Blank Check with Griffin & David - Three Thousand Years of Longing

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

George Miller returns with a sweeping romantic fantasy and if we had a djinn, we’d wish that more people went to see this movie in theaters!  Plus - Ben wishes for infinite sandwiches, and the two friends go long on Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. 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 If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (IL/IN/LA/MI/NJ/PA/WV/WY), 1-800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (CO/NH), 888-789-7777/visit http://ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY), visit OPGR.org (OR), call/text TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN), or 1-888-532-3500 (VA). 21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/LA(select parishes)/MI/NH/NJ/ NY/OR/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. New customer offer void in NH/OR/ONT-CA. $200 in Free bets: New customers only. Valid 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5 wager. $200 issued as eight (8) $25 free bets. Ends 9/19/22 @ 8pm. Early Win: 1 Early Win Token issued per eligible game. Opt in req. Token expires at start of eligible game. Min moneyline bet $1. Wagering limits apply. Wagers placed on both sides of moneyline will void bet. Ends 1/8/23 @ 8pm ET. See terms at sportsbook dot draftkings dot com slash football terms.

there's no story about podcasting that is not a cautionary tale. That's a good quote for us. Right? David. Yes. No bits. Genuine question. What is the regional accent she's doing in this movie?

She's Scottish. Isn't she? Is she supposed to be Scottish? Or is she Irish? I'm going to be honest with you. Yeah. It's been a while since you've seen this in a second since i saw this movie yeah and now i can't remember if you're scottish or irish she's doing

a very specific accent that i at first thought was scottish and then i was not so sure her name aletheia uh-huh suggests scottish to me okay i just want to make sure and her last name is binnie which is a very scottish name yeah yeah she's, she's Scottish. I feel like Idris is often cited as one of the great accent actors of our time. Like, he's kind of immaculate. But Tilda Lokey also

up there. Yeah, that's true. But it's she's, it calls her a British scholar here, but she's Scottish. That's the thing. I was like, is she doing a hyper regionally specific British accent or is she Scottish? Scottish accent. Folks, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who experience massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of wishes. Yeah. To make whatever crazy passion projects they want. At least one wish. And sometimes those wishes clear, and sometimes they bounce, baby.

He has gotten two wishes out of Fury Road. Would you agree? Because Furiosa, obviously, is a sure bet. But nonetheless, him getting that funded is not a guarantee guarantee even with the success of fury yeah yeah it's a little bit similar to uh the nolan post dark knight where it's like you get to make inception and you get to make another batman movie but you really get to do whatever the

fuck you want in that one but the difference is that with nolan it's like you're like clockwork you pump out a movie every two to three years right with miller it's like you take a long time to make a movie pretty much your whole career he's not he's not i mean like right at the start he was pretty fast i get you know like through to thunderdome but you know then it's right so it's like if like after max ferry road knowing everything you know about that movie yeah miller sits down it's like i want to make a prequel no one in the room including george miller is thinking like great that'll be ready to go in a couple years 20 years to get fury road off the ground exactly right and then making fury road was very very involved yes he's not young no no and the other thing was at there at many in time, he was like, I'm doing two Mad Max movies back to back.

Like, he had Fury Road and Furiosa both planned out. Yes. And it was like, he's going to do both of them, or he's going to make one of them animated or whatever. So then when it just became he's only doing Fury Road, it's like, we're never going to see Furiosa. And then even when he was like, no, I might do Furiosa. You're like, yeah, you might do Furiosa. How badly do you want to go back into the desert and shoot another Flaming Cars movie? Is Hemsworth playing Immortan Joe in Furiosa

or is he playing someone new? He's playing someone new. So who's playing Immortan Joe? Is it Tom Burke? No, I think Immortan Joe's not. No, he's in it. He is? According to the synopsis.

Okay, interesting. No, because recently photos came out of chris hemsworth character and he had like a big top hat on or something he looked he looked wild and he's got like a raleigh fingers mustache really yeah let me try and find it i mean it looks like a fictional character who owns a candy store you know what i'm saying like you know when like a candy store a sweet shop yes you know when like a sweet shop comes up with like a cartoon avatar of its owner yeah he looks like that um but his character name is absurd wait what is his character look it up tom burke is playing the character that yaya abdul-matin the second was originally supposed to play which makes me

think it is not it wouldn't be a morton Joe, one would think. Right. Whereas this kind of looks like it could be a Morton Joe type. It could. Maybe. It also looks like, right, he's like Willy Wonka's grandpa or whatever. I forgot he had the beard as well. The mustache goes like this. And then some of the other photos he had like, you know. Oh, Dementus is the supposed name.

Dementus. Dementus. How do you get that name, you think? I don't know. Maybe just by being a that name, you think? I don't know. Maybe just by being a super chill, normal guy. I don't know. There's just something about it where it's like, how does 3,000 Years of Longing exist?

A $60 million movie. It is the big question. A $60 million. $60. It's a pretty expensive movie. I mean, yeah. It looks pretty fancy. It's a real blank check.

Look. I got all those little cutaway story scenes set up the premise of the podcast right but a premise we should say that uh really solidified around fury road we've said this before but the night that we figured out what the podcast should be after almost a year of doing only star wars prequels was the night that we saw fury road for the first time and we were like this is the fucking thing and it was the fucking thing it really was the fucking thing and that's a perfect example of a guy who's in a real blank check position where it's like you made this beloved blockbuster like a nominated for and

won a bunch of oscars it's like one of the most critically adored movies of its decade it's a movie that's gonna play forever kind of everybody likes it everybody likes it yeah but it's like that rare kind of thing that we talk about sometimes on the show like the matrix or six cents or whatever where it's like you just you you ticked all the boxes it worked on every level. And yet, even still, it took seven years. Other factors involved. Pandemic and such.

But Miller takes his fucking time. And he made about the weirdest movie he possibly could have made with his cachet. Also knowing that I think to some degree he was hammocked by the promise of doing another Mad Max. Which he's doing in a weird way. I'm just interested by the promise of doing another mad max which he's doing in a weird way i'm just interested by the arc of it it's like you know in one way it's a logical arc right you know it's what we're saying it's like hey you make fury road sure you get to make one for you a little bit right that's fun and yet at the same time it's like it almost makes sense that he's in production on furiosa almost to be like, yeah, you know, this won't be the last you hear of me

or this isn't the direction I'm going in forever. Yes. But then again, I also just think he's George Miller and he's in his late 70s. He's not young. No, no, he's not. And he's like, you know, I wanted to make this. Yeah.

Look, we did our whole George Miller miniseries about two years ago. More? Because it was bifurcated by the pandemic, right? Like, that's the one that,

right? Yeah, that was the one. Yeah, early 2020. I guess we did almost, no, no,

yeah, because we did like Babe Pig in the City and maybe Happy Feet 2 on Zoom. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, Fury Road,

we had done already. And we'd done Happy Feet. Yeah, we'd done some of them. And then we had done an Efron episode. Remember, we'd done like... We had Mixed Nuts in the can. And we still do. We always got some Mixed Nuts

or Adelina on the can. But we, yeah, no. Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet 2, Bay Pig in the City. Yeah, we did a few of them online. Anyway. Anyway.

Anyway. So that was when we, it was early 2020. Right. And even at that time, there was the lingering like, he wants to make this movie. I mean,

as is often the case with him, he'll like verbalize this like project he wants to do. And then you just hear of years of delays of him being like, well, we were going to shoot here, but the weather wasn't right, or the timing wasn't this, or we need the time to do that or whatever right but pretty quickly post fury road it felt like it was like this is the next thing i want to do these are the two actors i have attached we're putting together financing yeah um it took a while to actually come to

you're right it was these it was interestris and Tilda were announced to begin with. There was no like... Because this is one of those movies you could see where it's like, oh yeah, there were like five genies and five doctor professors. Yeah. Yeah. 2018 announced. Described as being epic in scope.

And I guess it's 2018. It's three years from Fury Road. Yeah. Yeah, he gets to do what he wants. He gets to do what he wants. He gets to do what he wants. He gets to do what he wants. I mean, look, people are more than allowed

to dislike this movie. But as a thing I said to you over text last night after seeing this film, where the one thing that bums me out is I do feel like there has been some,

by bad faith, people, gleeful reportage of this movie bombing in this like, oh, he made this self-indulgent art film for $60 million. Look, there's a bad crowd online. The folly of this thing.

And it's not an important crowd and it's not even a particularly influential crowd. But there is a certain crowd that seems to take some weird delight in weird projects not working. Right.

Like, what were they thinking? Yeah, this esoteric masturbatory thing. And I'm just like dislike this movie or not it's fine we should be allowing this to happen i agree this used to happen if you fucking make fury road you get to do whatever the fuck you want my only thing that's a perfect example of a movie where everyone should step back and go you know what you're right this worked on every metric this is what our podcast is about fucking

we trust you and it happens so infrequently these days and beyond that so infrequently does someone take that cachet and actually spend it on something like this that would never get made and certainly not at this scale otherwise beyond that we should be thrilled that they let him make it that it exists i agree with all that but beyond that i don't because people have been saying like oh it was poorly marketed and like it's too too bad it got kind of dumped and like that's that's all fair yes like i it doesn't seem like it was really aggressively marketed and it is getting kind of like put out in late august the worst like what's notoriously yeah along with the first weekend of january the worst movie going but i don't think this was a movie that was ever going to be a screaming success it's pretty esoteric i

think two things can be true at the same time which is they mangled the marketing and release of this movie and this movie is kind of unmarketable pretty tough to mark i don't know i don't know how you sell this movie and the problem is it's it's a movie made for primarily weirdos like us because it's almost like like here's here's a great encapsulation right i went to see some movie with uh romley my sister long time sister and uh the trailer comes up and the trailer for this movie the first like 30 seconds make it seem like mrs harris goes to paris it's like twinkly i have i've seen the trailer comes up and the trailer for this movie the first like 30 seconds make it seem like Mrs. Harris goes to Paris it's like twinkly I've seen the trailer like one time

it's Tilda Swinton sitting alone journaling in the cafes solitary type you know whatever no hint of mysticism it's just like Tilda Swinton takes a nice vacation she's a middle aged academic enjoying her solitude, right?

And then, like, hotel room, Jin appears, trailer goes into bombastic, like, EDM music, hallucinatory. Like, they sell the fantasy story elements like it's, like, fucking hardcore, fucking intense shit. And immediately, like,

when the Tilda stuff is happening, Romney's like this looks like my kind of movie and the second it fucking goes like like eyeballs bleeding you know and like harems and shit she was just like oh never mind and it's that thing where you're just like the people who want to see wackadoo george miller probably are put off by how much of this movie is an intimate conversation in a hotel room. And the people who want to watch the intimate hotel movie are

probably put off by the crazy myths. So you need to be a very particular type of person who comfortably can hold both of these things in your head at the same time and have it fit your tastes. Which is why this movie is really tough to market. Which is all true. All true.

But, I mean, God bless the people, the good people at MGM and Film Nation and whoever else had to put money into this that they probably won't be seeing back. Yeah.

You know, that's movie making sometimes, obviously, but like, it just feels like the kind of movie that will be out there and can be kind of

stumbled across over the years in the future and will find more fans i probably you know i think it already has i would say the reaction to this film has been mostly mixed not even like mixed negative kind of a sort of like most of most reviews i have seen have been like it wasn't really for me but i i i can't stop thinking or like or i keep thinking about it or i'm impressed that it exists that's the thing but most of mostly kind of still a mixed bag

experience for people talking about a bombing it feels like have not seen it and the people have seen it are mostly kind of going like huh yeah oh yeah yeah okay yes i walked out of this movie like on a cloud which is like a rare thing for me not you pinned it as like favorite movie of the year i just love it in a way that's impossible to describe no i'm saying when you walked out but it was one of those things where it wasn't like this is a number one of the year by default but i had the experience and i love it i mostly see films of press screenings these days humbling and this film obviously had debuted at can and gotten mixed reviews i was very interested it's a george miller film it's an original film you

know i'm very intrigued by it but i was not walking and being like a masterpiece incoming right and i just you know it happens to me a few times a year that i'm watching a movie and i'm just like oh i love all of this it's just on your wavelength yeah and then of course this movie does have a sort of like major tonal shift in the third act and plot shift and i've heard from some people where they're sort of like and that's kind that kind of didn't work for me and i'm like yeah i guess i get it but i was even more into that oh that's like i love that the most for me and i also i've seen people being like the ending is such an abrupt rug pillet pull it feels like they ran out of money and i'm like that feels like how movies work no fuck's sake sorry i mean that

affectionately his problem was not not being given enough money for this movie i love that idea though he's like i was gonna do another magnificent tale of the past but i'm out of money so i guess i'll just melt him in a closet yes i'll just turn him to ash in the basement right fuck you it's cell phone yeah but i also i'm just spoiler alert for this movie anything is the whole point i mean not not to like reduce it too much but this is a we we tell ourselves storiesourselves-stories-in-order-to-live movie, right? That's the big thing Miller is saying with this film. A lot of great filmmakers, when they get to this stage of their career, start to make the movie, if not the autobiographical movie, almost sort of the self-reflexive movie of like, why do I do this?

Weren't we talking about this with Zemeckis? Yeah, yeah. There's definitely some of this with Zemeckis. Late career Zemeckis. I forget what guest, but someone was pointing out that their life experience starts to become through the lens of being a director.

I think it was Emily on the Marwen episode. Yeah, that sounds right. And that's what this movie feels like. But yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, this is not an autobiographical movie, but this absolutely feels like the movie of a 70-year-old master being like, why do I make movies?

Yeah. Why do I do this? Why do I tell stories? What is the entire nature of doing this thing, of putting on shows and spectacles for people? Classic late stage director rumination, right? Like, what is the meaning of a story and why do we do this?

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for a guy who has always done things in such a unique way, in such a bizarre way, and when you hit the end credits of this movie, you're reminded like, right, this guy pretty much has built his entire career existing outside of the studio system,

you know, with very selective collaboration with studios witches of eastwick is like the one movie that's really him like doing the american studio system thing but outside of that it's like and even that is an absolutely bananas movie but it's a kennedy miller mitchell yeah no that is the closest his regular collaborators hopping on a studio project with a script he didn't write you know he's got this sort of under discussed career as a mini mogul even in terms of like how many other australian directors he kick-started like philip noyce and stuff yeah you know but it's like he's just figured out his own way does things on his own terms and then now is sitting back and going like why do i do this 3 000 years of long yeah that is the name of the movie we're talking about returning to george miller 108 minutes of pure entertainment yes this is gene shallot

um it's a george miller film written by george miller and augusta gore who is his daughter i don't think I knew that. That's cool. This is a short story he had read a while ago. By A.S. Byatt. And his daughter, I believe, primarily studies like mythology and folklore and stuff. That's interesting. And he had been looking for a co-writer.

And then he was like, I should just do this with my daughter. Which is this other sweet element to this movie. It's like. You know. His wife is his editor. He makes movies with his best friends. And his family. And there is almost this kind of generational.

Passing down thing on this movie. This is his daughter's first credit in anything. Yeah. It is. And. It was one of those things where like. It started filming like days before lockdown like early march 2020 yeah and so it got massively delayed and i think they

restarted filming in the fall um they end up not filming in istanbul because of the pandemic that sounds right they like recreated mostly in australia there was some deadline review i read from when this movie was playing at con and the person interviewing him was like i have stayed at that hotel i know the hotel you're basing this movie on sure it is the most immaculate reconstruction of the rooms right because it looks like the you know a real spot for sure yeah they recreated that that's agatha christie room yes the ag room. Yes. The Agatha Christie room. Fucking Agatha Christie needs a fancy hotel to write the mousetrap or whatever. Yeah.

It is a tale of a lonely British scholar who... Well, is she Scottish? Yeah. Well, Scotland is in Britain. For now. For now. They may be leaving. They would like to... Or certain people in Scotland would like to or they they they're certain people in scotland

would like to be independent um who unleashes a gin inside an antique bottle yes that she buys at a local trinket store okay right off the bat i'm definitely buying every fucking bottle i can find a trick in stores for now on and just just rubbing them and then tossing them over your shoulder. Damn it. Smashing them on the ground. I want a genie. Big time. Do you want him to be room size like he is and then he comes out basically very large.

I want a big boy. Or a girl. I want a big genie. Not enough girl genies. No. That's a good point. I dream of. Well, that's true. She's kind of the queen of girl genies, No. That's a good point. I dream of. Well, that's true. She's kind of the queen of girl genies, I guess. But, you know, often classically represented as male. Yes, not many.

Out comes a djinn played by Idris Elba. Let's mention also you said she's a scholar, but she's like a folklore. She studies. She studies narratology or whatever. Her whole thing is trying to find the the common threads that are shared across the stories of all cultures to figure out the things that unify us she hosts a ted talk that might be the most boring thing i've ever seen it's not scintillating stuff i don't know i mean it's all right it's but she sort of breaks stories down a very mathematical that's i believe that's the

narrative purpose of that ted talk sequence right where it's like you know this is a lady who's kind of boiling things down a little too much yeah right i love when you make stories into math i do think it's interesting that study of like where it's like you know like cinderella is like a folk tale or you know that might even but like and then you like look at other cultures and you're like oh they have they have a lot. This myth recurs. There's various types of myths that sort of clearly are rooted in something deeper because they sort of spread across the world. It's the thing I like. Look, her TED Talk looks boring as hell. But the thing I like that they put a point on is that she's specifically trying to find the commonalities across cultures.

specifically trying to find the commonalities across cultures. It's like, what are the story elements that transcend time and place that seem to speak to some fundamental human yearning rather than any cultural specificity, you know? Yeah. Out comes the djinn? Well, she sees some other creatures, too. She is occasionally having hallucinations of other things it's true right there's the the little man who tries to take her luggage cart at the airport yeah

they joke that it's a gym and then she sees someone at the ted talk or whatever yes sitting in the crowd right she like faints and she faints yeah right they all have this and she's got a slightly she seems touchy or what's the word like she seems like someone who might like suddenly faint like she just feels a little frail or yeah i don't know she's got the thing where she's hyper defensive about how happy she is right right right she's doing great she's doing great this is exactly staying in a fancy hotel yeah and she is clearly very successful in this incredibly like niche field soown around the world. Great glasses.

Great glasses. I like Mike get those friends. I like her haircut a lot in this. Yeah. Her whole look is really good. Tilda rules. Have we talked about Tilda yet on the show? We can talk about Tilda. A friend of the show, Fran Hoffner, pointed out,

it's odd that she puts her hair up in a towel. She has very short hair. Yeah, she doesn't need that. She doesn't need to do that. And I feel like it's more just like, well, she should look really toweled up. I wish Id just put his hair up in a towel he should do that yeah lack of um out comes the gin and you know he wants to give her three wishes it's his deal yeah but instead as they're trying to figure out what she might want because she's given him the whole, what could I even need?

I'm happy. Wishing, you know, that leads to trouble. Did you guys feel like you were missing the genie referencing sort of cultural references over the last 20, 30 years? I always feel like there's a character who's been contained within a bottle for centuries, if not longer. It makes the a bottle for centuries if not longer

it makes the most sense for them to not only have a complete understanding of all the pop culture they've missed but pop culture that will happen centuries in the future what I think that should happen is when you come out of the bottle you should go you should stretch

crack in the neck like you wouldn't believe well he does he's watching, he does do this. He's watching TV. He does some TV stuff. Yeah, but he's like, what the fuck is this? I know. I like that. Yo, he witch hacks, my dudes.

He goes to the computer. He does some vapor ass shit, and he knows all the world's knowledge. That's witch hacking if I've ever heard of it. It's gin hacking. It's gin hacking. But you know gin is such a fun word gin it is a fun word um and so well the the basic structure of most of the movie is him being like all right well if you don't have any wishes let's talk about my life

i'll tell you i'll take you through my other sort of people i've given wishes to it's kind of this odd reverse like a thousand one nights yeah it's very obviously sort of drafting off of that yeah um because i guess he's sort of trying to convince her to wish for stuff she needs to make a wish she says as i misappropriated the beginning of the episode or butchered uh there's there's no wishing story that's not a cautionary tale this is a trap there's a there's nothing i want and she tries the thing of like what do i want i want to eat something and then she feeds herself and she's like they're done and he's like i only can grant wishes that reflect your innermost desires right which i like it once it can't be he's not the kind of genie where i'm

like god i wish i just felt a little like less sleepy today be like bam wish number one fuck you bitch only two to go right i wish i had a snickers right now you have a snickers right but yeah she can't be like tie my shoes right right he's like no no no no no this is an emotional relationship that we are now engaged in right and i'm here to help you understand what it is you truly want and i am not a genie who's gonna snap my fingers like as we see in one of the stories one of the people's like i want to like i want all the world's knowledge he's like all right let's get some books yeah i'll go get him like it's a process he's not right he's not gonna matrix style download all the knowledge into your brain but she like immediately deflects onto him like i don't know what's your deal right right she makes the comment she's kind of right she's kind of doing the like like he's a

mobster gonna kill her she's like well let's have a conversation over you know she's sort of like it feels like she's just drawing it out just talk right he's not trying to hurt her he's trying to help her but she's right very resistant to help she's fascinated too and of course because it's like especially her she's a fucking specialist in this stuff i haven't seen leo grande uh sure yeah but i've heard good luck to you leo grande is the people uh comparing these two films and this early stuff does have that energy of someone who is like in a hotel with a sex worker being like, we don't have to do anything.

We could just talk. Yeah. Like, you know, where she's just immediately like, let's not do the wishing thing. You tell me about you. What's your deal? Right.

He makes the comment about like, I'm a fool. I've been tricked into the bottle like three times. And she's like, interesting. Let's unpack that. I'm your therapist. To be fair,

I would also want to hear about that. Like if a gin came out wouldn't be like all right buddy here we go 10 billion dollars here's my checking account uh world peace i guess you know you know i would i would like i'd want to hear about how the wishing process has gone in the past absolutely right it's an immediate thing i love about this movie is it's not framed as tell me the stories of some of the other wishes you've granted. Right. Or like tell me sort of allegorical cautionary tales. It's like, what about you? No one ever asked you about you. you got fucked over and then within those stories you're finding out about other people and the wishes they make and the mistakes they make and all of that right but it's almost like no one's ever asked this guy how he's doing right no one's ever been like what's your your deal is you just grant other people's wishes you have to like fulfill their innermost desires are you okay how is that also what is it like to be locked in a bottle for thousands of years yeah gives you such a crick in the neck yeah that's what it is i'm trying to think if

there's any other setup we need you guys seem to have both liked the movie yeah yeah i think this person seemed very positive on it ben you guys saw it all separately yeah you all saw it alone i'm guessing it pretty sparsely attended screenings. Yeah, there was like two other people there. I think it was okay. I don't know if I would like go out of my way to watch it again. Fair. But I love a genie story. And I love movies like this.

The classic bedtime story. Let's then cut away to the story. I love that. Yes. Design and structure in a movie. Yes. Let's then cut away to the story. I love that. Design and structure in a movie. It's comforting. It's very comforting. It's very comforting. I think this is not a case like West Side Story where I'm wishing

I loved the movie more that you're waxing rhapsodic about. But I think you just do like this movie more than me. Because you're over the moon for it. I guess so. whatever it's just sort of like but then this isn't like west side story at all because with west side story i'm just like well this thing is just like an absolute masterpiece of craft like it's a little more like with 3 000 years of longing it is very the craft is is i would say pretty great like you you know, George Miller is good at that stuff.

Yes. But no, I just... You really connected. Yeah. I love these two freaks. Is it maybe that you've started to tell stories? You're starting to become your own storyteller with your daughter.

You have to start telling stories. I tell her stories. And make up stories. If you pick up the spices out of the spice rack and throw them on the floor, they might break, and I don't want you to do that. That's you to do that it's a great story that i tell her because the spice monster she's upset well and that's the thing she doesn't yeah i couldn't yet be like the spice monster will get you because you know she doesn't you know imagination has yet to really enter the story the story now is if you do that, you make me upset.

I'm the spice monster. She is obsessed with walking to the kitchen and just picking up spices and just like throwing them around. That's kind of a good bit. A little rat too, eh? Yeah, it's fun. Getting fancy with the spices. Listen up, let me tell you a story. Toronto critics are losing their heads over Six the musical.

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i saw this film with a friend of the podcast jordan hoffman who was like i guess I need to see it. I'm not a Miller fan, though. I'm not into that guy. He's just not my flavor. And then he walked out and was like, I really like that. And it is funny how much it's a quintessential Miller movie, but also, in certain strange ways,

it is his most reserved film. I would say, I would put it on the same shelf thematically as i guessed eastwick and baby pig in the city in that all three are like kind of like about you know different characters and they're sort of like they're painted very boldly right but they are about like i mean well baby pig in the city is about animals but still like about like people having feelings in a like mad max is mad max that's its own category of there's mad maxi stuff in here there's a little bit there absolutely is i'm just saying compare this movie to like lorenzo's oil and lorenzo's oil is so operatic shot like a fucking looney tune like doesn't stop moving and when you get to like the conversations

in the hotel room which are like 30 to 40 percent of this movie you're like this is kind of the most restrained george miller has ever been cinematically yes yeah you know i mean it's pretty it's a pretty subdued scene it is and obviously it's intimate and it's yeah uh low energy in a way and that it's like it is a conversation that's being had obviously we're having these very sumptuous sometimes very exciting flashbacks miller's usually a maximalist uh but it's like but this is obviously fairly maximalist it's what's wild it's what's wild about this film it's it's why like you might get thrown off by one element or the other, but I'm talking

about this movie with Hoffman, and we're just like, how the fuck did he trick people into giving him the money to make this? It's obviously just Fury Road, Fury Road, Fury Road. But then when I said to him, I will give him the credit, though, if you're going to make this movie and sell this movie and get this movie mostly put together by

foreign financing, which is, this movie mostly put together by foreign financing, which is, this film was made independently, Film Nation, you know, sold to and distributed by MGM. It was all put together from foreign financing, international pre-sales and stuff. These are the two actors

you can sell this movie on. Interesting. Not only were these the only two people who were ever attached to it, but you're kind of like, this movie feels impossible to pitch for how uncommercial it is, period. It feels impossible to pitch with any other two people.

They're both incredibly famous movie stars who also have weird levels of serious actor credibility, but odd cult of personality around them have weird levels of serious actor credibility, but odd cult of personality around them, who really want to act and aren't protective of, I got to make blockbusters. True, true. Even though they'll do it, obviously. We'll take big swings.

Yeah. And it's hard to think of two other actors who could have sold the different temperatures of this movie. What if you flip them? Also could have worked. Also could work, right? That's the thing. I'm like, you could gender swap them

and this would work with the same two people. Yeah, it would kind of work. They're the only two people who I think could do this and I think... They should do a True West style. They should make the movie again

with the roles flipped. See how it is. Both of these performances are phenomenal. I agree. I want to talk about them. I think it's also... I mean, Tilda has an incredibly

varied body of work and she's been in lots and lots of incredible movies, but Idris Elba, God bless him. It was a wonderful actor and he's done some smaller things sprinkled in, but he does a lot of big movies that I often feel he's a little undervalued in like, or like the movies undervalue him.

He's got this very odd movie star career where it is like this guy is undeniably an international movie star but he so often takes things where you're like do you not understand that you can do better than this well that's what you never that's at least what we think watching him you know on the inside he might be like this is a big movie this is a big role i'm the villain i'm the whatever sure and like i'll you know i'm sure it's good money and i'll do it like i'll do a good job and we have this sort of feeling professional but you're at yourself but you kind of should just be like only headlining vehicles right if it's a big movie like you should be at the top of this stuff not the villain in hobson shaw which you're like totally fine in i think he's pretty good he's

pretty good because he's always pretty good in this stuff. And like, same with like Star Trek where you're like, why are you hiring Idris Elba to be under this makeup? You're Idris Elba. And then you'll, he'll like make a movie like Beast, which I have not yet seen.

Most people seem to say kind of punches above its weight class. I think there's always been this thing with him where it's just like, here's this like incredibly charismatic, skilled, absurdly handsome man right that people are just fascinated by and he like blows up on the wire but then the wire has such a long tail of people coming around to that show and watching it 10 15 years later that he just kind of keeps on getting these bumps in fame from the original thing that broke him, if that makes sense.

Yes. You know, like, he's getting cast in, like, American Gangster as an immediate result of The Wire. And then 10 years later, he's getting new parts because people are finally coming around to The Wire. And, like, Luther's happening at the same time, so you're sort of like, he's got this, like, incredible TV career.

He works in, like, every genre. I mean, he does his fucking DJing. He does his DJing. Not only did he do DJing, didn't he then do a TV show? About DJing. About DJing? In the long run? Really?

No one really. That one really didn't. Idris is weird. That's so weird. What does he DJ? What kind of music? Well, I believe, you know what? Let me look up for, yeah, DJ Big Driss.

Big Driss? Yeah, it's like R&B stuff, you know? Big Driss. Oh, shit. I mean, I think he's been doing that, to be clear. He's been doing that the whole, like, that was like a side gig for him when he was making money and trying to be an actor and all that. Like, the thing about him he just does

everything he's an incredibly striking actor he's very very handsome yes he has a really distinctive voice he can do every accent obviously he's when he's in the wire you'd never think like oh this guy's from hackney london like you know you think like what i said he's truly one of the best accent really he's six two he's a big guy like he's genuinely imposing he's a bouncer at caroline's do you know that ben no the comedy club yeah and he's given a lot of performances that i think are really good and he's been in a lot of big movies yeah so why do i think idris elba's career almost hasn't been big enough like it's sort of it's just that weird kind of thing we were talking about jamie foxx the other day yes and i was it's like jamie foxx to me is almost like it's like shack or something yeah i

pardon the basketball reference all right i'll like shaquille o'neal the one basketball player i know you've heard of he won four titles yeah he was he won an mvp was a very, he was one of the most successful players of all time. And yet everyone who covers that, one of the most famous players of all time, one of the most famous players of all time, but everyone who covers basketball and like people like Phil Jackson, who coached him were like, he should have won like 10 titles.

Yeah. Like despite his massive success, everything about him, he actually should have been way more successful. And, you know, a lot of way more successful and you know a lot of people say like you know but unlike a michael jordan type he just wanted to have more fun and he wanted to do more extracurricular stuff so like and the jamie fox point was like i was like this man has an oscar he's like a hit musician he's like a hit comedian like yeah he's done it all

he's not unsuccessful and yet it feels like he could do more and like it just all but sometimes and also when when one of them will come up with like a jingo or a three thousand years of longing where it's like oh this is a movie that's actually giving them something that can showcase all of their skills as an actor and their depth you're like right of course they've been here the whole time putting tv aside putting putting like luther in the wire aside obviously yeah what are some of the best? Beasts of No Nation is the one that was supposed to be his big Oscar movie. He's excellent in that movie. And then he gets every other nomination and most of the wins.

It's that weird year where like he wins the Globe and the SAG and doesn't get nominated for the Oscar. He didn't win the Globe. He did win the SAG. Who won the Globe? And the SAG, I feel like sylvester stallone won the globe okay so it's the mark rylance right yeah um that performance is excellent yeah i think you know he didn't get nominated for two reasons one there was a it was the early netflix thing of like that

was like the first real serious show you oscar play yeah and then two that movie is incredibly grim and maybe whatever people avoided got turned off by it but like it's an undeniably transfixing performance yeah i guess before that well no so before then he'd done obviously you know he's in stuff like he pops up in like rock and roll or american gangster he's very good obsessed he's kind of obsessed he is first billed and that movie was... The movie was a hit, but I feel like he has the most boring role, because he's the guy who's like, oh, I don't know what to do with myself.

He's overshadowed by the two of them, but it's almost like, okay, here you go. There's an Idris Elba movie, even if it was largely sold on Beyonce, that was a big fucking hit, and he's the guy. But like Daddy's Little Girls, which, have you seen Daddy's Little Girls? I have not. I have. It's sort of similar to Obsessed obsessor it's like he's playing i mean an obsessed he he falters and he cheats on his wife right right he does cheat on her right

or is she just obsessed no in in obsessed it's right he doesn't cheat on her she truly just like gets unrequited feeling okay but in daddy's little girls you know it's like he's such a pillar in that movie because that's the whole point he He's just this, like, unambiguously, like, wonderful man who's being besieged by circumstance. And he's good at that. It's a little one-note. But, like, this is also the era of Tyler Perry movies where he's like, who are the best black actors who no one in the studio system is going to let be the lead of a movie? I'm going to write a movie for Taraji. I'm going to write a movie for Idris.

But, yes, he would often make these characters too saintly they're too cursed it's like one or the other okay and then like i never saw the losers a movie that's sort of like got forgotten yeah he's in that weirdly stacked soldana chris evans and driselba like five people before they find right before they're yeah you've got thor which is that sort of classic mcu thing now where it's like ah fuck you shouldn't have had him being heimdall not that he's bad but like you could have had him later like the things you could have done with this guy played mr fantastic and they pretty much have to like by ragnarok be like we're gonna make heimdall into the type of character we wish we had cast yeah he's gonna be more he's gonna be in the woods fighting because that's the thing him being cast as heimdall it's type of character we wish we had cast. Yeah, he's going to be more directly heroic. He's going to be in the woods sword fighting people.

Because that's the thing. Him being cast as Heimdall, it's more like, well, this is a very imposing guy with a great voice who's stoic. Right. So he's perfect for the all-seeing watchman type. But it's like... Right. Because he's the guy who watches the gate.

He's got the big sword. He's essentially the bouncer at Caroline. Yeah, he's a bit of a bouncer at Caroline. He watches the Rainbow Bridge. People forget he's the villain in Ghost writer spirit of vengeance but i remember him being pretty fun in that this is the thing i think anytime he does these things where you're like idris why are you doing this you watch it and you're like he is having fun here prometheus he's kind of having fun prometheus he's really good he's kind of horny yeah he's got an accordion

yeah uh and then in 2013 he he's in the Nelson Mandela film Long Walk to Freedom, which goes nowhere. Felt like it should have been a slam dunk for him. Oscar breakthrough, and it's just a non-starter movie. And he's in Thor The Dark World, and I feel like, right, there are, you know, now he at least has an action sequence, but he's still

the seventh lead. And he's in Pacific Rim, which he's great in. Yes. And that's at least Del Toro. He's not the lead lead, because Hunnam and then Rinka Kikuchi are kind of the lead,

but he's a co-lead. And he's given the speeches. We're catching the apocalypse. He wanted Cruise to do that. Yeah, yeah, right. Because it was right after he had been developing Mountains of Madness for so long, right? And the fact that it went from cruise to being like i don't know idris elba like obviously

idris elba was not at that level of bankability but they were like authority wise yeah but yes this is the thing like the times that he's been placed in the pole position in his own franchise as it were doesn't work dark tower doesn't work. Dark Tower doesn't work. Not for lack of trying on his part. I want to keep going. No good deed. That's sort of similar to Obsessed. That's kind of like a fun, trashy,

he's the bad guy in that one. Movie called Second Coming. No idea what that is. Truly never heard of that. The Gunman. That's the sean penn movie overqualified supporting cast right beast is no nation you know yeah it's a serious role yes really good and then in 2016 he's in zootopia and the jungle book and it's almost getting tired to

use his like imposing voice but it's totally good he fucking kills it in both of them um and he's also in finding dory i totally forgot about that so three voice performances that is three disney and he's the villain in star trek beyond which he's great in he is but it does the makeup is the thing that's kind of annoying but then of course it has this thematic thing at the end where you see his human face again you know he's supposed to be this human who got corrupted by radiation and all that but you do spend most of the movie going like shouldn't you be the lead of this like yeah yeah and then in 2017 like look i don't think the dark tower is good i'll kind of stick up for

that movie because it's so bananas it's a terrible adaptation of the books in the i mean it's a disaster on that front and it's like 90 minutes long and it feels like the studio's just like just put this out and let's be done with it but i think he's good and he was well cast and it's too bad that didn't happen for him i think he's amazing in molly's game incredible the accent he's doing it's the one time it just because the sorkin dialogue is so thick you can sometimes hear his accent kind of bending i also heard that was one of those things where he had like two weeks to prepare for that movie or something he is fucking great in it it's his big monologue he gives i love

that monologue is so good and it's one of those things it's like kind of power of acting shit where you're like it's the one time as you said in his career that he cannot hold that accent down and it doesn't fucking matter his performance is so transfixing he is so in it emotionally that you're like i i don't care um and then okay thor ragnarok adventures infinity war hobbs and shaw we're getting into this thing where it's like am i only gonna see you in this this stuff hobbs and shaw i don't know man he's fine yeah i've just seen you do a villain and at this point it's also like his career is starting to become emblematic of like the movie star problem in general which is like right if you haven't found you don't have ip right you don't have your distinctive thing you're in this position where it's like i'm picking up like third string

hero roles or villain roles and other franchises like i'm picking up like third string hero roles or villain roles and other franchises where i'm going to be unimportant or only in one movie and then like the oscar i haven't gotten the oscar juice enough where i'm getting movies financed on the idea that it's a slam dunk nomination every time there's cats we can't forget cats he was mcavity someone tweeted popping in and out of existence something last week about like uh tom hooper and george miller being the only two directors brave enough to cast uh idris elba as a shape-shifting magical tricksters without genitals yes does he not have genitals it doesn't look like it in this film yeah but but also they

make love. Yeah, they might just pop up at some point. But it seems like with smoke. Well, that sounds fun. It does. Sounds different. Of late. Yes.

Like he did Concrete Cowboy. He did The Heart of a Fall. He did Beast this year. Yes. And obviously this. I think he did a Luther movie. Yes. It feels like he's leaning more into like slightly more interesting projects obviously he did sensitive and textured work as knuckles the

echidna and satanic dad drug too i thought he was excellent in that film genuinely yeah he's really funny um and he did do suicide squad which is another franchise movie yeah he's phenomenal but it's another one where you're like okay this feels like you finally built a perfect Idris Elba and then the movie doesn't do that well I mean the movie I think that movie works like I think it's a good movie but it's not commercially there's probably a world where

that movie would have been more of a commercial that's one of the biggest pandemic and James Gunn I feel like was the first person to really kind of figure out how to use his emotional depths in a blockbuster. Yeah. He's got a daughter or whatever.

Like there's some, there's some real emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff there. Yeah. Um, but this movie,

he comes out of this bottle and I immediately from the first line, he says, go go I believe this guy is 3000 years old it is that ineffable thing yeah it's like undefinable and I don't even feel like it's like well I did the prep work to try to I'm like it's just you have

the command or you don't when Idris Elba says shit you believe it right? Absolutely there are some actors who can pull that off but it's it's not a long list but he just truly from that first moment i'm like you have the weight the presence the authority the intelligence the pain i look in your fucking eyes hotness but i'm like i look in your fucking eyes and i'm like i believe this guy has spent a thousand years in a bottle talking

to no one now how often have we talked about tilda have we ever talked about her on the main feed obviously we talked about like dr strange on the patreon or whatever have we not covered a tilda movie before i think the only instance i can really remember is just like shouting out how incredible she is in michael clayton exactly yeah obviously she i recently re-watched the boss one of the coolest oscar wins ever we talk about that obviously um no i guess we've never talked about a tilda movie wow huh yeah okay i think i like a lot of people was first really aware of her she obviously had already done

the Derek Jarman movies and Orlando and had her whole amazing 90s like art movie run but I was too young for that but when I'm like a teen and I'm a little Oscar boy and she is in the beach in a fun weird role but I think I didn't really

clock that but the deep end was this sort of like... I never even saw that movie. Oh, it's a good movie. But this like undersung Oscar contender. She kind of came close to a nomination for it. It sort of felt like she was sixth or seventh that year in like a little movie that could kind of way. And that immediately...

That was when I took notice of her name. She's obviously got a very distinctive name and a very distinctive look yeah and then right after that she starts showing up in smaller parts in bigger oscary movies like adaptation um that's right it's like oh clearly that movie was the calling vanilla sky adaptation young adam that's a bigger role so vanilla sky is the one we've covered that's right she is in vanilla sky not a big role no but yes this this run of now she's working with like american auteurs big stars supporting roles broken flower she's in for like five seconds that's a movie i saw once yeah i was i started the amc lincoln square because i was on vacation in New York. What?

Because I lived in Britain. Too tired to do the bit today. Yeah, fair enough. And I saw it like front row. I remember I just like, I didn't have good seats. I was amped. I was amped too.

And I remember thinking it was like pretty good. And I haven't thought about it much since. Is she one of the exes? My memory is that she is absolutely one of the exes my memory is that she is she is one of the absolutely one of the exes she my memory is that she literally opens a door yeah she punches him or or she gets guys to punch him yeah the great larry fessenden scary larry fessenden horror

filmmaker head of glass eye pics plays like her redneck boyfriend yeah biker boyfriend right he like cold cox bill murray yes she like opens the door she goes like what the fuck are you doing here i remember she in my memory she has like one line larry fesson and cold cox and bill murray wakes up with a black guy she's like not in the movie fair enough but maybe i'm wrong and she has more she did make the poster but that was sort of that's why i remember being like here we go tilde final x and then they like don't do anything with her. But yes, she's in the rotation at this point.

And then I guess, then she has, in the mid-2000s, Hollywood is like, be a villain in Constantine. Which she's incredible in. Which she's wonderful in. She plays the Archangel Gabriel. Be the White Witch in the Narnia movie.

Perfect casting. very impressive performance in a franchise that never got to be s tier but it's also one of those things where it was like disney's making a narnia movie they want nicole kidman to do it and you were like obvious obvious was like the number one choice for every one of those fucking things in the 2000s right ends up doing golden compass instead right a couple years later but like passes on narnia they offer it to tilda and you're like huh that's kind of cool she's good that they actually went with tilda who has not been like a name person movies of this size and then that first movie is such a surprising ginormous blockbuster that i do think it's surprisingly gets her some and she's really good in it. She's good in all three. I mean, she's barely in the other two,

but she's in them all. Yeah, but it gets her a little bit of bankability, surprisingly. And then she is in Burn After Reading, and she's in Michael Clayton, and she wins an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. And it's one of those things

where you're like, cool nomination for a great actor who's always been good, doing really skilled work the kind of unshowy performance that the oscars are never going to give the trophy to right and that very odd year where it was like blanchett versus amy ryan both giving excellent performances but much showier performances and it was back and forth the two of them were winning every other award till it fucking slips through and wins i mean having just re-watched michael clayton which i've seen many times yeah it's like that whole movie obviously she's in the first basically

the first scene of the movie like you're seeing her in the yeah and like she's peppered in through all those scenes are great but that whole movie is you waiting for the hammer blow scene of clayton out foxing her yes and they that scene is just such a unbelievable scene it's incredible and they're both i mean clooney and her are both just like fucking guns of navarone just like absolutely detonating but it's also the incredible thing incredible thing where it's and her face the way it changes what is arguably tilda's oscar moment it's her falling down out of focus out of focus in the background of a shot and you're like that just won her the oscar i mean i watched that movie with forky and forky was like why are we watching this you know slightly

grim happens every time i try to convince someone to watch michael clay right like you know like movie about and i'm like see so what he is is he is but he's, you know, not really like a trial lawyer. He's like, you know, kind of a fixer guy. He had these failed dreams. He tried to get out, but the restaurant didn't work because his brother can't get up his own way. And it's just, again, Forky's just like, yeah, sure, this seems like a seven out of ten, like, you know. Fine. And then, and I'm just like, just sit.

Just let it go. But people who saw Michael Clayton came out of that being, like, good movie. Yeah. And then two years later were like, best movie? movie we have had no idea how good we had it um and then since the oscar win i would say she's had one of the most interesting and exciting careers an actor could have okay i am love which is the guadagnino surprise art house crossover success. A little bit. She starts to become this champion saint of, I feel like, middle-aged women. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

But I think that movie crossed over in a much bigger way, and it was like, oh, women really want to see a told us what neurotic drama. Yeah, right. Oh, it's a neurotic drama oh yeah it's got some sex it's luca guadagnino who then does uh calling by your name and suspiria with her but there's also this whole thing she has this interesting marriage structure she lives this very free life

she'll do like fucking moment installations where she like sleeps in a box that's what i'm waiting for us to get to that's when when I'm like, okay, this lady, I can fuck with this lady. She's different. She's sleeping and making, and living in a box and making that into an art installation. That's cool as hell.

She's doing her own film festivals where she was like, I don't like all these other film festivals that are about like free gifting suites and stuff. We're going to have a film festival. It's just a bunch of beanbag chairs and we watch movies. Here's some other movies. Some movies are good. Let's just talk about movies. We're going to have a film festival. It's just a bunch of beanbag chairs and we watch movies. Here's some other movies she's been in.

Some movies are good. Let's just talk about movies. We need to talk about Kevin. She's really good in that. Phenomenal performance. Once again, comes very close to the Oscar. Moonrise Kingdom.

Playing social services. I think she's so funny in that movie. All of her fucking West performance. Her West drop-ins are always good. Only Lovers Left Alive. A phenomenal performance. Unbelievable performance. In a great movie.

Yes. Has amazing chemistry with Hiddleston. Yeah. Great movie. Snowpiercer. good only lovers left alive a phenomenal performance in a great movie yes has amazing chemistry with hiddleston yeah great movie snowpiercer so funny and weird in that movie playing like mutant margaret thatcher right so good grand budapest hotel you know another bigger splash like giving an almost silent performance as a singer whose voice is gone right fucking incredible have you seen bigger splash no love it you gotta take the dive another luca this is the other thing and she's like i don't know maybe i'll do a supporting role in train wreck that's funny maybe i'll be in doctor strange and no one will object to that yeah no one uh hail caesar i'll play dual roles as like dueling gossip columnists isn't she dual roles in okja as well or my miss yes she plays sisters in okja as well? Or am I misremembering it? Yes, she plays sisters in Okja as well. This is the other thing.

You look at director Muse. She's got four or five different really top-level directors who use her multiple times. Every time they're like, we're going to use Tilda. The Coen brothers are going to come back to Tilda. Luke is going to come back to Tilda.

Wes is going to come back to Tilda. You know? Jarmusch, like, she's collecting really good collaborators. And she kills it every time yeah man like oak as you mentioned isla dog she's a voice suspiria she's incredible three roles in that one uh pops into avengers endgame why not yeah dead don't die i think she's funny in that david copperfield she's

completely delightful in that if anyone has ever seen it then the souvenir heartbreaking incredible performance yes playing her you know alongside those yeah uh uncut gems she's on the phone don't forget i did forget if i ever knew yeah she's on the phone uh the she's the auctioneer on the phone um you know souvenir part two french dispatch she's fucking hilarious and the bit where she like does like a slideshow of a naked picture of herself it's so funny yeah and then memoria yeah it's just an absolute have you seen memoria i still haven't all right you gotta see memoria and then this i'm just saying like i don't know that there are a lot of actors with runs like that last 15 years no especially when you consider that she's this like you know elfin elfin fucking, how old is she these days?

You know, in her 50s, right? Oh, 61. Yeah. 61 year old, sort of late in life, quasi star. I'd say star. I'd say unqualified. Just incredible. But who will do a ton of supporting stuff, you know.

But then when she gives a big, meaty role, she's so incredibly transfixing. And I also think she gets movies financed. I think she's so big overseas that she can get very esoteric movies financed. She can find foreign directors, independent directors, and then she builds relationships with them that pay off over years and years and years. I don't know if this is necessarily one-to-one,

but we've talked about Buscemi as somebody who is so recognizable. No, that's a good call. Buscemi has a similar kind of run in the 90s and 2000s or whatever. Yeah, but I feel like Tilda and him are kind of similar career-wise and complexion-wise. Well, true. She also just has the healthy kind of cult of personality around her yes you know what

i'm saying like people are kind of fascinated with her and delighted by her in a way that is not bad but i do it adds the weird mystique of her yeah um this is what i'm saying though it's like who else gets this movie financed and is right for it i can't think of anyone i don't know i don't and i don't want to know i don't want to know she's coming up she's got another joanna hogg movie great she's got uh she's uh the blue fairy in pinocchio uh the del toro one okay um she's in the new west she's in the new west and she's in the new fincher. This is... I mean... Damn. Which, you know what the Fincher is about? It's about a guy who kills people. Guess what his name is.

The Killer. The Killer. Whoa. Ten out of ten. Guess what the movie's called. The Killer. The Killer. Perfect.

I love how Fincher's like, Mank, do you like Mank? And most people are like, eh. And he's like, fine. Fucking Michael Fassbender as The Killer. Great. People are like... Yeah, it sounds exciting. Michael Fassbender as the killer. Great. People like, um,

yes, it sounds exciting. So you, you start this movie with her narration saying this really happened to me, but I'm going to tell it in the form of fairy tale because it's easier for people to digest that way. So he's almost sort of like sewing his heightened George Miller style into the movie from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah.

This is true. This is not allegorical. I don't view this movie as a life of pie type thing where it's like I'm telling you a story in a heightened form so you can understand the lessons of it. Yeah. I think this is all meant to be taken literally. Yeah. Flying around the world giving boring TED talks. Goes to one of these

markets i like that scene a lot i love that scene i love that line where she's like there's 79 streets in istanbul and 4 000 shops and in one of those shops there's three rooms in the back room i found a thing and i just like i don't know i guess because like the movie knows how important it has to be for her to it can't just be her being like, and I'll take this thing too. The guy is almost like, you don't want this thing. It's not that good. But I love the chants of all the stores. Exactly.

You find the thing. They're trying to upsell her. And it's like, there's something about this little bottle. It calls to her. Yeah. Exactly. little bottle it calls to her yeah exactly and this contrast of the mundanity of like you know this very nice but like very modern clean hotel room she's there with her electric toothbrush trying to clean off this artifact from marketplace and outcomes a man with gold fingers

and scaly legs yes pointy ears yep's a gen is he ever got a proper name he's just the gen he's the gen uh the gen of myth uh you know the invisible creatures in pre-islamic arabian religious systems that then got carried over to islamic mythology and uh they're not a strictly Islamic concept for that reason. They kind of have some pagan beliefs swirling around in them. Sure. And I think in classic mythology, they're like shape changers. They're like invisible shape changers that can appear as all kinds of animals,

but as humans. And they have sex with humans and they make offspring and stuff. This gen has sex with humans, certainly. I mean, I'd have sex with them. I would too. Yes. Same. But I don't think it is necessarily always like,

three wishes! That is sort of specific to certain tales or whatever. That is not inherent. There's this element, too, which is very important to the film of, like, a lot of genius, it's this sense of, like, I was tricked, I was trapped, right? Which happens to him. It's how he ends up in the bottle for too long. But, like, my entire existence as a genie is one of sort of indentured servitude, right?

Like, you know, the whole thing with Aladdin where it's like freeing the genie is the happiest ending you can give this movie. He doesn't have to be a fucking genie anymore. This Jin, it's like his whole thing is on an emotional level, his entire existence

is about being able to make people happy, right yeah it's this idea of like this man who too selflessly loves and gets hurt in the process yeah he's a sensitive soul yeah he's very emotionally bound up in the relationships he gets sucked into by being a and it's it's about truly wanting to fulfill people's greatest desires right because like not just having to there is the sort of classic whatever aladdin influence like concept of like the genie is like a concierge and you are the client and you're just like it's kind of a curse on this weird creature right and and then like you know

there's a uh what's it called you know the comic book fables uh do you ever read that yeah yes i've not read all of it i started and it's one of many comics i should have finished and never done by bill willingham which which that has this fun thing where like at one point fables is set in a world where like any fairy tale is real okay all of them and like most of the fairy tale creatures live in like a big apartment building in Manhattan and these guys come from the Middle East and like they have a genie in a bottle and everyone is really freaked out because they're like that's like a nuclear weapon it can do anything like we have to deal with this this is like it's like unlimited power

bound within the specifics of wishing and all that but still here it's a little more like you get this weird friend yeah and he's your companion now and you guys got to figure out together what it is you want to do in your life yeah and he's going to try and help you but there is this like because it's stories and he's telling stories it's like it's gonna get tinged with tragedy and pathos and like ironic you know right like you know like that's what she identifies with me like i study stories for a living they all they have some message to send some moral yes exactly everyone there

is some ironic fucking twilight zone twist i'm gonna get hoisted by my own petard the hubris of the wish she's like the only good wish is no wish. Don't make me wish. What would you guys do? Oh, shit. Yes. I thought so much about this. I'm sure.

I don't. Well, all right. I initially was going in pretty confident. Like, I would wish the best. My wishes wouldn't be bad. They would turn out good. Yeah, of course. But, you know, the more you start to like question the logic there,

it's like it could actually go pretty dark. So I'll say number one thing for me is I want to be able to like travel at the speed of light. You want to be able to travel at the speed of light. So I can just go anywhere I want at any moment. Okay, but can I ask you a question? Want to enter the speed force? Yeah. Is it a thing where you go like

you have to run? It's not teleportation. It's kind of, but it's just like, because light moves fast. No, I know. But do you want to have to go through the physical motion? That's what I'm saying. Of moving. Just doing it at a rapid. I can travel at the speed of light. I want to have to go through the physical motion That's what I'm saying If I'm like I can travel at the speed of light I want to go to Istanbul

Do I have to physically Move my body Through space Or can I just zap there Are you the flash or are you nightcrawler Is the question I would like to bamf Is that nightcrawler

Essentially instantaneous movement is one of your things. Yes. Cool. That is pretty cool. Because I feel like also that's for me. It's not pushing my shit onto the world or onto other people. I just want to be able to experience things

instantaneously. Can you imagine how frustrated you guys would be if I had teleportation powers and I was still late? That would happen. That would happen. That's why I said. Yeah, that would happen. You would be late. I mean, I'd be like, hey, I'm sorry I

took a while to be. I just delayed doing it. Do you have your other two wishes, Ben? And then... Wish and Ben? Wishful Ben? Yeah. do you have your other two wishes ben and then wish and ben wishful ben yeah um part of me was like maybe i could like breathe underwater in space but then underwater so you mean like so i could go through space but i feel like that would get boring you want perfect yeah there's not a lot because space like even if I could travel the speed of light.

Yeah. You know what I mean? If I get really out there, like, I don't know. All of the logistics with that. Sure. So, I don't know. What about you guys? Give me some of your wishes. I don't know.

I do watch this movie and go, I have no idea what I would wish for. Me too. That's exactly why I asked. I don't know what I'd wish for. Because of the way this movie actually sets up a dialogue with the notion of wishing okay all right here I'll throw out another one then I wish that I could

experience another point of view perspective essentially live in someone else's shoes another thing shoes for an hour that's a cool like I want to be a squirrel I'm a squirrel now but I still have my thoughts and stuff. Pretty small shoes.

But I could go and collect nuts and have fun being a squirrel. Can you get out? It's one hour. You get one hour. But can you like, say you go into Squirrel in five minutes and you're like, all right, I get it. I want to leave. Or are you stuck for an hour?

Is an hour the maximum or is it also the minimum? You're right. You're right. Well, because I feel like with genie stuff, it's tricky, right? So it's like an hour on the clock. But now here's the thing. What if I get eaten? Yeah, I don't know.

What if? You tell me. What happens? All right. Shit. You just beat a squirrel and then like an osprey devours you. This is why we pull it back on our wishes. I'm top of the food chain then.

I'm a lion. What does this mean? Better hope you don't meet Idris Elba then. He's the one guy who can stop lions. I'm just picturing a genie trying to write all this down and being like, I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to tell me here. There's the classic thing where they say

you can't wish for more wishes, right? Can you wish for more genies oh has anyone ever exploited this loophole before genie says you only get three wishes this is 100 with the genies like oh you're one of those you're one of those fucking people or what if he's like fine and then he's like and then like genie start starts like emerge from his chest like freddy's chest of souls like body horror yeah and each genie kills the last genie yeah it would be something like that yeah you have to watch the genies yeah so you get 10 dead genies in your

room and then there's one and he's like all right here i am right i mean that's the final genie you go like obviously my last wish clean up all these dead genie bodies get these out of here he's like i agree i love even just it's such a george miller thing but this movie is like the physiology of the genie there's the sort of arc of what they say what it's like the the powder and then the gas and then the electromagnetic energy right i'm getting the order wrong and then the formation of the organs like this movie actually has an internal logic to like how does smoke coming out of a a bottle form into an organism right that breathes yes let's walk through the the stories he tells um so as he's like let me give you some wishes. She's like, well, tell me about the other times you got ended up trapped in this bottle. First time, the Queen of Sheba, his cousin and girlfriend,

the famous figure from the Old Testament who... I heard she was beautiful. No, she was beauty herself. Right. Is played very strikingly by Amito Lagum is the name of the actress. She's a Ugandan actress and model. She just looks absolutely outrageously cool. Yeah.

She's got the hairiest legs. She's got genie legs. Like horse hair. Like pony legs. Yeah. Yeah. She's being wooed by King Solomon as is part of her a part of her legend right he's like some of it's not true right that he wooed her rather than her wooing him exactly so he's like really uh trying

to uh win her over there's this incredible sequence where he like plays music for her and then animals come out my fucking guitar plays his cell instruments got little arms yes and a mouth at the top that starts singing all of a sudden yeah it's like the guitar starts playing yeah but then other elements of the chair he's sitting in starts to play he becomes a one man band I have no

idea how to verbalize this I was like a child and you read like just so stories or like Arabian nights or these sort of stories that have these elements of magical realism where logic is kind of slippery and things like that are very just tossed off right he had an instrument with arms that played itself and as a kid you're like what the fuck anytime i've seen someone try to put something like that in a movie it feels like

an effect an idea a shot and then this is like the one movie i've seen where i'm like this is how this stuff feels in my mind's eye somehow this all feels weirdly kind of organic despite it being a very heightened stylized film that's a good compliment but it also speaks to why this movie is like so insanely expensive for how esoteric it is because there's a version of this film you could easily see someone doing where you're like okay half of it takes place in a hotel room with two actors sure that is relatively cheap to shoot and then everything that takes place in their stories we shoot like in a more stylized theatrical style rather than going for

any sort of detail but it feels very old hollywood right like these big sets with big costumes very stately characters kind of just like in the background looking cool arranged like there's a version of this movie that where i could see the stories feeling more like the joel cohen macbeth where you're like you found a very yeah sure sure sure impressionistic minimalistic style to represent other worldliness yes and george miller was like no i'm gonna make this like cleopatra that's what he's doing he's doing the opposite right because like right and i feel like with nick beth also it's like there's the whole theme of like they're all fighting over nothing

like it's cool that it's minimal because it's sort of like what is this shit anyway it's all about the contrast because anytime you cut from the just the level of ornate sort of world building in these stories back to the hotel room with its sort of like flat white lighting that white lighting was getting to me yeah but like unlike mad max mad max fury road it's great it's all movement no one's ever slowing down and having a conversation correct everything in this movie as sumptuous as it gets yeah is people having conversations or you know these sort of like recollected memories that are basically like montage like you don't really see the dialogue even you just kind of within the stories right and they're all so thoroughly

idris is telling from his perspective and his experience and key is the voice and with the queen of shiba thing it's like he's kind of lurking he's hiding he's peeking he's watching this play out and he's like well she's not going to go for him like you know and like she's sort of watching them right like that that's really all there is to it with the Queen of Sheba. Because eventually the idea of Solomon bottles him up as a way to get him out of the way. It's one of those things where it's like, he's like, I give my love so thoroughly and selflessly

to this person. Surely that cannot be betrayed. It is the first time he understands that he can be hurt by loving people through loving people and then he's in a bottle for thousands of years yeah because he gets picked up by gulten who is a concubine in the palace of solomon the magnificent who was uh you know the uh sultan of the ottoman empire in the 16th century so it's it's a long time later and she wants classic genie wish she was falling in love with someone yeah she has a crush yeah on mustafa his son but like this puts forward something that i'd

never really thought about before but i really liked which is like what if you die before you're done with doing wishes yeah right like you know and then like the genie's just fucked he's just kind of like turns into a ghost she's just hanging out waiting for someone to pick him up that's cool right right she gets pregnant with his child yes but it's like yeah but the the court's not going to recognize her yes they don't want this child to be the heir to the throne like this doesn't the mere fact that he fell in love with you does not change everything right i mean it's so much of yes what this movie is sort of talking about is like what is the impact of love why do we love why do we want? What can it change in our lives? What can it not? Mustafa, of course, is a real figure.

That's a real person who was executed by his dad because his dad saw him as a threat. Sure. Because he was a very popular warrior and so on and so forth. Weird times. Gruesome death, too. Yes. He's played by Matteo Bocelli okay the son of andrea bocelli really yeah you know that guy i thought he was in the room with us for a second

it's andrea hello do you think that's what he's like can i have a tuna melt that's what he's like? Can I have a tuna melt? That's what he's like at a restaurant. I asked for waffle fries. Sparkling, not still. What else is there about this? Because I feel like... Well, this has the section of auditioning the different storytellers, doesn't it?

That sounds right. Again, I saw this movie a month ago. Well, yeah, the third story is about the... We're still on the second story, because this is also where you have the harem, right? Yes, the crazy harem. Oh, I thought that was in the third and final folktale. No, because the final story is, you know,

the girl in the tower, you know, the Zephir. There's sort of three sections. It's like Queen of Sheba, and then it's like the Ottoman Empire section, which is like the death of Mustafa. Gulten gets pregnant and runs away. The story stop and start also, let's mention.

Yeah, because they're cutting back to them. But like, and of course there is a little sprinkling of Tilda Swinton's character's background as well. Okay. In her boarding school, you know,

like being a sort of lonely girl. But I think that's such an important piece. It is, you know, being a sort of lonely girl but I think that's such an important piece it is you know at the beginning of the film when she tells the story about creating the fictional character that's her friend at the boarding school who's represented as like illustrations yes like he looks like he's literally

ripped out of pages but that she like narrativized a character of a friend beyond just being an imaginary friend but it was like a way for her to develop her abilities as a writer, as a storyteller, but also creating a sort of fully flesh person to be her companion. And the more details and the more world building, the less and less she believed.

Yes. And the more, and I think she says like at some point she just felt silly and gave it up. Right. To speak to my confusion it's when he becomes invisible when she can't make the two wishes he stays in that world for like a hundred years

as a ghost he's intangible and he's just the bottle is hidden and he's just like anyone want to find it? it's under a flagstone I love the first time also with Shiva. They throw him out of the window. And he ends up over centuries or whatever in a cobblestone in a wall.

And she finds him by accident or whatever. I love that. And that's always true of everything. It's like he gets found again by chance every time. It's like a weird Rube Goldube goldberg series of coincidences yeah um so yes you're right eventually um you've got ibrahim the next another sultan right um who's looking for an heir right right that's when he's like what am i gonna do about this um and another concubine i feel like the concubine finding him is not even that important because she doesn't even want to

deal with him she doesn't even want it she throws him in the sea eventually no they so badly need air that they like lock this sun in a room walled with mink well so like 15 women and are just like just stay in there until you give us a fucking error i mean we're getting it mixed up and it's like not important really i just like we'll say like the ottoman section it's like there's two sons there's the bloodthirsty one and then there's the one that is so just baby that he's literally a baby he becomes a baby a room of like just like um yeah that concubines. And he's like mink lined walls.

That's Ibrahim. Ibrahim is the one who gets locked in the harem essentially. And just let, right. And then it's, uh, his, so his dad,

I guess is Ahmed maybe. And like, yeah, I think that's right. And then, right. And he's got the brother who is like a crazy warrior. But so really what this part is just entailing to us is that he

gets this close to getting discovered yeah right hoping that he will then be uh let out finally being able to give him a wish instead of concubine finds him and she just kind of throws him into the ocean and again this is all like i wish you get on my fucking face this is all real quote unquote in that like that's a real person sure and he truly did apparently love fur so much that he like wanted to just live in like a fur lined room it looks gross and he was obsessed with overweight women and they would be like provided for him you know i mean it's not you know and so like he just spent all his time in like total sort of like extravagant luxury, just sitting in his furs with his many concubines in his harem of women. Whereas the older son, he comes back from war and he's just like totally ruined.

Right. Broken. That's when the storytellers come into play. Yes. Right. When he's holding court and they're auditioning, basically, people to amuse him. But it's essentially, like, right, this guy is so despondent and broken from his experiences

that he's, like, I need someone who can distract me from the reality. Once again, this, like, why do we fucking tell stories?

Why do we need stories? Why do we hear stories? I need someone to help me make sense of my broken sort of sense of reality now right and if he doesn't like their uh storytelling puts him out in a little paddle boat shoots an arrow it's it's very high stakes yeah but it's also like if you found the jinn and rich wished

for power yeah it's sort of like this it's like what would you get you would get like to be a part of this palace intrigue where you're constantly looking over your back anyway and you're surrounded by crazy you know warriors or you know right like it's like there's nothing at the top anyway because like the first concubine who finds him she's like i want to i'm in love with that guy right make it happen and he's. Make it happen. And he's like, okay. And then the second one, he's like, please, please make a wish. And she's like, ah, go back in your bottle. Like, you know, like she doesn't even want to deal with him. Because it's like, when are you going to, you know.

I think she goes, I wish you were back in your bottle. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then he gets cast into the sea or whatever. Can you just imagine how fucking annoying that is? You're a genie. And you're like, here we go.

Ready. Been waiting a fucking thousand years. Ready. Ready to grant some wishes. imagine how fucking annoying that is you're a genie and you're like here we go ready been waiting a fucking thousand years ready ready to grant some wishes and it's like my wish go back to your fucking bottle go get your goddamn shine box don't don't grant any he actually should say do you have any wishes uh just to be clear except for wishing me back into the bottle which is the one there's literally one wish i hate so much please don't make it yes yeah but no and so then he is locked in the bottle and he's recovered in the mid-19th century uh and given to this wife of a turkish merchant named zafir and she's like all right baby i want

to learn like i want to be you know i want to be smart i want to like gain all the world's knowledge and art which is a cool wish much better much better wish and so he's just like great you ever read oliver twist it's a page turner start there then i don't know you know the quran that one's good yeah he's just kind of like getting books right yeah lady chatterly's lover this one's spicy yeah he's giving her books and then she's and then they're like that this is like maybe my favorite part this whole dynamic is maybe my favorite part of them well no the ending is kind of my favorite part of the movie we'll talk through this no but but right like like the idea of the genie and what do you call call the person in charge of a genie? Because master is kind of like a weird loaded word at this point.

That's what they do in Aladdin, right? Yeah, well, you know, Aladdin. No, no, I know this is different. No, I know. But like, then of course that relationship would be emotionally fraught and intense and possibly romantic. But also, it's like, in a world where the genie snaps his fingers and you're the smartest person right then sure yeah the genie is just like nothing but a computer program who helps you but like in a world where learning is you and the genie you know pouring

over things together and learning things together and like you know like then it's it's just so romantic and so the whole problem with this guy is a problem i say but like his his issue is that he cares too much and too deeply right and but how else could he be a genie of course and that's why it's such a cool dynamic yes yeah yeah and she's great that actress again i don't know she's a turkish actress i'm gonna i'm to butcher her name. Berku Golgedar. Golgedar. But I'm sure I'm getting that wrong.

Golgedar. But isn't she... She's such a firecracker. Yes. I love her. Yes. Oh, I should read this article. 20-year quest.

He's been trying to make this movie for 20 years. This is what I'm saying. He optioned this book, the story, a long time ago. Probably in the early 90s, right? Yeah. He describes it as the opposite of Fury Road. I mean, it is. Yeah.

But it's just the scale is still there. The magic is still there. The sequence with the giant bodies is very Mad Max-y. Yes. you know yeah he's very mad maxi yes don't you think you know like uh like and just the exaggeration of almost every like costume and like he's the hairy legs from like he can't help but be inventive no there'd be a way to do this in a more like boring kind of stayed you know absolutely yes yes yeah the royalty is really dysfunctional and messed up in this movie similar to Mad Max. Well, he like hates rulers.

Yeah. Right? Like he hates power systems. Right. Yes. He hates the people who place themselves

at the top of them. Those are always going to be rotten. Yes. And they're rotten and grotesque. Yes. Yes.

Even just I feel like the size stuff with Idris at the beginning he eventually shrinks down but i feel like it's so well done it is really well done i think the cgr is really good i've seen complaints about it being junky and i almost want to watch it again not junky throughout but like having and like there's a couple awkward moments it's painterly too i mean you're like

getting into like artistic style you know he's telling you fairy tales i agree i agree right i'm like what do you want this to look like yeah should we just maybe say with this last story i think it leads into the end of the movie well and that he idris falls in love with this girl yes woman yes well which is a fear you mean or do you mean with tilda's character well first was a fear and that's it's very logical and the way he tells these stories is so swooning yes and you just i mean the thing with it yourself is like how would someone not be falling in love with this man and then he's playing this character who's so like you said overwhelmingly emotional that it makes sense that he's falling in love. But I have seen a lot of people complain that they don't buy the third act development of like, okay, now these two are in love.

I mean. Which I disagree with. I totally am like after hearing all that, I'm like, all right, baby, take me away. Yeah. And let's crack me open. I want a bone. Told his backstory is she was married to a guy. Right. They had a child that didn't go pregnancy that didn't go their relationship they focused and it was like

they focused all their energy on trying to conceive and when it didn't work everything was sort of falling apart yes which he i mean tells so gracefully i feel like visually in such a short sequence it does a, the arc of their relationship, seeing her with the other, seeing him with the other woman, but even just the baby book, all that shit. And then the closing the box.

All of it. Yeah. All of it. It's really, really elegant shit. And just also just like this woman doesn't want tacos. She's going to get the story over with as quickly as possible. She's not going to fucking embellish this the way the gen does,

but, but back to her, you know, like creating this fictional friend as a child yes and then she's just really really adamant about like i like my life i'm happy with my life i don't need someone else what are you talking about and the thing that he unlocks in her is just like anyone who doesn't quote unquote buy the twist not the twist but the development the turn in the story yeah right sure yeah that they fall in love i'm just like well this first of all this is his fundamental essence as a character yes you

fall in love with him he falls in love with you yeah it's kind of you're right it's kind of like bound up in just the experience of having coming to your life and i think the greatest point this movie comes to is like what is she falling in love with? More than anything, it is the idea of love. He is reigniting in her the notion of being in love with another person. Right. Because it's ludicrous. She's like, come live with me. It's like, come live with you.

He's a fucking genie. Right. Like, what is this? And then there's these like almost comical, like her coming home being like, how are you doing? And he's like, oh, you know, I went to the large hadron collider today pretty cool right and you're like what this is gonna be their life like but but that's what romance is right we're like we'll just figure it out my wish is that you could love me fully and like endlessly and then they have like amazing fucking magic cloud spiritual right looks incredible and then she's like come vapor come

back to london with me live in my flat next to my two shitty neighbors right she gets this she gets some jabs into the neighbors the who are like the neighbors are like ultimate little englander biddies who are like we don't like foreigners around here the ultimate you know vulnerability for her is to admit like i think i would like to share my life with somebody but the thing she had not considered the reason she'd close herself off to this possibility is like i've been hurt before i do not know if i can find someone who will love me so selflessly and thoroughly and not hurt me i would rather not try than get hurt again so she's like well if i can wish for that love it's less that like i have fallen in love with him in having this conversation with him.

It's that he has ignited in her the notion of falling in love and he represents the ideal of what you would want from a partner in a magical sense. But then this sort of profound point she gets to of just like your love is a lie because I wish for it. It cannot be real if i asked it of you aside from the fact that you are turning into dust and dying because the cell phone signals hurt you too much this isn't love because i wanted it right wait the dynamic is sort of broken yes from fundamentally from the start which is like makes sense and that's his sort of curse as a yeah but there is the suggestion like there has been an evolution in his experience here because every other story it's like well i was in love with someone or i was trying to help someone be in love and then it fucking ends up with me back in the bottle right and this one

feels a little different but the yes the big twist beyond them moving in together right is that he can't exist in our modern world yeah because of the damn 5g signals damn fucking signals damn cell phones uh which are basically turning him into uh ashes yes i guess right they're like melting him yeah wish number two is i wish you could speak. Because his mouth is all dusty and he can't talk. Yes. And then wish number three becomes what I find very touching. I'm going to get the exact detail

of this wrong, but she basically says, I wish you are wherever you would be happiest. Right. And he goes back to his realm. Yeah. It's not as simple as a genie or free free thing it's it's a like you you need what i want for you is you need to be number one in your own life again i can't say what that is hell yeah but i want the thing that you want she's figured it out she's figured

it out it's it's kind of the perfect wish and it means he can come visit her which i think is lovely like you know like there's that code of like you know yeah sure we're not together but which i think is kind of a direct mirroring of of the fucking friend she creates as a child right he exists in the state of the little paper cutout boy almost you know right and you know they can hang out on parliament hill which i also by the way i grew up i do want to say i feel like most of this movie is meant to be taken literally right sure i do think there's interpretation yeah it's not like i don't buy that it's like I do want to say, I feel like most of this movie is meant to be taken literally, right? Sure. I do think there's interpretation. Yeah, it's not like, I don't buy that it's like, oh, she's having some big fantasy of this.

And it's like her emotional development is, no, of course not. No, even if the other people can't see the things in the earlier moments and whatever, right? But she's narrating this film. We then see her in a park with a book, drawing the gen, closing it up. First page is the first lines of narration we heard at the beginning of the film. Book closed. She turned this into a story. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

This is how we process the events of our lives. Right? This is how we make them palatable to ourselves. And we put them out in the world and hope that they can help other people. Or at least entertain them or distract him or whatever. And then he shows up again and she says the thing of like,

and he still comes to see me sometimes. At that point, I think you can interpret it as she has turned him into a story so that he can be with her selectively at times. He might not literally be there anymore. Or if he is, it is in the sense that

like being able to bottle things into stories help us carry them around in a cleaner way we've taken something large and unwieldy and intangible and turned it into something sort of portable and understandable and they have an actually healthy dynamic yeah they both helped each other they forged an actual relationship emotional and like you know rewarding ways yes another thing about this movie i found really fascinating is it's like one of the first movies i have seen that feels like it reflects a quote-unquote post-pandemic world i say this with full awareness of the fact that there's a few like this that are acknowledging there's something like that you might pop on a mask to go in a shop or whatever you know that kind of stuff it's that balance thing like early

when she's giving her ted talk there's the shot of the crowd and you're like oh like 40 to 50 percent of the people in the crowd are wearing masks. Yeah. That new sort of weird reality where it's just like, you're going to see masks. It's not everyone masks. It's not peak, you know, like pandemic. And then even the airport, it's like one of the security guards she talks to has a mask.

The other one doesn't. Yeah. She's taking it off when she goes out of the shop. You know, there's that kind of thing. It was obviously in the hopper for 20 years. They started filming it. They were ready to go before the pandemic but I think the effects of the pandemic have bled

into the movie in slightly interesting small ways and I do think it's like you know I'm not gonna fucking get full messy griff here but it is one of those things of like spend like a year and a half of lockdown being single and then the last year and change or whatever it's been i've been like trying to date people

and i constantly come back to basic questions that it feels like the characters are dealing with in this movie where it's like what do i even want out of a relationship what am i looking for in another person why do i want to be with another person? What do I think that gives me? What do I want to give someone else? Yeah, these are complicated questions. They're like complicated questions. And I find this movie's sort of reckoning and questioning with it.

Without any... Relationships. Without any neat answers. But that's the thing. It's like, this isn't... Like, if I'm... What's that movie about? Oh, it's about the stories we tell each other like fucking do you have a bed nearby that i can sure fall you know but that's

not just what it's about it's not just about that it's about like right the emote the quality of romance like with a person i also think the difference between love as it exists in like stories and how it exists in reality i I'm not even saying stories in fiction, but I'm saying the way we talk about being in love. The way it is narrativized. People falling in love, the wedding, the marriage working or not.

How relationships work or don't. Versus, on a fundamental level, what are you actually looking for? Is there any tangible way to describe it you know is it just what ever weird ephemeral thing you feel with another person in that moment in that place in that time is it the idea of the commitment and the everlasting and the selfless fully giving is ghosting someone when you're just like i wish you back in the bottle get away from me the ultimate ghosting yeah exactly throw it in the ocean yeah yeah and then like with online dating there's less

randomness to meeting someone you're curating kind of around very specific needs whereas you might just see someone at a bar on the street and it'd be like someone you really have this connection with that you would never like necessarily swipe i mean basically how you met your girlfriend well yeah we met at a bar on sunday afternoon damn right doing a bit yeah sometimes you just got to say yes to the bit you do have to say yes to the bit um but but like i mean he's got the ultimate dating app which is just uh every thousand years bottle opens up and here's your blind date. Hello. But the movie is a little horny.

Because I remember when it was sort of being talked about, it was like, oh, he's making like a horny genie movie. But it's also swooningly old-fashionedly old romantic. Don't see a lot of that these days. It's got a lot of weird contradictions in its very existence, and I think the movie is very much of a piece and gels with itself,

but I think it contains such a weird collection of things and contradictory sort of feelings and moods and such. Not even tones as much, but certainly

vibes. Yeah. You know, it's, it's jarring at times to go back to them in the hotel room. Right. Like even the lighting, like I was saying earlier, like it was,

the whiteness was like giving me a headache at some point. Yeah. But, but like intentional and, and this is how we used to fucking make movies. Things were not algorithmized and there were not proven franchises on a large scale so if the right stars wanted to make something studios would fucking throw some money at and hoped it worked and same with a director coming

off a big hit if a combination of all the above all the better you know they look at something and hope it works well on paper but sometimes you take a fucking flyer on someone because you're like, well, the guy made Fury Road. I don't know. That movie must have seemed crazy on paper. It's that thing we talk about where it's like the true blank check thing is you have a success that almost can't be quantified.

The only reason it worked is because this director hit on something where they go, I don't know. I guess do it again. We just director hit on something. Where they go, I don't know, I guess do it again. We just have to trust you. And so rarely when people get to that position today do they actually get to make something like this.

So often it's like they just re-up for the franchise again. And as much as he's doing Furiosa now, which he is, a lot of people just don't even do the one for me anymore. That's the depressing part of it. Whether they don't even do the one for me anymore that's that's that's the depressing part of whether they don't want to or they can't get it made or a combination of both is it too hard to get it made or is it more it's like well you can do a one for me but

you actually need to do three for us because we need sequels fast and we actually you know need to get you on that treadmill quickly right and then there's like the more depressing thing of like james guns one for me is making a suicide squad movie that's the ultimate example i was about to bring up because it was already brought up in this episode not not true like that was kind of a personal movie and i'm excited for guardians three sure but it's also kind of fundamentally depressing depressing that i depressing. That I'm like, Guardians is sort of arguably Mad Max-y within the Marvel tapestry of like characters that no one fucking knew,

tonally very different from the other movies, work so much because of your voice and your style and your sensibility. Clearly the James Gunn thing has been quantified and is a sellable thing now. And he has chosen to reapply that to different superhero characters. Like he's going to do fucking Suicide Squad and Peacemaker.

Yeah. And now when James Gunn has talked about, it's just about like, well, is he going to go back to DC full time or do you think he'll ever do a Marvel movie again or whatever? And I'm just like, I want to see the thing that James Gunn wrote 20 years ago

that he couldn't get financed. Yeah, me too. There are tons of those scripts. I'm sure he's got them. He's talked about them. Let's do it. Some of them he's like fucking passed off and like, you know, produced Brightburn or whatever. You know, half developed ideas, the Belko experiment.

But I'm like, direct something that is something you can make now because you've made these films. Rather than making another one of those films. Well, it doesn't help that this movie isn't doing very well. It doesn't. It's a bummer. But I'm so happy it exists. Happy it exists. I'm so fucking happy it exists.

Let's do the box office game, speaking of. Oh, wait. Can I quickly, though? I thought of at least one better wish. Oh. And I think David in particular liked this wish. A sandwich. A magical sandwich. Okay. Okay not not all right somebody's interested

so you have this magical sandwich anytime you want it you can just design a sandwich and it materializes you eat it and then it's re it resets basically you have a sandwich for life any sandwich you want that sounds fine why can't we think bigger why can't i make any food i want in front of me for life i love sandwiches yeah that's fine and it feels like then it's like too many options you know what i mean then i'm like sitting there being like i don't know yeah i'm sitting at fucking hbo max like what the fuck do i want sure analysis paralysis yeah I always want a sandwich. But there's a lot of kinds.

But I guess you'd just be like, whatever. I'm bound by the parameters of the sandwich. But wait a second. Can you make a hot dog with this power? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Can you make a hot dog? This is the question. Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Moving on. I don't want to harp on this, but I just want to say this quickly. Talking about the release of this movie and then the performance and everything. Which I think we all agree kind of unavoidable. Weird movie. It was unavoidably not going to do well. It maybe could have done better than it did.

The one thing I want to spotlight within this is Mike DeLuca had this 18-month, two-year run as the head of MGM, right? Yeah. Mike DeLuca, we talked about, wrote In the Mouth of Madness and was a New Line studio exec

and has sort of bounced around for years, did a lot of movies at Sony, but like went back to MGM and was sort of like, I think we can fill a hole in the marketplace. What are the movies that aren't being made anymore? Teamed up with Annapurna, you know, and we're like,

we want to make like movies for grownups, small to mid-sized films that the studios are dropping, but are a little bit too big. So they make like House of Gucci, which works at the box office. Liquor's Pizza, which does okay, but obviously works critically, gets Oscar nominations, whatever. And it kind of felt like, oh, here's like a new force of like getting shit back up. They get the distribution for this movie and you're sort of like okay mgm's like slotting into an a24 adjacent

space with maybe slightly more commercial things and then mike deluca has now been hired by warner brothers to sort of take over their film division mdm is sort of abandoned and it just already feels like the dream of this thing is maybe a little bit out the window. And now he's just back into the Warner Brothers thing, which all we're reading in the press is

all the Warner Brothers hand-wringing of how do we just reestablish the franchises in the biggest ways and get rid of anything that feels even slightly risky. I don't know. But I do think that's

partially the reason this movie has been a little orphaned. Yeah, it's partially. This was kind of like the last movie of the DeLuca run, but DeLuca's out the door already. That's part of it. The other part is it's just...

It's weird. Weird. I think Warner Brothers is going to be... It's up. It's yes and no. It's good that Warner Brothers is like, we need to release movies in theaters again. Great.

It's not great that they're like, oh my God, what do we do about Aquaman? But that's also... It's what the trades care about now so like that's all they fucking care about that's all they ask about it's all they think about yeah what's the flash aquaman you know what you know and it's like it just becomes this like overwhelm there's other shit will slip through and others you know whatever it's been such a year for non-franchise stuff actually making money that like that will reflect it always does like the winds do always shift we talk about the interest thing in this like why hasn't he quite had the

gotten the the sort of hold as a an a-list star and it is like the the weird element of like in a certain way the most important thing about being a bankable actor is having a big enough franchise that is everlasting, ongoing, indefinite, right? So that whenever you're promoting your smaller movies, they can ask you questions about the next movie in that franchise, and those answers go viral. It's what you're talking about. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of, if these are the only movies that we report on, they're the only movies that are getting oxygen. Yeah.

But I just think that's not going to be true after this year. This year was great. I hope. The next couple months are bleak. And this is the first really bad weekend

in the run of studios not releasing a ton of stuff. But also, traditionally, the worst weekend of the year. Yeah, this is just a slow time. Yeah. I lived through 2020 and 21 box office reporting like i i won't i'm just simply not going to be cowed oh it's been a lean september i'm like bitch the the twisted was like

number one for six weeks or whatever it was called absolutely and i was you know it was all theaters are gonna die top gun Maverick just made a billion and a half dollars not without China. I wish there was more coming out, but that having been said, you look at the beginning of this year and you're like,

oh yeah, right. So recently, every movie below number six at the box office was making less than a million dollars. Yeah, and no one's talking about the Warner Brothers thing. It's like, they got sold.

AT&T has more money than the Discovery Channel discovery channel yeah they got sold by one of the most powerful companies in the universe to the discovery channel to a company that's less money smaller than they are yes like so obviously they have to fucking cook up i'm not saying it's good it's just like why do you think that credit costs it's not because cinema is dead it's because stupid corporate nonsense. Get over it. You, get over it. Streaming is the thing that's maybe dead. I love Discovery+.

They have great programming. Ben's been watching fucking Chip and Joy games. I love a House Hunter International. He's not even joking. Number one at the box office is The Invitation. The Invitation? It's just one of those weird tiny number one gross isn't it called the bride is that what it was it changes name to the

invitation which is the name of a better movie yes bad time um there's a show called good bones but don't let it fool you it's about the the house has the house it was called the bride and then it was renamed the invitation because because supposedly the bride tested poorly with men. That sounds like some made up shit though. Absolutely. But anyway. Invitation, bad title for that movie has been used too often too frequently, too recently.

But from what I'm actually aware, it's a Dracula movie. It's a modern Bride of Dracula sort of film. Right, you get invited to the you know, to the manor and people think we're spoiling it. The trailer spoils everything. It's one modern Bride of Dracula. You get invited to the manor. And if people think we're spoiling it, the trailer spoils everything. It's one of those trailers

where the trailer has three acts and the last shot of the trailer you're like, that might be the last shot of the film. I feel confident that might be the final shot. I want to see it. I feel like people say it's not very scary but kind of good. Okay, I'll check it out. I'm a big Natalie Emanuel fan.

I do love her. Yes, I'm happy she finally got a leading role. Absolute charmer. Number two at the box office is an action film based on a... Is it still Bullet Train? Is it a comic book? I believe it's a novel. Novel.

Bullet Train, which has made $80 million and almost $200 worldwide. Have you seen it? I haven't. I found it pleasantly distracting okay i'll check it out basically is what i asked for for movies like that i was on vacation when it came out yeah but uh the reviews were harsh enough that like after being excited by the trailer i was like oh is this gonna be a real fucking bummer and i watched it and i was like this kept me entertained the entire time it has good performances in it yeah i'll check it and i love pit i love yeah um uh number three the box office stars the star of this movie star of this movie it is idris elba's beast which i hear is fun i've also heard his and it's quietly made 20 mil despite like quasi not existing yeah

it's he fights a is it a tiger or a lion lion fights a lion with rabies i think this lion just fights a lion yeah he's like taking his daughters on a safari and there's like a lion that's out of control and they're like stuck in a car and he's like i gotta figure out how to fucking kill this lion it's about to sarcoma comaker movie and that guy kind of makes good that guy's like watchable thrill like everest is really good contraband is contraband is really better than it should be i haven't seen the last but people stuck up for a drift people thought a drift was fun oh yeah i never saw a drift yeah uh like you know that got like it's like you know the guy's not gonna punch above his weight he makes you a fun little you know nobody arguably does punch a little above his weight he just knows what his

weight class that's what i'm saying like he's not he's not gonna make anything too fancy here so idris elba is gonna punch a lion or whatever you don't want to see that almost to his credit and i know this will sound bizarre coming from me i hear he was like one of the guys universal really wanted on fast and furious maybe for eight because most of his films have been universal. And he was like, no, I want to work small. I don't want to make something that big. He just kind of was like, I don't want to be Jeremy Collette's era. I like making movies where I can

punch a little bit above expectations. Right. Number four at the box office has been out for 14 weeks. It's made $4.7 million in its 14th weekend. It is Top Gun Maverick? It's Top Gun Maverick.

Which is kind of getting just boosted at the end of the summer. Yes. People are coming back around to it. You know why? Why? It's a very, very fun movie to see.

It is fun. Very fun movie to see at the movie theater. Yeah. They've like put it back in more screens. I think they have been putting it back on

premium formats. Here's its rank at the box office over the 14 weeks. 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 2, 4, 4. I mean... It has not dropped out of 6. 6 is the lowest it's been in 14 weeks. And it's been going up again.

It's just chilling. Yeah, and then it went up. Yeah. It's wild. Have you seen it? No. Wow. It's're pretty good you're like the only person in america yeah you're kind of the only one i saw it three times in theaters and it's not even like i was i saw it twice and i kind of want to do one more it's just it it just like it's not it's not anywhere close to my favorite movie of the year it's not the movie i enjoyed the most but but i'm like it's you know what's fun

it's up there going to a theater and watching that what a fun experience i'm doing the gong you know from the theme song uh number five of the box office was number one the week before huh it's from crunchyroll studios that distributor. I forgot that this was number one. Is the title just Dragon Ball Super? Dragon Ball Super colon superhero, obviously. I couldn't remember if there were two supers. Remember Broly?

Yeah. How's he doing? I think okay. It's made $30 million in two weeks. That ain't nothing. I agree with you that everyone needs to calm down about Death of Cinemas. I mean, I agree with you that everyone needs to calm down about death of cinemas. And I think the rise of these short run anime releases making tens of millions of dollars in theaters prove that like, no, people want to see things in theaters for the right movie. There are underserved audiences.

Yeah. For example, people want to see Beast. It's not commercial enough that if you put in theaters, people will fucking vote with their dollars and rush out to see opening weekend. DC League of Super Pets is number six. Yeah, okay. Three Thousand Years of Longing is number seven. Not great. Open to two? 2.9. Okay.

So almost three. This is not that I'm any sort of fucking distribution genius, but this is the classic example of a movie for me where I'm like, you should have released this on 600 screens maximum. That would be the... Apparently a wide release was either built into its contract

or demanded by multiplexers. Both of these things have been reported. Okay. The latter makes a lot of sense to me. The multiplexers were like, hey, do you have a movie of movie stars? Can we have it? Yeah. We need stuff. need stuff i'm like 600 is a reasonable size and then you can pump it up weekend two or three but it's like this is a movie where you want fewer screens more full

the first weekend to build some word of mouth from the people who like it rather than having everyone report on what this fucking 60 million dollar movie and leave it turd. Number 8 of the box office. I hate that they sound like that. I don't like that they sound like that either. Is Minions the Rise of Gru? Uh huh. Another big hit. Huge

massive hit. Fat tittied hit. Exactly. Titties so big. Fat minion titties. Flopped around the box office. Number nine is Thor Love and Thunder, which despite horrible buzz and bad reviews, has also just kind of made $750 million worldwide. It's another movie that people are like,

a flop-a-palooza, and you're like, highest grossing Thor movie. Yeah, just barely. Highest grossing Thor movie without being released in China, Russia, and maybe two other territories. It outgrossed Ragnarok. Now, number 10. I just wanted to get to number 10. Is a film, it outgrossed Ragnarok. Now, number 10, I just wanted to get to number 10. Is a film that has outgrossed Scream, Bullet Train,

DC League of Super Pets, Morbius, Jackass Forever, Everything Everywhere All at Once. It is quietly. We were texting with the Doughboys, our friends, about the underperformance of this movie and the amount of original films that have sort of surprised at the box office this year.

Elvis. Elvis has done very well. That's done way better than this movie. Nope, if it's even... Nope. Nope's at number 11. It's made $120 million. Yeah. This is quietly the little engine that could of 2022. Yep. Where the crawdads sing.

Over 80 domestic. Yes. For a movie that got horrible reviews and literally the day it came out my publication published a giant story about the woman who wrote the book possibly murdered someone yes and is still wanted for murder holy shit and yet people are like car dads are singing i'll? I'll go. It stars Daisy Edgar Jones. Well, we love her. Of course. But like the biggest name attached to this movie

is Reese Witherspoon as producer. Correct. Yes. That's like, I mean, that's a movie that most places would go, you punt this to streaming. There's not a place for this in the theatrical marketplace.

People are leaving their homes to go see where the Crawdads sing. I wouldn't. But they did. They went and saw it. It's encouraging. Number 14 in the box office, Rogue One, a Star Wars story. Re-released, tied into Andor. They put it in IMAX only. IMAX has been in this weird zone of just like

so what do we do? We want to see E.T. Jaws coming back this weekend. That's cool. And 3D. Jaws 3D? I guess you Jaws 3D. It's Jaws coming back this weekend. That's cool. And 3D. Jaws 3D? I guess you Jaws 3D. It's Jaws 1 in 3D, not Jaws 3D in 3D. Yeah, that's it. You've seen a lot of movies lately.

Yeah. I'm in now 3,000 years of longing, a sort of weird exception because of when it came out, but I'm now in festival mode where the movies are getting loaded into my mouth like donuts. You said you're not sure if this is still your number one. No, it might not be.

Do you want to say, or is it too premature? The thing you told me was fighting for the spot right now. Yeah, Tar. You love Tar. Love Tar. You want to talk Tar? Tar is going to be very divisive, I think. Can't wait.

It's a two-hour, 40-minute movie. Cate Blanchett is a conductor who gets canceled. Oh, this is an Avatar. It's not Avatar. Although I'm excited for Avatar. That's what I thought. And we will be talking that Tar at the end of the year. We sure will.

I was like, damn, James had a take. All right. Shit. I don't know what he did. Here we go. Avatar 2, baby. It's about classical music. I do love Tar.

And I'm just about to see a bunch of movies. So we'll see how it all settles. And it's always an unsettled time. Funny Pages. We were just both talking about Funny Pages before the record, which Ben is not seeing and would love. But I want to shout that out because that's a movie in limited release. But it's playing in many cities.

It's in like 20 different cities right now. That movie is fucking hilarious. It's wonderful. I'm biased. Owen Klein's an old friend of mine. Oh, sure. But I think it's a wonderful, wonderful movie that I highly recommend to our listeners.

And I said this before the record, but yeah, incredibly funny movie. Good movie to see with a crowd. Yeah. Great movie to see on a big screen. Yeah. But it also feels to me like when we watch someone's first film in a miniseries and you see the rough first film where the whole thing is there

you know yeah like when we go back and go like oh the whole voice and the perspective and the point of view and the style is there i i think owen klein's gonna have a really interesting career as a filmmaker and i think it's a wonderful movie um recommend that just a lot of excitement you know i'm about to see the fablemans baby look you're you're not it's not like 3 000 years of longing but three weeks of break from kubrick is what this is kicking off that's true next week we're talking pinocchio no i don't think i'm gonna like as much as this movie. I also am feeling that way. But what a surprise it would be. If it eclipsed our high. If we were charmed by Pinocchio.

Should I re-watch the original? Yeah. It's a good movie. It's good. And then we're going to do The Woman King because Gina Prince-Bythewood has a big movie coming out in September as well. So they all come in week after week after. And then we will be back to Kubrick with Dr. Strangelove.

With Sean Fennessey. Fuck it, I'll just announce it. Say it. Get excited. Dorks. It's a good episode. It's a good episode. Next week, Pinokes. And let's say this. Should we say it? Yeah, I don't know what, but okay. Talk about another long-requested guest.

I mean, we haven't recorded it yet, but they'll show up. Yes. Barring any catastrophe, if this has not been cut out... Griffin isn't lying. His nose has stayed the same. My nose has stayed the same.

Long overdue, the Podcast of the Ride guys, the good boys themselves, Scott Gerdner, Jason Sheridan, Mike Carlson, all three of them will be talking Pinocchio with us. That's right. Yeah. Woman King, I think, will do solo.

I believe so. And then, yeah, back to Kubrick. And, you know, yeah, it's going to be Strangelove, 2001, Space Odyssey, Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut. It's quite a run. You know what's fucked up? What? Let me just double check here

to see. Full Metal Jack jacket will be our 400th episode is that right wow isn't that sick yeah that is sick huh isn't that sick in the head that's sick in the head that's totally twisted out of control fucking twisted all right i gotta eat something jesus all right we're done we had a magical sandwich I know Don't you wish I mean Ben's right It is kind of the ability I want mid-record Is just like

Give me the exact sandwich I'm thinking of Yeah This is a wonderful masterpiece And I can't wait to watch it Many more times Look go see it in theaters If you can

Yeah go see it in theaters If it's even available At this point Look it's not gonna be there for long Try to catch it when you can If you're gonna see it It certainly benefits From being seen on big screen. Yes.

Yes, absolutely. Vote with your dollars. Yeah, please do. And tell us your wishes, guys. Tell us your wishes. Tell us your wishes within reason. And here's my greatest wish. No wishing for being on this podcast.

Yeah, no wishing for that. And if you say longer episodes. Oh, baby. Oh, boy. I'm going to go bad, Gen boy. I'm going to go bad. No, I'm going to go Jafar genie on your ass. No.

And if you say, I wish I could be on the blank episode, you're banned. Banned. Banned. New rule of the podcast. We only book people who don't want to be on the show. Here's my greatest wish.

And even Idris would accept this because it's a true reflection of my deepest, darkest desire I wish that you would rate and subscribe I wish that you'd show your appreciation to Marie Barty for social media helping produce the show AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing Joe Bo and Pat for our artwork Lane Montgomery and the great American novel for our theme song you I wish I wish you'd type blankcheckpod.com into your browser for links to some real nerdy shit,

including Blank Check, special features at Patreon, commentaries on franchises like Roger Moore, James Bond, and some fun Kubrick bonuses we have coming up. And confess Fletch this month. The new Fletch movie. Yeah, we're going to do a little one-off fun bonus episode about the new Fletch movie. Doing that at the end of this month. The new Fletch movie. Yeah, we're going to do a little one-off fun bonus episode about the new Fletch movie. Doing that at the end of the month.

Because that's when it's coming out. And as always, I think all three of us just really, really want a sandwich right now.