Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Barry Jenkins on Mufasa

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Wassail Wassail Wassail! Christmas is almost upon us, and we’ve got a gift of a guest for you this week: Barry Jenkins, AKA Mr. Moonlight. He chats to Simon about ‘Mufasa’, the origin story for Simba’s father and the long-awaited prequel to 2016’s live action animation Lion King. When a flood washes the cub-Mufasa away from his homeland and parents, he finds himself an outsider in an altogether new territory—where he stumbles across young lion Taka and begins a life-changing new journey to becoming the King of the Pride Lands we all know and love. Simon asks the Oscar winning indie director how he ended up helming this huge Disney musical, and what he’s learned from the four-year journey to its release. We’ll hear Mark’s take on ‘Mufasa’ too, along with reviews of two more animation releases this week. We’ve got ‘Sonic 3’, where the speedy blue hedgehog and friends face new adversary Shadow—and Aardman’s Christmas gift to us all, the new Wallace & Gromit adventure ‘Vengeance Most Fowl’. The nation’s favourite plasticine pair are up against their old glove-headed adversary Feathers McGraw in this noirish stop-motion treat. You can hear Mark and Simon in conversation with co-directors Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham in last week’s episode, recorded live at our Christmas Spectacular. Plus one more review of ‘Alien Onstage’—a gloriously oddball documentary about a group of Dorset bus drivers creating a theatrical version of the 1979 sci-fi film classic. We absolutely promise this is the wholesome if slightly madcap holiday viewing you didn’t know you needed—but you really, really do. Top correspondence from you all as usual—including this year’s bespoke Christmas wassail number – don’t miss it! Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Review: Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – 08:13 Review:  Alien on Stage – 58:09 Review: Sonic The Hedgehog 3 – 52:59 Interview: Barry Jenkins – 26:10 And normally this is just for the Vanguardistas, but as we’re feeling festive – here are 50 Christmas TV films of the holidays for everyone: WATCHLIST: FREE FESTIVE FIFTY 1. Easter Parade – December 23, 9.25am BBC TWO 2. Meet Me in St Louis – December 23, 11.05am BBC TWO 3. Coco – December 23, 3.15pm BBC ONE 4. Ghostbusters (1984) – December 23, 4.50pm BBC ONE 5. Chicken Run – December 24, 10am BBC ONE 6. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – December 24, 11.25am CHANNEL 4 7. A Christmas Carol (1984) – December 24, 2.10pm CHANNEL 4 8. White Christmas – December 24, 2.15pm BBC TWO 9. Moana – December 24, 2.20pm BBC ONE 10. It's a Wonderful Life – December 24, 2.30pm ITV 11. The Snowman - Christmas Eve – 3pm CHANNEL 4 12. Shrek – December 24, 3.55pm BBC ONE 13. Home Alone – December 24, 6.05pm CHANNEL 4 14. Beetlejuice – December 24, 10.45pm BBC TWO 15. The Rocky Horror Picture Show – December 25, 00.15am BBC TWO 16. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – December 25, 6.10pm BBC ONE 17. Toy Story 3 – December 25, 11.20am BBC ONE 18. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York – December 25, 3.10pm ITV 19. North by Northwest – December 25, 5.05pm BBC TWO 20. On Her Majesty's Secret Service – December 26, 9.25am ITV For the remaining films on the list, go to (Dempsey, Heather, EXT insert timecode for the Festive 50 please) and listen for Mark's pick and reaction as well! 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh hey, well it's Simon and Mark here, ready to sprinkle a little extra cheer into your season with something to keep your holidays merry and secure. That's right, loyal listeners know that our favourite little helper NordVPN gives you safe, speedy access to content in over 111 countries. The ultimate digital stocking stuffer. NordVPN keeps your online activity wrapped up tight with encryption, built-in threat protection and even dark web alerts. So you're safe from sneaky cyber-grinches and for extra holiday cheer, you can use it on up to 11 devices so the whole family can stay protected.

But Simon, most importantly, it means that wherever I am this Christmas, I can watch the best Christmas movie ever. description right now. With Copenhagen pastries in hand We go assailing throughout the land With many cheddars they go very well But not with so strumming we can't stand the spell What's up, what's up, the assailers are here To wish you good health at this time of year Features and games, they have come and gone Exorcist from Number One Son World Cup of movie stars, we played along And question, smash, and still going strong What's up, what's up, the Sailors are here To wish you good health at this time of year

Mark is having a rant today Until we've heard it we won't go away He's gone to great lengths to warn all of us To stay far away from Megalopolis Stay far away from Megalopolis What's up, what's up? The Wasailas are here To wish you good health At this time of year Anal is never a word we would use So let us explain

In case you're confused Simon's the owner, we understand Of number one sphincter The best in the land What's up, what's up? The Wasailas are here The reason I don't like questions, Schmestrins anymore is that, you know, you give a look, you, you do an answer, which is appropriate to the question. And then it ends up being immortalized. First of all, in the Times diary and then also in our trad wassail song from Canohara.

So how nice to hear the mini cheddars being referenced. Also McGar Le Polis. That was fabulous. Yeah, that was very good. So Ken has emailed, so Ken who retired a few years ago, as I remember, a bit like Elton John on his farewell tour. So he signs it, Ken Ohara, B. Ed, Generation Game Winner, Ready Steady Cook Loser and School Record Breaking Discus Thrower.

Here we are again with the fluttering of the snow, the tinkling of the bells and the warm aroma of mulled wine wafting in the air. Fellow Wasailers and I, well just me actually, once again thank you for another year of reviews, frivolity and support in these heavy times. I am forever amazed at the range and experiences of the correspondents, correspondance, correspondence, correspondance, and their movie stories. Zach Roberts, Peter Sellers-Gilettine to name but two. I have my very own amusing movie story. I think we'll be the judge of this, Ken. Ken says, I played the teacher who gave Connor McCarran the belt in Peter Mullen's Neds. Mr. Mullen wanted a teacher who could act to give some air of

authenticity to the role. And even though I had never actually used the belt in my career, I remember being on the wrong end of it many times in my youth to show the ferocity of the punishment. Mr. Mullen, in directing the scene, proceeded to demonstrate in front of the young Connor by using a real leather tors and whacked it against the teacher's desk with great gusto. The young Connor turned a whiter shade of pale, as did I, thinking, do I need a lawyer? Mr. Mullen then produced the prop one, which was filled with air, which could not harm a fly, but made a great noise. I attended the premiere in Glasgow with my daughter

and quietly celebrated my appearance. I will never forget being on the set and thinking, Birdsong, I'm being directed by Peter Birdsong, Birdsong Mullen. My acting career continues and I am now off to prepare for my one-man performance of A Christmas Carol, I do hope you find some time in the forthcoming Christmas proceedings for this little ditty and that you recognise but a few memorable antics of 2024. Down with racist, philandering, narcissistic, lying egomaniacs and up with all things concerned with the common welfare, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you two wonderful specimens and to all church members. Ken Ohara, who has serenaded us, Mark, once again. Thank you very much, Ken. I do think you excelled yourself this year. You worked things into that song that I don't think any of us were expecting.

Yes, and some of us would be quite happy if you had not worked them into the song. Also, what a great thing to suddenly find yourself on set, you know, being directed by Peter Mullin. What a wonderful story. He's got one of the great voices, Peter Mullin. He does say. He does. So what is going to be reviewed in this year's show, Mark? Well, interesting, Simon. There's what is going to be reviewed and what it says in the

script is going to be reviewed. So I'm going to be reviewing Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul, because that is just about to come onto the TV for as a Christmas present. Sonic 3, this is the new Sonic movie, the third instalment starring once again Jim Carrey. Alien On Stage, which is a documentary about the stage production of Alien, the film, as performed by bus drivers from the Dorset area. And I know that in fact we're going to be reviewing Mufasa, The Lion King, but it says here on the script that we're reviewing Mustapha, The Lion King, with our very special guest. Yeah, Barry Jenkins, the director of said movie also. Some bonus reviews for then their

Vanguard Easter's in our special bonus section. What are you going to be reviewing there? I'm going to be reviewing a new animation, although it actually turns out it's a couple of years old, Dolphin Boy. Also, our special edition recommendation feature, we have a weekend mega Christmas free festive 50 watch list. I'm not sure this is wise. We're going to tell you where to find the best 50 movies to watch over the period. If there is someone who could take it as their, maybe they got nothing better to do. They could watch all 50. That would be an astonishing

achievement. Even if you've seen them before, we require you to watch all 50 films. We'll take you through from December 23rd to New Year's Day. That's the kind of double edition radio and TV times special pull out and keep supplement. One frame back is blue film characters. That's film characters who are actually blue, physically blue, plus questions answered as best as we can. They're not rude. They're not characters from blue films. Blue. Questions is going to be there. You get everything via Apple podcasts or head to extra takes.com for non-fruit related devices. A seven day free trial, which is a fabulous thing. And if you're already a Vanguard Easter as always, but slightly out of sync, we salute you. So it might be that everyone is very, very well aware about what we think of Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul.

What with us discussing it at great length with our special guests in our show from the Prince Edward Theatre in that there London. That was a marvellous show, wasn't it, Simon? That was a marvellous show. And it was very nice to meet so many people and thank you very much Steve for coming down and obviously it was a very problematic weekend because of the storms and everything but we appreciated everyone coming down. That was fairly astonishing. But in the course of the conversation, you didn't really do a proper Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul review. Now, so I think this will be the Christmas hit of Christmas day. I think it's 10 past six, BBC One, before it goes to Netflix. It's sit down, youngsters, oldsters. I think we know what Mark thinks. However,

here's a proper review done with style. So, Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul, in cinemas now, as you said, Christmas Day on BBC One, then on Netflix from early January. Let's just remind ourselves of the flavor of the film is a clip. We're getting reports of a crime wave across the region. I'm live outside the West Wallaby Street house of the evil inventor, Mr. Wallace. Evil? A menace unto us. Who could possibly be behind all this? And as you'll know, because you can't have not seen the trailer, what happens when you

hear that music, which is incidentally also the music that they use at the beginning of Rollable, is the unmistakable spectre of Feathers McGraw then actually playing the organ. So the setup for this is Wallace invents Norbert, the smart gnome, nominally to help Gromit with his gardening. At the beginning, we see Gromit out in the garden. There's all the usual Wallace and Gromit stuff, but then Wallace is out in the garden. Wallace says to Gromit, look, I see how hard you're working in the garden. Well, I've solved that problem. I have created this new smart gnome who will solve all your problems by doing all the stuff for you, neat and tidy, tidy and neat. Gromit's reaction, although Gromit doesn't speak, is very much like Mrs Doyle's reaction in that episode of Father Ted when they buy her a tea maker, a tea's maid, so she doesn't have to make

the tea anymore, which of course is the reason for her existence. She loves making the tea in the same way that Grommet just likes doing the garden. He doesn't want the garden to be done. He just likes doing it anyway. Norbert is so fast and so neat and tidy, tidy and neat that he makes the news. Wallace hires him out for gnome improvements. I'll say that again. He hires him out for gnome improvements because this is fantastic. And so all that sort of nice, tidy stuff, great, brilliant. However, Feathers McGraw, who I think the last, he's been in prison for a long time, basically. So, you know, go back to wrong tracks and everything, hacks the mainframe and manages to turn Norbert evil.

And the way he does this, which is brilliant, I'm not gonna just repeat the plot because you'll enjoy this, but he goes into the settings and the settings from Norbert, nice, he's got a setting which is evil. Just like, why would he have a setting which is evil? Also makes duplicate Nor Norbert who then are this crime wave and then Feathers McGraw embarks upon vengeance most foul. So we spoke when we were doing the live show with Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham about what you do in

the absence of Peter Salus and the fact that actually I think when you hear that voice, I think it's great. I mean, I think it really sounds like Wallace, doesn't it? It's perfect. Yeah. I mean, it's close enough so you think, I'm sure Peter Salis dies, so you check Wikipedia and he has actually died, but the voice actor is just tip top as we mentioned in the show. Ben Whitehead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, he first did it because he'd been working on the movies before, but they just asked, they were doing some looping of something and they just

said, can you do an impression just so that we can do the sync? And it turned out that he could do it really, really well. Also, so Pete K, who has obviously been in the Wallace & Gromit family before, was in Curse of the Were Rabbit, returns as P.C. McIntosh, who has obviously been in the Wallace and Gromit family before, was in Curse of the Were Rabbit, returns as PC McIntosh, who has now been promoted to Chief Inspector but is looking forward to stepping down. Inside number nine star, Reese Shearsmith is in there as well. As always with Wallace and Gromit, the site gags come thick and fast. I was saying there's a thing about the keep out, no you keep out sign. Here is the thing. Some while ago, I did a Secrets of Cinema episode on heist movies some years back now. We were doing Mission Impossible and Rifi-Fi.

Of course, we did a whole section on wrong trousers because the way in which that was put together, the way in which that film was constructed was so brilliant that it stood up with all these other kind of classic movies. Here, there is a heist sequence which involves a submarine mission into a zoo and a spectacular chase sequence over a precipitous bridge that's got kind of a touch of Mission Impossible, the most recent Mission Impossible, and a touch of the Italian job about it. And the thing that when you watch Aardman Productions, they're cinematic. I mean, I know an awful lot of people are going to watch this at home on Telly and believe me, you'll all love it. But if you ever get a chance to see it on

the big screen, they're wonderful looking films. They're extraordinarily well made, impossible to resist, perfect for Christmas. Honestly, you will be finding new gags in it all the way through Easter and then into summer and then into Christmas. Honestly, you will be finding new gags in it all the way through Easter and then into summer and then into autumn. Then when you watch it again this time next year, you'll see a whole bunch of other sight gags and you'll notice a whole bunch of other little nods that you didn't notice the first five times that you watched it. There is nobody else making stuff as intricately woven as this. I think they're magnificent. I remember the first time you ever said, I have a friend who has two Oscars. Who is it? I was thinking, I don't know, and it was because

it was Nick Park. You'd met Nick Park and he had his two Oscars. Yeah, I thought it was great. Did you like it? Yeah, well, I think anyone who listened to the show from the Prince Edward Theatre knows what we think about it. The only thing I would add to what you said is that we've got to, in take two, we've got a question about films for two-year-olds. Yes. Okay. So as a kind of a Christmassy thing, it's worth saying that the Norbert's that are invented are scary. They're genuinely kind of weird in that League of Gentlemen kind of way,

which exactly is what's expected. But it's slightly disturbing. Everyone will know their kids better than anybody else, but it's just worth saying that before you all sit down, it might be worth just thinking that these are a bit freaky and a bit scary in the way that that first Toy Story film was a PG, as we've mentioned a number of times before. That bit with the torturing the toys that are under the bed from the nasty boy next door is kind of unsettling. So, with that proviso, I think it's wonderful.

But always bear in mind that an awful lot of kids films do have scary elements in it. I'm looking at this on the BBFC site. It's you for very mild threat, scary scenes, violence and rude humour. That's rude humour in the Omi Begonia's sense, which incidentally also made it into the Times. Everything we say on this show makes it into the Times. But yeah, it is the scary gnome thing, but then garden gnomes are scary. Will Barron Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul, Cinema, yes, Christmas Day, BBC One, and then Netflix.

Long may they continue. Before we get off the subject altogether, an email from Paul Crosslin. It's quite a long email and these are the associated bits that I think we can go with. So, I don't know, Mark, in February it'll be a decade since my dad James passed away suddenly and left a huge hole in my life just days before my 20th birthday. At the time I wrote into your find selves and you kindly read out the email as a farewell to the man who instilled my love of film into me as a child. In the 10 years since his passing, my life has changed immeasurably, including graduating

university, getting engaged to the love of my life, and being fortunate enough to work on the upcoming film Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul, as an assistant editor. After hearing the live show last week, I'm excited to hear Mark's review, which you've just done, as I respect his opinions and knowledge on films. Nick and Merlin, who you interviewed for the live show, are both the kindest, most encouraging, and most generous directors one could wish to work for. If it's okay, I'd like to express a couple of sentiments that relate both to my dad and your show. Firstly, I want to thank you both for your incredible service to film discussion over these many years. I've learned so much about films in general, thanks to your insightful yet fun attitude towards the medium,

whether that be film reviews, interviews, or discussing trivia that we may not have otherwise known. As I'm sure anyone who's lost a parent so young can attest, that sort of loss leaves an everlasting void in one's life that cannot be mended. The number of times I have instinctively wanted to call him, to tell him something, or ask a favour before remembering that he simply isn't there is beyond counting. To not be able to tell him that I am engaged or invite him to our wedding or to tell him how far I've come in my career is heartbreaking. His love and enjoyment of film was passed down to me when I was young, introducing me to life-changing movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy,

which has always stuck with me and continues to be a series that my partner and I watch with awe and wonder on a yearly basis. This helped lead me down the filmmaking path, and I can now proudly say that I've contributed to the creation of a film that I know he would have loved to pieces. I'd also like to pay a dedication to my fiancé Willow, who has been the most supportive, loving and beautiful partner I could ever wish to share my life with and of whom I am

incredibly proud. Thank you once again for everything that you do, et cetera. I hope everyone enjoys a relaxing, happy and loving Christmas. That's lovely. From Paul Crossland, PS, I noticed that a colleague of mine called Andy had a little box on his desk that says hello to Jason Isaacs on it. I asked him about it and it turns out that apparently the same box is a prop used in the film Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists and I had never noticed it before. Please see a picture of it attached to this email. So here we go. This is the aforementioned. Look at that. Look at that. That's a still. That is fantastic. Like a pirate box, which probably contains weapons and cutlasses and says hello to Jason

Isaacs. Paul, thank you very much. It's very nice because when you meet Nick and Merlin, you think they seem like nice guys. Yeah, really nice. And then when someone who works with them says they're the nicest guys. Really nice. And you're thinking, okay, that's good. Correspondence at kermannamao.com. Okay, let's do the box office top 10 this week,

starting bizarrely at number 10. Pushpa 2 The Rule is number 10. Yes. So not press screens, haven't seen it. This is Indian Telugu language action drama film. It is the second instalment of the Pushpa film series. If any of you have seen it, let us know. Red One is at number nine. I think this is probably the last time we'll have to say this, but absolutely one of the worst films of the year and lost a ton of money and unsurprisingly so because it takes some really talented people and completely fails to capitalise

on their talent. Queer is at number eight. Some emails and then you, Mark. Yeah, go. Sol says, I wanted to write in about my shared admiration for the new Luca Guadagnino film Queer, which I was lucky enough to see at the London Film Festival. I frankly thought it was brilliant and a fantastic adaptation of the novel, perhaps one of the best books to film adaptations I've ever seen.

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey's Lee and Allerton are captured perfectly from the book. And I thought Luca masterfully expanded the relatively short source material into something of its own. I also couldn't stop thinking about Naked Lunch when watching it as despite being vastly different films, they both tie fiction to reality,

wrapping the stories up into Burroughs' own life with the William Tell stunt and perhaps the whole of the last 15 minutes. What a final shot. It's no secret that Queer is semi-autobiographical, but I think someone that isn't Luca could have fallen flat when trying to translate this complex story of desire and youth into moving pictures.

Julian on our YouTube channel. I saw Queer this weekend and it's still on my mind. The third act really captures the essence of the film so well. It's mind-bending. Gator, also on our YouTube channel, I love challenges, but I didn't like this at all. In a nutshell, it's just really boring. A bit of a slog to get through.

The first half is just so slow. It's not that interesting or funny. It gets more interesting when they go to South America, but then just descends into a trippy dream sequence and ends quite confusingly. Queer at number eight, Mark. I thought it was really good. And I'm very, very glad that Daniel Craig has got the reviews for it that he has

because he deserves them. Because anyone attempting to do burrows on screen has got a bit of a mountain to climb. And I think this does it as well as I've seen it done. Number seven is Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim. Yeah, it clearly has not set the world on fire. I mean, this was a fairly wide release and it's at number seven and it's got Lord of the Rings and of course Peter Jackson's in from Richard because, you know, is it exacting it. So it's, I think it's fair to say it has not caught the public imagination.

Conclave is at number six. Which on the other hand, clearly has caught the public imagination. Fantastic reviews, lots and lots of awards chatter. If you haven't heard Simon's brilliant interview with the two stars, then go back and find that on the pod, which obviously you can download at any time. It's a really, really great interview. It's Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes, who are in really good form, aren't they? They were in really good form in that interview. No, that was a pleasure. One of my favourite interviews of the year and one of my favourite films of the year. Number five is Craven the Hunter. Matthew Buck on Blue Sky. Not the worst of Sony's Spider-Man-less spin-offs is damning with faint praise. Aaron

Taylor-Johnson is committed, but this is constantly at war with its own silliness. Imagine a po-faced 127-minute crime drama with a Russian-accented Russell Crowe and another guy whose body turns into a rhino. Filled with well below par CGI throughout, said CG Rhino is kept off screen as long as possible and huge chunks of clearly ADR dialogue where nearly whole conversations happen in long shot and yet you can still see its sink is off. Craven the Hunter isn't amusingly bad like Madame Webb, it's just bad. Well, here's the thing about Craven the Hunter. I haven't seen it and the reason I haven't

seen it is this. No, the reason that we actually put a call out for people to send us reviews. Here's what happens in the film critic world, okay? On Monday and Tuesday, you get the national press shows, which are three or four on Monday, three and four on Tuesday of the film. Now, it's perfectly fine for a film company to not want to show you a film. Every now and then, you'll get a film that is shown so close to release that it's like we almost didn't press screen it. And in the case of the Monday and Tuesday that the Craven Hunter came out, there was plenty of spaces in the FDA, but they decided to screen it on Wednesday. And they sent another thing saying the only screening of Craven Hunter will be on Wednesday.

And what that said to me, okay, we don't really want critics to see it, but we don't want them to say it wasn't press screened either. So we are going to press screen it. But obviously on the Wednesday, we'd recorded the show by then. So anyway, I sent them back a message saying thank you very much. Obviously, I can't record, I can't review the film, but I'm sure that's not heartbreaking news for you. Paddington in Peru is at number four. The weakest of the Paddington films, but still pretty good.

Gladiator 2 is at number three. How did they get the sharks to roam? Wicked is at number two. I loved Wicked. One of my favorite films of the year. I just loved it and I have yet to meet someone who didn't love it. And Moana 2 is still at number one. Are you surprised, not that Moana 2 is popular, but the fact that it's outscoring Wicked?

I am actually, yeah. I mean, I suppose it's because it's a broader audience, but well, actually that's not, no, I mean, yes, it's done brilliantly well. I mean, I like Moana 2 enough. I thought it was fun. I didn't think it was as good as Moana. And as said originally, they were thinking of doing it straight to streaming and then it turned into a feature film. No, it's obviously hit the school holidays sweet spot.

Mason- After the break, unless you're a Vanguard Easter, we're going to be talking to Barry Jenkins about Muster for Camel, his new movie about the Lion King, also known as Mufasa. Barry Jenkins, after this. This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI is the place to discover ambitious films by visionary filmmakers, all carefully handpicked, so you can explore the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere. So hey, Simon, you remember The Substance, Mubi's runaway smash hit and clear film of the year? I remember you talking about it a lot.

I loved it. But this ad isn't about that. It's about another Mubi release, Queer, from Luca Guadagnino. It's adapted from the novel by William Borrows. It has an absolutely brilliant central performance by Daniel Craig. It's winning plaudits for its honesty, humor, and frankness. The creative team includes Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross doing the score. It's in cinemas on December 13th. Visit Mubi.com slash queer for showtimes and tickets. Try Mubi free for 30 days at Mubi.com slash Kermode and Mayo. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash Kermode and Mayo, all one word for a whole month of great cinema for free. Hey, Mark, I found that I've been thinking recently about merch. Merch?

Yes, merchandise, especially all those goodies we have for sale online. You know, branded mugs, t-shirts, water bottles, you name it. The torch, the director's chair, the full works. I wish someone had told me about Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your own business. I know all about that. So Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide, whether you're selling herrings or Harrington jackets with the take logo on the back.

Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business. Shopify even gets you selling across social media marketplaces like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok with industry leading tools. Get Shopify today. Sign up for a £1 per month trial period. Can't we fix this? Shopify.co.uk slash... Curmode. All lowercase. All lowercase. I mean, what is wrong with Kermode and Mayo? Why can't it be Mayo just for once? Easier to spell Kermode. They've gone for Shopify.co.uk slash, let's say it together, Kermode. Sure, I could tell you winter's coming or that it brings cold dry air, but you already knew that.

What you might not know is that Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash is made with millions of moisturizing micro-moisture droplets to keep your skin silky soft for 24 hours. Plus it's paraben and sulfate free. No matter how dry your skin feels, Dove has you covered. Buy Dove Body Wash today at your local retailer we go back a little way to Moonlight and his barnstorming success with that film. Then, if Beale Street could talk, and we're always very pleased to have him on the show, he's talking to us today about Mufasa of course, Mufasa the Lion King, and you'll hear a clip from the film. And then, my chat

with Barry Jenkins. Which one of you killed my son? I did. This lion with me is nothing but a stray. Let him go. The other is no stray. He holds the blood of the pride. The last blood of the king. Blood for blood. And that is a clip from Mufasa, The Lion King. Its director is Barry Jenkins.

Barry, hello, how are you, sir? Pretty good, man. Very nice to see you. Nice to see you as well. I wish you a happy Christmas. Thank you. Does Christmas feel a long way off, or? It does feel a long way off.

I mean, I have been just like going city to city, country to country, continent to continent. So… Do you get to stop? Once I get home on Sunday, I do get to stop, yes. OK, so Christmas at home. Christmas at home, for sure. All right, something to look forward to. So we spoke to you for Moonlight,

and we spoke to you for If Beale Street Could Talk. This is back in the day. It feels like a long time. And they had the Underground Railroad and so on. This is an origin story. The origin story of you working on The Fuzz is interesting as well. How did it come about?

How did you get approached? Yeah, I mean, Disney reached out in the summer of 2020. So during COVID, we were actually editing The Underground Railroad. And I just heard from my reps that Disney was making a prequel to The Lion King, and they wanted me to direct it. And I thought, how does Barry Jenkins, Mr. Moonlight, direct The Lion King? I don't know that that's gonna happen.

And I didn't read the script. And I just let it sit for about a week and a half. And then finally my partner, who's also a filmmaker, was like, what are you afraid of? At least read the damn thing. And then if you don't want to do it, don't do it. But you can't just dismiss it out of hand. Was she right that you were afraid of it?

I think I was. Not afraid of it, but I just assumed so many things about it. Jeff Nathanson, who wrote the screenplay, did a really wonderful job. He went in a direction and a place with these characters that I just did not expect. And I think maybe that expectation or whatever opinion I placed on the property, that was

just overwhelming my mind. So yeah, I didn't read it. And then what I did, I thought I'd only read five or ten pages. And I just, you know, it's what I was thinking. You pick up a book and, you know, you look up and it's three hours later and you realize, damn, I am hooked. I guess there will be some people who think it's the most un-Barry Jenkins thing you could have done.

I wonder if that was part of the appeal. That was definitely a part of the appeal. You know, coming through that cycle of Moonlight, Dole Street, the Underground Railroad, all of which, by the way, I decided to do in one moment, you know, before Moonlight even premiered. It was just really nice to sort of accept something or agree to something that was so clearly, I could not know at that moment what the process was going to fully be like, but I knew it would be radically different than the process of the things that

had come before. You gave us a couple of ideas from the film, when people go and see it. So what is the story that they're going to see? The story of Mufasa the Lion King is the story of two brothers, ultimately, that people have known for 30 years, Scar and Mufasa. The way they become brothers, I believe, is quite unexpected. And the deepness of their bond is quite unexpected as well. When you're working on a movie that's living in the legacy of something

like The Lion King, you have the advantage of people bringing so much knowledge and so deep and intimate a connection to the characters. And so I saw those things as a really great tool. And the way these two characters evolve from this initial bond, I think is just absolutely heartbreaking. So it's been observed by many people, obviously, that The Lion King was sort of hamlet with animals. There's still a Shakespearean line going through Mufasa. One thousand percent. And we have quite a few actors in here who can really romance the language. Lenny James plays Scar's dad, essentially, as his character Obasi, and just has some really delicious turns of phrase. And Tendiway Newton plays Scar,

Mufasa's mother, and she has some of the most eloquent sort of like soliloquies in this franchise. Some really wonderful stuff. Can I ask you about the voice cast? How much of that was, did you inherit and how much was down to you? You know, because it's a prequel or I call it a pre-sequel, some of the characters are in the film in two different sort of like times,

time periods. So there's a young Mufasa, a young Scar, there's a young Rafiki, a young Zazu, a young Sarabi. So all those people are new. And it was really wonderful casting them. You know, when you make a film like this, it all starts with the voices. And it doesn't matter what anyone looks like, you know, just about what they sound like, what can you communicate with your voice, because the animators are all chasing that for the next three and a half years. They're chasing the quality in someone's voice. So I had total freedom in casting the parts, you know, outside of people like Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner, you know, who we inherited. Beyonce, we inherited Beyonce. But then Blue Ivy,

her daughter, who's in the film, was a choice, you know? She was really wonderful. That, and at that stage when you have the voice talent, and so that becomes, it's like this is, if you were gonna put it on the radio, that's the version that it would be. Is it filmed as well?

And are your animators working on, you know, if they're watching, Mads Magelsson doing his thing, they then take away the images and they work on that? Yes, but they're not trying to replicate the images. It's purely so they can see what emotion was Mads expressing when he delivered that line. The tricky part is we do the entire film as a radio play. You're correct. We do it twice, actually. We did it first with a temp acting troupe

so that we could get the storyboard artist going. Then once we did the principal cast, we redid the entire thing with the principal cast. The editor is then cutting all that footage together because we're editing everything. You might have the first line from take two and then the second line is from take five and the third line is from take eight. And there's a corresponding image. It's not motion capture. We're just running a camera. There's a corresponding image for every piece

of that material. So the animator might get eight shots of mads, delivering this three-sentence line, because every time it cuts to another piece of material the editor is using, the corresponding image comes along with it. What should we be calling this, Barry? I've seen it referred to as live action animation, also

a virtual production. What are you happiest with? I like live action animation. It is a virtual production, which is sort of a very technical term for something that's so new that it can be anything. The way James Cameron uses this technology is very different than the way Jon Favreau uses it, very different than the way Barry Jenkins uses it. What we ultimately ended up

doing was bringing a very live action principle to virtual production, by which I mean we had animators, many of whom live right here in London at a company called MPC. We were talking about the radio play, so we cut the entire film together with just the voices. And you can literally put your headphones on and listen to the entire film back to back. The sound design, the whole thing, just voices. Then we took it to a stage and we would play scenes out loud at the actual actors, their performances. We would be there with a virtual camera moving on a physical space and we'd have the animators there in suits. And now we are doing a form of motion capture, but it's more like a rough draft of the animation.

Because the characters have four legs and human beings have two, it's not a simple translation to do motion capture, but the animators understand it enough that they can move in a way, that the transaction between two to four legs actually is usable. And so I would direct the voices as one performance, and then we get on stage with the animators and the cinematographer, and I would direct purely in blocking. So let's say we're listening to a scene by the actors, and at a certain moment I realize Aaron Pierre delivered a line in a certain way, that it feels like he's full of doubt, or he's fearful. You know, we might begin the scene face to face, but now I can tell the animator, you know what?

At that moment when he has that line, I think now he's overwhelmed. So I think you would turn your back because you can't say the rest of these lines to his face. We could do that in real time on a stage. And when you have something like that, I believe in cinema, the camera's going to adjust to that energy as well. I think it brings a sort of liveliness to this kind of animation. That's why I call

it live action animation. This is beginning to sound like a Barry Jenkins film. Hey, there you go. There you go. There you go. Is it possible to be spontaneous? Yes, absolutely. 1000%. How is that possible? Well, two different ways. You can control everything if you want

using this technology. You know, I can tell the animator exactly what to animate, exactly when to have the character stop moving, exactly when to have the character lift their head up. I can do all those things if I want to. The better version of this for me became, okay, let's figure out where the sun is going to be, what the wind is, what the topography, all those different things,

but physically the characters, let's get on a stage in real time. We'll listen to the actors, we have the performance. How does that inspire our movement? There's a scene in the film where Mufasa and Rafiki are having this conversation, and Rafiki is fishing, theoretically. And it's the first real conversation

they're having in the entire film. Initially, in the script, the scene is meant to be delivered face to face, but we realized very quickly that whatever it was that Mufasa needed to express, he needed privacy to express it. So in the blocking of the scene, we immediately realized, oh, you know what?

Instead of him staying in front of him, we're gonna motivate him to walk around so that he's behind us back. And now, you know what's going to happen? At that moment, I think I want him to look down. I think we'll put the reflection of his parents there. And then we realized, we can do this in one shot. We're going to have the sunrise over the duration.

We'd figure that all out at once, on the moment, on a stage. And I think that's the kind of, we got enough of it in motion, and then on the day, we can make choices, respond to stimulus, and adjust the way we're filming. Songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Man is a Genius. This is a very easy question. What's it like working with Lin-Manuel Miranda? Oh, it was awesome. You know, I've never made a musical in this guy's mates, like the best musicals of the last like 20 years. So, you know, I leaned on him. He was very good about respecting that, you know, the songs needed to service the story and not the

other way around. Typically in a musical, the songs come first, and the film sort of wraps itself around those songs. You know, we had a head start on Lin, and so he was really great about figuring out, okay, where can a song help advance the narrative? What do you mean by a head start? Oh, so Lin was busy directing Tic Tic Boom, you know, and also finishing his work on Inconto. And we were just headlong into, you know, casting the film, doing the radio play, getting the storyboard version of the film together, just like everything.

And so we already had a version of the entire film that was done. And so it really became about, okay, where do we need songs? Where can we use songs? How can those songs function? The beautiful thing in that is Lin began to find places where there were lines of dialogue that very clearly were the titles of songs,

and the subjects of songs. And it was really cool because one of the best songs, or all great songs, but one of the really fun songs in the movie is a song I Always Wanted a Brother. And over the course of that song, you establish the bond between Mufasa and Taka, Mufasa and Scar, and you see them grow up, you know, and become sort of young adults. And Lin achieved that, you know, in like a three-minute song, and

it probably could have taken me 15 pages, you know, of storytelling. Do you remember the first time you watched the first film? I do. Not the first time I watched it. I have like this collective memory of babysitting my sister's two young boys. And back then, this was pre-iPad, pre-iPhone. You know, you put in a VHS tape. And the Lion King was the one that always held their attention the most. And I remember just watching them watch the scene where after Scar has ultimately killed Mufasa and Simba walks up to his father's slain body,

you realize these children are processing a very complex emotion for the first time, what it might be like to lose a parent. And I just thought that was a very, very deep and powerful thing. And then two minutes later they're singing and laughing. It's like a magic trick. And even then I recognized that it was something special. Did you go back and watch it again and think, this is my gig now? I did. And I went and watched it because I was like, this is intense. This is intense.

Are we going to be able to do something as intense as this? And then I also went and watched the Julie Taymor Broadway production, which that was really, really inspiring. And I found that to be the North Star for what I was attempting to do in this. And at the end of this production, does it make you think, I want to do this again? Or can you not wait to get back to the kind of moonlight Beale Street kind of movies? Well, it depends. We tried to do whatever we could to make this process feel more like a Moonlight and a Beale Street.

Over the course of the four years, us literally evolving the technology we were using, I think we got there to a certain degree. The duration it takes to make a film like this is very interesting. I was at a moment in my life where I wanted something that would take this long to focus on, but maybe now I'm at a moment in my life where I wanted something that would take this long to focus on, but maybe now I'm at a moment in my life where I like to work a bit quicker.

That said, when the screenplay came to me, I had never in a million years expected to spend four years making a live-action animated film, but the script has worn me over. So if another script came across my desk, yeah, of course I'd do it again. Barry Jenkins, a pleasure. Thank you so much and happy Christmas. Thank you, man. Same to you. Strange thing about the meeting with Barry, you have very little kind of preamble and post ramble, but it was quite clear that he genuinely recognized, either recognized me or remembered coming on the show before, which when you think about the number of interviews that he's done in the intervening years is fairly astonishing. But

anyway, always good to have him on the show. Very interesting filmmaker. What did you make of Mufasa, The Lion King? Well, that's a thorny question. I went back to look at my written review of the live-action animation remake of The Lion King. This is basically a prequel to a remake. This is what I said. I said, it's one thing seeing a cartoon lion sing, but watching photo-realist recreations of animals speaking and bursting into song is altogether harder to swallow. Does photorealism actually serve such an inherently fantastical narrative? On stage, The Lion King became a huge hit because the theatrical techniques used to tell this sturdy story required the audience

to use their imagination. There's little space left for that kind of collaborative experience here as every detail is filled in down to the very last pixel. Now, it was interesting that in your interview with Barry Jenkins, amidst the discussion of the very complex process, he talked about the North Star of seeing the stage production and seeing the stage production as being something that was crucially inspirational to him. He also asked the question, you know, he did the thing that you sometimes get, he asked himself a question that he answered, which is, how does Barry Moonlight Jenkins do Lion King?

He said in that interview that he thought they got some way towards doing it. As he explained in that interview, which I thought was really insightful and really brilliant, that effectively the way he did it was that he directed the voices as if he was doing a radio play, and then he directed a physical version of the voice track as if he was doing a theatrical play. And then the last part of the equation is then to turn that into the photo realist animation. And so it's like two thirds of that process are making a Barry Jenkins film and then the last part of it is turning that into the Lion King. Honestly, for me, the visuals here were

less problematic than they were in the first photo realist Lion King version because I just thought it was a complete mismatch in that first one between the way it looked and what the story was doing. Here, actually, it seems to have leaned more into animation, certainly in terms of, I mean, I'm not entirely sure why, but I found it slightly less bothersome. There is a really interesting question about,

how do you make Barry Jenkins do this? Because remember, Barry Jenkins was at one point going to make Queen of Katwe for Disney way, way back. It's not completely left field in terms of, because he's such an intelligent and inventive filmmaker. What he said in that interview was that he got the script and he didn't read it, and then his partner said, you need to read it. And then when he did, he realized that Jeff Nathanson had gone, quote, in a direction I did not expect. Now, that direction is a story about finding your tribe, finding your family. So it's an origin story, but it's how Mufasa and Taka

becomes another character, how they became brothers, and how the bond between them was built and how it was tested and how it was broken. Now, that is Barry Jenkins' territory. And then you have a cast which includes Maston Mickelson and Tandy Wynne-Newton. I think some of the voice cast are great. There were some things like Preston Niman-Nazazu who was taking over from Rowan Atkinson and John Oliver and I thought- Oh, that was poor. It was poor. It was poor, not least because you keep thinking why isn't it as good. With great respect, I don't think the Lin-Manuel Miranda songs are as good as the Elton John Tim Rice song.

Now, I say this as the person, I qualify as the person who saw The Greatest Showman and said it doesn't have a single memorable tune in it. I was completely wrong and it is entirely possible that in three weeks' time those songs will be coming out of every speaker in the country. I don't think that they didn't sound to my ear as memorable as the songs in the original Lion King. Did they to you? No. No. Okay, fine. But it's tough.

I think I was familiar with some of the songs when I went to see The Lion King, which is the old Tim Rice, Angeloid Webber thing about knowing some of the songs before you actually see the movie. I hadn't heard The Lin-Manuel Miranda, so they sounded pretty good. I thought the film was pretty good. I thought the film was pretty good. I would like to see it again and I would like to hear the songs again and maybe they settle down and live with you quite happily. Well, you see, I am willing to accept that because we've all had the experience of buying

an album and hearing it for the first time and it doesn't really sound great. By the time you listen to it for the fourth time, you realize that actually Young Americans is your favorite David Bowie album. It's just the way that hearing songs and getting used to them works. Anyway, I think what you end up with is this. I was never crazy about the photo realist thing anyway because animation as a genre is something I'm particularly fond of. I was never quite sure what the point was, but I did find that the a formless one. I was never quite sure what the point was, but I did find that the original adaptation of the Favre was pointless. I liked this more than that. I think that there are things in it that I can see where they are Barry Jenkins elements. There is something in there, and it is particularly to do with the way in which characters find their

families as opposed to things just being passed down singly generationally. I think that some of the voice performances are great, and I think, as we mentioned, some of them less so. The songs have yet to bury themselves in my head, and I don't know whether or not they will do. The thing that I come out of it thinking is, well, Barry Jenkins took on this kind of behemoth and it didn't entirely defeat him. There are things in it that do feel like, okay, they are his touch. Okay, maybe people would want more, but it is a photo realist, what they're calling it live action animation prequel to a remake of The Lion King. That is what it is.

I think he's come out of it with his head held high. I think it's done him no harm at all. It's demonstrated that he really is an incredibly versatile filmmaker. In the way in which when he was talking in that interview, the way in which the talk of that procedure, which obviously he hasn't invented this X knee-hello, but you can tell that when he's excited,

it's talking about that stuff. I think the film itself is fine. I think it is better than the previous photo realist live action, whatever they're calling it, animation. I don't think either of them come close to the animated Lion King. I am very interested that Barry Jenkins has

such respect for the stage show and said it was his North Star because watching this you go, yeah, I can see that. Mason- I would be interested to know from a generational point of view whether, we grew up with the Jungle Book and The Lion King. So if you take those singing and dancing, clearly drawn cartoon characters, of course they can talk. of course they can dance. It's not a problem. But when you see a lion that looks like a lion, a real proper lion, singing and dancing and talking to a hippo that's a real hippo, this is clearly preposterous. But if you've grown up with this, as this is what animation is, maybe that's not as big a barrier as it is for you and I.

maybe that's not as big a barrier as it is for you and I, but I never once thought in Jungle Book, you know, snakes can't talk. Well, I mean, the only thing we can do is to say, you know, if anyone has an experience in this, anyone who's listening who is like a quarter of our age, who was grown up with this, is that the case? I mean, you're absolutely right, it may well turn out to be completely generational. I have no doubt that people will watch this over and over again, but I find it hard to imagine it coming close to the impact of the original animated Lion King. Correspondent to co-animated.com, it's the ads in a minute mark, but first let's trip quite happily into our, it's not particularly

festive but it's a laughter lift all the same. Here we go. Mark, I have to tell you, it's not going too well at home, which seems to be the standard intro for a laugh. We had cousin Cecil over at the weekend. He brought a box of Quality Street, a box of roses, a Thorntons Continental selection and some Bendix Bitamins. He said, Cousin Simon, would you care for a chocolate? No thanks, I said. I'm holding out for a hero. Now, overseas listeners, please note the Cabaret's Hero is a multi-pack of popular British chocolates. Also... And everyone and other listeners, please note that Footloose was released in the 1980s. The Cadbury's Hero is a multi-pack of popular British chocolates. Also – And everyone, and other listeners, please note that Footloose was released in the 1980s.

Also, I'm not quite sure why Cecil had to be a cousin because there was no cousin reference there I don't think. Anyway, the good lady ceramicist after this exchange looked devastated. I can't take any more of your Bonnie Tyler joke, Simon Mayo. She always calls me by my full name. I'm off to the salon to cheer myself up. Oh great, I said. Do you know how Bonnie Tyler's stylist does her hair? He totally clips it. He totally clips it. It's all about timing. Anyway, as she began sobbing and running away down the front path, I shouted out of the window, please don't get me

another Bonnie Tyler sat nav, by the way. That was the worst present ever keeps telling me to turn around and every now and then it falls apart. Oddly she didn't stop. So I ran out and I fell over on the pavement clutching my chest. Other than stop punning didn't know what else to do to stop her leaving. Oh my heaven Simon Mayo. Are you okay? She said again using my full name. It's a heartache. I said it's nothing but you okay? She said again using my full name. It's a heartache I said it's nothing but a heart heartache. It hits you too late it hits you when you're down. Anyway I haven't heard from her since and you can probably understand why. Anyway what's happening later on in this podcast? That was a surreal trip. Still to come a review of Sonic 3

which is the Sony store with Sonic Hedge thing, and Alien On Stage, the documentary about the bus drivers who put Alien On Stage after this. Sephora's biggest fragrance sale of the year is on. Get 20% off full-size fragrance gifts, including designer scents like Valentino Donna, Born in Roma. sale of the year is on. Get 20% off full-size fragrance gifts including designer scents like Valentino Donna Born in Roma. How did you know? 20% off floral scents like Burberry Her. Thank you. And 20% off trending scents like Kayali Yum Buji Marshmallow and Glossier You. This is perfect. 20% off full-size fragrances now through December 24th. Shop now at Sephora and Sephora at Kohl's. Okay, so there's plenty more to see. What else is out there, Mark? What has taken your

interest? Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which is in cinemas from December the 27th. If you remember, the first of the Sonic series wasn't great. It was okay. It did very well despite all the fuss about the design. Then there was the second one, which started off with Jim Carrey's Dr. Robotnik on the Mushroom Planet. Then he gets back to Earth with the help of Knuckles, who's voiced by Idris Elba. Then it was a very kind of video gamey plot. Now you've got Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails taking on a new adventure, a new challenge, a deadly threat

in the form of Shadow, who is a Sonic-like being who's been on Earth apparently for 50 years, was once thought to be a power source, is now a threat, is a clip. There's been a high-level security breach. And we need Team Sonic's immediate assistance. Project Shadow is far beyond anything we've ever encountered. Shadow's story began a lot like your Sonic. But where you found family and friends... Shadow found only pain and loss.

Alright, we got a rogue alien on the loose. How do we find it? Start with the giant fireball? I love it. Let's start with a giant fireball. Now, it's an interesting thing. At the beginning of the screening, we were told, do not spoil the film. Do not do any spoil it. The problem is that because I'm not massively emotionally invested in the plot, I'm not sure what constitutes spoiler or not. So I will do my best. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Shadow is voiced by Keenananana Reeves in very Keenananana Zen-like fashion. Jim Carrey, obviously back a few years ago, after doing the last Sonic thing,

Jim Carrey said he wasn't really interested in acting anymore. He said, this is a quote, he said, unless the angels bring some sort of script that is written in gold ink that says to me that it's going to be really important for people to see, I might continue going down that road, but I'm taking a break. So, well, was this the gold ink script that was, quote, really important for people to see? And according to the director, whether he was gagging or not, he said, oh yeah, we did, we printed it out on 24-karat ink, but it's still Sonic 3. I honestly think the lure of this outside of the paycheck is, and I don't believe this to be a plot spoiler, but there we go, is that Jim Carey plays two characters. He gets to play Robotnik, the one, the Robotnik that we know,

and he also gets to play an older version, the grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, of whom Jim Carrey has said that he is the rock that his Robotnik called out from under. Okay, but it's another Robotnik with a big mustache and a gurney face. I think that when Jim Carrey said a golden script that it's going to be really important for people to see, what he actually meant was a golden script which has got lots more of me in it, which sounds about right. It is weird to remember that Jim Carrey started, there was the Ace Ventura movies that I hated and you hated them too. Then there was The Mask, which was a big success. But then he went from the sort of face gurney stuff into Eternal Sunshine

and Truman Show and Man in the Moon. And he's now kind of come back to where he started. As for the film, the Sonic 3, it is more of the same with the emphasis on more and same. So it's like what you had before, but dialed up. So you get some Thunderbirds movie style London sightseeing. Oh, look, it's the Millennium Wheel and look, it's the Thames. Lots of pop-powered whooshing and swishing around. A couple of gags that are okay. I laughed once and I heard another member of the critical fraternity, of whom I still do, laugh twice. Lots of stuff in space with massive space lasers threatening to blow up planets, which I grew up on science fiction, so whenever I see a space laser as a

part of me kind of is interested. There are two end credits things, you know, one in the credit, after scenes, and one at the end. And again, ask not to spoil them, but I couldn't spoil them because I don't know what the significance of the additional things that happen to the end are. So overall, if you've liked the Sonic movies up to now, it's that, but with double the Jim Carrey. I find Jim Carrey a strange screen presence. You just always want to go, just dial it down about

50%. But that's not what he does, is it? If in doubt, dial it up. Yeah, and have two of you. If you like that kind of thing, you're going to like more of it. You like more of it. And if you find it a bit annoying, probably the same. Maybe you don't bother. Okay, correspondents of Covenhormone.com, keep your emails coming for the new year. Now I've got Alien On Stage written down. I know this is coming.

This has to be one of the more strange prospects that you're tantalising us with. Yes. It's a documentary film that you may know some of the story of already. It is available on Amazon Video and Apple TV Plus, and it's been soft launched since October, but this is the week that we've got to it. So here's the story. A few years ago, there's an amateur dramatic group called Paranoid Dramatics, led by bus drivers from Dorset, who decided that they were put on a traditional pantomime every year. They decided that rather

than doing Robin Hood or something like that, which they'd done before, they would do something different. Something different they were going to do was they were going to do a stage production of Alien, which as everyone will say is hardly a Christmas pantomime at the best of times. No, not really. stage production of Alien, which as everyone will say is hardly a Christmas pantomime at the best of times. No, not really. So really ambitious project. But when they did it, there was apparently no appetite for it. They did it at the Allendale Centre in Wimborn. And apparently on the big night, it was like 20 people. They'd done the whole of Alien on stage and about 20 people were

there and it was a down-to-script. However, Lucy Harvey and Daniel Comer saw it and they apparently were wowed by it. And they decided to set up a crowdfund page to take the show and put it on for one night only, one afternoon, one performance only in the West End. And in return, what's happened is that the production agreed that there's going to be a documentary about it. So the documentary is about how this stage show, this completely mad, let's do a version of Alien on stage, you know, with cardboard and papier-mache, then managed to get sort of reborn to go to the West End and how they sort of they had to, you know, up the ante for it. So the opening is really

smart. There are all these shots of Dorset buses in bus stations, shot to look like shots of an Estromo. So sort of pneumatic ramps and doors opening and bits of engine that all actually look, oh yeah, that's fine, because that reminds me of the opening shots of alien and then we meet the director who is struggling to keep the project on course the rehearsals are constantly foreshortened by the fact that they get to the theater and the theater isn't open the cast many drivers conductors we meet them and when we first see them they don't appear to know their lines they're still working off book. The whole thing looks like it's a catastrophe. And then we meet the special effects guy,

the guy who is in charge of essentially remaking HR Giger's incredible creations out of styrofoam and string. Here's a clip. This is firmly fitted in a bag on the chest, on the stomach area. Two wires are strapped to either side. Fit these onto wires that are attached to fishing rods.

It's supposed to jump out, sit on the chest and then be pulled off to one side. Still in the upright position. But all more luck than judgment some of the time. Oh God! Sam Wallace and Gromit. I know, I know. And actually in terms of the kind of the Heath Robinson like nature of how they make the chest burst to come out of the chest and then do the thing about zipping off while still standing upright is very, very wild and grimy. We see the buildup to the big day.

There are little glimpses of the rehearsals which aren't promising and glimpses of the special effects which are very, very blue Peter. Then they get to the West End and we see the highlights. It's sold out. It's completely sold out. It's the West End. It's just off Leicester Square, so proper West End. We see how the show goes.

Here's the thing. I reviewed a film a while ago called A Bunch of Amateurs, which was about Britain's oldest filmmaking club in Bradford. They were in danger of being shut down and then they got COVID funding during lockdown, which saved the day. The documentary follows them fulfilling their filmmaking dreams. The key thing about that documentary is, it's funny and poignant,

because it's not laughing at the people. It is laughing with them. And it is a celebration of artistic aspirations, no matter how kind of apparently mad cat they are. This is the same. When the show is playing in the theater, yes, the audience are laughing during the horror scenes, during the chest burster and the face hugger, but they're laughing

with the players. They're not laughing at them. And that laughter is kind of like a celebration of what a mad thing it is to attempt to reproduce. I mean, Alien is one of the most visually extraordinary films of all time. We had never seen anything like it. And here with bits of foam and bits of metal and bits of string and bits of, they have inventively attempted to reproduce it on screen, including the alien himself. I mean, the way in which they do Ash losing Ash's head is one of the, you just want to stand up and applaud. And the thing that I really, really liked was that the whole documentary is a joyous experience. And it's because it's

a sort of ode to the indefatigability of the artistic inspiration, which is, let's just do this. Let's just do this and see what happens. And then the very fact that when they just did it and that first they didn't get an audience. I mean, although honestly, if I heard that the local bus company was doing on stage performance of Alien, I would go, but they said only 20 people. Then by the time it gets to the West, and it's like it found its audience, it found its tribe. I think that if there's a message to be taken from the film, it's if someone tells you you can't do something, pay no attention. Can a bunch of people working on the Dorset buses do Alien on stage? Well, you know what? They can have a damn good go at it.

And I think the doc really captures that. That sort of just stand up and cheer sense of, well done, well done. You know, you are working with string and glue and spray paint, but you've done Alien on stage and that, and you know, bravo. Anyway, I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was really, really life-affirming. That's the end of take one. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team, Jen, Eric, Josh, Vicki, Zachy, and Heather.

The producer was Jem, the redactor, Simon Poole. If you're not following the pod already, which is ludicrous, please do so wherever you get your podcasts. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, partly because I loved it and partly because the tagline is, endorse it. No one can hear you scream. Alien On Stage, which as I said, it's available now if you want to find it on Amazon Video and Apple TV Plus. It's a bomb for the soul. So there'll be interesting and enticing new product from your favorite movie podcast. There's one on Boxing Day, there's one on New Year's Day, and then I think we're back to normal, whatever normal is.

Whatever normal is. Yeah. But anyway, thank you very much, much indeed for listening and a happy Christmas. Although if you're listening to, I mean, who knows when you're going to be listening to this, but assuming that you might be listening to it before Christmas, have a fantastic Christmas.