Kermode & Mayo’s Take - A Complete Unknown divides Simon and Mark – with director James Mangold

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

The big movie release this week is ‘A Complete Unknown’, but our guest is actually pretty famous... James Mangold, director of the much-anticipated Bob Dylan biopic and Hollywood hits from ‘Walk The Line’ to ‘Le Mans 66’, joins Simon for a chat. They talk about putting Dylan’s iconic and mysterious life onscreen, Timothée Chalamet’s awards-tipped performance as the young songwriting legend—and accidentally creating the Jonny Cash cinematic universe. Picking up a teenage Dylan—then still Bobby Zimmermann—as he hitchhikes to New York, the film follows his discovery as a once-in-a-generation musical talent and a defining voice of the 60s. Through rough relationships with fellow musicians like Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro)—and himself—we watch Dylan’s rise to fame, culminating in his hellraising ‘electric’ performance at the 1965 Newport folk festival. Is Mark shouting ‘Judas!’ or rocking along? Hear his review of the film, along with ‘Wolf Man’— the latest screen outing for the classic horror monster with a modern twist by ‘Invisible Man’ director Leigh Whannell. We’ve got Mark’s verdict on Robert Zemeckis’ new drama too, which reunites ‘Forrest Gump’ stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the story of one piece of land throughout time. It’s called ‘Here’, but it might make you wish you weren’t... More excellent listener takes too on what you’ve been watching this week. We love hearing from you, so if you’re thinking of writing in, Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright... Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Here Review: 04:29 James Mangold Interview: 29:06 A Complete Unknown Review: 43:50 Laughter lift: 57:48 Wolf Man Review: 59:05 You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail] And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, this show is sponsored by NordVPN. Hey Mark, you know what people say about this time of year? That it's perfect for huddling together with a warm blanket, a mug of cocoa, and the best movies and of course movie podcasts around? Well, ideal for taking an early ski trip to L'Alp de Huy. What's wrong with the Alps? Yeah, well, I was going to say that it's dank, dark and miserable, but you convinced me really. And if you're here or there, whatever you're watching, Pleasures, Nord can help. It connects you to servers in 111 countries.

You can use it on up to 11 devices and unlock content from around the world. Whether you're under a woollen blanket or gliding across a blanket of snow, Nord keeps you safe from trackers and hackers by hiding your details when you're connected to public Wi-Fi, built-in threat protection and even dark web alerts. This January with our link you get an additional four months free on the two-year plan and with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee there's zero risk. Check out the link in the episode description. You know how we are the representatives of the smug metropolitan elite, Mark? Oh, are we?

Fine. Thanks for telling me, but okay. Well, I think we are. Okay. We're kind of out of touch with what the common man and woman thinks. The only reason I mention this is we're recording this on Wednesday and the redactor is a gooner. So we were talking briefly about the forthcoming Arsenal-Tottenham match, which clashes with the traitors. And I sort of felt embarrassed to say that I haven't watched the traitors, but then you made me feel a whole lot better by saying, what's the traitors? There you go. So I thought I was bad for not having

watched it, but then you made me feel so much better by not even knowing what it was, therefore proving that we are both out of tune with the common man. Right. Well, my work here is done. I've made you feel better on a Wednesday morning. Who is going to win this football match that's happening? Well, obviously when this goes out, the match will already have been decided, but my guess is that it'll be Arsenal because they've been playing better than my team, sadly. Okay. Would you want to predict a score?

Three one probably. I would say, are you going to watch the game? No. Cause you don't watch the games. Cause when you do your team lose. Yes. So obviously I've been watching quite a lot recently. No.

So what happens is unless we are, if it looks as though we're with 10 minutes to play with three nil up, I might risk it. I think it's very strange that one of your favorite things is a thing that you're not able to watch. It's like, I mean, you know, you say you're a football fan, but you can't watch the game because they might lose. Well, I could say, well, I'm a Spurs fan because I've never watched any of their games. Yeah. Thing is, if you go to a match, you feel as though you can, I mean, this is ridiculous, you feel as though you can have some input into the proceedings. Whereas if you're just watching, you're just completely, you know, it's absolutely...

So the losing thing only happens if you watch it on television. Yes. If I go, that rule doesn't apply. I didn't understand that. Okay, fine. That changes the whole thing. I just thought you meant you can't ever watch them play, which seemed to be like a weird way of supporting the team. I can go to the game or I can watch it on CFAQS. That's fine. You can what?

Although CFAQS doesn't exist. I used to watch games on CFAQS. Page 302 is where the football was and then it would scroll around every 60 seconds and you could get score updates. That was the least stressful way to follow your team on CFS. Okay. The really funny thing about this is that you always make this big deal about, I'm not superstitious. I walk under ladders, like me and Jonah on the plating and all the rest of it. Yes, that's true.

Yet you were incredibly superstitious about sports. When it comes to sport, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because, well, we've discussed this many times before, but I don't know why that is, but there you go. So, um, I, yes, I wish I was more like Tim Minchin because Tim Minchin makes a big point of so he's so anti superstitious. He will, he apparently says things like when he's saying goodbye to his wife, if he's flying off somewhere, he says goodbye and she says, I hope the plane crashes. And he says, so do I. And because obviously it's the kind of thing that you know, don't say that thinking that just by saying it out loud, it might make it happen.

Yeah. So I should be more like Tim Minchin. That's my real year resolution, be more like Tim. On the show, Mark will be reviewing these films. We have reviews of Here, which is the new film from Robert Zemeckis, which reunites Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. We have Wolfman, which is the latest incarnation of the iconic Universal Monster, and A Complete Unknown with our very special guest. The director of that movie and the co-writer, James Mangold, will be talking to him. I had a conversation with him last night from Los Angeles, so you'll hear that later on. Plenty of extras for the Vanguard OC, including two films that rhyme. I'm not sure if this is going to work.

Clace Bang got murdered in Bad Sisters. Now he shoots arrows in William Tell. If she's not careful, she'll get some blisters. It's Noémie Merlon in Emmanuel. Does that work? Not really. No, I didn't think so. But well done. Our TV Movie of the Week Watchlist Notlist, one frame back, inspired by a complete unknown. Films about or featuring Bob Dylan. Plus, your questions answered best we can in questions, Schmestrians.

You can get all of that via Apple podcasts or head to extra takes.com for non-fruit related devices. A seven day free trial is still available. And if you are already a Vanguard Easter as always, we salute you. Dear Nosferatu and Dracula says Owen. Thank you, Owen, for sending this in. As per your discussion about when it's appropriate to stop saying happy New Year, there are over 16 different New Years around the world. Here is a comprehensive list for your reference. January the 1st, Gregorian New Year. 14th of January, Orthodox New Year. So year. Yeah. Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Mongolian lunar new year. This is between Jan 21st and February the 20th.

Balinese new year on the 29th of March. Persian new year, 20th or 21st of March. Thai new year, 13th to the 15th of March. Tamil new year, 14th or 15th of April. Sinhalese new year, 13th to the 14th of April. Bengali new year, 14th or 15th of April. Sinhalese New Year, 13th to the 14th of April. Bengali New Year, 14th to 15th of April. It's a very busy time. Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, September or October, varies yearly. Ethiopian New Year, on the 11th or 12th of September. Islamic New Year, varies yearly. First Muharram lunar calendar. Diwali, the Hindu New Year, October or November, Vietnamese

New Year, same as the lunar New Year, also Korean, same, same, same, and the Zulu New Year, finally, December varies based on the harvest cycle. So I'm going to have a go at that. Umkoshi Wakwesama is the Zulu New Year in December. So I figured that this more or less covers the whole year. You're never more than one or two months off a new year somewhere. I will make it my mission this year to put on a film and enjoy a couple of Japanese whiskies for everybody's new year.

And if my friends and family ask me why I'm drinking so much, I'll simply say it's always new year somewhere, as long as you don't stop saying Happy New Year every week. Up with New Year universalism and down with the Gregorian calendar. That's great because that frames it as I'm just being inclusive. I'm a New Year universalist. That's great. We're not just exclusive for January the 1st, we're celebrating New Year. So as ever, Happy New Year.

How do we celebrate the New Year? The nearest one being the Orthodox New Year. So as ever, happy New Year. Happy New Year. How do we celebrate the New Year? The nearest one being the Orthodox New Year. So how should we celebrate that? By going to the cinema and watching something. Tell us about it. Yes, and then having a Japanese whiskey. Yes, maybe take a Japanese whiskey in, in your hip flask.

What should we be going to see then, Mark? Give us something. Well, let me rephrase that question. What's out that we could see? So here, which is a new film from Robert Zemeckis, you know, the guy behind Back to the Future, Contact, Polar Express, and of course, Forrest Gump. The latter being crucial since here reunites Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. And here's a little clip of the trailer that tells you that they do want

you to know that. Dad, I couldn't meet Margaret. Nice to meet you, Margaret. From the director of Forrest Gump. You will have an adventure. Tom Hanks. Robin Wright. And what an adventure it has been.

Here. Now, the reason I play you that is because there's almost no point in playing any other clip from the film because it won't make much sense. So here's the thing, this is adapted from a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. There was first, it was a six page comic strip in 89, then it was expanded into a graphic novel in 2014. The central concept is a single location

where stories from across the ages play out. Now, apparently the comic strip is brilliant. It's apparently, it's a groundbreaking experiment with the formal properties of comics. It has been adapted in various versions before, and I only know this from researching. I haven't seen any of them. In 1991, there was a six-minute short film adaptation that was done as a senior thesis project. 2014, there was an immersive VR film based on the graphic novel for which Anna Meredith did the score. Now, we have Robert Zemeckis' all-singing, all-dancing adaptation,

co-written by Eric Roth, whose credits include Forrest Gump and more recently Killers of the Flower Moon, but also Benjamin Button. So, non-linear story, a single locked off location. You have to kind of imagine this. A single locked off shot, which we see first as a primordial swamp where there are dinosaurs and they're wiped out by an ice age. Then it's home to the indigenous people of the North East Woodlands area. Then it's the site of a house owned by William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin. So there's some stuff about kites. Then it's a suburban home, which is variously owned

at one point by a pinup and a guy who invents the lazy boy recliner chair. Then by Alan Rose Young played by Paul Bettany and Kelly Riley. And then their son Richard played by Tom Hanks and his wife to be Margaret played by Robin Wright. You heard very briefly in that clip, whose life then plays out for most of the movie. And then an African American

family who were dealing with modern day racism and it comes up to date with COVID and the pandemic. So the transition, this is all one, one locked off shot. The transitions come picture in picture. So you're looking at the same frame and then inside the frame you'll get like a square or a rectangle from another time period. And then that time period will then take over the screen. So you're moving backwards and forwards in time. There is a central sort of theme to it all, which is follow your dreams. I mean, if only Tom's character who's got these artistic ideas, but he ends up making money. If only he followed his artistic soul, perhaps things would have been rather different. Anyway, that's the thesis of the film. Now, it exists because of the marvels of technology,

packed with digital de-aging. Tom Hanks and Robin Wright de-aged to being younger characters and then all the way through to being them in their dotage. There's lots of CG trickery, so obviously that shot, so you've said windows within windows within the shot. So we can see all human life on earth through the miracle of this technological thing, except of course you can't. This might have worked as a comic strip. I haven't read the graphic novel and I haven't seen the comic strip and I haven't seen any sort of previous version of the thing. But watching it, I was reminded of that line that everyone always quotes from Jurassic Park, which is your scientists were so busy wondering

whether they could, they never stopped to think if they should. And in this case, they absolutely should not. It does not work at all. The second thing is, it's not mock-ish. It's mock. It's just the most saccharine, sentimental, fatuous, surface scratching nonsense. I mean, despite the fact that the narrative, the shuffle time addresses, you know, racism, alcoholism, broken marriages, Alzheimer's, it never gets above the level of absolute chocolate box chintz. I mean, compared to this, Forrest Gump is Apocalypse Now. I like Forrest Gump. And I know a lot of people were very down at saying, oh, it's got a very conservative mentality. I think it's a much more adventurous

film than that. But this is just so far beyond in terms of the schmaltz. The dramatic strokes are so broad, they barely fit onto the screen. Because of the expansive timeframe of the narrative, when you actually – the central story is a story about a marriage and the trouble that the marriage endures. Because they keep having to go backwards and forwards in time for no reason at all, any kind of emotional moment, they've got all the depth of a teaspoon. It's trite, it's contrived, it is toe-curlingly dull. Bill Forsythe sort of tried to do something which is not completely dissimilar with being

human and it defeated him. I remember, I've said this before, I interviewed Bill, who I'm a huge fan of, and I said, what do you think was wrong with being human in the end? Which was, again, a film about the way in which human emotion is singular throughout time. Bill thought about this. He said, I think in the end I should have just written a poem. Zemeckis is no Bill Forsyth and he's no poet. Honestly, the substance of this is so little, it would barely fill the back of a postcard anyway. So A-list cast, A-list writer, A-list director, A-list source material, A-list access to technology,

all coming together to create a E-minus drag of a film that covers pretty much the whole of human evolution and feels like that's the time that you spent watching it. It's a strong contender for worst film of the year and it's only January. Have you got a minus on your school report it would be you know see me. Okay but also that must rank as if a film is that bad and gets any minus but it has everything it also has great talent in the mean that's what i mean. That's what I mean. That must make it, I'm so disappointed. You've let yourself down, you've let the studio down. That's right. Just while we didn't have Tom on for this film.

I mean, honestly, and you know how much I love Tom Hanks. You know what I mean? I love Robert Zemeckis and I love Robin Wright. And, you know, but just, no, it's, it's, honestly, I promise you, if you started to watch it, you'd give up after 10 minutes. We have the box office top 10 here, but we're going to start at umpty 733. If that's okay. We have an email from Phil Goldfinch, high school recycling champion.

Dear K3 Mode and May Zero. Australian colonial commoner living in Minnesota. All of those things work on the page, but obviously not when spoken out loud. Medium term list, the multiple emergency mailer once read by S. Faunjeev to mark on your last iteration, and Vanguard Easter, again. As Mark has referenced to seven, placing a number in the movie's title, I felt compelled to correspond. The key point many of these cleaver marketers are trying to do is to aim to replace a letter that looks like the number. This is called munging. Originally a way to create stronger passwords by replacing letters that look like numbers. So the seven in seven replaces a V,

which could be a seven rotated. The number four is commonly used as the letter A as seen in Phantom of the Fort. Other movies to have munged, the 13 ghosts, Simone with a one and an O, Simone with a one and an O, Layer Cake, El Foyer, CAC 3, and M3 Gun. Anyway, there are movies where the number from the movie's title is moved around. Examples, Scree Form for Scream 4, Tac 3N for Taken 3, Expend 4-dables, and yes, Fant 4-Stick is technically Fantastic Four, Fant for tastic, Fant for stick is technically fantastic for the first of its incarnation, but coincidentally the fourth fantastic for cinematic movie. Now the film soulmate with M8 at the end is different as I believe that might just be a homophone. Okay. Thank you for pointing out the difference. Last week, Mark tried to remember the attempted sequel to S7 was to be spelt EIG 8T.

After a little digging, I found that it actually was EI8HT where the eight replaces the G. Okay. I mean, it doesn't make any difference to the way you're going to say it. Anyway, up with the good stuff and down with the bad anyway. So munging is what it is what we're talking about. Well, yes. Can I just say if anyone's thinking of stop, just stop doing it. Just stop. Because it's also not very flexible. Also for podcast purposes and sound broadcasters everywhere, it just is a nightmare as I think we've just proven. Number 121919, Maria. There's an email here from Rosa Blue Handmade. This is via our YouTube channel. 5 million views a month and counting. Thank you very much for watching. Rosa Blue Handmade says, this film is no more

lump and fare than the other were ethereal masterpieces. I imagine Rosa Blue Handmade says, this film is no more lump and fare than the other were ethereal masterpieces. I imagine Rosa Blue Handmade is talking about the films of Pablo Lorraine. Anyway, Lorraine, yeah. Maria was tender, engaging and moving in equal parts. If you were prepared to meet it halfway across its lyrical imagined landscape, shorter version most Brits will like this less. Yes, I disagree completely. I thought it was lump and boring. Conclave is a 10. Which we all love. I watched it again actually, in the second time round, it's every bit as

exciting. Gladiator 2 at 9. Sharks in the Colosseum. Space monkeys. That's a number. 11 in America. Paddington in Peru is not in the American chart, but it's number 8 in our chart. Yeah. Weakest of the Paddington movies, I've said this every week, weakest of the Paddington movies, but it's still a pretty high bar. And it needs more Sanjeev. So when we have the next Paddington movie, can it be Paddington and Sanjeev go somewhere?

Yes. I think that would be a very good idea. Better Man is at number 7. It's number 12 in America. Dear M&S or S&M, depending on your sandwich choice, says Adam Stevens, actor, voiceover artist. Okay. Love the show, Steve. However, I felt I had to pull Mark up on the fact that he has repeatedly said that Robbie Williams in the film Better Man is played by a CGI monkey. Although this is technically true, it is not entirely accurate. The work of Robbie Williams movement was reproduced with motion capture by the actor John O. Davis, who performed the role brilliantly and has earned many plaudits for his work. Carry on with your excellent work. Happy New Year every week forever and hello to Jason.

Yes. No, absolutely credit where it's due. The central point still, but yes, thank you for pointing that out. Number six is a real pain. Lynn Campbell says, I saw a real pain just before listening to your podcast interview and reviews of the film. I really appreciated hearing more about the film as I hadn't heard anything about it until the morning of the day I watched it. I woke up, saw a Friends magazine review referenced on social media, read that and went out immediately to the next showing. My day off turned out really well as I enjoyed the film immensely. Kieran Culkin's Benji was a real pain and the performance

was a revelation. I left the cinema wanting to give his character a hug as he sat alone yet surrounded in the crowded airport lounge." Which is both the beginning and the end of the film. It is. The film was a brave move in today's political environment and a total triumph of humanity and understanding in storytelling. The beauty and complex history of Poland was well showcased and there were genuine laughs to be had as well as genuinely difficult questions that are broached. An unexpected and much

enjoyed film. Loved its underrated beauty, warmth and weight." Thank you, Lyn. An unexpected film is absolutely right. A real pain at number six. Yeah. I mean, I liked it very much. There's been quite a lot of discussion about Kieran Culkin in the supporting actor category. And somebody said, well, I'm, you know, that's just ridiculous, because he's not the supporting. But of course, you know, this is just, this is one of the things about the way awards ceremonies work is that you put somebody forward for lead and somebody

forward for supporting and quite often, the supporting actor category is won by somebody who is demonstrably a lead, but has been categorized as supporting actor. I think you could argue that he is the lead and there is another supporting actor, but you know, award Schmold. Will Barron Well, exactly. And as you have mentioned many times, I want to me more one for the substance. And she was very moved and she said she hadn't won anything ever. It was in the category best comedy or musical.

Now, I, as you know, have only watched the first two thirds. So unless it gets hilarious and they sing songs in the final 20 minutes. I'm thinking that's the most ridiculous category ever. The weird thing is there is a kind of truth in what you've just said, sort of, you know, blood splattered music. The end sequence reminded me of the end of Brain Dead, the Peter Jackson movie, which was famous for a long time for having used more on-set blood than any film up until that point. TJ Jaeger from nearby Trinidad, California. Jassy Eisenberg famously does not have a television, does not go to theatres and watches movies on his phone. So yes, indeed, he had not previously seen Kieran acting and did not know him. This is a reference to the interview last week. I have

amused my Lemington Spa residing sun with your recommendations and of course, Simon's laughter lift. Oh right. From a many years fan that lives remotely enough not to even have a movie theater. Anyway, yes. So Jesse Eisenberg, incredibly it does appear. Cast Kieran Culkin on the advice of his sister and that's it. See previous week's show for details. Baby Girl is at number five. Yes. Well, we were talking about it last week. I said one of the things about it is it bothers me that people snicker at anything like this

anyway. And I did throw forward to the fact that this week we have a reimagining of Immanuel, which was kind of like the classic female sexual quest story. I thought that although Baby Girl doesn't entirely work, it was at least a serious attempt to address the issue. Do we have an email? We do. Lily says, hello to my favourite podcast hosts. Long time list, the first time correspondent. This autumn winter, I've watched The Substance, Baby Girl, Nightpitch and The Last Showgirl, and I've had the time of my life. I think we might be experiencing a cinema revolution where middle-aged women's stories are being told in a way that I've never quite seen before." It's quite a long email, but

The Substance is this one. "'As a woman in her twenties, I always had this looming sense that I had a time limit on putting art out into the world. I felt that people would only be interested in what I had to say if I was young. And as I became a middle-aged woman, I would become invisible in every sense of the word. This cinema season of what I'm calling the autumn of unhinged middle-aged women, and I mean unhinged in a positive, raw, free, and wild kind of way, has been such a privilege to witness and I'm convinced there is a cohort of aspiring female filmmakers who will watch the substance and grow up and make some of the best body horrors

we've ever seen. Writers and directors like Coralie Farage and Helena Rain have made me feel excited to get older and to make art that gets better, freakier and more challenging. I've loved your reviews of these films mentioned and here's to middle-aged women letting their freak flag fly. Great. That is a brilliant email and I am really, really glad that you sent it because I agree with all the points that you made. I do think that some of the sniffiness that greeted Baby Girl was just because we have a cultural issue with any film which deals with the idea of the complexity of sexuality and the complexity of power relations and specifically S&M and the way in which, you know,

who is authoring any situation. But what a great email and how brilliant that that's the world that you find yourself in at the moment with everything else that's going on across the Atlantic. That's terrific. Thank you so much for that email. There's lots in this email that's interesting, but she says, when I speak to older women about what life is like for them, they describe a simultaneous freedom and fear in their invisibility. Suddenly they're relieved from the burden of youth, which is so deeply intertwined with perceptions of beauty. And all these films have a similar theme of women responding to invisibility. And so on. So anyway, thank you very much. We had movie night here at Shea Kerr Mode on Saturday night and we watched as a double

bill, Chuck Chuck Baby and Night Bitch and it was fabulous. You should sell tickets to that. Number four is We Live in Time. Which I think is an interesting film. I mean, certainly if you're talking about a time shifted narrative and you compare this to the nonsense of the Robert Zemeckis film. This is absolutely Citizen Kane. Number three here and in America, Sonic the Hedgehog 3. So all the threes lined up there with Sonic.

I mean, this is why Jim Carrey came back. As he said, I'll only come back if there's a script that's really of a story that really, really needs to be told and people are really going to get something out. There we go. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at number three. Number two is Nosferatu Leighton says, Dear Clarence and OddBuddy, can I please ask a favor? My wife, daughter and I have each created a bingo card of things to achieve during 2025. Bin goals, I'm calling them. The first person to complete their bingo card gets a prize yet to be determined ranging from my daughter's preference of 200 pounds to my own preference of a sense of wellbeing. Classic parenting there, Leighton.

One of my challenges is to have an email read out on your podcast. So even if you've read this far, that's enough. But if it needs to be movie related, I went to see Nosferatu and agreed with the correspondence that the acting was a bit theatrical. So my review would be titled, Hammy House of Horrors. Thank you very much for the consideration. Leighton, you can cross something off on your bingo card and you're one step closer to a sense of wellbeing. Anyway, the number one film is, unless you wanted to add something to Nosferatu. I just wanted to say that the person who made the Nosferatu Nos joke was apparently on social media on the platform that neither of us are on anymore,

mentioning that we mentioned the Nosferatu-Feratu-Nos gag. Because you said that you'd got it from somewhere. That's right. And they were also on Blue Sky and I found it and I've reposted that. Oh, fantastic. Well done. Brilliant. And the number one movie here and in America is Mufasa the Lion King. Okay. I mean, I like Barry Jenkins very much. I think that there are certain things that are interesting about Mufasa the Lion King, but I think in the end it is a disappointment because certainly in comparison with the original Lion King, I think that what he did was he

made, he put as much moonlight and the stuff that we like in there. I still think it feels a little soulless and a little empty, but hey. On the way, Wolfman and a complete unknown, and I'll be talking to James Mangold after this. This is an advertisement from Better Help Therapy Online. Yes, we've all had our stocking fillers and I bet there are a few diaries knocking about maybe on your desk there and a year, a year is kind of like 365 blank pages just waiting to be filled and just maybe you're ready for a plot twist or there's a part of your story you've been wanting to revise. Well therapy can be a part of making resolutions that don't just fade away by February.

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Need to hire. You need Indeed. Indeed. What's up, Mark? All's well. How about you? Well, I've been thinking about that cushion that we gave away at our live show. Yeah. That and the pencil case. Imagine if we had a that cushion that we gave away at our live show. Yeah.

That and the pencil case. Imagine if we had a load more that we needed to shift. Imagine the riches. Every bottom or pencil case in the country would be graced in some way by our presence. Well, when you put it like that, we should have used Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide from people selling compasses to comfy cushions. And it covers all your sales channels, from a shop front ready POS system to its all-in-one e-commerce platform. It gets you selling across social media marketplaces.

Oh, and it's full of the industry-leading tools ready to ignite your growth. Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without learning new skills in design or coding. And thanks to award-winning help Shopify is ready to support your success every step of the way. Sign up for a £1 per month trial period at shopify.co.uk slash curmode. So now this week's guest is James Mangold. You know him, Copland, Wolverine, Logan, Lamone 66, aka Ford versus Ferrari. The last Indiana Jones film. What did you call it? Indiana Jones and the More Toby Jones. That one. And of course, Walk the Line. To be discussed next, because he's also the director of, it's not a biopic, but it's

the movie about the first few years of Bob Dylan's professional career. The movie is a complete unknown. It stars Timothy Chalamet. You'll hear my chat with James Mangold after this clip from the movie. Hey, Pete. How you doing? Good. Great to see you. How you doing? chat with James Mangold after this clip from the movie. Mr. Seeger. Oh, he's peeped. Oh. It's terrible, isn't it? Putting the lien on you there? Trying to get you to fling it. A little bit.

All right, well, don't hold it against them. For a good cause. Want to use this beauty? They always keep it handy, don't they? It's like a gunfighter. Always keeping it close. And that is a clip from A Complete Unknown. I'm delighted to say that its director and co-writer James Mangold joins us. James, hello and thank you for joining us. My pleasure, Simon. It's nice to be with you today.

Where are you speaking to us from? I'm speaking from my office here in Century City, California, in the heart of Los Angeles, California, amid, of course, the catastrophic fires that have just taken place over the last week. I would be with you in the UK right now if at all had gone more by clockwork, but my own home as well as many, of course, many others were threatened and many were destroyed.

Thousands by what's occurred. I myself was very lucky. I'm merely existing in a house currently without power or gas, heat, but my home is still there and my wife and my children are all fine. Pete Okay. That's very good to hear. Thank you for just updating us on this. And as you said, you were going to be over here, but thank you for your time. This particular part of the Bob Dylan story begins with the Elijah Wald book in 2015. Dylan Goes Electric with that splendid subtitle, Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the night that split the 60s,

which kind of tells you a lot about the territory here. When does this become a James Mangold project? Right then. I was mid-2019. I was given the book and an early pass on the screenplay by Jay Cox. And the moment before I'd even read the script, I was like, I want to do this. I was already writing it.

I was on my way to the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado with Lamont 66. And I started writing it at the high altitude, oxygen deprived altitude of Telluride, Colorado, literally during that festival, rewriting and writing notes on the script. And by the time I got to the Toronto Film Festival, which is only about 10 days later, I was meeting with Timmy and we were forming an alliance to make the picture. That's now almost six years ago, but the, um, um, so that's how long it's been percolating in my life.

So why did you go so quickly to, to Timothy Chalamet? Well I think the answer is in the movie. That is, that is correct. But before you, before you shot anything, you clearly saw something and heard something. I mean, since then, you know, we've seen him in one person, we know we can sing and so on, but you knew something about Timothee Chalamet that made you go straight there. Well, Timmy is one of the most gifted actors of his generation. So there's that, put that over here. Then he's also the right age, you know, he is, he's scrawny, brilliant, quick-minded, gifted musically, all things that Bob was at that time. And one of the things that I'm most conscious of,

particularly when making biopics like this one, is we're making a movie about Bob Dylan between the ages of 19 and 24. So I really need, although our image of Bob Dylan, our kind of mental cultural image of Bob Dylan is not that young, I needed a way to kind of shock the audience into understanding that this young volcanic talent who wrote at least two dozen of the most important songs of the 20th century did all that before he crossed the threshold of his 24th birthday.

And I needed someone young and brilliant and quick-minded who, when the camera looked in their eyes, we not only felt how they felt about what was in front of them in the scene, but we also saw this clockwork, the gears spinning behind the eyes, because I personally feel like Dylan was living in two universes at this time.

One was the present with the people around him, and one was also riding this kind of volcanic talent he had inside him. He had a kind of internal tiger by the tail and these songs were coming out of him and required tending, even if that world only existed in his mind. And that was something I felt instinctually that Timmy could capture. But even though Bob Dylan was very young, he was influenced by much older singers, folk and blues singers.

So he needed to, he needed to be young and very old and his voice needed to be young and old at the same time. That's a very particular skill that you're after. Yes, it is. I mean, I can't say, you know, being a movie director is little like being an obsessive gambler. You, you, you have hunches and you go with them. And you know, I somehow felt that Timmy was up for this. And I couldn't articulate it more like it's a kind

of scientific fact. I didn't know. It's more like I had a divining rod and I sensed there was water here, but I don't really have a way I can explain my instincts any better than any other artist. What was it like sharing the script with Bob Dylan? Well, anxiety-ridden because at first when I did my first pass, I went way more into the personal life than his management team had anticipated. and they all became quite nervous.

And that's when COVID hit in 2020. And because Bob had a tour canceled, he asked to read the script they were all, you know, a little worried about. And he liked it. And that created a new phase on the writing process in which I started sitting down with Bob himself and talking about the script and talking about that time and really interrogating him about

all things philosophical, granular detail, anything I could get from him and of course his own emotional experiences in that period and trying to get those as right as I could for the film. Did that script that Bob Dylan liked include the line from Joan Baez played extraordinarily by Monica Barbaro when she says something like, you're a bit of an asshole? Did Bob approve that line? Yes. Because he doesn't, he comes out of it as a genius, obviously, but he's not nice. He's not likable and Joan Baez is right.

I think when you're having to manage a talent like he managed at the same time as living in the world, it's hard not to be a bit of an asshole. The reality is it's like you discovered a gold mine outside of town and everyone in town wants to know where the gold mine is and you can't tell them because it's like you discovered a gold mine outside of town and everyone in town wants to know where the gold mine is and you can't tell them because it's in your mind and your heart but the there's a kind of coveting it is impossible for anyone to exhibit the kind of talent Bob did in those years and not experience how almost every relationship around you suddenly becomes at least partially transactional. In a sense, the only relationship that wasn't, I'd suggest, was Suze Rotolo, played by Al

Fanning named Sylvie in our movie. But almost all the other relationships, even as lovely as Pete Seeger was, he needed Bob to hold up the center post of his circus tent of folk music. And had become, the folk movement had become dependent upon him. So that's a transactional need. That's not about what's best for Bob. That's about what's best for us.

And that that pressure, I think, also contributed to some of what we might perceive as arrogance because it's not easy to have a talent like that and navigate the world. It's not easy to feel that everyone wants something from you and or wants to understand why you in the same way Salieri wondered about Mozart, you know. There we go. See, I wanted to throw a couple of movies back at you, which are the two reasons, one of the two of the reasons why I love the film.

One is Amadeus, which is my favorite movie of all time. And the other is Basler, Man's Elvis. So the Amadeus factor, I think, is that because the film doesn't explain the genius, it doesn't explain where all these melodies came from, you see the effects as he interacts with other people. And Bazelon's Elvis. Well, when you see Austin Butler in that pink suit for the first time with what appears

to be an electric current going through his body, you go, okay, yes, now I finally see what people saw. And I think it's my reaction to those two movies which explain why I like your movie so much. But the Amadeus reference you brought up, had you been thinking about that? Absolutely. It was what I said in that first week I was on the movie to the studio, to Timmy, to everyone, and even to Bob Dylan about how I wanted to structure the movie. I didn't feel there was some Freudian trauma in his childhood that he would suddenly cough

up in the third act and explain his arrogance or his peculiarities or foibles. I thought that his talent itself was the explanation that his his own philosophical attitude, he not busy being born is busy dying. The fact that he was suffocating in some way in Minnesota and rebirthed himself in New York with a new name and an identity and then from this blank slate came this fountain of music is itself a he it's like as I said he discovered a kind of gold mine and and there was no secret there was no damage I think the only thing that he might have been operating with was a unique contradiction that we in the public have a hard time accepting. That is, we assume that anyone who has the skill, talent

and inspiration to be a great artist also has the skill and talent to be a great celebrity. And they are not the same. They are not the same skill set and they don't come hand in hand. There are people who are born to make art, who may not be born to operate under the kind of media spotlight

or kind of intense sense of scrutiny or being considered adored, adulated or even turned into a profit by a general public, that in itself is a whole nother minefield that I don't think personally, my own theory is that Bob was as equipped to navigate as he was the relationship between himself, his typewriter and his guitar, where I think he was most happy and comfortable. And I think that's true of Mozart, you know, that his primary

relationship was with his piano. Yeah. I love, and I do love that connection. You must be the only director in history who to have cast two Johnny Cash's, Wacken Phoenix and Walk the Line, which was fantastic of course, and now Boyd Holbrook. Is this like another bit of Johnny Cash that you're just sort of wanting to add in to the story? Because people will come away, I think, we'd like a Pete Seeger film, we'd like a Joan Baez film, but we've got more Johnny Cash going on here. He's fantastic. Well, it really came from reality. Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan were profound pen pals

through this entire period that the movie chronicles and their letters still exist. I got them from Bob's management team. And the words that Johnny Cash speaks to Bob in those letters are literally taken from those letters. And that cash serves such a unique purpose because there's so much pressure on Dylan from the folk side. And cash, in a way, is the kind of one person who is saying, who is speaking to Bob as a

peer, he wants nothing from Bob, he has nothing transactionally to gain from Bob. He's just in Kirk, he's the only one who is a singer songwriter in the same realm of brilliance as Dylan, and therefore approaches him as an equal and appear without an agenda of understanding where it comes from or how did you do that. None of that is a part of their relationship. It's just a kind of a co-support system of two people under a similar spotlight. And I thought that was a really important relationship. Also, I thought it highlighted some of the hypocrisies of the folk music in that they welcomed Johnny Cash on the stage at Newport and he came with

drums, bass and electric guitar and no one complained. But when their own boy, Bob Dylan, started to get tempted by the same tools, they were threatened. Of course, the truth is he was never just a folk singer, as he's made very clear from a very early conversation that he has with Pete Seeger, by the way, in passing, because we haven't got time to talk about Ed Norton. Fantastic. He's incredible in the movie. He is.

But my final question is a very British question. I don't know if they know the person who shouted out Judas, which is of course at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, which you obviously transferred to at Newport Folk Festival. But are you expecting an email from someone saying, that was me shouting out Judas and I was in Manchester, not Newport? I have no idea, but they'll probably just be upset that I moved it to Rhode Island. But the reality is that we were more trying to capture that sense of outrage. And the use of... The reason I wanted it in there is the use of a biblical term to describe his betrayal.

I think in some way encapsulates the way the crowd felt so... His fans felt so betrayed on a level that was beyond just musical. It extended into the existential. James Mangold, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much and safe travels to France. Thank you so much. Take care, bye bye.

James Mangold speaking just a couple of days ago. And as he said, he would have been in this country if it hadn't been for the fires, but I think he was on his way to launch the movie in France anyway. It's been in the pipe work for six years, finally comes to our screens, a complete unknown. I know what you think.

In fact, I would say while I was watching it, there were a number of points where I thought, I know what Mark's gonna think. So anyway, let's find out what you do think. Okay, well, firstly, I don't know that you do know what I think. So let me say two things. Firstly, that was a great interview with James Mangold, not least because he's a very good

filmmaker. I'm a fan of his work right back to the days of Heavy and Copland. Of course, a fan of biopics, I think Walk the Line was an absolutely exemplary offering. This, as you said, the screenplay by Mangold and Jay Cox is inspired by the book Dylan Goes Electric. In that interview, Mangold said a couple of really interesting things. Perhaps the most interesting thing was the thing about the transactional nature of Bob Dylan's relationships at this time. Specifically, his relationship with the folk scene and how the scene that had supported him wanted something from him and he wanted something else.

Mangold makes an interesting point about in the end we get what we want because they didn't get what they want. He described in that interview, dying in Minnesota, rebirthed himself in New York. I was reminded of that thing in the recent Roger Moore documentary about Roger Moore saying that the greatest character he ever created was the character of Roger Moore. So part of this is about the creation of a character. You mentioned very astutely Amadeus, which I think is something that will be in people's minds because what's the line in Amadeus? I'm a vulgar man, but my music is not. It's kind of why this vessel?

And that's- Which is what offends Salieri so much because he wants to be close to God and yet God appears to bless this vulgar man. Yeah, exactly. And I think you're quite right. The film doesn't explain the genius, the arrogance, the foibles. What it does is it describes the effect that they have on those around him. Again, I thought it was very astute when you brought up the casting of Austin Butler because that moment you refer to when Butler is on stage, and as you quite rightly say, it's like there's electricity passing through him, and you go, okay, fine, I'm in. I'm in. I buy that. There is something very smart and I have to say very intuitive on Mangold's part about the casting of

Timothee Chalamet in that central role because he talks about that being six years ago that he had he knew that that was what he wanted to do and it is absolutely true that what Chalamet gets in his performance is the arrogance, the narcissism, the studied cool. His version of Dylan is, as Joan Baez says to him and as you quoted in that interview, a bit of an asshole. I think he does get that. Of course, like in Walk the Line, there's the thing about doing your own performances, which is remarkable. Hats off to him. it's a very, very good Dylan impression. I confess that at times, it felt like an impression, but for most of the time,

I thought it felt like an embodiment of what this story needs, which is somebody who is touched by greatness, but whose personal relationships are, is not likable,'s not likeable. It's not likeable. It was, it's just interesting to have a, you know, to have that element. And of course, Bob Dylan, you know, read the script and approved it.

So at the moment, Timothee Chalamet is second favorite to win best actor after Adrian Brody. And I think he's ahead of Ralph Fiennes in the bookie stuff. Elle Fanning, I think, makes the most of the role of the character who is a renamed, fictionalized version of Suz Ritola, who apparently, you know, I think, as I understand, because I saw it on the stage with Mangold, Dylan didn't want that name in the film, and that's perfectly fine. And Mangold was then talking about it being her story, but it isn't really her story. I mean, it is really the Dylan story. Monica Barbaro is, I think brilliant as Joan Baez.

Despite the fact that her singing voice sounds absolutely nothing like Joan Baez, her performance is completely on the money. And I mean, I met Joan Baez once and was almost, was barely able to speak because of course to speak because, of course, to me, she's – well, I mean, she did the songs for Silent Running. But I think it's a performance that you completely invest in and completely believe in. Ed Norton, Crispin Uptight as C. Scoop McNary making the most of essentially non-speaking

role as Guthrie. So I think all those things are, they're on the money. I have some issues and here's what they are. Firstly, the whole, the period that we're talking about has been addressed, well actually Dylan has been addressed in many different ways. There is of course, I mean everybody who's a Dylan fan and a Dylan fan, and I'm not a big Dylan fan, so correct me if I get details wrong. The D.A. Pennebaker doc, Don't Look Back, which comes out in 67, but it's the 65 tour,

is I think pretty much the definitive document of Dylan at that period. It's weird that when Mangold said he might have been a brilliant musician, but he wasn't a great celebrity. Because actually in Don't Look Back, I mean, he kind of runs circles around the press. He's a bit like the Beatles in Hard Day's Night. I mean, he is funny, and he knows he's funny. The other film, which of course is at the background, and I'm not the first person to mention this, but there is Todd Haynes's film, I'm Not There, which is a film about Dylan that isn't about Dylan. We reviewed this when it first came out. That is a film in which the cultural figure of Bob Dylan is played by a number of actors, ranging from an 11-year-old African

American boy called Woody, played by Marcus Cole Franklin, to a folk singer called Jude Quinn, played by Cate Blanchett, and then Richard Gere as this kind of embodiment of Billy the Kid, and of course, Dylan co-starred in Pat Garren, Billy the Kid, for which he wrote Knockin' on Heaven's Door. And what Todd Haynes' film does is take this kind of kaleidoscopic approach to what it says at the beginning,

inspired by the many lives of Bob Dylan. And that's the only mention you get of Dylan, then there's a bit of concert footage at the end. Now, I think that pop biopics are, they're always a bit of a, it's a bit of a cleft stick, you know, there's always the chubby-hum moments, but you know, I love the Buddy Holly story, I like Great Balls of Fire, I love Slade in Flame. My own feeling is that the more fictional they become, the more interesting they become. I can't help but think that I was more interested, more intrigued by what Todd Haynes was doing.

Todd Haynes started out by doing Superstar, the Karen Carpenter story, as told by animated Barbie dolls, and then also did Velvet Goldmine, which is a much derided film, but I think is a really interesting film about glam rock, although I seem to be singly alone in that. To me, I think that approach is more interesting than simply telling the story,

which is fairly well rehearsed, of how Dylan, in inverted commas, went electric, and how that annoyed or didn't annoy, because obviously there are different accounts of this, the crowd at Newport. And the problem for me, there's a lot of stuff in this that I didn't, I mean, I said I'm not a Dylan devotee, you are, I didn't know about the Johnny Cash letters. Did you know about them?

No, and it was, and I also didn't realize that the dialogue that they have between each other comes from the letters that they wrote to each other. But it was interesting points that James Mangold was making, which was the fact that Cash was electric. He was on stage doing the electric stuff and everyone was cool with it. Yeah. But so, okay. So in that case, there are two problems. And I'm sorry, this may be just me, but I want to know from your point of view, how you feel about this. So the first thing, if you're going to do this, we all know that Pete Seeger didn't go and get an axe to cut Dylan off. That's not what happened. What happened was, I mean,

again, the history around this is there are differing reports. I mean, there are different reports about who was booing in the crowd and whether the crowd were as hostile as everyone thinks they were. But what Seeger said was that the sound was very distorted and what he wanted was for the sound to be turned down because he thought that Dylan's voice was distorted. He said later on, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable. He didn't go and get an axe and then have to be stopped. Okay, fine, it's a bit of dramatic license, but it's kind of well-known that that's the case. And the other thing, and you raise this yourself, I, even as somebody who isn't a Dylan fan, think that having somebody shout Judas at the Newport Folk Festival is a bit like doing a documentary about JFK in which he gets shot in Birmingham.

The Judas thing is a really, really big deal. There are not one but two BBC documentaries about it, one of which they track down the person that they think was the person that shouted Judas. At last looking, there are two, and there's Keith Butler and John Caldwell, both of whom had at some point claimed to be the person who shouted Judas. But the thing is, it happened at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and it's like one of the most iconic moments in the history of rock music. And I know it's a dramatic conceit, but that really bugged me. Did it bug you? No, because it was a dramatic conceit.

Okay, fine. Because I think it's well known. I mean, there's very little reference to the British music, which apart from the fact that the Kinks are on the radio at one stage. So I think it's just the framing of the film that he just can't go there. He's not going to take everything and go to Manchester, but he wanted that Judas betrayal moment. I liked it for all the reasons that I said the fact that Chalamet does do a good Dylan, that Ed Norton is wonderful as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbera, I thought does sound like Joan Baez, but when she sings, but I was smiling all

the way through and from, so this is a little bit weird, but when Child 3 was very young, I did Bath Time, okay, that was one of the things that I did. And we had a Bath Time tape or a CD, whatever that we put on. Four of the songs were from Pete Seeger. It was Little Boxes, Michael Rowe the Boat Ashore, Wimowe, and This Land Is Your Land. Apart from a little bit of Guthrie, that's the first live music when Ed Norton as Pete Seeger is singing on the steps of the courthouse. He sings a bit of This Land Is Your Land. I was just smiling all the way through. house. He sings a bit of this Land is Your Land and I was just smiling all the way through. So I just, you know, I thought, okay, no, I am in. I felt like it was a bit, that was the Elvis reference really, that I thought, okay, when he stands up, it's an earlier Newport Festival, and he sings, the times there are changing, and the audience kind of know it and understand it

straight away. I thought, okay, that's what it must have been like. And the crowd hearing Masters of War for the first time, which is probably framed against the Cuban missile crisis. I listened to Free Will and Bob Dylan on the train at the weekend. I don't think I'd ever sat down and listened to the whole thing all the way through. They are just incredible songs. I'm not sure that you did know what I think about it. I don't know whether what I've said is what you thought I was going to say. In the end, I found myself detached from it and I didn't find that it got me in the fields.

Obviously, in the case of the Buddy Holly story, which is just complete, I mean, fictionalized, there's a whole bunch of things. There's a whole guitarist who's not there because he has a rights issue. But that music speaks to me. And I thought, I kind of, I sort of admired, I admired a complete unknown, although I thought at times it should be called a complete known, because surely this is a well rehearsed story. Because I'm me, the Judas thing bugged me, because I'm me, the axe thing bugged me. And I don't know that it will sit with me in the way that my favourite pop biopics do. I would absolutely rather watch the Todd Haynes again. But that is not to say that it's not a fine film made for it. And you're the Dylan fan. And in the end, it's more important

what you think about this than what i think about it because i it has Guthrie in bed, Pete Seeger visiting and Bob Dylan framed in the doorway. It was like past, present and future. And I thought, okay, that's- I still think Kate Glanshot has been the best Dylan Peter. So our email is correspondence at cobinomeo.com. Let us know what you think about a complete unknown. More of that next week. Let's lighten the load, Mark. Do you fancy a little trip to the laughter lift? What do you think? I think so. Okay, play the music. I mean, I'm fine. I'm smiling again because I'm just looking at this class material. Mark, did you get anything nice for Christmas? This feels like a little bit of a...

Are we still doing Christmas jokes. Yeah. Because I got a lamp that always says please and thank you. It's a polite bit of a kerfuffle over the break. As you know, cousin Cecil and his wife, Deidre were staying at a house over the festive period. They had a huge row. It was awful. Cecil phoned from the pub and asked if Deidre wanted him to pick up fish and chips on the way home. I never should have let you name the twins, she screamed. That happens every year. Barely a titter.

I am, as you know, trying to lose a few excess Christmas pounds at the moment. Actually, I'm not really. The Telegraph called me strikingly trim in merino wool sweater and jeans. Anyway, but I won't be following the example of that man in Athens who tried to lose weight by eating only cheese. It didn't work. He just got fatter and fatter. Hey, Mark, please entice me to hang around for a little bit longer for another movie review. There's a wolf man just around the corner. just round the movies. And we are not film critics. We're just two movie nerds who've been doing this for the last eight years. I don't take our word for it. Here's some recent reviews on Apple podcast.

A charming couple with bad movie taste. I mean, their taste in movies is putrid. Your taste in movies is putrid. But hey, if you like listening to that sort of thing. Right. OK, ignore that one. Another great one we recently got was I absolutely love this podcast. There's nothing like the raw feeling after watching a movie. And Dave and Kathy perfectly capture that. Great reviews, great fun, and you just love listening to nice people chat about movies. Yes, I swear we are nice people. And if you don't

believe them either, well, maybe you'll believe the Independent Podcast Awards who named us the best film and TV podcast of 2024. So that's us. We are the Cinemile. You'll find us wherever there are podcasts. In the summer of 2003, two half-starved young men emerged from the woods in my small Canadian town telling an incredible story. They'd been raised in an extremely remote cabin in the wilderness, and this was their first ever contact with society. So the community took them in, with everyone marveling at the so-called Bush Boys. But there was a problem.

Not a word they said was true. From Campside Media and Sony Music, Chameleon, Season 3, Wild Boys. Available wherever you listen. Mark says there's a wolf man around the corner, which sounds like a fairly scary prospect, but anyway, we've walked around that corner together and here we go with Wolfman. Yes, the new incarnation of the iconic Universal Monster. The project was first announced a decade ago and as part of the Inverticom's Dark Universe, which then fell flat on its face when they made The Mummy, which if you remember when we reviewed it, I said should

have been just called Tom Cruise movie. It wasn't the thing. Anyway, so this is produced by the ubiquitous Jason Blum, directed by Lee Warnel. So it saw an insidious fame. Blum and Warnel had some success in their reboot of The Invisible Man. Then they ended up taking over the reboot of Wolfman. At various points, Ryan Gosling, Derek Zinfrans were attached, but then it didn't happen. So now, Chris Ravitz Blake is a family man who, as a boy, heard weird sounds in the woods near his rural home and whose dad disappeared into those woods, missing, presumed dead. Now his father's estate is finally being passed on. He's inherited his childhood home on a whim. Well, he tells his wife and daughter,

played by Julia Garner, brilliant, Amethyl de Firth, that it will do them all some good to go and stay in the house, the rural house where as a kid he heard scary noises in the woods from which his father disappeared, which has been empty for umpteen years. And, you know. Yeah, good idea. That's what they do. They pack a truck, they head off into the outback, stopping en route to get directions from the locals. But then, as they're driving there, something or someone steps out into the road. There's an accident, injuries are incurred. The next thing, they're holed up in this terrifying old house in the middle of nowhere with at first no electricity, no phones, just a CB radio, and no idea of why nice passive dad has suddenly started to develop wolfy teeth. His hair is falling out and he's not talking. He's making strange growly noises. Here's a clip. He's not himself and he can't talk. He doesn't seem to know he's sick but if someone can hear what I'm saying please help.

Hello? Hello? He's not himself, he can't talk and the film is called Wolfman. So look, on paper, there is an interesting idea here, which is, you know, let's do it as a sort of metamorphosis style update in the same way that, you know, when David Cronenberg did the fly, it was, okay, let's have Jeff Goldblum's body falling apart and him turning into a fly. And apparently the director screened Michael Haneke's Amor as a tonal touchstone at the beginning

because that idea about his playing out in a fixed location and it's a life and death drama and it's intimate rather than spacious. Also great cast, I mean, Julia Garner was brilliant in The Assistant, was absolutely brilliant in Ozark and is fantastic. Also, great composer, Benjamin Walfish, who produces a properly unsettling growly score. Also, some differently scrungy transformation effects. Although of course, if you're my age, you go, well, yes, it's not like

Rick Baker on American Werewolf in London or Rob Bottini took over from Rick Baker on The Howling. There is actually this one shot that is very, very specifically American Werewolf. So lots of promise. The thing is, I think lots of promise, but sadly little bites. I mean, the whole thing plays out in a very compressed timeframe. Unlike the fly, the fly plays out over like a long period. And so Jeff Goldblum's disintegration from man to fly happens really gradually. In this case, it's like one minute,

everyone is a townie, and the next minute, they're all just dealing with wolf manny stuff, and they kind of get used to it much too fast. And whereas in The Fly, you had Gina Davis being genuinely aghast at what was happening to her boyfriend, and this has a mum and daughter showing comparatively little shock when their nearest and dearest starts turning into a wolf. when their nearest and dearest starts turning into a wolf. I mean, watching it, I, do you remember when we were at Radio One and Jack Nicholson starred in Wolf,

you know, the Mike Nichols film? And the biggest problem with that film was it was sort of trying to, it was a slightly serious take on the wolf trying to, we never was, oh yeah, well, you know, Jack Nicholson, he's a wolf, isn't he? But the way in which they dramatized the wolfiness of the Nicholson character was he did a lot of trampolining. There was a lot of off-camera trampolines. So he would jump,

he'd run along and then he'd jump, but it'd be like a trampoline thing. And, you know, the problem with this is that it's, I think it's hearts in the right place, but at times it's silly and it's also, it's a bit dull. I mean, there's the scariest moment. In fact, the one moment that made me jump is the moment when the somebody or something steps out in front of the car just before the car crash. But otherwise it's, you know, what's the phrase? It's a bit of a sheep in wolf's clothing.

You know, it's like, it's not going, it's not got enough bite to function as a horror film. It's not got enough depth to function as a sort of companion piece to the fly. It doesn't have the humour of American werewolf. It doesn't have the shock factor of howling. It's just a bit dull. Mason- Correspondence at kerbenabeyer.com. Once you've seen it, let us know what you think. That is the end of take one. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh, Vicki, Zachie and Heather. Producer was Jen, redactor was Simon, Paul, and if you're not following the pod already, for heaven's sake, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, what is your film of the week?

Mark McLeod Well, my film of the week is a complete unknown because despite my reservations, I think it's… I mean, clearly the other stuff that we've talked about is it is clearly the film of the week. But yeah, my film of the week is a complete unknown. Toby Grant Take two has landed alongside this one, so check that out if you're a Vanguard Easter. Thank you very much indeed for listening.