House of R - ‘Memento’ Revisited | A Dream of Nolan Spring

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

It’s time for a Dream of Nolan Spring! Mal and Jo continue their journey through Christopher Nolan’s filmography with ‘Memento’! They discuss how this unique film holds up on a rewatch, the influence it has had, and where it ranks among the rest of Nolan’s films. Plus, they give out some superlatives!(00:00) Intro(02:49) ‘Memento’ revisited(38:41) SuperlativesHosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory RubinProducers: Carlos Chiriboga and Scott LeeStudio Production: Jacob CornettSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, welcome back to House of Bar. I'm Joanna Robinson. I officially live in Los Angeles. That's Mallory Rubin. She lives in the same town I do. How you doing, Mallory? It's the thrill of my life to share a studio, a podcast, a city, a creative mind, a rich and vibrant experience and a life with you. And I'd also like to say, nice shot, Leibowitz.

Memento. That's nice. Memento. here we are. Okay, so it is 25-ish years later. Memento, part of our Nolan trek to the Odyssey. This is something that we have been doing slowly but surely, and then we're going to have to ramp it up. Three months away.

We'll be here quite soon and we have one, two, three, four, five, six movies left. It's fine. We're halfway there. We're halfway. It's time for everything to go from black and white to color and we'll get into all Memento right after this. This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Rip are back in a new series. Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Cole Houser returned, and this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch, willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives.

Dutton Ranch starring Colehous or Kelly Riley, Annette Benning and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise, Activia is one of the easiest and tastiest ways to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort,

which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Okay, before we go backwards and forwards in time and explore, the limitations of memory and and reality and all of that. Just a small task here for the beginning week for us. Yeah. What else do we have going on this week? Here's what's happened. Yes. We watched a couple episodes of Daredebel and we were like, huh, that was pretty nice, but it was okay. And then we watched the beginning of, or, nope, I'm going to say we. We watched the beginning of episode four and we went, oh my gosh. Darendel episode four. Yeah. Our guy, X, my guy, ex. But he can be ours if you want to share.

her. Yeah. Feeding cats, doing all sorts of stuff. So we're going to do a Daredevil midseason check-in later this week. We are. We are. We're going to watch episode five, then we will do sort of halfway through the season checking. I'm expecting big things for episode five. Just feels like the mid-season mark, something fun should happen. Great time to check back in. Yeah, you have some theories. We'll see how they pan out. It's just a long way into the season for certain characters to not have appeared. So my hopes are high. We'll find out. Okay. So that's something we have coming up. We have some, I have some like big plans for

May. Now that I'm here in studio, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that. So we will see what comes in May. There's a lot going on. A lot that we're excited for. Not to mention House the Dragons coming later on, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Mali Rubin, how can folks keep track of everything we're doing? Oh, follow the pod. Follow House of Ar on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of Ar. Here we are in our beautiful new studio. Together. What a wonderful thing. What a wonderful thing. You can also follow House of R on our new Instagram and TikTok at House of our pod. And you can send us your emails because the inbox is always open, Hobbit and Dragons at gmail.com.

Okay. So the Nolan Trek. That's right. Here we are. Yes. As I mentioned, six more films to go. Yes. Two Batman films.

Yeah. Some lesser works, the following and insomnia. Mm-hmm. And then Tenet. That's right. And then the big boy Oppenheimer. Tenet definitely, I think, the leader. in the like bad babies reaching out and saying give tenant the appropriate consideration that it

deserves. All we were saying is give peace and tenant a chance. That's what our listeners are saying. I am excited to revisit tenant. I truly am. It's been a minute since I saw that and could not hear a single word that was uttered in it. So I'm excited. Watching it at home with the closed captioning on, it might be just like a completely different experience for you. Are you going to do the closed captioning when you watch it? I don't think I'll have a choice. I mean, I'll watch it without, and then I'll watch it again with. But I did watch it at home the first time, and that made no difference. And then you'll watch it backwards.

Yes, exactly. Okay. Do you feel like this is the sort of most spiritual twin to Mento is Tenet? I think that obviously, like, one of the fun things about doing this Nolan revisitation in the run-up to The Odyssey is realizing how many of the films not only navigate like memory or the dreamscape or something. but the idea of time and the passage of time, both in our lives,

but also structurally and formally in the process of making a movie. So the non-linear nature of this movie, I think certainly Tennett is difficult not to think about, especially given that this is early in his career and Tendit is late in his career. That's like a fascinating thing across many, many years, decades of storytelling.

But, you know, Dunkirk, the like distillation of time inside of certain storylines that we're moving in and how we realize as you watch that movie like time is passing differently inside of those three stories compared to it. Interstellar. Time dilation.

Obviously, inception, limbo, the way the time moves more quickly as you go deeper down the layers, etc. So so many of his films. I mean, it's also like, you know, the theme of great men, which we've talked about across the episodes of The Dead Wives. The Thru Lines are like,

really undeniable, which has been like, again, part of the fun of the journey here. The dead wife er text. No question. No question. Patient zero. Unbelievable. Yeah. All right.

So let's get in some quick facts. Great. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Have you heard of him? I have. Screenplay by Chris Nolan. Based on the short story, it's complicated, but based isish on the short story, Memento Mori by my beloved Jonah Nolan, Jonathan Nolan.

US wide release March 16, 2001. Budget, $5 to $9 million. on the cheap. Wild. This was made on the cheap. Box office domestic, $25 million, international, $14 million. So worldwide, $39 million return on a $5 to $9 million investment. Pretty good.

Pretty, pretty good. Would have cost more if Brad Pitt had been in it? Certainly. We'll talk about that. But pretty fucking good. And obviously a movie that has a lasting cultural impact and legacy and level of adoration that well exceeds that already impressive gap between what it costs to make

and what it earned at the box office. This is a movie that people have a lot of affection for and maybe more accurate than affection is admiration for. I think this is something that people consider a very impressive feat of filmmaking and something that very early in the Nolan Brother Run declared them as not only like intellectual filmmakers, but filmmakers of bold intention,

which is one of the things I really love about it, especially as we are considering 25 years of movie making. I mean, I love this movie. I think I talked about this how my friend and I watched this right before we went to go see Inception in theaters. We like rewatch Memento at home. How high were you?

On that day. We were on Red Bull, but no other drugs. So close enough. But we went to like a midnight showing of Inception. So it was like this from, you know, like 9 to 11 and then we went to go see Inception from midnight to whatever. What a journey. It was a great evening.

It was a great time. This was a huge. of course, a huge calling card for a director, but I think what's interesting, you mentioned Brad Pitt. I think if they had gotten Brad Pitt to be in this movie, then this becomes part of like a Brad Pitt mind fuck trilogy. For sure. With Seven and with Fight Club.

And so what becomes really clear when you think, I mean, like, they bleached Guy Pearce's hair. Like they're clearly trying to invoke Brad here, right? And so in doing so, it's very clear that Nolan is trying in a way to make a adventure movie here. And so there's a lot of smudgy fingerprints of all the things that he's interested in terms of like time and memory and all of the things that you've mentioned in a lot of that formal how do we mess with the flow of time or color versus black and white or different layers of reality, all that sort of like there's stuff that is undeniably Nolan. But I think it's really

fun to watch us as a young new filmmaker trying to sort of belong to a trend, which then later, you know, and to a certain degree, when, you know, and to a certain degree, when, you Nolan makes the Batman films, he's also trying to sort of be part of an existent. And then eventually we'll get to things that we just call this is a Nolan movie. Yes. You know, that's not an honorific he had yet here at the beginning of his career. Right. He's just trying to sort of like, you know, in Jonathan Nolan's idea of what if there's a guy who cannot form new memories.

Yes. And then in Christopher Nolan's idea of what if I tell this story backwards. Amazing. You know, let's just put a hat on a hat and do that, you know. So those two ideas combined create this incredible confection. But once again, he's sort of, it's fun to watch directors at the beginning of their career really sort of try to play in structures that were created by other people, buildings that were created by other people. And certainly Fincher is playing in buildings that were created by other people.

And then slowly just sort of create landscapes, worlds, entire worlds that are their very own. I love that. And, you know, I think we've been getting at aspects of that as we've gone because we haven't gone. We can pretend it was just deliberately that we were always intending to do the entire filmography and decided not to go on chronological order. But we started with like these are three movies, a couple of which have anniversaries last year, and one of which we just really want to talk about because we're talking about these others. And then we thought, The Odyssey is next year. Let's do them all, right? And so we've had moments to consider like a version of that. But I really agree with you that this is a great moment to kind of present that thesis more fully. because what we were talking about a few minutes ago with these through lines, these undeniable strands of DNA that are like inextricable from all aspects of consideration when Nolan is like, this is a story that I am drawn to and this is my version of it that I want to tell. But one of the things that is I think like so consistently intriguing about him as a filmmaker is that he does dabble in those different genres. And so you have here not only the other filmmakers who he admires who he admires,

who their influence is present here, but then you read these stories about like, oh, Soderberg was like, I got to help get this movie distributed, right? All of these things track and make sense. You have something like Dunkirk, which is a period piece. You have something like Oppenheimer,

which is a historical drama at astonishing scale. So he has never ceased being interested in dabbling across different genres. And yet we did tit that. point, as you noted, where it's like, that becomes part of a Venn diagram, but the largest circle is like, this is a Nolan movie. The Nolan movies are always going to be another genre. I mean, he's about to do The Odyssey. Right. Like, that's like the ultimate genre movie in some ways. A grand literary adaptation, a biopic, a this, that, you know, a World War II epic,

like all of this sort of stuff. But they all in their own way. And, you know, we haven't seen The Odyssey. We don't know how it's, we know the story, but we don't know exactly how it's structured. Right. But in, in. There will be. something funky. But in thinking about, you know, watching Memento and thinking about watching Leonard think about his wife, you know, watching Cobb think about his wife, you know, we know that like, you know, Odysseus is going to be thinking about his wife. No question. Trying to get home. And like, in terms of when does, when will we be flashing back to the war versus Odysseus's sort of adventures on the sea versus like what happens when he gets home, you know,

in what order will all of those stories be told, you know? There is zero chance that it is sequentially. Non-linear is what we would have to guess. And so that's exciting to me to think about that. Very. And like to be at the early days here where it's like smaller and cheaper and more street level, that feels so, it's because they're early in their careers, it's out of necessity. It's practical at the time.

But like it feels so appropriate because he's telling a like a gritty tale, right? There's a thriller aspect. I am navigating the streets of my former life trying to figure out this thing. It's, there's a noir quality to it. certainly the California setting is helpful in that respect. It's not the last time, obviously, that Nolan was interested in somebody in the story or us as the audience engaging with a mystery. But when you get to like prestige a movie we both love and have already talked about,

there are so many puzzle elements to that movie, much as there are here, it could not feel like more distinct in terms of the style of it than Memento does. And so his ability to like kind of strike that. balance where each movie is a little bit new, right? Obviously, we have like the Batman trilogy, but you know, you have a space movie. They're all a little bit new in terms of the setting and the genre that they dabble in, but everything inside of them is unmistakably Nolan. Like, you can't watch one of these movies and not know that it's a Chris Nolan movie. I think also that something that we clocked, I think initially when we were talking about

inception, this idea of legibility, however confusing and naughty with a the structure is, right? You can follow what's happening because there are clues that will help you, whether it's we're in black and white or we're in color, but also it rewards rewatching. And this is something, you know, this is baked into the story we're watching here when we see Leonard's wife talking about rereading a book and the pleasure of rereading a book, you know? And so Nolan's like, come rewatch my films. And if you rewatch, especially my most mysterious films, you will see the answers were always there

right at the beginning for you. Leonard's wearing a suit that doesn't fit him right for the very beginning. You know, like there are questions you can ask yourself from the very,

very beginning of this movie. It fits him better than it should, but yes. It is right away something that you mark. You know, there's just a lot that's just right there at the very beginning of the movie for you

that upon rewatch becomes more and more and more satisfying. And it can be disorienting to watch a Christopher a movie for the first time, but I don't think you're ever at sea so much that you can't follow the emotional reality of what's going on. And for this, especially I would say in light of the idea of this fitting inside of the world of Fight Club or Seven, two movies that I really, really like.

But I don't feel as emotionally connected to as I do to this movie. And this is, this is, you know, my ongoing thesis being that like when Jonathan and Chris work together, that is the perfect pairing of sentimentality and intellect to create this kind of story that I respond to best. And so I think Leonard's quest being so emotionally rooted in the pain of the loss of his wife and his inability to properly grieve her, right? Yep. You know, how can I heal if I can't feel time? You know, like all of these sort of ideas, that is stickier to me than some of the like, albeit very fun sort of, sort of like social critique aspects of particularly fight club, but also seven. But among all of those, those three stories and a lot of what Nolan likes to tell after this is this idea of,

can we ever know ourselves? Are we always the most unreliable narrator to ourselves? Right. And that's, you know, thinking about that when it comes to the prestige, thinking of that when it comes to to this movie, Leonard is an unreliable narrator for us. but more importantly an unreliable narrator for himself. Yes, and it's one of the really indelible spoilers for the rest of the way. You know, one of the most indelible aspects

of the movie, and I think there are honestly, any point and stretch of the film, you could say like this is the most memorable visual or this is the line idea. I'm excited about the categories today because I think it's the hardest exercise yet in isolating a specific moment or scene because

inherently the nature of the way the movie is told is that the black and white sequences are moving chronologically in one direction. The color sequences are moving backwards and they always overlap a little bit to give you that connective tissue to understand how they're being stitched together. But that bleed, it's, you know, like anytime we get something wrong or forget something on the pod today, we just have the meta cover of like, well, it's just really, we're just like channeling Lennar's spirit here. But, you know, the fact that the choice, I agree with you, I think that the movie, because the movie invites you to be such a sleuth as you're watching it,

there's like a little bit of comfort that that grants you understand right away that you're not supposed to understand right away, right? And so trying to figure it out and piece it together as part of the fun, there's like a really kind of engaging, immersive, like almost experiential quality to watching Memento, certainly for the first time. But I agree with you. I think it, I will say that was an interesting part of prepping for this pod, was like revisiting some of the commentary around it when it first came out. And, you know, if this were rewatchables, Bill would be pulling Ebert quotes and stuff. And, like, there's definitely a little bit of a, when I came back to it a second time, like, it wasn't as fun.

That's not my experience or your experience with it. And I don't think it will be many of our listeners' experience with it. I think it is such an interesting thing to, like, identify those strands and look for those clues on a rewatch. I agree. I can understand that that, like, if the biggest pleasure you derive was sort of the twist or something like that. Then you're like, well, I know the twists, but that's not how you and I watch things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think like the way that structure serves as, I mean, this is a movie featuring mirrors in a number of respects, right? Mirrors so that you can see backwards tattoos, et cetera.

Photographs. Boy, what really makes you want to have a Polaroid and take pictures. And the compressed Polaroid that, like, you can kind of wear as a little purse. Great stuff. I love that. There's a number of times where he's, like, sort of adjusting it, and it reminds me of, like, a gun holster. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I actually, like, it had been a few years since I had seen Memento,

and so the first time I was rewatching this a couple weeks ago, like, I had to pause. I was like, is that a... Because, see, there are many guns in the film as well. And you're like, oh, no, right, that's how he carries fuller, and really fun. But, you know, the structure is putting us intentionally, deliberately, in that mirror position for Leonard.

Leonard can't remember more than the few moments he is inhabiting and his life before the injury, right? That is his, to use his word, condition. And so the fact that we are watching those events backwards puts us in that exact spot that he's inhabiting. We only know what he knows in that moment. We can't, we can't know what came before because we haven't seen it yet. Right. He can't know what came before because he can't remember it. And that's just a really, really brilliant and interesting choice that on, locks a degree of empathy for you as a viewer that then makes you either really destabilized by what happens at the end or complicit in it. And obviously, I think one of the things we'll

talk about today is like where we stand on, you know, do you believe what Teddy says? One of the things that's interesting about the movie is kind of doesn't matter because Leonard makes the choice that he makes any way to say you're going to be my John G. Right. But it's just like, boy, It's fun. It's thematically rich. It's really well performed. And it's like very tidy and contained for a film with such big ideas and intention. Like it's so compact compared to so many of Nolan's like sweeping grand epics that follow.

It's really interesting to consider. And I think that to your point about the, you know, the shoestring budget and the compact nature. Again, like Chris for Nolan, such a new filmmaker, getting this movie made with. Yeah, it's made on a shoestring, but Guy Pearce is coming off of L'A Confidential. Carrie is coming off the Matrix. Right. Joe Pantiliano is coming off the Matrix. You know, like, these are three actors who are coming off some of the busiest films that ever were in the late, in the late 90s. And so there was a lot of shine and excitement to it.

I remember, so this is like really early days of me reading movie blogs. This is like the beginning of me being like someone who reads entertainment websites. And there was the one that I got sucked into because they. had a robust Buffy Vampire Slayer message board. But the one I got sucked into was a Canadian website called Corona. It was like Corona.b.bc.ca, I believe, was the URL. Does not exist anymore. I didn't even, like, go on the Wayback Machine I should have to just poke around.

But I was on there every day. That was like my entertainment website and I was on the message boards. And I wasn't like a, anyway. Reposting? I'm just reading. No, I would post a little bit. But, like, they're, you know, in the early days of message boards, maybe this is still the case, probably still the case in like certain subreddits or whatever. There are people who are like, you're like, oh, I remember that person.

I was not like a memorable person on this, on these message words. I was very, I was very young and very, like, new to the internet. But what I remember is the first news write up I saw this movie coming out. The guy who ran the website would just call it autnomemm. He would just write it backwards all the time because of the structure of the story. I love it. And it was just like a bit that he did. And I just like, that's how I say it in my head.

Really? Yeah, I say autumn. Yeah, I say autumn. Oh my God. It imprinted on you. Yeah. I love knowing this about you. So that's a beautiful memory.

But I just think that like, so Krisnal in early in his career, getting this movie made with the help of an idea germ from his brother who was still in school. And his girlfriend who is now his wife and his enduring producing partner, Emma. Emma got this in front of, you know, the right people so that it could get made. So it's like a, it's a family affair in every way. Emma gets a tattoo parlor named after herself in this movie. But I love that, that it's just sort of like made with the family structure around him that he still very much, you know, interacts with and relies upon. You mentioned the Brad Pitt of it all. Yes.

Initially Cass had to pass on it due to scheduling conflict. The Brad Pitt, What If of was cast and almost famous. dropped out. So Billy Kredup says, thank you very much. And was cast on this and couldn't do it. And so Guy Pearce says, thank you so much for this, you know, building block of my career. An interesting what if for Brad Pitt here in 2001, 2001, 2000. I mean, Brad Pitt's, you know, just obviously always great. I do think that we agree that almost famous just shouldn't be touched. So any kind of alternate history there is, eh. I know. I think about Sarah Pauley all the time. I love Gay Hudson as Penny Lane, but Sarah Pauley as Penny Lane is a different movie, and it's really intriguing to me.

I think, I do think, and I think Guy Pearce is wonderful as Leonard. Brad Pitt would have killed this. Brad Pitt would have killed this, but I think he would have just overshadowed it. It would have been a Brad Pitt movie. It would have been a Chris. I don't think it would have been as much of a calling card for Christopher Nolan. It would have burnished Brad Pitt's, you know, career. Yeah. Or would even more people right away have discovered it because it was Brad Pitt and even more people right away have said like, oh my gosh. God, what are these Nolan brothers up to? Some other options here. Charlie Sheen, horrible. That's a no. Alex Baldwin, possible.

2000, Alec Baldwin? I can see it. Interesting. Aaron Eckhart. Nolan will come back to him. He sure will. Tom Jane, honestly, I love Tom. He would have been good.

Yeah. Yeah. If you think about, you know, the expanse, like what Tom Jane does in the beginning of the expanse, this is like essentially the same role. So I'm a big Tom Jane fan personally. But Guy Pearce, fantastic. Coming off of Ellie Confidential, so people are like very used to him in this moire setting, his voiceover work in this.

I was a huge Priscilla Queen of the Desert fan. So, Guy, I don't know if you've ever – have you seen Priscilla Queen in the Desert? I don't think so. Oh, my God. Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Terran Stamp. It is like one of the best movies that is ever. But Guy Pearce is doing something so entirely different in that movie. So like seeing Priscilla Queen in the Desert and then Ellie Confidential and then this, I was like

Guy Pearce is going to be the best. biggest movie star in the whole world. And that didn't happen for him. And I'm curious, I'm curious if he's in enough, but, you know, despite it just being on the rewatchables, how rewatchable for your generations is LA confidential. Memento certainly is part of Nolan's filmography has to be like sort of essential viewing for certain people. And then like, Killian, MCU.

Right. Iron Man. But there, I was thinking about this. there wasn't like there isn't a friend you know he's not in a matrix or he wasn't in lord of the rings or you know like there isn't there isn't a thing that i know that everyone watches all the time right um but the brus boys are just eating they're thriving you know he kills him brittalists really fucking good and permethia's fans are like what are you talking about it's guy pierce but i don't know i'm curious like what his uh hobbs and dragons at gmail.com if you're a young

listener of this podcast. Do you know who Guy Pearce is? Oh man, this is the same question you even have to ask. I think he should be, but I don't know. This bums me out. I love Guy Pearce. I've always loved him. And I'll save this for one of the categories that we have today. But I did find myself really, especially because you get a few movies into Nolan's filmography and as we have tracked across the pods. He uses so many of the same performers across his film. And I was like, boy, you know who never showed up again. Turns out there's a. answer for that, which we'll get to later in the pod. But he's just wonderful. And I think he has such a presence. I find his Leonard to be like a really wonderful combination of heartwarming.

And you feel so keenly and deeply for him so quickly. And there are these moments of just like grave despair. And then you watch him do these things. And obviously he's navigating this life circumstances. So even when he does these things, you have this level of, like, empathy and understanding and forgiveness, and then you get to the end and you're like, holy fuck. And he could just command all of that. I find the quality of the, especially in the black and white sequences, the phone calls. There is a, and so much of the movie is just his voice, there is a, like, lullaby, like hypnotic quality to the way that he is speaking in those scenes that really kind of heightens that effect of I'm sucked in and full. This has my complete attention,

but I'm also like, like, Leonard, while I just like snap to and, like, you know, there's just something that kind of like lulls you. Yeah, into this like hypnotic state. So that's just, that's really interesting. I think he's great. LA Confidential is one of my dad's favorite movies like ever. So, you know, that is one of my main associations. But I do think for me, with love and respect to Iron Man 3, I think Memento is like my first association with Guy Pearce all these years later. It's not a bad one.

Yeah. I honestly think the movie of his that I've seen the most is Priscilla Quinn in the Desert. But I think that any answer is a good answer for Guy Pearce. And I do think that he should have been even bigger than he was. I think there's something about, yeah the timbre of his voice the you know the slight what's going on there of his like sort of

Australian English accent that's part of it you know like his American accent is very good but there is slightly off there's a specificity to how he's speaking that is part of it for sure that is very interesting um this played Venice film festival then Tiff then Sundance which is uh in the model of uh Memento a very unusual order uh for a movie to play. Like Venice and Tiff is normal, but to go from Tiff to Sundance is like, that's usually the previous year

it would have played Sundance or something like that. But that is how we got it. And another fun fact that I think is just really interesting to think about at the time is that Jonathan Nolan designed the website for Memento and they were going for a real like Blair Witch Project viral moment, which they will revisit again when they do the Dark Night.

You know, the Joker stuff was very inspired by this. But I just like, it's just such of a moment of just like, we're making a mystery box movie. We've built a weird little website, you know, like come, come, come welcome into our world, you know? There are a lot of great little aspects of this film's like kind of early stretch of time, you know, the DVD menu, like Leonard's tattoos, like things that just feel so of me. You can unlock the chronological order if you play, if you get the right answers to some questions. Yeah, which is like a great and smart. way to include like a bonus feature on a DVD if you wanted to watch this like an order.

And it was interesting too to like hear Nolan talk over the years about like and this makes complete sense crafting the story that way initially. And then of course breaking it up and reordering it to actually make the movie. Like yeah, you would need to understand all the story was in sequence. It's a fascinating thing. But watching it that way, which I've never done. But what would be interested to do? I've done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would just be like such a radically different experience. It's interesting. I think it's an interesting. interesting experiment, but it's not like a more rewarding experience. Yeah, and I imagine it's like quite a bit like less rewarding actually as an experience,

which then you start to get into like how much of what makes the movie so effective is the story itself versus the structure. And that's like an interesting thing to consider. But then, and then, you know, I thought it because this was a Jonathan Nolan idea and story and he did publish Momentomori, which like, in just this recent stretch of time makes me, of course, think right. way of Ray Fines. 28 years later, a wonderful association to have with that incredible

scene. The fact that that was public, even though the story existed was the germ of this film, that that was then published after, so it was nominated for Best Original screenplay at the Academy Awards. It's just like a fascinating, kind of meadow, like a fascinating little bit of sequencing there that

it's just like an interesting little nugget in the history of the film. Something I've mentioned a couple times when when going through this Nolan filmography, especially for the Jonah Nolan movies that we've covered, is that when I was trying to unlock the mystery of season one of Westworld, I spent a lot of time studying Jonathan Nolan's other stories to really help me understand what he was most interested in, these theseses. And I think Inception Prestige and this movie were incredibly

instructive to me in understanding, I don't need to spoil Westworld season one for anyone, even though you cannot find Westworld anymore, it like has kind of, yeah, it's not on HBO anymore. Is that true? Yeah, it's like vanished. What? That's true. Oh, no.

Kai Grady and I were looking for it the other day because we were both like, we're the only ones we know who like watched all of Westworld. But, um, geez. The mystery of season one of Westworld is so twisty and fun. And I will not spoil it for people. But in order to figure it out before it was revealed on the show, which was something, you know, I was only able to do because I would like study. And so like when you watch Leonard talk about memory and memory and healing and the way in which his memory prevents him for processing its grief or feeling, understanding love in the passage of time where you think about in interstellar.

I think I think about interstellar. And you think about Anne Hathaway's character talking about love is this force that like, you know, stretching. across galaxies and stuff like that. And then you watch Westworld and without spoiling where the twist is, like you watch someone struggle with their memory and flashes of memory and sort of disassociating into different parts of their own timeline. It's just fascinating to me that these ideas were here from the very beginning for these brothers and for Jonathan Nolan especially.

So when I think about like what is the piece of all? art that was most influenced by Memento, I think it might be Westworld, actually, which again, like, I don't know how enduring that is, but it was a huge, like, the first season of Westwell was incredible. It was massive and, like, incredibly good. And I'm really grateful that it exists, and I don't think it exists without this movie existing. So, and that idea is still kicking around inside of his head, you know? I love that.

And I like having the Jonathan Nolan version of that, given how much time we've emphasized that idea for Christopher Nolan, you know, what are the through lines even in a different form? And like, you know, memory, this is such a specific way to explore a specific challenge with memory. Like, Leonard has gone through a trauma and an emotional one and a physical one and cannot form new memories. Right. But can create lies for himself. And everything about the way the film explores conditioning and the habits. That's what I mean. Like, remember Sammy Jenkins, like, sort of, like, lie that he can talk for himself,

that he can upon repetition, you know, only every time I see it. Like, do you tell me that story? Exactly. He has conditioned himself into this thing. I think that's the most fascinating thing is, like, you can't form new memories. Yeah. But you can form a new lie. A false, you can plant a false memory for yourself.

Yeah. And you can form the parameters for how you navigate your circumstance, right? And the things that you tell other people in yourself. And so, like, you know, memory as a. a concept to explore and a thing to play with and specifically lends to then examine questions of like, well, who are you based on what your connection to your own memory is? And I love the way, like, well, this will come up in some of the categories, but like when Leonard kind of tears down memory and props up fact as like a, you know, champions fact as the thing that you can really put your

trust in and then you come to understand like what it means to think that way. But like, you know, there are so many different reasons that a person's memory can be affected. illness, trauma, injury, technology, like the way that you explore what happened. Debilitating fatigue. Some of us are just like huffing creatine to try to preserve our crumbling brains. Yes, exactly. So like this is such a specific rendering of it, but it does tap into larger questions. And I love that more broadly.

We've talked about this many times over the years, a number of podcasts like, you know, in Black Mirror pods, talking about like an episode like Playtest or something, which is not my favorite Black Mirror episode, but is one I really admire because. You know, this question of like, can you trust your own mind is always a fascinating one because, like, what does it mean if you can't and how do you navigate that? And there are obviously really devastating things that people can go through as they are grappling with that. And it can happen slowly and you can be really aware of it or it can happen just instantly and you have no ability to like even understand what has happened until it has. You know, it's like one of the more unmooring aspects of your humanity that you could have to like learn to relate to and assess in a new way. And so the fact that Leonard is such a active interrogator of his own memory is like one of the things that makes this such a unique way to explore what memory means. He's as consciously aware of it as he could possibly be. No, but he is and he isn't because like you you watch him set up these parameters for himself.

Yeah. And then you watch someone on the phone just be like, he's actually a drug dealer. Right. And he just like scratches out his own note. Just takes the, you know, know, never answer the phone, but just like takes the word of someone. Like, we watch him be led by Natalie, by all these people, you know what I mean? For sure. I mean just he is aware that he can't form new memories. Like, he is aware of his core circumstance or his condition. And that awareness guides every choice he makes, however passively are active.

I hear how we're like agreeing and disagreeing. But I do think there is just like such a his certainty of like, poor Sammy couldn't do these things. But I figured out a system. So I'm fine. So there's like a, there's an awareness. but there's just this self-delusion. Of course. All the ways in which he is just like completely unself-aware.

Yes. And like, again, how can any of us actually be aware of ourselves? And I think that that is like something that Christopher Nolan especially really believes is that we are all delusional and we all cannot see ourselves clearly. And all of these great men, you know, when we talk about Oppenheimer, and we talk about all these other things, just sort of like, there are things that Oppenheimer, let's say, as a person, is aware of. the damage that he has done to the world that he is aware of that weighs heavy on him. And then there are personal actions that he has enacted that he is just sort of completely blind to. That's the dissonance that I think is so rich. Leonard is aware on an almost like intellectual,

like theoretical level of the context of a circumstance. Yeah. But he is not aware of his own ability to navigate that because how could he based on the specifics of this condition, but also because how can any person be? Right? And so like, you get to something like Teddy saying at the end, Sammy, going to throw this out there. Like, it was your wife who needed the insulin, right? It was your wife who was a diabetic. And the way that you flash to this pinch of the thigh that we had seen previously. And then we see it with the insulin serend. And then we flash back again to the pinch. And Leonard's like, No. But the seed of doubt, a seat of doubt, he won't retain in a couple minutes still has the ability to completely destabilize him in that moment. It's fascinating.

Honestly, my favorite line delivery of the whole movie is Joey Pants when he's like, my wife wasn't a diabetic. He goes, you sure? Yeah. I mean, Joey Pants is so fucking good in this movie. You sure? And he kind of smiles at him in a way that's just like so diabolical. He's so good. He's the best. He's amazing. Yeah. Anything else do you want to say sort of broadly before we get into, you know, there's a lot we can sort of talk about when it comes to our categories. Let's get some of our categories. All right. Memento top 15, a combination of superlatives and other sundries. Lovely. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terse appetite. The first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine. used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA.

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Save at Whole Foods Market. All right, we shaved a few categories off because this doesn't, you know, not all of the broader Nolan sort of big grand set piece ideas fit here in this movie. Right. Though I will say he said that he intentionally shot the motel. You know, there's a couple motels in this movie, but the main motel in this movie. To look like an MC Escher drawing, like where you just like are constantly confronted by like stairs and railings and all this sort of stuff like that and doors and, you know, Leonard's in. two different rooms inside of the same motel, if only two, perhaps more, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, he's trying to make a Penrose staircase out of just an ordinary motel

that he has, you know, only a couple mill to shoot at and stuff like that. Where's Arthur to come in and say paradox, bitch? Paradox, a bitch. All right. First category. Why so serious? Funniest line or moment of the movie. So it's not the funniest film, but it doesn't.

There are funny moments. I have a couple of answers here. Yeah. There are funny moments. So I have one Natalie nominee and I have two Teddy contenders here. So I will go as my main pick before I hit the two runners up with when Leonard finds Teddy like waiting reclined in the JAG and says, you're still here because of Natalie. Leonard says who's Natalie? And the way that Joey pants as Teddy says, Schmuck, who's house do you think you just walked out of? Like, something about that schmuck just kills me. And then Leonard pulls out the Polaroids. And Teddy says, oh, that's right.

Take a look at your pictures. I bet you got one of her. And then looks at it. Oh, nice shot, Limo. It's just incredible. It's really hysterical. It's like vintage Joey pants. So that is my pick.

What is your winner here? I mean, I think the most obvious one for me is, I don't think they let someone like me carry a gun. That's my runner up. Yeah. And then I fucking hope not. I'm fucking hope not from Teddy. That's my runner up.

It's so good. On the gun front, though, nothing except the Gideon Bible where he pulls a door open and there's just a gun there. Great moment. Genuinely great moment. And then I also, I think it's really funny, even though it's like very sad and scary, when Natalie just hides all the pens. When she just takes all the pens with her and you don't know, like, for the first time, you don't really know sort of like why she's doing it or what. she's done or whatever, but when you rewatch, I just think it's like, like very smart and really good. She's grabbed them with the quickness.

My Natalie nominee is when they're at the cafe and it's like, so you have information for me, is that what your little note says, yeah. And then she says, must be tough living your life according to a couple scraps of paper. You mix your laundry list with your grocery list and you'll end up eating your underwear for breakfast. Very good. Tough feedback. Anything else?

Well, delivered. Nah, those were my top three. Carrienne Moss is really good at this movie. Okay. she is. You either die or hear or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Who is the real villain of this movie? What's your pick?

Our health care system? Yeah. The insurance system? Yeah, the health insurance system. That's a great one. Yeah. I might be living out with the pit too much, but I'm just sort of like, I was like, oh, this is an indictment of health insurance. Yeah.

It's the flashes to Leonard. and the Jankis family are quite distressing, whatever level of reliability or unreliability is actually at play there. The scene in particular where she visits him at the office, and he's like, we shouldn't even be talking and this and that.

That was just, it's all quite upsetting. Yeah. Mine is just sort of like the thing we've talked about a lot already, which is just memory, but more specifically the way that memory is not presented is just like this haloed thing. You know, the fact that we get to see from all angles, well, okay, you see somebody who is struggling to grapple

with the absence of the ability to form new memories, but then that person, Leonard is saying, like, when he basically lectures Teddy about memories not even, like, not perfect, not even good. And then, of course, I think of something like the affair, you know, and how we get, like, to see how unreliable memory is. For me, it's less room for you is the affair. The ur-text we will always come back to. Exactly. And Leonard's like, facts, not memories. That's how you investigate. I know it's what I used to do. Look, memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation. They're not a record. And they're irrelevant if you have the facts. And you have moments where like Natalie, Teddy across different parts of the film say to Leonardi version of like, you're not even going to remember this if you do it. Like if you get the vengeance you seek, will you even feel it? And you know,

very rewarding on a rewatch to see those seeds planted really early knowing where we're going. And the choice Leonard will make it at the very end to hunt Teddy, to hunt John G. But this idea that memory is this missing thing that has radically altered his life and also something that he is saying, not only do I not need it, it is less helpful and less reliable and less sure than the fact that I can write on a paper and learn to trust my own handwriting. And that is a warped idea that leads him to a very dark. place. And so the way that we look at memory from all angles, depending on whose vantage point we're in in a given moment and who is like espousing a certain idea, but then even when inside of one perspective, like Leonard's, we see a different relationship to that at the end is really fascinating.

The, uh, something, a fact that I learned that I didn't know before preparing for this pot is the, um, is the license plate that Teddy's license plate throughout this movie is two different license plates that Christopher Nolan swapped out on the car. And in one, it's the letter I, you at the end. And the other, it's the number one and you. Because Leonard writes down the license plate and he just draws a straight line. And the tattoo artist interprets that as a one, but on the license plate, on the DMV thing, it's an I.

But physically, the license plate in the color timeline is both. So it's great. Which is just like a fun little detail. tale of just like, hey guys, what's reality? What's real anyway? I love it. The other, oh, the motel industrial complex. Bert!

All right. Oh, man. Are you watching closely the most exquisitely gorgeous shot? Wally Fister, you know, longtime collaborator of Chris Van Nolen, is on this movie here. It's beginning of a beautiful friendship. Yes. What do you want to call out here? Okay.

So I am going with a bookend, but it's, it's, it's, It's a joint pick. Both of my picks are Polaroid moments. A Polaroid early and a Polaroid late. So the opening, just the opening visual of the film that starts over the opening credits, the visual of the Polaroid, the hand is shaking it. It's the peak of just the Jancus. You don't really know, you don't know yet, but you're starting to see things. And the way that the Polaroid is rewinding out of clarity, out of focus, out of development.

it's a visual primer for us of like the way the movie is going to work, right? What the logic in the movie is going to be? It's obviously very like, whoa, what am I watching right away? There's the mystery of like what you're actually seeing in the Polaroid.

That's a lot of blood. You know, whose body is that? Like all of the questions right away. And again, the peak of the tattoo, because the Polaroids, the tattoo, the notes, there are all of these different aspects of the visual language, the tapestry of the film.

And so you're getting a lot of that right away. And it's also just fucking cool and really memorable. And then at the end, The Polaroid is what melts the timelines with Jimmy G. When we're looking in at the Jimmy G black and white Polaroid and as it is developing, it morphs into color and the timelines have connected at last. And that's, you know, there's like maybe like 10, the first one is just the beginning of the movie. That's like maybe like 10-ish minutes left at the movie, but it's basically the end of the film. Yeah.

And so the way that the Polaroids are visually deployed at the beginning and end to tell us how the time of the movie is going to function. and also just looks so distinct and specific to this film. It's just great. Does the bullet casing going into the gun give you tenant flashbacks? I mean, now it does. Yeah, now it does. No, it gives me tenant hype and excitement to revisit that film that I have very little attachment to currently.

I mean, I think the Polaroid is the right answer. It is just so iconic and the way it's used differently at the beginning of the end. But for me, I think it's the flash. of Lenny and Sammy's seat. Like when you see Stephen Tobolowski as Sammy in the chair and the institution and someone walks past him. And like for just a few frames, it's Guy Pearce's Lenny in the seat. And it's just sort of like it's so quick blinking you might miss it.

Got to watch us back at home, you know, to sort of make sure. But like what that tells us about the story. And also that idea of like, even. before you understand that perhaps, according to Teddy, at least, Lenny's the one who killed his wife via insulin overdose, that idea of like pretending to recognize. You know, like, Stephen Tobolowski is so good as Sammy, like really good casting, I think, but just sort of that like, sort of like puppy dog look on his face as people walk by, because he can't remember everything, but he's just like, is pretending to like to get that pat on the head as, as the, you know, voiceover.

tells us. But then you have Lenny, like, sitting in that chair and you think about the way in which, even before, again, even before he better understands the way in which he's blurred these stories in his mind, this is something that I've learned to do to cope in the world, to be less embarrassed by the way that my memory works. You pretend. Yeah. That was interesting. Okay. I can't remember to forget you the scene you think about the most. This is a good example of a category that's like just really hard for this movie, I think. But again, I went with something early in the film that I think is not only just excellent

in and of itself, but is such an effective primer for what the movie is going to be and also such a lasting aspect of how you think about what it was. So I'm going with the first full glimpse of Leonard's tattooed torso and arms and legs as he is studying.

He's studying, he opens the envelope, he's studying John G's license. and then he's looking at all of his tattoos and recounting the information and the facts to himself and then this is the stretch where on the heels he has just explained to us his system and looked at this information

and then he goes to change, he sees everything and then he will write, kill him. This is the, like in this stretch, the path to writing. Yeah, it's you, I found you, you fuck, writing he is the one and then kill him. And we get to see, you know, as he is refreshing on this and we are seeing for the first time, John G. raped and murdered my wife. Find him and kill him. She has gone. Time still passes. Consider the source. Memory is treachery. Don't trust your weakness. Eat. Which he has placed strategically right above his own dick. I guess the idea is that that's where he's like definitely going to look every day. You know, if his tummy is rumbling and he's like, oh, I should eat? Maybe. Would you get eat tattooed on your pubic bone?

In a very different, for very different reasons in a very different context. You know, it's multifunctionalienable. which is, I guess, good for Leonard. Something to think about. I love that you feel like that you need to clarify that. That's not exactly what I was talking about. And what font would you get the word eat tattooed on pure-gbone? I've got some notes on Leonard's font. Obviously, he's doing some of these himself.

And he's going to the parlor for some. That's another like... Stick and poke. Yeah. For us, yeah, the snapping of the pen to get the ink and the sterilized. You know, for us, for people who have any familiarity with, like, tattoos and the healing process, you know, you can see the very raw red in certain areas. You're like, that's fresh, right?

So many of these are, they're healed. Right. You know, they're like your tattoo artist has posted this on Instagram, like caught a healed one, you know. So you know, like time has passed right away. But then we see the facts, right? Mail, white. First name John or James. Last name, G. Drug dealer. That's one of the very, very fresh ones. Car license number, et cetera. So he thinks he's pieced this together. And it's just so harrowing because not only are we like, okay, wow, this is how the movie is going to function. This is with the visual language of the film and like the journey of discovery. Repeat on repeat, right, inside of these scenes is going to. be. But there's something that's just so indelible about that, like, kind of glimpse of the landscape using your own body is like your notepad for these facts that you're amassing. And you wonder, it's such an effective way really quickly in the film to like make you think what would this person have had to go through to get to this point, right? What is his reality that he was doing this? Yeah. On his like collar bone, you know what I mean? One button off your shirt. It's like the first thing anyone sees, right? Like it's like it's what

Natalie is confronted with when she wakes up with that word. Yeah. What does that tell you so quickly about his life? And what is what is written forwards and what is written backwards and what is written like upside down or right side up and all that sort of stuff like that. The one that really kills me is the first name John or James because it feels really clear because or James is in a different, you know, handwriting. So it just seems really clear to me that like Teddy wanting to expand his options for like drug dealers that they can go after is like called him one day. It was just like, or it's just like, or it's. James, you know, let's just add other J names to your arm in perpetuity. What's going to happen to Lenny now that Teddy's no longer there to lead him around by the nose? Like what's... That's a great question. And what'll, I guess he'll keep finding weight. Because his purpose is completely entwined with being able to go on this like perpetual hunt, right? To seek this vengeance endlessly. So I guess he is at the point. Well, he will find a way to generate that for himself. I thought you were going to ask what happens when Leonard runs out of skin. Like, does he have to start getting tattoos removed so that he has fresh patches to then tattoo

again? His whole back is clear. He's got a lot of real estate. I mean, at a certain point, though, he's going to run out. He's going to run out. The, I mean, maybe he'll die before them. Yeah, maybe Dodd will just come back to town again. Like, really sketchy plan and just be like, get out of town, Don. I know. That part makes no sets. My guy, Leo bin, though. Always great to see him. Always great to see him. All right. My answer for this is, so Harriet Sansom Harris, who plays Mrs. Jankis, who is like a perhaps a complete construction of Lenny's own mind. I love this actress. She, I met her. She's, she was a long-running guest star on Frasier, but she's also like incredible The Phantom Thread. She's just a great, like, wherever she shows up. I think she's so good in this movie. Like, I think she, you. she like runs away with a lot of the movie for me. And,

but it's just the scene where, you know, she dies. Like, even if it's like a fake memory, just like, again, and I also think Stephen Toboloski is really good.

So just sort of like his, you know, cheerful and her despair. Yeah. You know. Rewinding the clock hand every time. Yeah. And then just sort of like his,

his absolute desolation once she's dead, you know, and his bewilderment. Yeah. Or even earlier, like, when she's sort of, like, frustratedly yelling at him and he's just, like, confused and upset and all this sort of stuff like that. Or, you know, this is, this is a classic smuggle.

But, like, honestly, any of her scenes, when she goes to talk to Lenny in his office, you know, and I mean, is asking about her husband. But I think for me, it's, it's, you know, time for my shot, time for my shot, time for my shot, time for my shot. It's brutal. It's just like that, I think about that a lot. Yeah.

It's really upsetting. I love those scenes because they like, I mean, I don't know that much about the movie is subtle, but like, you know, meme bracket, complimentary, right? Like, I love the way that her character in particular, ask the question of like, well, what would you be able to tolerate? Really? Like, if you were being honest with yourself, because the fact that the relationship that is presented to us is rooted in love, right? that it's like the framing is the reason it is so hard is because I look at him and I recognize the person who I love. And he is able to do these things for me that stem from care and preservation and a nurturing spirit inside of this partnership, but we can't break through beyond that. So the idea that the thing that keeps you together, your affection and your desire to help each other would be the thing that made it impossible for you even though you still love that person to actually accept. And like that it would, that it would. be really hard. Yeah. Even inside of the fiction and unreliability of the film feels like just a true note

about interrogating like what people are, what people want to believe that they're capable of and then what it looks like to actually try to navigate something that is really challenging. So I love that aspect of it too. Swear to me. This movie is rated R, but still, if you could add, so like, unlike a lot of the other is one, but this is rated R. So, like, it's not at a loss.

for swear words, but we've been enjoying adding swear words to other Christopher Nolan movies, so I just thought we would do it here as well. So if you could add an extra F-bomber, any other swear, where would you put it? Yeah, this was hard because there are so many, there are so many fuck utterances in this film. And so, like, any scene that I thought, oh, this would be a good candidate. Someone said fuck inside of that very scene. But even so, I will go with Bert in the, like, oh, I've been found out with my multiple hotel rooms. He does actually say I fucked up in that scene. But later, if you'll lines later when they're leaving the room.

Leonard, always get a fucking receipt. Yeah. That would be my nominee. Oh, yeah. I'm going to write that down. Always get a fucking receipt. And then he doesn't. Yeah, I think Mark Boone Jr. is really good as Bert.

I think you talk about bookend lines or bookend polarites. I think where the fuck was I. Yeah. as like a final line of this movie. I don't know. I'm actually, I have two minds about it because, like, it's a line that I wouldn't mind a little pepper on, but also, like, now where was I is so innocent and just sort of like, now where, like, so casual.

Now where was I? Yes. Because, like, all the agitation of the previous minutes are gone. Right. So I kind of. Yeah, there's like a return to a foundational state. I'm kind of like negging my own answer, but that was my best. that I came up with.

I like it. Amateur Seek the Sun, get eaten, power stays in the shadows, stealth MVP of this movie that not enough people talk about. I thought this was hard because I think so many aspects of this film are widely celebrated.

It's so lean. So it's like what haven't we explored. Yeah, and this is the type of category where we'd normally be like the editing, but it's like, you know, we're talking Oscar and I'm here, right? And you can't talk about the film without talking about the editing,

things like that. I don't think it would be a good faith argument to pretend that people don't talk about the Polaroids as an iconic aspect of this film, but my pick will be inside of that. Specifically just the image choice in each photo, like the actual facial expression or positioning, you know, the big, broad smile on Lenny's face and the blood on his body, and we're like, what has been captured here exactly? Or the fact that the Natalie Polaroid is opaque and obscured and kind of like dappled

in sun to the point where it's almost. in shadow, you know, the mugging that Teddy is doing. So just like the specific, because in the flow of the film, you know, Leonard is just like, hey, you know, and sometimes he's like, Teddy's like, well, let me move over here and there's more of a kind of active pose. And sometimes he just takes a picture of Natalie before she even realizes what's happening. But then what the film is communicating through the actual image that has been captured of each of those people. I really like. And then especially because, you know, you get to like, oh, you got to burn it. you get the kind of crumpled, but you see, like, oh, there's, like, a part of a body that you can still identify.

And what are we, what mystery are we going to unravel next? So, like, I wanted to just say, like, Joey Pants, because I think he's the best. But I don't think that would be, um, stealth necessarily. No, no, no, no. Um, my answer is twofold. Okay. The bleach job on Guy Pearce is doing a lot of work. I have a lot of questions about it, though, because it's not even, like, trying to be realistically blonde.

It just looks like a bleach job. So how often does he have a tattoo? somewhere that's like remember to bleach your roots like sure but he has the blonde hair in the flashbacks as well so he was always bleaching his hair yeah neatly jailed yeah neatly jailed over but like again that felt very like Brad Pitt adjacent or something like that but yeah the bleach job on on on on on on on on on on on on on good work um just to put us in this sort of like dirt bag late 90s early aughts sort of uh noir era but Also, my honest answer is whatever pen he's using to write on the Polaroid, that is inky enough that it looks nice, but does not smudge.

It doesn't. It never smudges. It's not a ballpoint. It's a felt tip, but it doesn't smudge on the Polaroid. It's important. What is, what miracle pen is this? That's a great question. And where's the note that reminds him exactly which pen type that he likes best?

I'm sure he's somewhere. No question. That's great pick. love all of the penmanship aspects, like the fact that we learn, he's got to learn to trust your own handwriting, right? And then the way that, like, he writes, he uses cursive he uses, you know, the difference. Yeah. So that he can, when he sees it later, he'll know it to cross it out, that it's not legit. Yeah. That stuff is all. That's great. All right. You're waiting on a train, a train that will take you far away. Best Dead wife moment. Crowded Field. Oh, my God. Okay. I have a pick and then a couple.

runners up after you give your pick. It's completely wild. This is astonishing stuff. I will put a pin in it and come back to it when we finish the whole rewatch. But I think there's a chance that this stands the test of time as the ultimate winner of this category at the very end. Because it is just a quote about how cool it is to have a dead wife. And I would like to read it to you now. Teddy.

Laying into Lenny about his nickname to have a dead wife. He's like, man, oh, you're, you're whiny. You got to always keep seeking. And here's what he says. All you do is moan. I'm the one that has to live with what you've done. I'm the one that put it all together. You, you wander around. You're playing detective. You're living a dream, kid, a dead wife to find for a sense of purpose to your life, a romantic quest that you wouldn't end even if I wasn't in the picture. a character in this movie Joey Pants's Teddy says out loud in a Christopher Nolan film you live in the dream man you got a dead wife It's so sick to have a dead wife though

Look at all that purpose Whoa Look at all that purpose Bro such pining Your wife's dead You get to pine Such quest for your dead wife Goals

Wild Wild Actually, I think Georgia Fox, who plays the aforementioned dead wife, is the person I would recast in this movie. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good picture. I think it's a tough, you know, unlike Marianne Cotillard in Inception, she doesn't even, like, she has, like, one scene where she gets lines.

You know what I mean? It's just like, so it's just a lot of, like, you know, and Georgia Fox was in CSI at this moment. You know, like, she was an identifiable TV face, a West Wing CSI face that you could put in movie. I just don't think she conveys dead wife to pine for in her performance here. She's just, she's beautiful. She's beautiful. But like, I don't feel like in the sort of like romantic, I've seen many a dead wife paraded through the Nolan filmography. And this is, I think, maybe one of the most lackluster. For you, this dead wife doesn't rate. She just doesn't do it for me. You know, maybe he should have said when Joey, when Joey Pan's like, a dead wife to pine for,

he's like, yeah, but I mean, a lesser dead wife, honestly, in the list of dead wives. Georgia Fox is a great live woman in certain things, but I don't think she's, she's crushed in the dead wife. Dead wife exists in flashbacks only. Honestly, an incredible take. Also, I don't understand why a woman with her hair texture would brush her hair with a bore bristle round brush. That's just her hair brush, a bore bristle round brush.

Nobody was on set to tell the Nolans this is not the brush that you. she would use. When that sex worker was like, you want, and he's like, don't use it. She's like, listen, I don't want to. Do you know what this would do to my crudgy blonde curls? Bad things. More enthusiasm for asking if she should wear the bra than ultimately,

like really pushing to keep using the brush. Just put it around the room as though, you know, they were like, your things. Yeah, I'm going to, I guess, you know, late breaking, I think I am going to give it to asking a prostitute to strew your dead wife's items around the room. It's a choice. She just placed the clock and the book and the brush somewhere, not to mention flung the bra somewhere.

Yeah. Teddy bear. Yeah. The teddy bear. Mallory, if I ever die and you need to collect like a few of my positions to remember me by, please let it not be a teddy bear. What should it be? There's so many options. Faramide?

Yeah. Well, no, the meat's gone. But like, definitely some books for sure. Yeah, for sure. You know, there's like plenty of items in my house. Claudia's the God and his wife. But I would, yeah, not that book necessarily. But I would say not, I mean, I do have a teddy bear that I've owned since I was a child.

But, like, exists in, like, a chest that I have with, like, blankets that I had as a child. But it's not, like, a thing that I cradle and own and cherish. It's just, like, a relic of my childhood. I'll find other items. I'm committing now. I don't think this woman, you know, despite her questionable hair brushing technique, I don't think she was, like, cradling that teddy bear around. I'm very confused. Well, it is, you know, he does kind of say when he's burning things.

How many times have I done this? Is he scraping him the bottle of the barrel? So he might be like, we're deep into the possessions. Though the fact that the book, this prized and sacred thing is there. It's an interesting reread, honestly. But also, how many cars is he just abandoned with more of her stuff in it? You know what I mean? My question.

Was there other stuff in the truck? These tracks are fresh. Bullets on the seat. I don't know. How many of my dead ones? Does he still? Does he still have that house, you know? I wondered about that as well.

Does he go back and pilfer more items? Some nice natural light in there, I thought. Lovely. You know, the book scene is, you know, we already talked about it, but that was one of my runners up just because it is like the parallel to Leonard's own experience when you're like, how much of this experience of reading this book is about what you remember. Rattain versus what it feels like to navigate it. It's, again, not subtle, but it's good.

I like as another runner up when Nadley tells Leonard to just like close your eyes. eyes and really remember, like really remember. And we're flashing at everything we see. And he's saying these, like, beautiful things. You can just feel the details, the bits and pieces you never bothered to put into words. You put these together and you get the feel of a person enough to know how much you miss them. That's a very moving moment of the film. But I love that everything we see. Now, you could turn this the other way and say, interesting, that that dead wife, never left of the house. We never really got to see any other experience. She loved that kitchen. She loved to gaze out the window of her kitchen that she was in prison.

and then sit at the table. Maybe she only read one book because she never got to go to the bookstore. Floral dresses. It's possible. But I do like that every moment we see is like routine, that that's the kind of thing he's remembering, not like a honeymoon or a grand like experience, just like what it was like to be in a home that you shared with this person.

Yeah, yeah. I do think it's interesting I've seen many side by sides on the old internet of like they're pretty much near identical shots of Mal in Inception and Georgia Fox. character in this movie. Also, true to form. Is this right? Oh, no, Catherine, she has a name, Catherine.

That's true. Mrs. Jenkins does not have a name. She's a fictional creation, but she's just Sammy's wife. Listen. Gwyn was named in Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Don't be greedy. But don't be greedy. Catherine Shelby, just wandering around this kitchen where she is in prison, her little

loop of the kitchen and the bedroom and the kitchen of the bedroom and the bathroom in the bathroom in the middle of the night. That's her. That's her. But yeah, there are shots like her lying sideways in the bed, her sitting at the kitchen table. There are identical shots of Marion Cotillard in Inception. And I hope that was intentional. But it's also possible that when Christopher Nolan's like, what does a wife do?

And he's like, lay in a bed, sit at a table. Or if it's his own wife, answer all my emails and my phone calls for me. I don't know. What does a wife do? I love Nolan movie. me. They're the best. Oh, man. He's the hair of Gotham deserves him not the one it needs right now.

I already answered this one, but who was regrettably miscast in this movie? I'm going to go with your pick. I think that's your case is strong, and I think that's the right answer. Let me toss out a kind of hot take contender here, though. Okay. I don't even think I agree with this. I don't agree with that, as I suggested, but I want to float it for a reason. Okay.

We both love Big Steve. Just had a, when we were doing basic instinct, there was a fascinating, like, that guy for Tobolowski. And it's like, in some ways you can say he's like the ultimate. I think he is. That guy, like he's the ultimate that guy. I tried to argue that on the sneakers, we watchables. That's right. That I thought you should replace Joe Pantilio.

Yeah. And then this keeps his, none of us can break through. But I'm with you, Stephen. Do you deserve it? Every time he shows up, I'm thrilled. He's great. So I do not want to. recast him because I think he's always wonderful.

And I really agree with what you said earlier that that expression what he is conveying with his eyes and the wideness and the face is so effective at communicating what the Sammy character is supposed to communicate to us. So I ask this for one reason and one reason only and we can just discard it right away if we don't like it.

Is there any logic to recasting him with an actor who's a different actor, but looks more like Guy Pearce to make the like wait are Lenny and Sammy the same character thing? Brad Pitt. It's Jane.

Tommy Jane. No, if I were put Thomas Jane in this movie, I would put him in the Calum Keith Rennie. Okay. Oh, yeah. He'd be a good dad. I don't think... I think Calam Keith Rennie is really good

in Battlestar, obviously, as you already shouted him out. I don't think he's great in this movie. No. And he has like two and a half minutes. I also think Larry Holden, who plays Jimmy, is also not that great. I think there are some people down the cast list

and buy down the castles, I mean, number six and seven, because it's a very short catalyst. But, like, we're saving money. We're doing our best. But I feel like, you know, were we to make this now? That would be Killian Murphy. It would be. Yeah. And you know that to be true.

It's definitely true. Jimmy, he wore that suit well, I will say. He wore that suit well. I just think Natalie could have... The suit should have been filthy, by the way. He was, like, dragged across the flurs. He probably being choked to death. He probably should have shit his pants.

Why is this a thing that Leonard does? Why does he take off his clothing and put on Jimmy's clothing? I don't know. How many times has he done something like that? Was the plaid shirt the previous Jimmy, you know, like the previous John G's plaid shirt? You know, like, is this a part of his ritualistic killing? I think that is a really reasonable deduction because, again, who knows how accurate, if at all, any of the flashbacks that we've seen are. But like, you're not getting that like I'm wearing like plaid and a vest and driving my pickup vibes.

He's a madman kind of guy. Yeah, exactly. So, but again, is any of it. So this is his trophy is like. Yeah, he's like. taking their... The suit in the car. He's not taking their literal skin,

but like the skin of the life that they lead. I mean, it's great for the movie because he shows up to the bar in Jimmy's suit in his car. It's, you know, you can't come in here like looking like that. Like, all of that stuff is really good. Yeah.

But, like, why does he do that? I mean, a bizarre thing to do. Perhaps he never wrote himself a note saying, like, do your laundry and buy new clothes. It's like, this is sense, you know? So this... He's going to have done the shower and soap and towel.

So this thing that I have, like, dragged through the dirt and it has possibly got some blood stains on it or whatever, this is what, I mean, it looks great on him. It does. It looks really good. It does. Yeah. Okay. Tobo. You're going to recast toobo.

I couldn't bring myself to say it with, as Chase Serrano would say, I couldn't say it with my chest. Yeah. I couldn't say it with my chest. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled. Most satisfying twist. I mean, it's the ending. Yep, Sammy Jenkins.

Okay. So let's use this as a quote, since it's so obvious and we agree, and there are fun little twists and reveals along the way. When I took several categories out, I was like, should I take the twist category out of Memento? The movie. There are a lot of great, you know. They're mini twists.

Yeah, like everything with Natalie is really satisfying. Yeah, Teddy. Multiple motel rooms. Yes, yeah. Okay, so, but let's just, since we agree, it's the ending, and it's specifically like, Leonard's choice about what he is going to tell himself, right? You think I just want another puzzle to solve another John G to look for.

You're a John G so you can be my John G. Do I lie to myself to be happy in your case? Teddy, yes, I will. Chills. Where are you on how much of what Teddy tells Lenny is true? It's a good moment to talk about that for a second. Yeah, that's a great prompt. So Nolan has said that definitely something happened in the bathroom.

Like, that's not invented. So definitely something happened in the bathroom. bathroom, whether or not the insulin thing happened is not something that he has confirmed one way or another. Right. I think it's a better story if it is true. I agree. I agree. If Leonard killed his wife.

Because I think the core of his quest to avenge the person who killed his wife and he is the person who killed his wife. Then you never reach the end. Is. Yeah. And like you are so consumed with, because in theory, well, of course, because not in theory, she survives the attack. So it's not like immediate, like as soon as he lost his ability to make memories, he wasn't immediately on this vengeance quest.

There was a moment in his life when he was just like pinching her thigh and giving her injections or whatever. So like he was living a more sedate post-accident life. Yeah. And then he is so traumatized not just by what happened in the bathroom, but by his, I mean, did he kill her? Could you say that directly? But like in his. complicit in that

that he's then driven on this unsolvable quest to find the person when he's the person who did it you know harrowing to confront Penrose stairs that's right you know you're running around exactly I am in the same place

so my feeling on it is like similar to you know Cobb being like I did this to her you know Joey pants like you you couldn't have a more perfect person in that seen because he is, and I'm blanking on where Nolan said this, but I know he, I'm paraphrasing, but he has said, like, oh, it's really fascinating to the Nolan's that, like, many people

who see this movie don't want to believe, Teddy, because they've seen. It's classic. Honestly, that's classic fight club, like behavior. And also he. Or like having a poster of a scarface on your wall, honestly. Yeah, yes. And also like... Loving Breaking Bad. You're just like, Walt, what a guy.

Oh, rude for you. Redemption is possible. Is there an epilogue? Is there a stinger? I haven't given him yet. Are we sure he's dead? I'm not sure. But the idea that you've basically been conditioned all movie through Leonard, don't believe his lies.

And then you get maybe the truth. Right. You're like primed to believe it is a lie and you're rooted in Leonard's experience and point of view, such a third. is a point of view that you can be rooted in. Right. But like, Lenny, what a guy. I, you know, Joey Pants is a smart ass and he's a, this is part of his undying charm. Like, he's like a little bit of a demon in all of these scenes and he's so funny and witty and sharp and like, you know, the acid that is like drenched over every word he says. But he's played a lot of bad guys over

the years. And so you're not always like, Joey Pants is definitely playing a good guy. And so, especially because you have this crooked guy. Well, he's not playing. Yeah, he's not really good guy in this. You have all of these reasons, even in this scene, this moment of reveal, to say, well, you have your own agenda. You have a reason that was just presented clearly to deceive Leonard, to lead him to a place that suits you. You also know he won't remember this. So there's all of that in the brew. And yet, despite that, my feeling on it, and I love that, and this is like, you know, we've had so many Nolan movies that have a version of this. Like, you can. can just keep debating it forever. And that's part of what's fun and interesting about it, that there's like an invitation to the viewer to say, well, what do you think about this? I'm not going to tell you definitively. Maybe it'll be pretty clear, but it's not definitive. And I feel that what he, that what Teddy says about, like, you killed this guy a year ago, and I thought it would pull you out of this.

I love that line delivery when he's like, I thought so too. You know what I mean? There's just like something kind of, there's emotion there. Yes. Like, to me, that feels definitively true. I agree. The Sammy Lenny one is. is a little bit more, how do I feel about this? But I also land where you land because I think it's a more interesting story, if that's the case. And the fact that, like, ultimately the key in that moment is that Leonard does not know. And I think it's because he refuses to accept it that makes it feel all the more true. I agree.

Yeah, I agree. All right. It's not who I am underneath. But what I do that defines me. Nolan is not known for a sexual content, but let's go ahead and try to excavate the horniest moment of this film. I think there's a clear answer here. Tell me.

And maybe this has revealed something about me. I believe it is Natalie spitting in the beer. The way that Carrie-Anne Moss does that. What? I think is extremely horny. Oh my God. I love this pick. Incredible.

Yeah. There's just something like that she spits. Spitting on something else. She's known, she knows her way. way around a spit. It's what I think. Also, do they fuck? Is that your interpretation?

So I don't think so. I don't think so either. But there are horny moments around. This is obviously like kind of a fraught aspect of this where like Leonard could not. What sex life for like? Because the timing is inconsistent for when his memory resets. In that stretch in particular. And so could his memory reset mid-act?

Yeah. And I assume that's part of why he's probably like not in. engaging because he wouldn't remember like how he started. Yeah. So that's tough. The spitting is just an iconic choice. I have really no notes on that. That's incredible.

I think she's incredible. I think she's for my sort of like late 90s into early odds sort of aesthetic moment or whatever. I think she's hotter in this even than she is in the Matrix. I think she's so hot. One A and one B. I think she's so hot in this movie like the smudged eyeliner just like. It looks great. I think she is and like how like her disdain.

the way that she manipulates him, but then the way that she's actually, like, has some tenderness for him as well. It's just, like, femme fatality's fine. She's great. The way she says freaky tattoo is lovely. I will throw out another Natalie nominee when they wake up together

and then he's getting dressed and leaving. The way she kisses him is they part and says, I think you will, like, remember me. Like, I'm going to give you a reason. And then he doesn't. Which is pretty sad. But for, like, 0.5 seconds there was pretty hot. There's also a shot of her,

you know, after he's, told the story about, you know, the warmth of the bed. They just got up or something like that. And she's sort of doing the same, you know, thinking about Jimmy. Yes. Yes. Her eyes, I mean, like, her eyes are so beautiful. They both have beautiful, like, blue-green eyes. And, like, when they're sitting across from each other at the diner, it's just sort of, like, flash-on-flash, like, gorgeousness. But there's a shot of her in the bed in the dark, and her eyes are just kind of, like, flashing in the darkness. And I just think that she is wonderful in this movie.

And similar to Guy Pearce, I think Karen Moss is forever Trinity in The Matrix. So that is like something that has cemented her career forever. Yes. But I think she should have been so much bigger than she was. If only the acolyte had taken off. Yeah, that wouldn't have helped her. I don't know. So nobody picked The Dive and Lenny Naked Shower Fight.

Interesting. Well, you could pick that if you want to. There's my runner up. Okay. It's pretty good. Yeah. And ideas like a virus resilient, it's highly contagious. The line that hits the heart is 25-ish years later.

Can't remember to forget you disqualify because it's one of the names of our category or is it allowed? You can't use it. I think that's pretty good for a reason. It's memorable for a reason. Probably try this before. Probably burn trucklets of your stuff. Can't remember to forget you. Yeah, that one's really good.

If we can't make memories, we can't heal is mine. So it's like they're very similar of the same vein. I think I can't remember to forget you. I think whoever wrote that line, whether it was Christopher himself, whether Jonah was involved, whether Emma tossed it out from the other room when she was stuck in the kitchen or whatever. I don't know. But like Emma Nolan is very accomplished, obviously. That was just a joke about poor Catherine Shelby being stuck in the kitchen.

Emma Nolan's not stuck in the kitchen. But whoever wrote that line. Let's give it to Chris. I love him. He's great. I hope that he bought himself something shiny that day. It's a great line. I hope he felt great writing it.

Really great. I have a few runners up that are a little less maybe like, oh, people are still quoting it years later, but that I find very impactful. Early in the film, Teddy, gun to his face, Lenny, poised to shoot him. You don't know who you are. I'm Leonard Shelby. I'm from San Francisco.

That's who you were. That's not what you've become. I just love that exchange. And then especially because we see it, you know, in the process of the film that earlier he has said versions of that, but the way he says it there. Where is that house in San Francisco? I don't.

Great question. I don't think so. Great question. Leonard and Natalie at the cafe. I think what he says he's from San Francisco, what he really means is he's from Marin or possibly. Some, like Piedmont. But I don't think he's from San Francisco.

So I'm in Northern California geography from you here. Yeah. They're in like a little like idyllic little cottage suburbia home that doesn't exist in San Francisco proper from just outside of San Francisco. Oh, man. Leonard and Natalie at the cafe, this is when she says, you're not even going to remember your revenge if you get it. And this is when he says, the world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes,

does it? Which obviously comes back into play at the end. So that's a great line and a great idea and a very interesting and rich idea. Boy, on the, like, beautiful, you know, Joey pants is bringing a lot of levity and a lot of menace, but then he has these like quiet, gentle little moments that just will in the middle of a scene, like, knock you over. And one of my favorite examples of that in this film with his performance, his portrayal of Teddy is when Lenny and Teddy are having lunch.

And Teddy's just like trying to remind Lenny, like, you actually are alive. Like, you're not gone. And Lenny says, he destroyed my ability to live. And then Teddy reaches over and he just, like, puts his hand to feel the pulse. Like, you're living. It's just, it's perfect. And the way he says it is just so memorable. me.

What is he said? For revenge? Yes, only for revenge. Only for revenge. And then lastly, Teddy. Should I do that to you next time you come in? You're like, I'm so tired and I feel like I'm dying and I'll just gently put my hand on your throat and say you're living.

You're living. And I'll say only for this podcast. And then we'll see what happens one hour and 53 minutes later. Teddy, when he's cornered by Lenny at the Jimmy G. hit. So you lie to yourself to be happy. There's nothing wrong with that. all do it, which is just so, so, so true. So Teddy just like bringing the gospel there.

That takes me to the next category. You think darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the dark. I was born and it molded by it. All right. So most devastating moment, I think it's Lenny lying to himself. Yeah. You know, like the revelation that he perhaps had a hand in killing his wife, all these other things for sure, but like that he knowingly,

Yeah. Creates a puzzle for himself to solve. I'll do it. You'll be my don't G. Right? Very tough. We're just thinking about him, like, redacting the police files.

Oh, my God. Pulling out the 12 pages and, yeah. Just to create a narrative that can work for his broken brain is really tough. That's a great pick. I am going with, let's bring the dead wife back for another minute here. when Teddy is in bed with Natalie and they're talking about her, which is a scene I've already mentioned. But I just find this is like the performance from both of them and the scene is so good. I don't even know how long she's been gone.

This is what he says. And like it just really boles you over, like to think about what would that be like, to not even know the period of loss that has come to define every aspect of your existence. We've already talked about the scene a number of times because this is what builds toward, I lie here not knowing how long I've been alone, so how can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time? So it's like it's a good kind of mission statement for so many of the things that this movie, but also just like Nolan more broadly is interested in exploring, you know, loss and grief and pain and memory and time and healing and wounds

and how these things are all entwined. And this like examination of how, you know, if you're not able to feel that time and to heal because you understand the time is passing and like emotionally intellectually, when you lose someone, you're like, I will never, this will never stop hurting as much as it does right now. But like, you know, the nature of just moving through the world is that one day you realize like it's been a little longer than it was yesterday since I thought about this, right? And that like Lenny can't have that? And you form new attachments and new connections, which he can't do. Yes, exactly. Yes. Because there's the like, the really intense, like, you know, can you even get, like, can you even get afraid? Like, can you feel fear? You know, can you get scared? But then, right, what are the other things that he's not able to feel? you know, and how does that all then form the kind of like smoothie of his experience every day? It's just, oh, man. How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time? I just, again, if you can find season one of Westworld, I really recommend you watch it. It's just that is like a thesis of that show.

Okay. For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship. Actors who never returned to the Nolenverse but should have. You have Guy Pearce here. Yeah. I was like, hey, you know, it's pretty. weird that Guy Pearce has never been in another Nolan movie. What's up with that? And there's a Vanity Fair article from very recently, from 2024 The Brutelist Run.

I would like to read you this passage. And who knows, right? This is Guy Pearce accounting of it, but I was like, what? Have you been in touch with Christopher Nolan over the years? Not really, but he spoke to me about roles a few times over the years, the first Batman and the prestige. But there was an executive at Warner Brothers who quite openly said to my, agent, I don't get Guy Pearce. I'm never going to get Guy Pearce. I'm never going to employ Guy Pearce. So in a way that's good to know. I mean, fair enough, there are some actors I don't get, but it meant I could never work with Chris. Brackett, Warner Brothers had not responded to a request for comment. And then the follow question, wait, wait, hold on. So an exec at Warner Brothers just had a no guy Pierce policy. Did you do something to offend him? I think he just didn't believe

in me as an actor. So there were times when Nolan was like, hey, my old buddy guy would be great. and the execs said, no guy? Yes, they flew me to London to discuss the Liam Neeson role for Batman. Prasawks! It's like wild. And I think it was decided on my flight that I wasn't going to be in the movie. So I got there and Chris is like,

hey, you want to see the Batmobile and get dinner? Decent consolation prize, honestly. Listen, Nolan's done with Warner Brothers now, so now my time has come. There had to be some explanation for why he was never in another Nolan. movie. But like, that's a fucking bummer. That's a hot bummer. Interesting. But he's not in the Odyssey that we know of.

Wouldn't it be great if Guy Pearst just shows up somewhere in the Odyssey? Rowing a boat. Yeah, it'd be great. Get him in there. It's not too late. He's like, we're not at Warner Brothers anymore, so it's time to work together. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Maybe we need to, maybe this needs to be like the Killian Murphy story where it's just like, Guy is the lead of his next movie and Guy wins his. Oscar for it. He, that would be wonderful. I wouldn't have been mad if he had won for the Brutalist. He's very, very good of the Brutalist and he was nominated. I wouldn't have been mad about that. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Guy Pearce is probably my answer, but I mean,

Joey Pants also. Yeah. Or Carrie and Moss. Why not? Mark Boone Jr. and Tom Lennon, who are in this movie, are both also in other, or Harriet Sansom Harris. Like, honestly, like, there's a lot of options in this movie. Is it too late to get Joey Pants in The Odyssey? Oh, he's in the honesty. You didn't know this? He plays the head siren. He can do it. There's nothing he can't do. There's nothing Joey Pants can't do. With the teddy mustache. It's the teddy mustache, but like, you know, he's just warbling like a dream. It's great. Wouldn't you throw yourself overboard for Joey Pants? Without hesitation. I know. I agree. Okay. Some men just want to watch the world burn. The most Nolan thing about this movie. I mean, it's just all of it. Memory time. Memory. Yeah. The nonlinear structure. I think like we talked about at the top of the pod.

But it's legibility inside of that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. All of it. A category that I snipped out that we often do is this idea of like the great man. Yes. And I just don't think that concept really exists in this movie. Too much dead wife.

Yeah. To make room for a great man. Yeah. We had to turn down a little bit of the dead wives to make room for the great man. The recalibration is coming. Like 30 seconds for dead wife and then all great man. I had to balance it across time. I don't know.

Oppenheimer is a lot of room for. dead girlfriend. That's true. That counts. That's true. All right. And so does inception. All right.

Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us. What aspect of Nolan's upcoming The Odyssey are you thinking about slash most hype for this month? Trials. I think, you know, the idea of like trials on the road to a goal. I love you. You and I have different interpretations in this category every time, which is like you're like, how does this movie make music money? IMAX! Yeah.

Here's my answer. Tom Holland has seen the audience. Odyssey. He says it's a masterpiece. He says that there are sequences that he was insisted had to be CGI. And Nolan's like, nope. That's practical effects, buddy. That's a lot of planning and a lot of money in the Adriatic Sea. So you know what? Here we go. We're going to do it. Anything else you want to say? Okay. So trials, you were saying. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. I can't believe the Odyssey's in three months. I'm hyped. Okay. Which Nolan movie should we do next? Let's see. So we have We have the dark night.

Dark Night rises. Yeah. Have you had it? Just classic us to not have done those yet. Following insomnia, tenant Oppenheimer. Hobbs and drags at gmail.com. I've used some thoughts and feelings. Actually, I have an idea, but I don't want to say it yet.

I think we're thinking the same thing. Okay, great. If the scheduling works. Yes. I think that should be next. Okay, great. All right. Everyone's like, what the wrong are they talking about?

But we know. We know. We're locked in. All right, anything else you want to say? I was literally going to text you that yesterday when you mentioned. Yes, exactly. It was on my mind, honestly, when I said it to you. It's fine. Don't worry. This all stays in.

Who should we think today? Oh, man. Let's see. Carlos Chirovoga. Scott Lee. Jacob is here with us again. The whole crew. Arjuna Ramgapal. Arjuna, Jomea, Jomea Dinner on.

Yeah, we saw Jack Wilson earlier. I'll say hi to Jack. Thank you to the whole crew. What a wonderful time here at Sycamore. We'll be back with the Daredevil check-in. What percentage of that podcast am I allowed to dedicate to Dex? As much as you want. Great.

We'll be back for a Dex check-in. But you do have to make a sunny side-up egg for a cat at some point. On the regular. Great. My cat? I don't know that I want to give my cat an egg. I feel like she would just vomit. No.

If she would like it. Okay. I will make an egg for my cat and I will film it. Great. For you. Content. And the Instagram, perhaps. I will not, however, be having a banana milkshake.

It's funny. Adam and I had a pretty long discussion about that. It's his one flaw, I would say. I like a banana pudding. I like a banana ice cream. Banana, cream, pineapple, no, no. Banana and cream pairs wonderful together.

No, no, no. Banana and a smoothie. You can fix him. Well, sure, but that's a whole different thing. But, like, where's banana, okay, maybe I'm stepping in the Daredeville pod, but where's banana rank on, like, if you had all, the flavors to choose from in your milkshake. Sure. It wouldn't be my first choice. Is it above strawberry? It's probably delicious. No, certainly not. I love a strawberry milkshake.

So like the Neapolitan flavors, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry are going above. Is it above an Oreo milkshake? Depends on the mood. And it depends on the establishment. Are they known for their banana milkshakes? I think banana is just, like, I would take a coffee milkshake over it. I love, like, coffee is like my number one favorite. Like, yeah, that's my number one favorite. Oh. I would take, I would take like a mint chip. milkshake over banana. Like banana is just like, actually, I think if they said we only have banana, I would say, I will not be having a milkshake. Yeah. Well, I would say, give me plain vanilla. They would say, we don't have it. I said that's impossible because you have to start with vanilla

and add the banana to it. So there's no way you don't have vanilla milkshake. And they would just be like, sorry. And I would go. What if they were using a banana ice cream? Disgusting. Delicious. Absolutely filthy. There's a banana ice cream that I love. You have to order from Kentucky, but I will be doing that so that you can taste it. From... Crank and boom. The state of Kentucky. Delicious.

Worth it. I would rather we go to Kentucky than you fly a milkshake from Kentucky. It arrives. It's not a milkshake. It's a pint of ice cream. To prove to you that you can make

the banana ice cream from the pint. There is chocolate in it, so it's wonderful. Well, we'll be back. Carlos, you can just clip all of that and put it in the tariff out of pot. Thank you to everyone. Thank you to you, Mallory.

we will be continuing with Nolan. Hobbits and Dragons at Gmail.com. If you have strong thoughts about Wish Nolan movie about milkshakes, banana, otherwise, or about Daredevil, feeding eggs to cats, anything else. We will look forward to that. We'll see you soon. Bye. Pay off your home. Travel for life.

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