiot like why are you doing this you're gonna ruin the whole thing but it's because it is like it feels real yes she's still trying to con her but the love is real there well you're also like initially like well you're not gonna get away with it right yeah this is not this is not gonna work out for you it's impossible but um but yeah we believe that

but you know and i think the first scene with them when you know they first you know there's the kind of first seduction like when they're talking about what the count would want that is much more conventionally shot i think as a love scene minus the um vagina cam at the very end the pov but the p means something different yeah but um but yeah then after that though there is this really kind of almost self-aware staging of the sex scenes, which is, to me, just feels like, okay, we are submerged in this world of this purposely structured for men's pleasure kind of erotica and porn and all of that. pleasure kind of erotica and porn and all of that and we're going to make our own version of that and it's not the structure of it that is it is that is bad or or that's harmful to us it's the point of view and and we are going to reclaim this for our own you know our own pleasure and and and satisfaction as to women as and do it outside of the power of these men and so that's why i think that the framing of it and the formalization of it and these like symmetrical

shots and everything are are are important yeah but sex is also like a big part of his movies but often these sex scenes in his films are the least erotic parts of the film right and something like stoker the peak of the movie is like them playing piano together where he's able to come up with this sort of like this act that conveys the feeling yeah of being in tandem with another person or the anticipation or the thought of it versus a lot of times i feel like his comedic scenes are a little bit comical like kind of other sex scenes are kind of comical yes yeah sorry in other films right yeah and then in in this it's like uh it's not the opposite but it's like he needs them to be

there is a kind of humor though in in how unguarded they are in this because it has been all these like careful little tiptoes around each other and the fact that they're just so like helpless in front of each other that they like are just like i you know there's no holding back any emotion it's sort of like you know watching somebody eat an entire candy bar in like one bite or so you're just like there's something so human and sweet about it yeah yes um we don't need to dig in on this but I'm just curious because I was thinking the same thing about like reading a bunch of, the reviews of people at the time

questioning whether this scene was male gaze-y and I was thinking about Blue is the Warmest Color as a comparison point as well. Am I wrong in my mental timeline that this movie comes out around the time the pieces were coming out? Probably true. about the actresses on blue and the is the warmest color talking about because that was a thing where that movie came out

plays a con everyone was like you will not believe the intimacy achieved on screen steven spielberg gives both of them the palm door along with the director and then within two years later the entire narrative of that movie is different yeah and and both both Sudu and Archie Pelligrover, I always get her name wrong, were sort of like, we didn't feel comfortable. This felt exploitative to us. So it almost felt like when this movie came out and people were raising questions about the sex scenes, it was this defensive,

are we about to get duped again? Yeah, they're like, we don't want to be upfold again by this shit. Right. It's something really nasty was happening on set. I don't know. It felt a little reactive to me in that sense. Sure. Yeah. No, I think that totally could be an element of it. I mean, now I want to look up if that

is annoying. I agree. Throw everyone into the sun. God, can you imagine though, like, if that came out, like, when that came out in 2016, before... This one came out in 2016. But it came out, you know, I feel like... Well, when was it the theatrical?

Because I saw it... For what? For this. Like October 2016. Okay, so immediately before everybody lost their goddamn minds. It was cool and normal. It was one of the last normal weeks. Yeah.

Yes, this is the first film I saw at the Alamo Drafthouse. Oh, wow. It was like opening week of the Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse. Don't remember. Burger? Okay. They didn't have a special handmade menu? Okay.

So part three of the film. We should mention, right, part two concludes as we see their sort of, you know, their genuine affection and their genuine conspiracy with each other. Yes, they go into the basement the basement into the library right and trash it yes um yeah if you look it up griffin it's not helpful i promise yeah well but the movie came out in 2013 i think it feels about right what they talked about it as early as 2013 so i don't know that we can put an exact date on it i still think this movie being in the way i think that's what it is that's all i'm saying. It was the warmest color. Exactly. That movie became this sort of

like touch point of like... Yes. But they destroy the library. They find that movie that they blew as the warmest color guy made about butts. They find it in there. They throw it in the river. Yeah. They break the criterion disc in half. Right. They're like, remember when they said this was a bare-bones release,

but a special edition was coming later? And then the special edition never did because the movie got canceled culturally. Right, right. All that happens. But that's a very transcendent moment. They're like, can we still find the tweet where they said the special edition is coming? They find Burt Cooper's octopus drawing. They don't like that.

That actually does happen. But they do like Mad Men. They talk about like, that really was like a golden age of television in retrospect right we didn't know how good we had it um there's a lot of dialogue in this scene while they're trashing the library just weighing in on i wish i hadn't started this pop culture of the 20s so as part three begins we have the count yeah with uh hideko wait i want to talk sorry sorry sorry i know this podcast is going to be three hours long but i just want to talk about that scene too because i i i do and i it actually still gives me pause watching it now um just the image of these women basically like doing the opposite of a book burning for a bunch of uh porn destroying high-end fancy

stuff erotica all of that um and you know that does that rings an alarm in my brain i don't understand i know exactly what you mean like it you know and i think that divorced from context, it is something that I feel like could be, I don't know, like misinterpreted or something. These are the tools of her oppression. They are the tools of her oppression. It makes sense that she wants them destroyed. Specifically. And I think it's very specific to the character. And I think the way that you see that there out in the film is that this film is incredibly filthy and clearly really into sex.

Yes, I do not think this film is shamey. No, no, no. But I think that, you know, I guess it's just, and one of the things I need to stop doing, especially since I stopped being a film critic, is like thinking too much about what other people will make of a film. That's the advice I give to everyone at all times. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about morons. But I mean, I think I always have a mind, especially then you're like, you can anticipate a stupid discourse that's give to everyone at all times yeah yeah but i mean i think i always have in mind especially then you're like you can anticipate a stupid discourse that's going to happen around

something but um but yeah i i i think that you know the idea of these you know two queer women destroying porn as a you know as a means of their liberation it just like that can be so misconstrued and i just but i don't think that's what this movie is you're watching if you're watching the movie i think you understand what's going on yeah the other element of as well is like this is coming right after uh haidako explains her childhood to suki basically like finally unfolds all these things right yes yes yes he's saying that here's what's actually been going on. Yes.

And, you know, my dirty old uncle. And Suki's response is sort of like this anger stemming from, I am so upset that there was no one in your life to protect you. Right? Yeah. It's like she wants to destroy the past that she couldn't prevent. Yeah. And the trauma that she couldn't stop her from going through

because, like, here's this person who who like had her her mother and her aunt taken away and a guardian who then abused her where it's just like how was no one keeping you safe how was no one caring about you and worrying about your best interests until this moment it's like there needs to be an outward physical display of like yeah but burke cooper did watch the scene and that's why he dies in madman yes um well yeah it's her it's her it's the one thing that she can do to actually prove her you know devotion to to taking care of her exactly yes well put there's the sequence to begin part three between the count and hideko they're in a hotel room full of money he has this line when they're at dinner that i love where he's like, I don't even dream of money.

I dream of being able to order wine without looking at the price. Describing the difference between being rich and being wealthy. That's what that is to me. He's like, no, no, no, no. Even a rich person might check what they're ordering. A wealthy person doesn't even know what things cost. This guy could get upsold a steak by some stupid waiter who tells you it'll be worth it when you pay for the sides. The money you save for not buying the sides.

And he wouldn't even flinch when he got that bill. And he wouldn't hold a grudge for probably the rest of his life. Wouldn't become a recurring bit on the podcast he produced or anything like that. It wouldn't become a story he has to retell at his birthday party to every single person in attendance. His friends wouldn't get text messages to this day. Yeah. What did this date cost, though? Do you know the actual number?

It's okay if this is an invasion of privacy and you can't share it. Ben, do you like this movie? Do you like Handmaiden? I did. I loved it. Yeah. Had you seen it before? Nope. Oh, man. Congrats. Fucking saucy one.

Owns bones, in my opinion. Absolutely. It was a great way to start the day. It's hot stuff. You did a nice morning handmaiden. I did indeed. That sounds like a euphemism for stuff. Cup of Joe and handmaiden. Yep.

I spread it out over two nights. This, this rewatch. That's what I did with the extended. I watched, I watched the, uh, the theatrical like two nights ago.

And then I, I did the, the extended, uh extended evening and morning. Did you split at the part one, part two? Yes, I did exactly. I mean, it makes sense, but I just don't know how you would start. Like, I would just want to keep watching. But it's a lovely, but there's such joy when you're doing something like that,

where you're like, ah, a treat awaits me tomorrow night. Also, I had stopped it after already watching a previous version of it the night before. I hadn't seen it in a couple of years, but I have rewatched it. Give me a 4K of this movie. I saw this like two times that year and then hadn't seen it in eight years. I mean, Criterion was doing a lot of Amazon releases for a moment there. And yes, the North American is out of print and the extended's never been released

and they should put out a new disc. I just wanted to shout out the interiors and the fashion. Do it. Wallpapers. I mean, Park does good wallpapers always, but... I mean, he's going hard on the wallpaper as usual. The architecture, the suits. The guys do look pretty cool yeah especially the white bow tie yeah

eyebrows such a good look i think he like purposefully you know kind of also looks like a poor person's idea of a rich person like you know that right he's so he's too snazzy he's like got spats on or something you know. Yeah. When he's found. So he, you know, obviously he is, she, she gives him the knockout drops and he collapses mid-sex or about to have sex with her. That's the thing he promises her as a wedding gift. Right. Her greatest fear is having her, what little age she has. Going to the basement.

Take it off. Right. Doesn't want to be in the basement. So he goes, if you marry me and the worst case scenario, everything goes wrong. Here's the ability to kill yourself through drops or at least knock yourself out. Um,

but when he gets knocked out and then the guys find him the next day, uh, and he's got shirt, no pants, but he's got the, the garters and he's got the garter belts. Yeah. He's so fancy.

I love, I love that shot where he's like, he's almost like lounging like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like where he's like he's almost like lounging like a like a he's just like hey you mind throwing me though can you hand me my pants he basically delivers on it he's so hot i'm in trouble aren't i oh you guys look like a fancy fake samurai yeah it's like oh this is just security detail This is the Uncle's security detail Fake ass samurai He's like I'm so Japanese

I have samurai in the 20th century Who are my bodyguards or whatever The third part's really pretty short It's really just them Going down to the basement and smoking a cig Right I mean because at this point the girls Are they got the money, they're on the boat,

they forged the passport. She's a man now in the passport. Right. Don't worry, I called into every office. They will not allow any two women to travel together. Right, right. So easy to forge a passport by the way. Yeah.

Also so easy to apply a fake mustache. Right. And then you just have this incredible, I mean, I think I'm watching this movie the first time and i'm like okay so are the girls gonna like you know go ham on these guys be gay do crimes well no right you know like we're gonna get in the torture chamber and they're gonna be like chopping these guys up and it's like no they don't even like mr vengeance trilogy i know. It's so much better. I mean, but there's something that's very, you know, by the end, you're like, okay, we got our guys in one room. Like, truly in the most miserable, awful place you can imagine. Smoking poison cigarettes, cutting off each other's fingers, just like killing each other, literally.

But also just like that's the bed they have made for themselves. And the bed that the ladies have made for themselves and the bed that the ladies have made for themselves is much nicer you should right and and the uncle is kind of like indignant and self-pitying and the count is just like we fucking we had this coming yeah like can you really be he at least has the awareness yes yes yeah well the uncle is just like so you had sex with her though like what was that like right he's like really pushing that yeah while chopping his fingers off losing his mind yeah he's losing his mind over and it's like the perfect you know this is all he wanted though he would yes like all he wanted was to hear about what it would be like to have sex with her right from somebody else um and he can

only understand it you know he's again he's again, he's porn poisoned. He's... Well, yeah, it's all weird Madonna whore stuff where it's like the second the women you're attracted to perform your greatest fantasies, they are sullied in your eyes. And the eyes of these men who want to keep these two identities of women separate. But it's also the arm's length thing. And it's like I don't even want this vision, this fantasy to be sullied by a woman's presence or her real like you know consents or anything i want this to be told to me by a man um and be like and be like two degrees away from it and that's like what what's gonna really get me off. And yeah, it's just, it's such a, it's such a interesting way to embody his own shame at his identity and what he really wants.

Because that's, again, the thing that separates him and the Count is that they are both pretending to be Japanese in this movie, but the Count is doing it as a means to an end. He, you know, doesn't really have... He really just wants to be able to order... He doesn't want to be Japanese. He's doing it so a means to an end he you know doesn't really have he really just wants to be able to order he doesn't want to be japanese he's doing it so he can get this money whereas to impress the guy who wants to be japanese yeah yeah and and and he is just completely blinkered and delusional at this point about who he is um you know it's like the the the shame whatever

whatever you know part of him wants to disavow being korean is so metastasized by now that he can't even like it's his whole identity and that's sort of what separates them in the end um and of course he's laced his cigarettes with mercury and it's producing a lovely and very atmospheric sort of blue-tinted smoke that kills them dead. Kills the shit out of them. Yes. I guess he wasn't inhaling, because I'm like, how did he not die first?

Well, but he is moving it around. I don't know. It's just a perfect romantic ending. I just love... He does, like, three cigarettes in, like, five minutes, right? Yeah, he's... Right, he's really puffing them. And there's no windows in there. If I'm the uncle, I'm like, no. No cigarettes should have cigarettes right identified this and he did do check off cigarette because we

see the blue cigarettes in his case before when he's being carted off by the fake samurai and he takes the three normal ones and smokes them all together and smokes them all together and they're like again looney tunes shit and um yeah but you know we've also seen that he you know he he hand rolls and he draws dirty pictures inside of his his cigarettes which is you know extra decadent i suppose and while this is happening cut to the girls on a boat putting the balls in their uh vaginas having a great time i don't think there's any better way to put it. I mean, in the canon of great Bell cinema we've covered on this podcast,

it's really this and the Polar Express are the two great can-you-hear-the-bells movies. I've been sitting on that joke for two days. I'm glad I didn't forget it. I was wondering what that was going to be. Can you hear them jingling? Now, speaking of shame, it is worth noting,

as I believe you already alluded, Emily, that pretty much as this movie comes out, a few weeks after it comes out in Korea, Kim Min-hee's affair with Hong Sang-soo, the prolific Korean director, comes out, and she is like a ruined celebrity yeah in korea but this is like the peak of her stardom is this is going to be the launch to like her international stardom

yeah yes and then like the rumor hits the press the two of them come out and publicly acknowledge it and then she has since then not worked on a non-hung Seng Su movie. Well, she got dropped by her management, I think. She got dropped by her management company, lost her endorsement deals. Right. She made a movie right after this with Hung Seng Su called On the Beach at Night Alone, which Emily, you and I saw together. We did, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which I think is such an amazing movie. I did. Best actress blankie that year. I did. And she's pretty much in all of his movies now. I mean, the man makes up eight movies a year. And they're all kind of meta about her. That one is very meta.

That one's super. That one's the most directly meta, but yeah. But yeah, there's a lot of that going on in them. And she remains an incredibly compelling performer, but it is crazy how, like, modern Korean, contemporary Korean society is so nervous or anxious or disgusted by infidelity or divorce and things like that that like she can't work i don't think he's been able to get a divorce he's not actually that's part of it that's part of it right right so you know at first it was that you know they were separated by the court yeah like yeah which sounds cool yeah um and uh you know kim says we

love each other with all our hearts We humbly accept everything Situations ahead of us and that will come There is some That's love baby I know There is some rumor that it's not entirely just like You know like it is partly just They kind of just decided to do this

But who knows But there was a An immediate backlash Just work together and fuck it. Like, you know, fuck everyone else, like post-scandal. But very strange and ridiculous. She's incredible in this.

I hope for her sake that they never hit the rocks, because if you can only be in that guy's movies, well, yeah. Look, if you're going to only be in one director's movies, be in Hong Sing's two movies. You get to be in three movies a year. Yeah. you're gonna only be in one director's movies be in hong sing-si movies you get to be in three movies a year yeah he's just gonna yeah i'm not a huge i'm not a huge hong head but yeah it's it's uh you know it's i like him he's good haven't seen the last you know six or whatever aka

but yeah no that's great because you know i and i think that that scandal was largely not did not really make it over here so i think a lot of people saw that movie and are like well what the hell is she going to be in next because she's so amazing and gorgeous and just like such an incredible presence and the answer was a bunch of hong singsoo movies. Now, Griffin, did you know that Park initially intended to shoot this film in 3D? No, are you fucking crazy? They should have just done 3D for the crotch shot. That would be cool.

Because he thought the house was so cool and maybe he could have emphasized the perspectives of characters in a pronounced way. They couldn't make it work financially, he said. 2016 is, I feel feel like basically the tail end of any serious filmmakers taking this on as an experiment right right right right yeah right yeah like is there something to be done with 3d and i'm waiting for the fifth wave of 3d it feels 3d without being 3d it's fine like definitely it's popping off the screen. It's a popper.

Yeah. It was shot on digital, although they used some anamorphic lenses from like the 70s to sort of augment that or whatever. Park still thinks film is superior to digital, but, you know, whatever. They often will say that and then they'll be like,

it's cheaper, it's easier to control. It's, you know, we understand. Did I read correctly that it was, at the time of its release, the highest grossing South Korean film in the United States? Parasite has now obviously outgrossed it many, many times over. There's no way that's true because it only made $2 million in the U.S. Because it was an Amazon film. Yeah. They kind of only gave it a limited release.

Where was the status? They at least put out the films, though. They used to put them out. Yeah. They kind of only gave it a limited release. Where was the status? They at least put out the films though. They used to put them out. Yeah. I mean frickin' Manchester by the Sea made like a lot of money.

Like they used to make money sometimes. And Love and Mercy no not Love and Mercy what's it called? Love and Friendship that made some money. That quietly made

like 20 million dollars. Yeah. I saw that one at like Nighthawk. Weird. That was an Amazon too? That was an Amazon. Yeah well that it was like Whitstable and Spike Lee.

There's a few others. Lonergan. Lonergan. You know, like these guys where it's like, hey, do you want to make a movie? Yeah. No, but I think this movie, I am always surprised by how many people I know

who are not necessarily movie people who aren't even necessarily like, yeah, they're not like big park heads or whatever, but they have seen this. Like, I think this movie is fairly well seen by, you know, a general movie going public. Sorry, my stat was wrong. It was the highest grossing park release domestically.

That makes sense. The film outgrew Stoker and became the highest grossing park Chan book directed film in the United States. I don't think, outgrew Stoker and became the highest grossing Park Chan-wook directed film in the United States. I don't think, well, did Stoker really do that badly? I think Stoker did quite badly. And to be fair,

we talked about this on an episode. And then Oldboy only exploded on DVD. Yeah, yeah. It did outgrow Stoker. It did. We're talking 1.7 to 2. Yeah. That's not a huge jump here. It did outgrow Stoker We're talking 1.7 to 2 Yeah Wow So

What was the budget on this? The budget on this film was 10 8 million 9 million dollars US It made like 40 mostly in Korea That's all up on the screen That's amazing

It was big in the uk as well yeah um premiered at the ken's film festival the ken's film festival the ken's film festival it's just it's just ken uh george miller's jury um god i love you george you're a good man uh decided to take a big poo-poo in the toilet that year but when uh i daniel blake that's so funny ken take the palm take it you need to uh and the handmaiden talk about that movie a lot though we're always bringing up daniel blake can't use the phone can i Fucking government. It's an all right movie. I'm making fun of it, but it's all right. But, you know, Tony Erdman was obviously the big sort of hot movie that year, along with Handmaiden.

Both got, well, Handmaiden got blanked. Tony Erdman got something. Oh, my God. I forgot completely about Tony Erdman, but that movie is incredible. Wow. Actually, no, Tony Erdman didn't get is incredible I wow actually no Tony Ehrman didn't get anything God yeah it was

fucking he gave it to I Daniel Blake he gave the Grand Prix to the Xavier Xavier Xavier Dolan movie it's only the end of the world the one that everyone hated yeah where they

cut to my Mads Mickelson looking like someone just like slapped him in the face and then Xavier Dolan's response was I'm insulted that you didn't give me a

better award. Right. And now he's not even going to make a movie anymore. Too bad. What he definitely doesn't want us to do is talk about him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he can make a movie if he wants to. Andrea Arnold won the jury prize for American Honey,

which is an excellent film. But weird to watch The Handmaiden and be like, you know, but maybe it was polarizing. I mean, thing with juries is if you polarize or a couple people don't like it, you're in trouble. We've talked about my theory, though, that often the jury head at a film festival,

especially when it is a director, will award the film that they are most impressed by because it's the film they could least see themselves being able to pull off i love that theory and like so that way spielberg gave it to blue is the warmest color and like tim burton gave it to uncle boone me things like that yeah right and you could see george miller being like i could make never make something as stripped down as hi daniel blake uh i could see i could never make a Ken Loach film. He could never just film a guy being like, can't call the NHS.

Fucking government. Film was a smash hit in Korea. Made $31 million. Perk's most successful film ever there. Outgrossing JSA's 29. Amazon distributed it here

with their friends at Magnolia Pictures. These alternate cuts we mentioned. There was a ravenous reception. Loyal fans demanded an extended cut. Investors agreed because it was doing so well. They were like, come on, what do you got? What do you got? So that's where that comes from.

But he, Park has made it clear the theatrical cut is his intended cut. He's got no beef with it, but he's like the rhythmic standpoint, in my opinion, theatrical. Very acclaimed film. In my opinion, snubbed at the Oscars. Yeah. Sometimes they'll kind of be chill and be like, we're going to throw a design nomination to a foreign film that looks so amazing. Yes. And like, this could, like, what's going on?

How is this not the most amazing? I mean, I do think 2016 is a stack year, but none of those things I think were nominated of the things I think of as loving in 2016. I think 2016 was like maybe the best year of that decade. I'm going to say that without looking things up. I'm going to just put it out there. 2016 was the best year of the 10th.

Let's see. It's the Moonlight La La Land year. Yeah, I'm looking what else here. Oh, La La Land. Wait a second. Oh, you're talking about the Oscars. Sully landed in 2016? No, I'm just looking at your letterbox.

Hail Caesar, Lobster, Tony Airman arrival, Silence. Yeah, it's a great year. Jackie, The Fitz. Shin Godzilla, you love that. The nice guys, I love Shin Godzilla. He's a really good person. Oh, what's this one here? What's that?

Hi, Daniel Blake. Wait a second. I'll venture myself. I'm in a scenario. It's a metaphor. Yeah. So Manola Dargis raved this the first time, uh, a park film got a New York Times critics pick.

She was not his biggest champion. The Times in general would just run at him. Yes. He would release Oldboy and the Times would be like, has cinema gone too far? Like, yeah, like, um, but anyway, so just like, it did feel like a moment for him. Not that he's not a huge massively respected name in the cinema world but i don't know it just felt like everyone was kind of like have you made your opus yeah i do think also and i mean it's sort of interesting that it did that much better than

stoker because i think it does sort of hint at what you know i think we almost you know post post-parasite certainly but i think and what we were talking about, the Netflix, the globalization of Netflix. Who? What? Netflix. Internet movie flicks. The internet movie flicks. to foreign films that can, that can break through like this in a way that I think, you know,

yeah. Well, by old boy was huge, but yeah, all on home video, it still felt like something that somebody had to, you know, get you into in a way like,

um, you had to be reading the right blogs or whatever to see it. And this does feel kind of like the handmade and walked, but like box office wise. So parasite could run. So yeah, a little bit. Sure. And I do think also in general, like the handmade and walked but like box office wise so parasite could run so yeah a little bit sure and i do think also in general like the you know the south korean cultural wave in general has just had made it that much easier for south korean film specifically to hit here um so uh we're gonna play the box office game and i've decided that we will play for its second

weekend two reasons one that was when it went wider okay rather than just a couple screens two the weekend before is jack reacher never go back box office which we covered we covered in i'm sure immense depth yeah so um do you have the korean box office well? That's a great question Can you do both? Why not? Por que no los dos? Great Even though I have to go home No, no, no, we're fine

We're fine, we're fine Jack Reacher never go home When did Nantes and Shin Godzilla come out? September? Am I wrong? September Oh god, now I have to look that up what an incredible what an incredible october in america just like what an incredible year shin godzilla looks like july in japan

holy shit you know what's crazy about shin godzilla uh how much it rolls his eyes his eyes are googly yeah he got google eyes i like when he's like the baby slug his second evolution he's the weird slug and you're like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. Anyway. What a good movie. All right, the American box office. This is October, late October 2016.

I like that he looks like an overcooked hot dog with boogalias. He does. Yeah. Number one is a Halloween film. A film celebrating the great holiday of Halloween. I'm going to guess it's called Halloween. No. Fuck.

It does have the word Halloween in it. It does. But no, this film has a- But it's not David Gordon Green's Halloween. It does have the word Halloween in it. It does. But no, this film has a- But it's not David Gordon Green's Halloween. No, this film has a comic take on the holiday. It's a comic take? A beloved cinematic character, in fact, is, you know, peering down her glasses. Boo.

What's the film called? It's a Madea Halloween. Madea's Hellerween. Hellerween. Hellerween. Is number one at the box office in its second week in a row. A sensation. That poster that is a parody of the original Carpenter Halloween poster is incredible. I have called it out many times.

I'm going to call it up right now. When are they going to make Boo 3? I mean, it's the funniest shit on the planet. Yes. There it is, if you can see it. I can't see that. It's just the Halloween poster with Madea glasses.

It just works. Amazing. I mean, the thing is they did other ones. They did like an Exorcist one, you know but there's nothing like this it really speaks to how good the original halloween poster is but you can just like you were like i get it yeah it wasn't as good when they did the second one anyway all right so that's number one wait can we briefly talk about handmade posters oh well that one that that one that's like the sort of um the screen with the trees

yeah that i i was remembering that one i'm gonna i'm gonna fucking buy that thing it's so amazing blocking of the kind of main poster where like they each have their hands on each other that's also incredible post is so cool it's so good um no both of them are fantastic i just think that the the the the screen style one it's so it's so perfect it's pretty it's also kind of like nasty because when you like look at it the artificial eye blu-ray the menu is that that's cool and the selections are the little figures of them oh Oh, wow. For if you're doing like play movie special feature set up, whatever. Go on.

Go on, David. Number two at the box office was probably hoping to beat a Madea Halloween. In the second weekend. Yeah, in its second weekend. Too bad it went up against a buzzsaw. It is a huge flop. A huge flop. It's a literary adaptation. A literary adaptation. It's a sequel.

Stars one of our great famed actors. Stars one of our most famous actors. Returning to a role he hadn't done in a while. Oh, is it Blade Runner 2049? No. No, fuck. That didn't do that badly. That didn't get bodied by Madea.

No, it didn't get bodied by Madea. This was a huge flop. This was a huge flop, and it was a return to the same role decades later kind of thing it's not jack reacher it's not jack reacher but it is based on a book it is based on a book yeah because you said a literary adaptation but with one of our biggest stars yep uh-huh yeah fuck what genre thriller but like you know your Fuck What genre? Thriller But like You know

Your heart rate will go 50 beats a minute Thriller Museums It's the great genre of museums Isn't the great genre At the museum But I think they have some

Nights at museums In this series They have some Nights Well it's just him But it's always him with a girl. It's a different girl every time. Oh, oh, oh, it's Inferno. Inferno.

The third Robert Langdon Dan Brown movie. Yes. Felicity Jones. That was like a decade later, right? Yes. Yeah. I think we should watch these movies for the Patreon then. That's a good idea.

Here's why. They're about, one of them is about the Illuminati. Yeah. And I feel like you have a lot to say about the Illuminati. Do I? I don't know. No? Listeners, the way that the Zoom is set up right now is that

Griffin and David are looking at me like they are two panelists on a Q&A. And Ben is behind you on the screen. And I guess I'm on the side of the room that Ben's on. So they just pointed at me and said, you have a lot to say about the Illuminati. Griffin and I look like we're doing a talk back at the IFC. Yeah, absolutely. That's a joke for 10 people.

Here's my counterpoint to the idea of doing the Robert Langdon trilogy. I, during Deepest Darkest Lockdown, watched The Da Vinci Code. Da Da Vinci Code. Da Da Vinci Code. For the first time for our friends at the Can I Kick It podcast. And that movie is the most boring shit I have ever seen in my life. It's good, though. We'll get some Zs.

It is interminable. We'll get some Zs. It is 15 hours long. May I remind you about the reaction to us discussing the moon landing? Yeah. Everyone was chill about it. Everyone was really cool about us just sort of like poking at fun at that. We definitely didn't have a panic attack before you've been releasing that.

Ben, now that you're reminding me of that, I've come around. I think we should do the Robin Langdon. Illuminati. All right. Number three, Jack Reacher. I think we should do the Robin Langdon trilogy. Illuminati. All right, number three, Jack Reacher, Never Go Back. Number four, a surprise hit, an action thriller of sorts. It's funny that you just have Tom's, Hank's, and Cruz grasping at straws. Right, being like, don't you want my book? Fucking slashing her right at the top of the box office.

Number four, look, it's like a crime thriller. Okay, surprise hit. Bit of a surprise hit Boring title One of those movies that people are more and more kind of like To that kind of role Kind of fun you know It's the star of the picture You know he's had his ups and downs

His swings and roundabouts I like him a lot when he's had his ups and downs his swings and roundabouts um okay uh i like him a lot when he's good i can't deny that he's sometimes been bad sometimes he works for the ups maybe a bit of a mailman sometimes but uh also he's a filmmaker in his own right uh interesting um and this is one of the movies he made where you're like, okay, so this is kind of like a pay job, and then it was actually like a hit. Like a, you know, moderate hit. There's a lot of talk of sequelizing it, but it's never come to pass.

Probably because this guy's fucking busy. Oh, it's The Accountant. The Accountant. The Accountant. And Affleck is The Accountant. Which was like quietly a big hit. Yes. It's crazy how much this week or this month or whatever is completely memory hold for me.

As someone who's still working and covering culture, I usually remember all those weeks pretty well. I feel like you were at the Verge. Yeah, I was in the very, very tail end of my career at the Verge. Which was a great time for you. It was amazing. I had a great time. We had some very chill dinners at that, I remember, back then

where you were like, how's work? I believe I was doing the, I believe I was co-hosting the Mr. Robot After Show on Facebook Live. Which I believe drove me insane. And I think it's all in past statute of limitations I'm talking about. Yeah. No. Yeah, it went absolutely bananas. No one can probably find it.

Yeah. It was cool. But anyway, maybe that's why I didn't see. The. No. Yeah. It went absolutely bananas. No one can probably find it. Yeah. That's cool. But anyway, maybe that's why I didn't see The Accountant. The Accountant. You didn't see Ben Africa.

Yeah, I didn't see it. You didn't get your books balanced. No, I did not get my books balanced. Number five at the box office, a prequel horror film

that is so fucking good. Ouija Origin of Evil. That is correct. Had to be the answer. Mike Flanagan's fantastic film,ija, Origin of Evil. That is correct. Had to be the answer. Mike Flanagan's fantastic film, Ouija, Origin of Evil. Yeah. Which combines the sort of, you know, like vintage throwback-y scares of Mike Flanagan

with a blessed hour and 39 minute running time. Yes. Which he stopped giving us. The whip scrote. So good. The Korean box office briefly Number one the handmaiden Fuck so they beat

Boo Well this is July Or late May so it's a little Madea hasn't shown up yet I'm sure Korea and Japan Have very chill opinions on Madea I'm sure Madea is always coming out there. No, I have no idea.

Madea's cultural reach. Number two, comic book sequel. Terrible. Number two is a terrible comic book sequel. Some people like it. It's not a Marvel. Wait, was it, what's his face? The Doctor Strange.

It's not the good Doctor. No, no, no, no, because that was the first Doctor Strange. Never mind. Wait, but it's not a Marvel? Well, it's... X-Men Apocalypse? It's X-Men Apocalypse. The movie that embarrassingly caused me to originally coin the term A Gentleman's Six.

That was the first movie I ever applied that to. Yeah, that was not A Gentleman's Six, in my opinion. Which is almost incriminating. Yeah. Number three is a Korean film Horror film That fucking rocks And I feel like they keep threatening to remake In America I bet you have seen

Emily, maybe not The director is Na Hongjin It's about a policeman Investigating mysterious killings in a remote village I don't think i've seen it yeah what movie is it called the wailing oh no yeah no big hit okay all right now the weirdest thing is the fourth and fifth okay both american films both like rom may well this is a rom-drom. May 2016. It's a rom-drom. Yes.

Is it based on... It's based on a novel. It's not a Sparks? No, but that vibe. It's in that mode. It's about a couple who... There's problems beyond their control. Health issues. Okay.

But they love each other. It's not The Fault in Our Stars. No. They're older than stars no they're older than that they're older than that it stars a game of throne and a hunger game oh it's two games what's it called me without you emilia clark that's how old sam claiflin yeah yeah claiflin in me before me before you I can't believe that movie came out that long ago. Yeah, that's upsetting.

And Passage of Time. That movie also did weirdly well in North America. It did quite well. People liked it. It was one of those things where it's like, people actually do well in North America. Was it a brain problem? I think he's in a wheelchair,

but I cannot remember the reason why because I didn't see the film out of disinterest. Number five is a charming indie musical. Interesting. An indie musical. People love this movie. People love it. I have always found it to be okay, but that's how I feel about this director. I think it's a bad movie. Is that my opinion on this movie? You think it's a bad movie? Do I? Is that my opinion on this movie? You tell me. a bad movie. Do I? Is that my opinion on this movie? You tell me. Do you think you know what it is, Emily? I think I know what it is, but...

What do you think it is? Well, I mean, it's 20... I think it's La La Land. It's not La La Land. It is not La La Land. I think La La Land is a good movie. And I'm with Emily on that one. I don't think it's the best movie ever made.

I like when it was remade in 2022 as Babylon. Yeah, a better film. I think Babylon is... And David, also, I'll say you and I do both agree on La La Land, in that it is not the single best film ever made. I'm firmly in the camp of it

not being the number one best film ever made. That's your Arnie and Carl Leathers moment. Come, come on. What is this? What is this? It's an indie. Charming indie musical. Musical?

How many of those are there? But not, like a diegetic musical? Yeah, that you're fucking in a band. They're singing songs. Oh, Sing Street. Sing Street. Oh, that movie rules. It's okay.

That movie's fucking incredible. I can't believe it was blown up the box office in Korea Well it's number 5 it's doing alright It's doing pretty damn well You know this is the thing Anytime I have looked at stuff that hits In Korea Or in Japan

It is It tends to be shit like that though And then you're like why is there this mandate Especially back then less so now that like the only thing that's gonna hit over there fucking marvel movies are things with tom cruise in them like it like everybody loves musicals and people kissing and those travel well it's true people love to kiss people love people kissing people kiss everywhere. Number six is the Universal Language. Number six to the Korean box office. Universal Language.

The Angry Birds movie. Oh my God. I remember. I had to see the Angry Birds movie. There's also a Korean horror film called Horror Stories 3. Appears to be an omnibus. There's also an American horror film in the box office called The Angry Birds movie. A horrifying cultural export.

There's a sweet sort of grandma movie called Canola that is a Korean film. And there's kind of an awful Angry Bird movie called The Angry Birds Movie. There is a film called Our Times. Can't really find much on that one. How much later the Angry Birds movie came out after everybody had stopped playing Angry Birds. Yes. So amazing. It was like a decade.

It's incredible. And then they like barely like kind of squeaked out a success and they were like, so sequel time, right? There's a hunger for more of this. It'll take another three years to get a sequel into theaters. We don't think we've overstayed our welcome. I wonder if you ask an average teen today if they know what angry birds is like uh and i think i think a teenager today would view angry birds the way we view a mario bros no the way we view like yeah exactly like gramophones yes yeah um number 10 of the korean box office of course is the uh the prequel to

brahms the boy too some would be called the boy obviously i'm only a brahms the boy too stan Korean box office, of course, is the prequel to Brahms' The Boy 2, some movie called The Boy. Obviously, I'm only a Brahms' The Boy 2 stan. For me, the series starts with Brahms' The Boy 2. It's a bit of a New Hope episode once. Final Fantasy. I haven't seen that. I did see

that director made the Orphan sequel, and I did watch that. Oh, interesting. You liked that, right? It was okay. First kill? I mean, you just like to see Isabel Furman pop off. Yeah, I want to the Orphan sequel, and I did watch that. Oh, interesting. You liked that, right? It was okay. First kill? I mean, you just like to see Isabel Furman pop off. Yeah. I want to see Orphan last kill. Well, then it's over. Sad.

She's like 95. Are you sure? She still looks... She's still little. Yeah. All right. That's the box office. I got to go make dinner.

But is there any closing thoughts on The Handmaiden from any of us i love it it's very good i'm just like this it's really quite an accomplishment it's a full fucking meal it's a full meal that's exactly yeah it's thrilling romantic because then we might be overstuffed you know and then once in a while you get served a five course meal like this you know it is the thing about this movie though is it's so good and it's so entertaining that you sometimes make the mistake of thinking you could watch it with, say, a parent. Because you're like, oh, it's a period piece. It's a period piece. It's so beautiful.

It's so fun. It's based on a book. You won't believe this twist in the middle. And then you're like, oh, no. This hasn't happened to me personally. But it's like, oh, no. I mean, this hasn't happened to me personally. But it's like, oh, no, I'm watching the scissoring scene with my mom. Titties. I'll say this.

The film does, in fact, have titties in it. I will say that I've never made the mistake of watching it with someone who I wouldn't feel comfortable sitting next to while watching it but this is like in the seven years since this movie came out this is one of my default go-to anyone asked me for a movie recommendation movie yeah it's just the fact that i know it's on amazon all the time and if they're like someone who's like open-minded but maybe has not really delved into foreign film you know what movie might blow your mind the handmade yeah and they're like what do i have to know about it? I'm like, nothing. Right. And I'm always just like,

okay, take your Apple, type this in, B-R-A-H-M-S colon T-H-E colon B-O-Y colon I-I. Yes. I comma D-A-N-I.

A little intense if they haven't seen The Boy, though. I'm like, we don't talk about The Boy! Is The Boy's name Brahms or is Brahms the name of something else?

We'll find out sometime later on a different episode. Mama. Sorry. I hate saying that. Wow. That sucked. Emily. Mother.

Mother, please. Emily. Yes. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. When does this episode come out? Late August. Okay.

Okay. Why? No, I'm just like hoping. I was going to ask if you— You'll be flying back from Edinburgh. Yeah. No, I was going to ask if Emily wanted— No, if I have anything to plug.

I was going to ask if you want to plug Strike Solidarity, but then I'm also like, imagine if it's over when this comes out. It's starting to feel like maybe no. I think it—well, We'll find out about your guild Well if you guys go on strike We're recording on the day that the strike decision is supposed to be made I think it's tomorrow I think it's tomorrow, it's Thursday Oh really, why do you think it was today?

Because Fran has to get back from Venice where she was partying with Kim K Jesus But if you guys go on strike There's an argument it actually might accelerate the end That's good for you guys I mean for you guys The writers are generally rooting for you guys to go on strike, there's an argument it actually might accelerate the end, right? That's good for you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. I mean, for you guys.

The writers are generally rooting for you guys to go on strike, but I will not. Yes. No, I think we need to burn the whole system down. I just have some terrible news to share with the podcast. What's that? Occasionally, we get like an exciting deadline update while we're recording and we get to capture the reaction on mic. Right. Problems with the boy three?

No. I regret to inform you and I hate that I'm the one who has to give the boy three no i regret to inform you and i hate that i'm the one who i still give you this news jimmy weldon died who's that why are you laughing jimmy weldon just i'm gonna have to read it jimmy weldon You're really losing it. I fucked up my own pit. And I gotta go. I just looked it up. The voice of Hanna-Barbera's Yankee Doodle Duck. He was 99 years old. Something about the headline.

It's not Yankee, it's Yankee Doodle Duck. Yankee Doodle. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I was cold reading that. I'm just telling you this. Hanna-Barbera's Yaki Doodle Duck was 99. I know I'm cutting off the first couple of words there.

He was a 1940s era disc jockey. Like, they invented discs pretty quickly before. He was one of the best ever dudes. And I'm sorry if this sounds disrespectful. You bookmarked this death so hard in my mind that I'm going to be waiting on the edge of my seat during the In Memoriam at the Oscars next year. Yeah, he's a good guy. You bookmarked this death so hard in my mind that I'm going to be waiting with like on the edge of my seat during the memoriam at the Oscars next year. Yeah, right. Yacky doodle duck.

And of course, if this guy gets yacky doodle milkshake ducked afterwards and turns out he was bad or something, I disavow everything I said about him being good. Of course. But I think yacky doodle duck's my problem. I'm sure there's no bad yacky doodle ducks Am a problematic king I'm sure there's no bad Yacky doodle ducks out there

We gotta go Emily thank you for Zooming in Sorry I couldn't be there in person I think this setup works It does It took some time to get it working But Ben you made it work baby

Ben's the best in the biz. It's sort of weird to not see Ben at all. I know. Yeah, it is weird. I don't know. How do you feel about not seeing Ben at all? This is what it was like in the old studio days when our UCB studio was so small

that Ben had to be in a different room and he would just pipe in. In a smaller room. That sucked. Yeah, it wasn't great. I mean, it wasn't good. Sucked ass. Yeah.

Anyway, I'll be over here mopping up the floor. Our AC's busted. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to promote the show and produce the show. I don't know why I said promote. She was help.

Yeah. Thank you to JJ Burst for our research, AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing, Leigh Montgomery and the Great American Doll 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 are doing the Oceans movies, and also Little Drummer Girl this month. Yep. I think we probably just did that. I think that just happened.

Probably finishing Oceans. Yeah. Tune in next week for the end of Part Jam Book with Decisional Leave with guest Tatiana Maslany. That's right. Which is a really exciting one.

I think it's a good episode. She's real cool. She's a cool-ass person. She's a real cucumber. Cool-ass. She's a real cucumber. And I'm She's a, she's a real cucumber. And I'm sure she's going to be thrilled to hear us describe her that way. She's a chiller.

She's a chiller. She's a real cucumber. And as always, thoughts and prayers to Stanley Tucci. We hope you get the touch back. And also to the family. Maybe you can be the new Yaki Doodle Dad. That's the answer.

Bye. touch back and also to the family that's the answer bye