Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Does Mark dig Digger? + AARON SORKIN

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member-only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind-the-scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show - a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time. Three more big screen big hitters are getting the Take treatment this week. First up, the British boarding school answer to Booksmart, Extra Geography, which follows the offbeat romantic quest of two Oxbridge hopefuls with an unlikely love interest. Next up, Verity: an Anne Hathaway led horror with a dash of the erotic thriller. And last but not least, we’ll get the Good Doctors’ verdict on Tom Cruise’s latest and quite possibly maddest movie yet, Digger. Our special guest is Oscar-winning writer and director Aaron Sorkin, who chats to Simon about his new film The Social Reckoning, out next week. In this companion piece to The Social Network, he revisits the theme of social media with a focus on The Facebook Files, the expose on the link between facebook’s algorithm and political radicalisation in the run up to the Capitol Riots of 2021. It’s a meaty conversation with one of our greatest living screenwriters, not to be missed. Plus the box office top 10, and top tips from your correspondence about how to beat bladder-bursting movie runtimes and more in another top-drawer Take. You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo. 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] EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Our Christmas Movie Spectacular is back! It’s in Bristol this year on Sunday 6th December. Don’t miss it! Here’s the link for tickets: https://www.fane.co.uk/kermode-and-mayo 17:37 Ad break 1 28:09 ad break 2 58:08 ad break 3 Timecodes: 00:09:38 Extra Geography review 00:17:07 Box office top ten 00:29:07 Aaron Sorkin interview 00:46:31 Verity review 00:55:14 Laughter Lift 01:00:21 Digger review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions. Available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free. Some evil thing happened here. Three people die in a quiet suburb in the same house, years apart. It's not a coincidence.

This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay, these were murders. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrisons. Start listening today, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free. Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguard Easter and get an extra episode every Thursday. Including bonus reviews. Extra viewing suggestions.

Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas. Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in questions, Schmestgen. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts or head to Extra Takes.com for non-fruit-related devices. There's never been a better time to become a Vanguard Easter. Free offer, now available wherever you. you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguard Easter, we salute you. Well, I'm not completely sure, but you have a manner about you today. There is a definite kind of, let me,

let me have a look at it. Yeah, the glasses, the jaunty expression. Yep, that's right. You're a well-season traveler who's been to America recently, got let in and got let out again. That's, that's, That's the look that you have. I was fully expecting to get a message in the middle of the night saying, they've detained me. They realize who I am. I know. And you were making jokes about it on the program.

And I was saying, can you please stop making jokes about it? And then people actually started sending me messages saying, yeah, I'm sorry that he was making jokes about it because I would feel the same as you did. As it was. They're ridiculous then. They are absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah. As it was, it was fine, but it took something like three hours to get through customs, because you get there and there are 10 desks for United States citizens and one desk for everyone else in the world. That's prejudice, that is. Mind you, going anywhere, if you come from this country, is pretty much the same. You know, if you fly into, I mean, the only place I go is Copenhagen,

you still have to wait there for hours. You know, the flight, fast, hour and a half, great. You're there, you're ready to go. Two hours later, you finally get to the passport guy, which is just madness. Anyway, ask me what I did when I was there. I know what you did when you were there. No, you don't. There's something that you don't know about.

Tell me the thing that I don't know that you did when you got there. I met up with hello to Jason Isaacs. Yes, I didn't. Didn't he post about something? Didn't you post about something? Oh, did he? Isn't there a photograph? I've seen a photograph, I think.

Okay. What's he up to? Well, he's out that he's filming like five movies at the same time. Such a tart. We walked the high line. You know, there's this thing. It's like a, it's a bit of elevated railway track. and they've kind of turned it into like a garden walk.

So you kind of walk above the city. And we met at one end of it and we walked. And we must have walked faster than we thought. Because about 10 minutes later, we were at the other end of it. And we both went, that's a lot shorter than we thought it was going to be. And then we, it's Jason, because he's Jason, he took me to, did you know there's a Soho house in New York? Yeah.

Did you know that? Is he a member? Well, again, it appears to be a member of everything. Yes, probably. So what benefits did you get from that? Well, I sat with him and talked, and we sat and talked. And then as we talked, a whole bunch of people came in, you know, sort of, so it was like, you couldn't do anything at all because, oh, look, there's Garinda Chudder.

She come over and talks and, you know, talks about whatever she's up to. And then somebody else famous comes up. He's just, he's the most famous person we know. Do you think? I suppose it might be right. Yes, he'll be listening to this. Say hello. Yeah, I'm just right.

Is he the most famous person that we know? I think he is. Yeah, he could. Well, is he more famous than Sanjeev? I suppose he is. I think he's more famous than anyone. I think he's like literally properly famous. He wears a baseball cap.

To stop people saying that's Jason Isaacs? Well, I said, are you doing that in order to stop people going hello to Jason Isaac? He said, no, I'm doing it because of my hair. but I think he was I think he was keeping a low profile. It was lovely to see him. He was in particularly good form and he said to say hello, back. That's very nice.

But what is he actually doing? How many? I'm not making this up. He's shooting a number of movies. So he's shooting something in New York and then he's shooting something else in Canada. So he's going backwards and forwards and, you know, from one to the other because he's shooting them both at the same time. He's so busy.

He's just constantly in demand. Do you think he could host this show if I was off one time? You could ask him. I think he probably would, wouldn't he? Dave Morris has done it back in the old days, but I think there was, he wasn't quite sure about, hello Dave, by the way, wasn't sure about queuing to the sport and the travel and the horse racing and things like that.

But that's why we got rid of all of that nonsense. Well, you're off soon and we're not going to say this now who it is, but there's an absolute doozy. you're a presenter. Yeah, a bit of a low-budget presenter. Standing in for the one week that you're off. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I knew David Cameron wasn't doing much, but I didn't know we could get him. Do you remember there was a week when we used to be on a different platform, when I was off and you got Michael Portillo to stand in for me? Because it was a joke about the fact that Michael Portillo looked a bit like me. I do. And he didn't quite understand.

and the concept of movie criticism because he just read and told us the whole thing all the way through. I mean, he was doing his best, but Frank Gardner did the same, reviewed a film about security by talking about the whole thing. Tom Courtney did it.

It's clearly a school of thought which says, here's the entire movie. That's it. Okay, thank you very much. Just describe for me what happens in the film, in the order that it happens. That'll be fine.

Speaking of which, tell us about the films that you're going to be talking about in order without spoiling too much. Yes. So we have a new Britpick, extra geography. We have Verity, which is a sort of modern erotic film noir thriller, and Digger, which is the Tom Cruise movie that you will have heard tons and tons about,

but everyone has been told very specifically, don't say anything that will spoil it. And we also have a very special guest. Sorry, sorry, hang on a second, before the guest. what you can't say anything about it no no not you can't say anything

yes more than normal there was a big announcement that came up at the beginning which said we the filmmakers you know want you to enjoy this in the best possible way and consequently don't do any spoilers at all we'll we'll deal with it

when we get to the film okay so on our work we said oh yeah I've heard about that it's a musical I said I don't think it is okay well that's one thing sorted. Or maybe that's a spoiler. Maybe that's a spoiler. Maybe it's a musical. Every time you say

digger and anyone else says digger, in my head it triggers, I digger, I digger was a boozy beggar. Hobbes was fond of his dram and René Descartes was a drunken bar. I drink before I am. But obviously it's a different digger. Yes. So Aaron Sorkin is going to be on the show, which is a fabulous thing. West Wing, a few good men, American president, Charlie Wilson's War, Money, Ball, Steve Jobs, Social Network. All of that. that he's doing the social reckoning. He's written it and he's directed it and he's on this show.

May I just ask you? I know you're probably embargoed up the wazoo, but generally? Generally what? Generally, because you've seen such a record, I'm not saying it until Monday, but I'm very excited about seeing it. I think your excitement will pay off handsomely.

Excellent, thank you. Is that okay? Yes, that's great. I mean, I really, if you're waiting, obviously, if you're waiting, for a car chase, this isn't your film. If you're waiting for some shoot-em-up action, this is not your film. If you're looking for some rampant sex, this is not your film.

Are there any dinosaurs in it? No dinosaurs, no spaceships. But if you're looking for some sparkling dialogue, then this is the one for you. And in Take 2, what are you up to there? A couple of films in Take 2. The Wait, that's W-E-I-G-H-T, not The Wait, like the second track off the Pretender's first album. and April X, which is a futuristic thriller. You can get Take 2 ad free by heading to our Patreon page.

Just search for coming about Patreon, and you'll find us there. Ryan in Abington says, Hello, number one and number two. Last week, Simon told us about RunP, an app that tells you the best times to go to the toilet during a movie. Yes. While I'm sure it's useful for many movies, I find it doesn't work particularly well for action movies.

The app suggests time where you can, nipped to the bathroom without losing track of the plot. And for action movies, it will often suggest going to the bathroom during an action sequence. Yes. You only really need to see the start and end of an action sequence to be able to follow the plot of the film, but for an action scene, the action is the real reason that you're there. In the latest Mission Impossible, Run P suggested the best time to go to the bathroom was during the submarine dive sequence, which was one of the standout sequences of the film,

and in my view not to be missed. You'd be better off going to the toilet during one of the explainy dialogue sequences, or in the case of Mission Impossible 8 just arrived one hour after the film started. Tinging to Tongue, down with the usual suspects, thank you, Ryan. Yeah, I suppose the algorithm there, even if it's just a person, has got it slightly wrong. Because if you're going to a Mission Impossible film,

for example, as it does action better than most films, you're not going to want to miss any of the action sequences, aren't you? No, exactly, because as you said, the actiony bits are what you're paying for. Yeah, I think you're going to have to take a water bottle, bottle and do that probably. I think that's... Or just don't drink any fluid for 24 out, not medically approved. Don't drink anything before you go. You're just suggesting that in general, are you? Yes. Correspondents at covenomero.com. Tell us something that's out that might be interesting.

Okay, so, extra geography, which is an adaptation of a 2007 story by Rose Tremaine, very celebrated Rose Tremaine. This is directed by Molly Manners and features two dynamite breakout performance from Mali Duggan and Galaxy Clear. They play Flick and Minner, who are inseparable best friends at an upmarket boarding school, both of whom have got their sights firmly set on Oxbridge. They are closer than sisters.

You know that way that when your school friends, you're completely in sync, you're sort of, you're almost finishing each other sentences, although right from the beginning, there is a suggestion of rivalry. When they play hockey, they play hockey to win, and they love the fact that they get celebrated for winning the hockey.

and they look down on the world. They look down on their classmates, like needy Phoebe, on teachers, and especially on boys, who they all agree are absolutely horrid, until auditions come up for a school play, Middummer Night's Dream, which is going to involve boys from the boys' school. And Flickaminer aren't interested in plays,

but their resumes in order to get them into Oxbridge in the future, require broad outlook. So they read the play, and they discover that the play is about, love, which they know nothing about. So in order to improve their CVs and make themselves more likely to get parts in the play, they decide that what they're going to do is they are going to make, as their summer project, falling in love. And then using as a template, the play itself, they agree that what they're going to do is they're going to walk into the classroom and the

first person they see they are going to fall in love with. And the first person they see turns out to be mousy antipodean geography teacher, Miss Delavine, with whom they then proceed and indeed compete to fall most completely in love. Here is a clip from the trailer. What will happen if we don't get into Oxbridge? Maybe we'll just die. Thank God we're here. Finished. Not off getting distracted by like drugs and boys. Horrid.

What are you going to do for your summer project this year? It's a secret. Godfeebe. What if we like fallen in love? Making our summer project. We've fallen in love with the first person we see. Hello, Fleck. Hello, Minna. All they know about love is what they've read in books. And they read in book because they go to the library

and they get all that about all this romantic book. And they discover that love makes your heart fluttering. It makes your pulse race. and it fills you with longing, but it also fills you with pain and heartache. And they're going, well, are we feeling these things about Miss Delavine? Meanwhile, the play brings boys into their lives. Yeah, exactly. But the presence of boys also further obscures the fact, ugh, horrid, obscures the fact that if there is a love story here,

it's playing out right under their noses. Now, I have to say, I loved this film. I thought it was simultaneously innocent, and knowing, and arch yet sincere and funny but also kind of heartbreaking. I was looking at some reviews afterwards because I did an interview with the filmmakers. So other people have compared it to films like Lady Bird, Booksmart, Francis Haar. I think it's closer to kind of the spikier productions like, you know, heathers or mean girls or clueless.

And for me, tonally, it falls somewhere between the kind of brilliant, awkward teen evocations of Richard Iowaddy's submarine and that sort of sublime swooning of Carol Morley's The Falling, which I love and which is a film which is very inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock. And that kind of strange dreaminess is in this, although this is much more in a kind of comedic register. I mean, this has got mystery, but it's also got that thing that the very best films have, which is recognition. I am a 63-year-old man, and watching this, I felt at times like, oh, I understand what the feelings of these people who are completely alien to me because I have never, unless you

never noticed, I have never been a teenage girl. But I think, yeah, I recognize that. And I love the fact that cinema at its best can do that. I mean, I thought this was, it was charming, but it's also quite daring. It absolutely nails the fact that when you're young, the attachments that you make to people and to things and to projects is heightened. You know, what's that in the open portal phrases, when your portals are open and you're feeling everything in a kind of really sort of heightened way. I also thought it reminded me of probably not anybody else of, I was talking about that Julia DeCourneux film, Roar, which looks like it's a film about cannibalism, but it isn't a film about cannibalism. It's a film about sibling rivalry. This isn't about

falling in love with your geography teacher. What it's actually about is it's about the heart-rending pains of young friendship and coming of age. And, you know, in the same way as the best Bill Forsyth evocations of this, it just gets it right. I mean, it's a real marvel. It raised the roof at Sundance. It really deserves to do the same in UK cinemas. I thought it was terrific. It's called extra geography. And I thought it was really something special. So when is this set? Apparently 2003. So I imagine they've done that because there's no mobile phonage. So You know, it's just when you said they learn all of, all they know about love is from books. Oh, yes, I see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have thought everything they know about love is from the internet. ChatGBT. Well, chat GBT now and TikTok, certainly. But do they not look at the internet at all? No, no, it's absolutely books. Absolutely books. Books and plays and stuff like that.

Okay. All right. I just thought they'd have been online and checking out that kind of thing. You know how it is. Definitely books. They go to the library and they take out every right. romance novel they can find and then they sit and read them and then they write in, you know, in their notebooks with pens.

Okay. Still to come after the break, if indeed there is one, because if you're patron then you don't get a break. The box office top 10, Verity, Digger, Errant Sorkin, and a quick reminder that there are only a few tickets left for our Christmas special, which this year is at the Bristol Beacon on December the 6th. So if you'd like the chance to experience our 90s Christmas death match, then head to the address on the show notes, which is.

HTT-C-Colon forward slash another forward slash W-W-W-W-Fain full-stop, F-A-N-E dot co-d-UK forward slash Kermode-N-Hifin-Mayo. Wow. Or just, you know, I think that was pithy, don't you?

It's embedded in my memory now. It's got a comma after fame, which is not right. That can't be right. You can't have a comma in a, in a, in a, in a, address. It's feign.com.

at UK Kerman and May with hyphens. That's the kind of thing. Anyway, we'll be at the Bristol Beacon, which is just off the ring road. So you can find us,

you know, just hang a left, that kind of thing. Okay, box office top ten then. This is a groovy thing. And we're actually starting at number 10, which is a very rare thing. At number 10 is the Paradise.

Which was not screened. This is an Indian Telugu language action drama starring Nanny as the leader of a struggling tribe in 1980s, is Secundaabad. So I haven't seen it. If you have, send us a review. Number nine here, number eight in America is Spider-Man.

Brand-new day, nine weeks in the chart. Which has just done incredibly well at the box office. So that and the Odyssey between them have raised the general box office level quite dramatically. Yeah, and the Odyssey is there at number eight. Number seven here is pressure. It's exciting weather, man. And I liked it very much. I enjoyed it very much. It is very old-fashioned. but it's got a very good central performance by Andrew Scott,

who does that thing about everything being very, very uptight until the moment that it isn't, and I think he does that very well. But as we have sort of talked about, when it says, you know, the untold story, no, the story of the weather and D-Day has been told. It's quite significant. It's told in every D-Day book, yes.

Retold, but with particular style and panache by Andrew Scott and his cast. Number six here and number six over there, Practical Magic 2. Well, as predicted, this is dropping quite, fast now. So the fans all went to see it in the first week. And we got lots of nice emails from people who had really enjoyed it. I didn't like it. But it now seems to have exhausted the fan base and it's on the way out. It may have one more week in the top 10 and that's it. Number five and number 14 in America is shul and the sheep, the beast of mossy bottom,

which I just loved. I mean, you know, when Arbman knock it out of the park, they really do. And I really, I've enjoyed all the Sean the Sheep stuff and I really enjoyed this. This for me would make the perfect double bill with Wallace and Gromit curse the wear rabbit. Number four here is sense and sensibility and Kirsty says, hi both, full disclosure, I love an Austin adaptation. A bit like Agatha Christie, I think the plots are strong enough for people to faff with them. So went into the new sense and sensibility with optimism, which was for the most part upheld. Everyone was fab. I didn't mind the flapping hair, although the health and safety of horse riding with it in your face has to be considered. And love the costume, scenery and general loveliness. Elliot Sumner, as Mr. Palmer,

was an interesting choice and I thought they were brill. But if you want to, if you want to gender bend, make it Willoughby and don't chicken out on the side character. Okay, I got lost halfway through that bit. However, the dancing, I love the anachronistic dancing is in something like a night tale. But then the whole film plays with that sort of thing. What sense and sensibility did was swing from Austin dialogue and polite manners to drunk flamingos doing close-up magic which left me sniggering and somewhat baffled. I began to hope that they would dance again

and honestly I can't remember anything else that happened in those scenes. Anyway, up with galloping in the rain and down with bounders. I mean, in general, bounders have got us into a lot of trouble over the years. Kirstie, thank you very much indeed. And the dancing is certainly from, it's out of another picture. Yes. I mean, the dancing is the bit in which, because they're all very repressed and they don't express their emotions

and then when they dance they express their emotions through the medium of modern dance but it is definitely modern dance because I did say to you those dances weren't period dances were they and they absolutely aren't it's like the Hacienda in 1982

that's what it was like for some reason where did that come from I mean they docedoed the partner but also whilst tripping but probably just on lavender Can I just tell you the Hacienda in 1982 did not have people dancing like that. The Hacienda in 1982 was an absolute hole.

Because when the Hacienda first opened, firstly, it was empty. Secondly, the sound system was awful because it was a big warehouse with a terrible sound system. And thirdly, if you ever went there to one of the nights in which it was a disco night, it was like three or four people

in long overcoats looking miserable. The Hacienda didn't really happen until much later on. For the first few years, it was empty and whole-like. Well, I'm speaking here on behalf of the good ladies framists, Terry indoors, who would probably dispute what you said there. She was a very early member of the aforementioned club

and seemed to have a wonderful time, unless she was one of the miserable people in an overcoat. I think she had a blast. I will defer to her, but I remember going to the Asienda on many nights when my friend Danny Jacobs was VJing. Well, that was the problem. That was the problem.

Danny Jacobs, everyone knew that he, He was going to empty the floor. I think that's what it was. Three here, three there, Heart of the Beast, Paul Sims from Chesterfield in Derbyshire. A heartfelt adventure, which is tender,

but also punishing with all the obstacles in the duo's way, one of the best films of 2026 with one of the best acting performances of the year. Nick Budgie says, this is director's David Ayres' best film. It achieves a remarkable balance between hard-edge realism

and full-blooded melodrama landing emotionally as well as viscerally. Pitt is extraordinary, delivering his best performance in years, but he's matched every step of the way by Odin, the dog. They genuinely feel as though they're having conversations. Give that dog an Oscar. Hello to Jason, which we've already done, down with the usual, up with pets, and a hearty tinkety-tong.

Much love Nick Budgie. Well, I agree that the dog was very good. I thought that the film was very average, and Brad Pitt was very unremarkable. I thought he was coasting, honestly. So it's either unremarkable in coasting or his best performance in years. It isn't somewhere in between the two. It absolutely isn't his best performance.

I'm sorry, I'm glad you enjoyed it and everything, but it isn't. Dropping one big top 40 place to number two is Resident Evil. Yeah, and it's only dropped one big place off the top spot because it's been knocked off the top spot by a pre-new Avengers re-release. So I think Resident Evil's terrific. And I mean, I'm really glad it had one week at number one. I thought I really, really enjoyed it. But it is at number two because Avengers Endgame Encore,

which is a reissue of Endgame with a little bit more footage, has been stuck out because there's a new one coming out. Nick in Leeds says, Dear Endgame and Encore, having just got out of a ScreenX infinity vision, didn't add anything for your information. screening of the re-release of Avengers' Avengers' Endgame Encore with a colon,

I can't stop wondering if the resultant cash from new bums on seats will be added to its first box office run, resulting in a challenge to retopple Avatar from the number one spot. And more importantly, should it? Given that there is new additional footage, which, spoiler light warning,

actually lessened the film's emotional impact by changing it from being the end to be continued. I don't really feel it's taking I don't really feel it's taking should really be counted but on the other hand I hated Avatar so was happy if it's brought down a peg or two

so what do you think? I don't know actually I don't know whether they will round this into the into Avengers Endgame Total Box Office If they've added footage it should be separate shouldn't it? Yes I mean it should be

I honestly don't know what the answer to that is my problem is I don't care either I mean, it just feels terribly, you know, let's put that film out again with a few little extra bits in it, in order to remind people what's going on so that the next, it feels awfully corporate. Nick, thank you very much, Steve, for the email correspondence at carbonamone.com. More of your takes on Resident Evil in the overflow car park in Take 2, including a suggestion of what it's actually about. Search for us on Patreon to get that and this and the other.

All ad free. That sounds a bit dodgy. Could I ask you something? Every time you say the overflow car park, my head adds the words of love. Why? You say overflow car park, and I want to say of love.

And I've got no idea why. But I can't hear you say it without thinking the overflow car park of love. Because you're just a big hippie, Mark. Oh, that's what it is. I think that's what it is. Because you want to buy the world of Coke and live in perfect harmony.

I haven't heard of the car park of love. Maybe that was just by the Hasienda. It was the Hasienda once they finished hanging around in their overcoats and looking miserable. No, the Hasienda was definitely the overflow car park of Wee. It was definitely not love. There's a great Van Morrison song, which we play a lot on greatest hits, which has a line in it, making love in the tall grass behind the stadium with you.

Yes, yeah. I think, I mean, how unromantic, Van, can you possibly be behind a stadium? Really? Yeah. That's the most exciting place you could possibly think of. But you know what's fascinating about that, Simon, is that you are therefore playing the uncensored version of that song, because in the original release, they just repeated the line from the other verse, because they thought that making love in the long grass or green grass, whatever it is, make love in the green grass, was, you know, was a bit rescape.

particularly with the additional information about where it was happening. So in the original radio edit of the song, they just take the line from another verse. We don't care about that kind of thing. Speaking of Greengrass, Paul Greengrass will be on the show very shortly. Oh, great. Is he coming on for the release of Uprising?

For the uprising, yes. The Uprising. Is it Caravan of Love? Is that what you're thinking? I don't know. I really don't know. But honestly, every single time you say it, I just think the overflow car park of love.

You would, the thing is, you would never want to go to the overflow car park of love, would you? Because there's a lot of bad things happening there. Unless it's a car boot sale. Is it a car boot sale? Maybe that's what it is. All sounds most unsavory. Anyway, special guest time in a moment. You're listening to a quick ad.

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Hey, better late than ever. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Some evil thing happened here. Three people die in a quiet suburb in the same house, years apart. It's not a coincidence. This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay? These were murders.

From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrisons. Start listening today, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad free. And that special guest moment is right now, because our guest this week is top man, top writing director, Aaron Sorkin, whose latest project is The Social Reckoning. So a few good men. You're about to get a very good story about a few good men, by the way. Oh, good.

Jack Nicholson, which I hadn't heard before. So I don't know if, I'm sure he's told it somewhere before, but anyway. Famously the West Wing, famously social network. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Moneyball, Steve Jobs, trial at the Chicago 7. And now we get to, I mean, there's loads of other things. The most annoying thing about him from a writer's point of view is, because I heard him. He has written 11 screenplays, Mark, 11 screenplays, they have all been made.

There is nothing in his drawer that hasn't been made. Wow. There are very few writers that can say, no, I haven't got something here which never got made. Anyway, his latest is the social reckoning. You can hear my conversation with the great Aaron Salkin after this clip from the movie. The reason why you hear it from the left and the right

on content moderation, they work in the refs. Facebook isn't the ref. That's the point. Look, that's the point, Charlie. We're not the ref. We're the public square. I'm a free speech absolutist, so accept where there's imminent harm.

You can't say absolutist and accept in the sense. With the new optimizations, with the MSI, the fire hose of bad information, you are injecting into the air supply, is becoming jet powered. It's hydraulic. Harm, I promise you, is imminent. And that is a clip from The Social Reckoning. Aaron Salkin, welcome to the show. Good to be here. How are you?

Good. Thank you. Thank you for your time. What hooked you back into the Facebook orbit? The story. I wasn't looking to get back into the Facebook world. There had been a couple of times over the years since the social network came out that it had been suggested to me after Cambridge Analytica, you should do this, that kind of thing. But there just wasn't a story there that was grabbing me. And then I met Francis Howgan and Jeff Harwitz and the Facebook files.

And suddenly there was a great story, a whistleblower story, a newspaper story, and all these secrets about Facebook, these terrible secrets, that would have. come to light. So that's a contemporary story, but also a very traditional newspaper story. Yeah. And I'm sure the traditional nature is what appealed to me to. I tend to, I like writing the kinds of movies that made me want to write movies. Yeah. So once you were hooked into that story and you'd met Francis and Jeff, at what stage in the writing process did you know you wanted to direct as well. I was my second choice to direct. My first choice was David Fincher.

But David Fincher has an exclusive deal at Netflix and was in the middle of, was a repairing to direct Quentin Tarantino's movie, The Further Adventures of, Further Misadventures of Cliff Booth. So I settled for me. And it was somewhere in the middle of the writing process. And it's the first time actually, this is the first movie I've directed where I knew I was going to be the director when I was writing it. The others were surprises. Okay. Is that a good feeling? Sure. It's a good feeling.

Listen, I'm not done wanting to work with great directors, but it's nice to know you're not going to have to battle with someone to, you know, get what you want. And when you're telling this story, did you always know how it was going to open and how the film was going to close? It wasn't until I knew how it was going to open that I understood what I was going to write. There's a period, you know, you do all this research, but then there's this period of just climbing the walls, of not knowing what the once upon a time of it all is. How is this going to work? And so I asked Jeff Harwitz, who's in the movie is played by Jeremy Allen White. I asked him a dramatist's question. I asked him, what was the inciting action for Francis?

You know, one day she wasn't a whistleblower, and the next day she was. What happened? And he said, well, she had this friend who became radicalized by Facebook very quickly, and she, Frances, wanted to know how this happened. And once Jeff told me that, a couple of days later, I knew what the opening scene was going to be. It's a great opening scene. Thank you. The thing is, you know what the opening scene is going to be,

but nobody's ever going to get to see it unless you write the hundred scenes that come after that. So that was my motivation. So the last time I saw Jeremy Allen White in a movie, he was Bruce Springsteen. And his manager, John Landau, is played by Jeremy Strong, who here is Mark Zuckerberg. So slightly, it took a moment.

But why Jeremy Strong? He's terrifying, I think. He's extraordinary. Why him? It's a fantastic performance. I think Jeremy Strong is the best American actor under 50 years old that we've got, and he proves it in this movie. He's absolutely fantastic.

Are you asking why Jeremy Strong and not Jesse Eisenberg? Yeah, I mean, I kind of know, because you said that Jesse didn't want to do it. Jesse didn't want to do it because Jesse over the years, he's distressed that he's been conflated with this person who he doesn't really like that much. and, you know, he's become Jesse's now very well-respected writer and director himself. As it happens,

I hadn't told Jesse what I was doing over the last two or three years that I was writing this script. I ran into him at an Oscar party, an Oscar night when he was nominated. And I said, listen, I'm going to be sending you something in a couple of weeks. And he smiled and said, great.

And just a few minutes later, I ran into Jeremy Strong, who asked me what I was up to, and I told him what I was writing, and he said, hey, for some reason, Jesse doesn't want to do it. Sent it to me. And that's what happened. And he's phenomenal on the film. It was like replacing Joe DiMaggio with Mickey Mantle. Yeah.

We'll have to look up those references. I'm sorry. That's one great American baseball player with another American baseball player. That worked on the New York Times, but it's... And is it the same Mark Zuckerberg? I know you wrote both characters, but for me, he's edging to villain here. And anti-hero, yes, but I'm not on his side at all. No.

You ask if it's the same Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, it's the same Mark Zuckerberg 16 years later. 16 years later, the company is now worth a trillion dollars. As one of the characters points out, they are twice as big as the largest country. on earth. Anti-hero versus villain. An anti-hero, his intentions are good. The results are bad.

And even his methods could be bad. Jeremy Strong was the biggest Mark Zuckerberg defender that you can imagine. And after, on his last day of shooting, after I called cut, check to gate on his last shot, he made a B-line to me, and he said, if I'd been playing Jeff, I'd have been defending Jeff. And he was done. I would still say, I think the reason why you're feeling like he's harder to liken this is there are fewer moments of being alone with him inside his head the way there were in a social

network where he was also younger. This is The social network was about how Facebook was invented. This is about what it's become, and in particular, Facebook's role in the rise of divisiveness and extremism, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. And it's happening because he wants growth at any expense. You said before that you see dialogue as music.

When Martin McDonough was on the film, was on the show a few years ago, for Banshees of Innesharen, I asked him slightly mischievously, because I knew what his answer was going to be, if Colin Farrell or Brenda Gleason came up to you and said, can I change a line? Can I change a word? What would you say? And he said, I'd tell them to F off. I am the best writer on set. These are my words you're going to stick to them. Are you slightly more open to suggestion?

Or would you be a little bit... Similar. Slightly more open. If it's music, you can't change the notes. You can't. The first movie set I was ever on was a few good men, which was based on my play, the first play that I wrote. And I was in a rehearsal with Jack Nicholson. And I was a kid.

This was my first thing, and this is Jack Nicholson, who had a line, I don't mind the bullets and the box. and the blood, Danny, I don't mind the heat and the stress and the fear. And he came up to me and he said, I'd really like to not say stress. Stress, it just sounds like a, doesn't sound like a word, a Marine colonel would say. It sounds like something a teenager. I would say, and I said, sure, duck, cut the word, all the while thinking, well, he just killed the rhythm of it. It was, I don't mind the bap, da-pap-da-ba-da-ba-ba.

I don't mind the bup-da-bub and he cut the second but-a-bub and it's not going to be as good but it is Jack Nicholson so and I am nobody so we're going to do it this way but I'm happy to have actors come to me and but now you're not on your first movie I'm not on my first movie I am happy to hear suggestions from actors but I'm also happy to tell them why I can't change it okay I do listen if they're You better have a very good reason. I would need to have a good reason. And I also need to, especially if I'm directing, if for some reason they are having trouble with the line

because it's tough for them to get out of their mouth or it's just not fitting with what they're doing. Well, the writer is on the set too, I'm there. And I'll find something that works better for them. You are known for being somewhat of an optimist and having movies which maybe look at on the positive side. I have to say, I loved the film very much. I thought the performances that all your main characters put in is amazing.

Mikey Madison inspired Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong. Yeah, fantastic. But when the credit started to roll, I thought, we are in serious trouble. That's what I thought, because the people making these decisions are Mark Zuckerberg and others may be worse than him. And I don't know what we can do about that.

It sounds to me like you responded to the movie exactly as I hoped, which is this. You're right. I'm an optimist. I wanted the audience to feel good at the end of the film, to feel that lump in the throat, a moment, which hopefully you will from Mikey. But then when you're walking out of the theater, you should realize we're in big trouble and something has to be done. Yeah.

If all social media went away tonight, all of it. You can't un-invent anything. But if it all disappeared, we would be in a better place, wouldn't we? There's no question about it. There's no doubt about it. Social media was a good idea which it's out of control. It's gotten out of hand. It's bad for us in any number of ways.

This movie, again, examines how it's making us, on purpose, mad at each other. They're purposely show, your algorithm is purposely showing you things designed to make you angry. And not to mention the effect that it's having on young people, a terrible effect that it's having on young people. If it all went away in the middle of the night to night, it'd be a great thing. Do we, should we all, do you think, Aaron, should we all share your confidence in institutions, that the institutions will get it right? I think that you should share my belief that these institutions are incredibly user-sensitive,

okay, that it matters who's in the institutions, and that will take greater care maybe with who we're putting in the cockpit. Okay, that sounds like a job for you guys. Yeah, I think you're right. And have you had the, I know you said before about when you finish a project, you've got no idea what you're going to do next and wonder if you'll ever have another decent idea ever in your life, which clearly you will do. Is this different? Have you wrapped and thought, no idea? I have no idea. I don't know what I'm doing next and you're right. When I don't have an idea, it's impossible for me to imagine ever having an idea. And are you expecting any pushback from Facebook now?

Yeah, sure. Listen, I imagine that somebody is advising Mark and the others. Just don't say anything. Just ignore it. But yeah, there'll be some kind of pushback. But you're quite happy with that, and your bosses are quite happy with that, and they've seen it, and everything is signed off and legaled. Yes, my boss is Sony at the studio.

Tom Rothman is the head of the studio. This was not a no-brainer to Greenlight. this movie and he did it full speed ahead. Aaron Salkin, it's always a pleasure to speak to you. My pleasure. Thank you very much. Thank you. Aaron Salkin, talking about his new movie, I've got my notes here for the interview. And he's just what, I mean, this happens a lot, but he's one of those guests that, you know, if you had a couple of hours with, it would be fantastic. You know, there's so much in what he said there.

I mean, I do stand by the fact that, yes, there is a little kind of uplift. with the Mikey Madison character, but you will leave. You see, this is very, this actually is going to tie in with a Paul Greengrass uprising interview, which hopefully will be with you next week.

Angry and powerless is a very bad place to be. And if your main concern is housing or Brexit or unemployment or benefits or immigration, then you have a political system that's designed for that. If you've, if you're,

issue is with AI and social media, well, you can do nothing. You can do absolutely nothing. So you're angry and you're powerless. And that's how I think a lot of, well, if they're like me, that's how you'll leave the cinema.

Well, just on the basis of that interview because I haven't seen the film yet, which I'm now really, really looking forward to, you said that you enjoyed the film and I'm, which I'm really looking forward to enjoying it. And I actually think that seeing anything, any story that kind of at least reflects a concern that you may have is in itself empowering. Because I do think there is a thing about even if the position at the

end of that film is, you know, we're in trouble. My own feeling is that to see something that reflects an anxiety that you have can be an empowering thing in and of itself, even if it doesn't offer an answer. It reminded me of, and I think it reminded you of the Michael Man film The Insider. Oh, right. With Russell Crow, Alperino, with the expose of the tobacco industry, in as much as they knew that their product was killing people.

Yeah. And one of the central things about the movie is Facebook knew what they were doing. Yeah. They knew what the algorithm was doing. They knew it was making people angry and they did nothing. That's, so that's the kind of, that's why it's a traditional film. But I love the Jake Nicholson story. just because there was a, this idea of dialogue as music is great.

And you could hear the rhythm in that line, which he was able to recall. What I should have said. I thought he was going to say that the line that Jack Nicholson didn't want to say was, you can't handle the truth. Yeah. No. Maybe that one of the reasons he can remember that is because it's going to Broadway and a few good men. So there's a new version of it.

So my guess is that line has gone back to the original. Bradley Whitford is starring in the new one. So he now says, yeah, the stress. Can I also just point out, you mentioned the insider, which is absolutely brilliant and is a really brilliant indictment of the tobacco industry. I interviewed Michael Mann about that film when it came out, and he was smoking.

He was not. Really? He was. What, like it was 1972? No, I mean, not during the interview, but before he was, and I mean, just got to figure if you made a film like The Insider, you'd just never, ever go anywhere near a cigarette. Yeah. Anyway, I look forward to talking about the Aaron Salkin film. So you are reviewing it next week?

I am. I'm seeing it on Monday and I'm very excited now. Okay, well, COVID and January 6 are all going to be part of that conversation. Also, the one other thing I was going to ask him about was, have you heard about this P-Doom figure? You know what P-Dome is? I don't know. This is another terrible phrase out of Silicon Valley. But it's sort of, it's, and it's tied to AI, your P-Dume number, the higher it is, the higher it is, It's like percentage of the end of the percentage of doom. It's how likely is the apocalypse? How likely do you think the apocalypse is? Yes, because of AI. Oh, I said right. So a lot of P-Doomers are around 10%,

but there are many who have 30, 40, 50%, and I was going to, my guess is Aaron Salkin's P-Doom number is quite low. But then having seen this movie, it might go up a few notches. Anyway, that's also more for Paul Greengrass next week. So you haven't seen the social reckoning that will be in the show next week when they will have seen it. Tell us about a film you have seen.

Verity, and this could not be further from all the sort of heavy stuff that you've just been dealing with. Verity is the latest screen adaptation of a novel by Colleen Hoover, the Nick Sparks de Nosejeure. Oh yes, yes. Who, you remember, initially self-published and then became absolutely huge publishing sensation. Her books have inspired movies like It Ends With Us, Regretting You, Reminders of Him. and now Verity. So this is written by Nick Antoska and directed by Michael Showalter.

Now Michael Showalter's name will mean something to you because he directed The Big Sick, the Eyes of Tammy Fay, for which you interviewed, did you interview Michael Showalter for that? You did an interview for Eyes of Tammy Fay. Was that Andrew Garfield?

Oh, was it? Okay. Oh, fine, maybe it was, yeah. And was it him? I think, I, hmm. Now you got me going. Yeah. You've done so many interviews. You've interviewed so many glitter-arty that we can't even nail it down. Anyway, he did that and he also did the idea review, which I essentially liked.

This is, at the end, it says, a Michael's Show Walter film. So he's, you know, he's that level. So this reunites show Walter with Idea Review star Anne Hathaway. If you remember when I reviewed an idea of you, a lot of people being very sniffy better, but I liked it, alongside very bankable stars, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartlett. So Dakota Johnson is Lowen Ashley, who, a struggling writer who we meet doing a reading of her latest serial killer book. And she's reading it in a library. And there are like three people. Then one of their phones rings.

There's only two people. Her agent calls her and says, you've got an assignment. Get yourself to this meeting. And then we see her walking down the street. We hear in a voiceover. She says, I like being in New York because it's anonymous. Nobody knows me. And then there's a road accident.

And the road accident happens off screen. But what you see is blood is splashed onto her. Okay? So she's suddenly standing in the street with bloods. flashed onto her. And then there is Josh Hartner, this handsome young man who steps in, helps her, he gives her his shirt, he's unfazed by the blood, and whilst he's sort of cleaning things up, he tells it, it's a lot of plot in the opening 10 minutes. He tells it, it's okay, I've seen worse, I lost a child. And she reveals that she has recently lost her mother. This is all happening

in like the opening 10, 15 minutes. Then she gets to the meeting, only to discover that the meeting is with the Josh Hartner character, Jeremy. He is the husband of a claimant. He is the husband of acclaimed writer Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway, who is struggling to finish her latest book after being injured in a car crash. There is a lot of plot. She is being asked to help out, to help her write the books as a ghostwriter. And she agrees. And she goes to the house, the lakeside house in Vermont,

where she learns that Verity isn't just struggling. She's catatonic. Here's a clip from the trailer. You must have questions. Why can't your wife finish her book series? You really want to know? This is Berty. Doctors don't think she'll ever walk or talk again.

She said you are a brilliant, undiscovered voice. The only writer who can finish this last novel. Her fans know her voice. They would know it's not her. There's a lot of heavy work being done by the school. there, isn't there? Yeah, that's right, because that score is saying important thing, bad thing, scary thing about to happen, like it's the end of the world. And that score is by Volker Bertelman, who is honestly having an absolute wail of a time doing this. And he's also,

he's scoring every single movie. Volker Bertelman is becoming the most, you know, prolific composer of our time. I think it's him on the uprising. I think he does music for that. Almost certainly. Almost certainly. Anyway, so she's, you know, prolific composer of our time. I think it's him on, I think it's She's going to have to do the writing alone. So she buries herself in the office and she's got, you know, all the, all the notes that were made. But she also finds something else, something that suggests that all the darkness, which is in Verity's very dark fiction, where it's very, very dark books, maybe that darkness wasn't just limited to fiction. Maybe there's something else going on. What the hell is going on? What was going on? What's happening now? So, now, it's no surprise. Have you seen the trailer, the trailer was giving away more. information than I've just given you there, incidentally, like I said, lots of plot. But you can see from the beginning that, you know, she's going to, they're going to become mirror images of each other. She's in her office. She's reading her notes. She's sitting at her desk. She's at some points wearing her clothes and inevitably falling for her husband, played by handsome Josh Hartnett.

At some point, she's wearing her clothes. Yes, at some point she's wearing Verity's clothes. At other point, she's wearing her own clothes. She's always wearing clothes. I mean, well, actually not I thought you were alluding to the fact that there's vast scenes of nudity. No, there's not vast scenes, but there is a sort of, there's a sort of frisone. As I said, there's a sort of erotic thriller frie son. And the surprises aren't that any of that stuff happens. It's how is it going to happen? How, you know, how is this stuff going to play out?

Because, you know, we know that this is about dark fiction and we know that we're in slippy territory because, I mean, first, you know that you're in neurotic thriller. One way you know that is because there is a point when she is, you know, she's, you know, She's in a room and you overhear a clip on television. And the clip that you overhear is Michael Kane, and it's Michael Kane in Dress to Kill. And then there is a clip on TV. There's a little bit of Daphne Dumorriere. They were these kind of little things that are giving you the sense of which genre you're in.

Actually, the biggest debt that this owes is to Joe Esther House, who wrote music box and jagged edge and basic instinct. And basic instinct, of course, is about a, a woman who is a writer, but he's also involved in a murder mystery, and there's a whole bunch of stuff about how much, you know, are the books the clue to the murder mystery? The other thing is that all Joe Esther House's script have the same setup. They have the same setup, they have the same reveal, and then they have the same last minute pull the rug out from under you thing. That's what they do. I mean, in music box, it is literally the music box in jagged edge. It's the typewriter.

It's that's how it works. And this conforms very much to that model. The main difference is that this isn't written or played like the leery masturbation fantasies of an oversized man boy, which is what Joe Estherhouse, you know, that's how he writes. It's kind of, you could call it Esthouse Light. I prefer to think of it as an example of what Esther House, how he might have written had he not been that leering little boy. I mean, the script makes no sense in terms of in the real world it makes no sense. sense. But in the terms of the genre, it's fine. I mean, it's a B movie. It is a B movie, but with an A-list star and an A-list director. And I rather enjoyed it. And, you know, Johnson and Hartnett do exactly

what they do. You know, they look fabulous and flirty. Anne Hathaway hams it up very nicely in old school fashion. There is a, there's a nice on the nose thing in the title because, of course, Verity, Verity means, you know, truth. But what is truth? And what is truth and what is fiction? And incidentally, this is one of two movies out this week that plays with the idea of what is true and what is fiction. And I have to say this one does it rather better than the other one.

It also has a kind of satisfyingly ambiguous finale, which is ambiguity is not something Esther has ever really managed. So I thought it was fun. I mean, it's preposterous, and it's nonsensical in terms of the real world. But as a genre exercise, it was surprisingly well put together, and I did enjoy watching it. Okay, that movie is Verity.

All of which tease us up very nicely, because I can see the music approaching very fast, it's time for everybody's favourite part of the show. Never mind all the work that Mark puts into the film reviews, going to see them working up carefully thought out, response for your edification. What people want is dad jokes, which is what you're about to get in the laughter lift. Oh, good. Hey Mark. Interesting little natural history fact for you. Okay. Do you know how you can easily tell

male and female ants apart? I don't. You just need to briefly put them in a little bit of water. If it sinks, it means it's a girl ant. If it floats. It's a buoyant. Oh, it's boyant. Boyant. Thank you very much. I was thinking it's a man ant. I was thinking it's a man ant. I was we went fossil hunting in Suffolk over the summer, Mark. I was specifically dig. I was. I was. Trust me, I was. I was specifically digging for dinosaur leg bones, and I thought I had one. Okay. But it was a fossil arm. A fossil arm, okay.

Yeah. Not a dinosaur leg bone. Also on holiday, yeah, I was walking with a good lady, ceramics, sister indoors, through a lovely little churchyard where we spotted a grave that said, here lies an honest man and an estate agent. Oh, I didn't think you were allowed to put two separate people

in the same grave, says she. Everybody jumping ahead there. Very good. What is still to come? Please, Mark. I digger, I digger. It was a boozy bigger. Bigger.

And if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far, and even, honestly, if you haven't, there's a lot of extra content waiting for you over in take two, such as One Frame Back, our extended viewing feature, and questions, schmestians, in which this week we're asked, why is it only in horror that we see such extreme quantities of sequels, remakes, and reimaginings? Just search Comit and my Patreon

and join us over there. You can get both takes ad-free plus our exclusive fortnightly extra show Extra Extra Extra Show, Take Ultra, which features Mark and I enduring the murky world of our YouTube commenters.

Oh deary, dearie, dearie, dear, dearie, dear, dearie, dearie, dearie, dearie, dearie, dearie, dearie, all right, well, we're moving on. I mean, some people had some ads and some people didn't. So now we get to the exciting What's on section, which is where you tell us about anything cinematic or cinema adjacent that is happening either because of you, because of your friends or near you. For example, by example, is Nicholas Vizi. Hi, Simon and Mark. Aspen Chapel in Aspen, Colorado is hosting its third annual sacred cinema series with films that have a spiritual bent. This year we have the mission

with Robert De Niro on October the 8th, Martin Scorsese's Kundan, which seems to have mysteriously disappeared from all screening services, Nasa Camer's Persian classic Babaziz, and finishing with Stephen Soderberg's Solaris, with George Clooney on November the 19th. It's all free, more info at aspenchapel.org.

Thank you, Nicholas Vizi. That's how they all speak in Aspen, Colorado, by the way. That's, you know, a whole John Denver thing that was a huge, I was just wrong. They didn't, they don't talk like that. They talk like Nicholas Vizi. Nicholas, thank you very much indeed. Thanks for that.

And here's Marco. He's going next. On the recent topic of poets and their representation in cinema, why not come to a charity screening of Simon Mesa Soto's A Poeta at the London-Colombian Film Festival? It's a hilarious satire

on raw poetic talent of the future and have been poets of the past. This is happening at the Genesis cinema in East London. Saturday 10th of October 6pm, all proceeds will go to support relief efforts for the Colombian earthquake of August this year. Thank you, Marco. Please send in your videos to the usual address,

which is correspondence at covenoméme.com. It's Tom Cruise time, everybody. May I just point out before it's Tom Cruise? I'm on the subject of whether those what's on things are effective. Linda Marrick, who had one on our show last week. I saw her yesterday and I said, how did it go? She said it was sold out. And I'm sure that was entirely, entirely due to featuring on this program.

Yes, on that. Well, let's get follow up. I can't imagine that we have hundreds of listeners and viewers in Aspen, Colorado. But if anyone turns up at that because of this podcast, please tell Nicholas Vee. Or just tell us. Yes. Because, you know, it would be nice to know that, you know, it makes a difference somewhere, even if it's one bum on one seat.

So now it's Tom Cruise time. Tom Cruise o'clock. Okay, so Digger, which is the new film from Alejandro G. Iniaritu, the Mexican filmmaker behind Morris Peros, 21 grams, Babel, Birdman, Revenant, the last of which both earned Best Director gongs. So there was a big notice at the beginning of the screening that was on screen that said, from the filmmakers, we want you to enjoy this, you know, and we want you to allow other people to enjoy it in the same way as you are doing. So please do not do any spoilers whatsoever, don't

reveal any secrets of the film. The problem is, it's hard to know what constitutes a spoiler, because I'm not sure what you're meant to not know. I also think that, you know, clearly there will be some reviews that do actually tell you a bunch of stuff. What I'm going to do is this. I'm going to approach this, as I have done in the past with movies like when we were doing the last James Bond movie. I am going to really avoid as much as is possible specifics about the, you know, exactly what's in the film. I will talk more in generalities. What we can say is this, because this is what everyone knows. It stars Tom Cruise as Digger, who is this wealthy tycoon who must, and this is according to the official strap line,

who must save the world when one of his oil rigs malfunction. and causes an environmental catastrophe across the planet. Here is a clip from the trailer. Mr. President, 55 minutes ago, my company bore me of the explosion on our rig. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. What was this to make casualties in hundreds of thousands? Now, Digger here got us into this mess,

and Digger's going to dig us out. What the hell is that? That thing is huge. Of course, they all heap to blame. on me. You just drowned half the damn content and what you're going to do, double down. So we also know that Cruz's performance involves a ton of prosthetics, everyone's seen the

thing transforming him into this portly, balding old guy with an outrageous accent. We know that from the trailer. Apparently the makeup originally took six hours. They managed to get it down to one at Tom's instruction. Stellar cast includes Sandra Huller, John Goodman, Jesse Plymence, and Riz Ahmed. And it's filmed by Manuel Lubezki, who is a brilliant cinematographer on 35 mil using VistaVision.

The budget are whopping 125 million. So none of that is spoilery. That's all stuff that's in the public domain. As is the fact that Iniaritu came up with the idea for this in the wake of the Revenant, so 10 years ago, he said, I had an idea, not script, not a film, just a relentless recurring obsession that has endured through all these years. I knew who this character was. I knew how he spoke, how he survived, how he seduced reality into agreeing with him.

But it took me 10 years to do this film because I wasn't looking for a story. I was looking for the right way of saying it. And then 2019, when Tom Cruise was doing Maverick, that was when they started talking about him doing it. The script is now, I think, multiple credits, Sabina Berman, Dinalaris, those people, Jazz Bartwood's names in there as well. So, big star-driven production from an Oscar-winning filmmaker with a huge budget. how to describe it without doing anything that is a spoiler.

One way of doing that will be to talk about other films that I think are significant here. So the films that this put me in mind of included most notably Charlie Kaufman's Synecichy, NY, Synecichy, New York, which was a sprawling art pop production with Philip Seymour Hoffman as an ailing theatre director who creates this vast, elaborate stage production, which becomes bigger than life. it sort of kind of overtakes reality and it sort of blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. Now, that film divided critics, and I didn't like it, if you remember. I thought it was kind of insufferably up itself. Digger also put me in mind for obvious reasons of eyes wide shut,

which was Stanley Kubrick's sprawlingly indulgent final feature, in which Tom Cruise plays a man who, in a fit of jealousy, goes off into the night looking for sexual pleasure, ends up at this great maskball orgy, which may or may not be happening, because the thing is based on trauma novel, dream novel, dream story, and there's a whole suggestion in eyes wide shut that none of it is really happening.

And that film really divided critics, and I didn't like it. I thought it was insufferably up itself. Actually, the film that Digger wants to remind you of is another Kubrick production, which is Dr. Strangelove, which is this kind of tragedy comic farce about impending nuclear disaster. in which a series of larger-than-life caricatures of President's Generals, industrialists, you know, pontificate in slapstick fashion about a potentially world-ending disaster,

which they are in the process of bringing about. Now, I like Strange Love, as does everybody, this wants to be Strange Love for the climate crisis age. It isn't. In fact, the thing it's closer to is a film which no one's heard of, which is Deal of the Century, which is a William Friedkin film that desperately wanted to be Strange Love. It was from a script by Paul Brickman.

It was from the 1980s and starred Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver. And it really wanted to be a kind of strange-lovy film about the arms race. But it wasn't because it was nothing like as clever or funny as it needed to be. Nobody liked it. Nobody liked Deal of the Century. It crashed and burned and disappeared. And it didn't even divide critics. And I didn't like it, not least because I thought it was insufferably up itself.

So what you've effectively got, rather than a 21st century strange love, which is what I think it really wants to be, is what I would call deal of the synecdochie N wide shut. On the plus side, you might say, you might say it's encouraging to see a studio putting this much money into a big, O-Tur-led art house folly. You know, I mean, people are saying that there's, you know, in the wake of one battle after another and things like that, it's like, okay, studios are now backing big O-Tur productions. The problem is, the last time this happened when you've got studios backing really big budget O-Tur movies, we ended up with Heaven's Gate destroying United Artists. And, you know, some critics have embraced Heaven's Gate. I never liked that movie. I always thought it was an indulgence and insufferably up itself. This, Digger, is an indulgence.

a grand and, I have to say, insufferably up itself, look at me folly, in which everybody appears to have taken an overdose of acting pills, but in which that criticism is promptly diffused by the postmodern meta declaration that, oh, they're meant to look like they're acting. And it's like, you know, like postmodernism, being meta means never having to say you're sorry. You know, you think You think this animatronic cat that Tom Cruise is stroking looks theatrically shunkey? Well, that's okay. We meant it to look like that. You think these performances are wiggy and preposterously over-egged?

Well, that's okay. We meant them to be like that. You think the recurrent fourth-wall framing device in which beautiful views from the window are revealed very, very early on to be window dressing, you think that's heavy-handed? It's okay. It's meant to be heavy-handed. Now, I'm not quite sure why the filmmakers have been so strict about not revealing anything, you know, the twist. Because the thing is, the film doesn't really have a twist.

It has this meta-framing device that's flagged up very, very early on. And he's nothing new. I mean, we've seen it in everything from, you know, Lars von Tray's Dogville to Almodovar's human voice and that Sebastian Lelio thing, The Wander, you know, a device which says, look, we're making a film. You know, we're drawing attention to the fact that we're making a film. And the only twist here is that

what is a familiar framing device becomes a slightly less familiar core conceit. And that's kind of it. And what that means is, for the first 40 minutes or so, before the film really starts to play its hand, it looks clunky and grating

and overacted. And then it shifts into, oh, I see, I see what you're doing. how long are you going to do it for? To which the answer is a very long time. Now, in its defense, in the later stages, it sort of pulls things together. It pulls things together much more effectively

than I had thought it was going to because there was a point about halfway through when I had completely lost patience with it. And then in the sort of latter third, it kind of, you go, okay, fine, you've done that better than I thought you were going to. The problem, I mean, it may be that the second time round it would look like a better film

if you knew where you were from the beginning but I can't imagine anybody coming out of this and going I really want to sit through that again as for all the pre the previewing stuff about Tom Cruise is going to actually win the Oscar this time he's actually going to get his competitive Oscar

it's not just that this isn't the best performance of his career it's not the best performance in the film the best performance in the film is Riz Ahmed Riz Ahmed really should win something because he's terrific. He plays the Digger's chief scientist, Ganesh. And he does that really well. And his performance is, you know, pretty much worth the price of admission. But elsewhere, you've got people like Sandra Hula,

who I think is one of the greatest actors of her generation, in a role that is completely wasted. I mean, just completely thrown away to the point that every time she walked in, I forgot that she was in the story. there's also there is a very adventurous score by Cosmo Sheldrake, which sort of seemed to be channeling the spirit of the work that Joskin Fendricks did, you know, because Joskin Fendricks has now so become known for his film scores. But I think, you know, when we were watching, when we were first seeing it,

so it's like, okay, that's very, very experimental, experimental. I think this is kind of in a similar way, it's experimental. And if I still had a scholar show, I would be annoying the bosses every week by insisting that I play some unlistibly squunky thing from that soundtrack. But for the rest of it, I haven't read the reviews because they were embargoed until late last night. So I don't know what the critics have said. But my prediction is that it will divide critics.

This is just on the basis of the screening that I was in. I could kind of feel it doing it, that it will divide critics. It will open big because of its star power. I think it will then drop like a stone in the following weeks, due to word of mouth. I think it'll lose money. And I think at some point in years to come, it will be embraced as a cult masterpiece

that was misunderstood by stupid critics like me because we weren't clever enough to understand its brilliance, which is exactly what's happened to Eyes Wide Shut. You know, everyone now says, oh, Ice Wide Shut is a must be. It's not. Eyes Wide Shut is not a good film. And it doesn't matter how long away from it we get and how much you think...

Somebody said, I did think about Eyes Wide Shut. Somebody said, oh, you edge law. not liking eyes wide shut. No, that's not edge lord. Nobody liked eyes wide shut. What does that mean? It means, oh, you think you're so edgy. And it's just like one of those really annoying things

when people think that you're saying something to be edgy. And I'll get a certain amount of it for this. This is not brilliant. It is at best an occasionally jaw-dropping failure. And I mean, jaw-dropping in a good way. Like, you know, you have to applaud its ambition and it's hubris. But you also have to admit that it's nothing like a smart or important as it thinks it is.

Is Tom Cruise any good? Does he play old well? No, but the answer to that question is that there is something inherent in that question, which is part of the spoil. Oh, God, I mean, I'm totally insufferable is the restrictions that they put. I mean, this is like a standard question? Is the lead star any good at doing what he's trying to do? And you're saying that you can't answer that. No, no, I'm not saying that I can't.

doing is I'm policing myself very carefully. Your question was, is Tom Cruise good at playing an old man? And the answer to that question is no, but it's no in more ways than you think. And it's no in more ways than I can reveal due to the central conceit of the thing, which is, is he meant to be any good at playing an old man? And even, I think you can hear even from the way I'm describing this, I mean, I'm finding myself insufferably up myself, because that's, it's kind of part of what the movie is. And I'll also say this. When I watched it, I said halfway through, I was fed up with it. In the final third, I thought it kind of pulled itself back together again. I came out of the cinema thinking, well, it's mere. You know, it's mere. There's some bits work and some bits don't.

The further away from it I get, and I'm 48 hours away from it now, the more annoying I found it. The more I think about it, the more empty it seems to me. Yeah. Well, we're five seconds away from your review and I'm, I can't stand the film. I haven't seen it. Literally everything that you've said about it makes me want to go and watch anything else. Yeah, well, but I am going to say once again, because I was quite pleased with this, it is, it is not strange love, it is deal of the Synecdochie N wide shut. I don't quite follow all of that, but anyway, in the context of your review, I do, but I'm going to have to go away and study it all night. That is it for this week. It's been a Sony Music Entertainment production this week's team, Dom, Eric, Josh and Heather,

the redactor. He's not going to get credit. He's not even on the show today. So there was been no redactor. All the glory to Dom, Eric, Josh and Heather. In Take 2, we're directing you to the Overflow car park. We'll chat about current film releases, giving you some film viewing suggestions related to one of this week's new releases. So on the subject of Digger, we're looking at the best Tom Cruise non-action roles, which is interesting. And don't forget me, Babbers. We're in Brissal in December. Mark, what is your film of the week?

Well, in a week in which Hollywood threw $125 million at the screen to make Digger, I'm very proud to say that my film of the week is extra geography. Thank you. One last email from Tabitha. Tabitha from Brighton here. Second-time emailer from early this year. a pregnant lady turned new mother. Glad to inform you that as well as my gas and air,

I did indeed enjoy some Kermode and Mayo before welcoming our sweet baby boy. We are the equivalent. He's gas and I'm air. Please can you give a big welcome to your newest member of the church, Cassian Bruce Beattie, lovingly named after the boss himself, so I hope Simon approves. That sounds like a great name. Unsurprisingly, I've not had much time for movies or podcasts recently, so lots of catching up for me.

It'll be a lovely surprise if you do read this out when I eventually listened to it in 2027. Thanks for all the lulls from Tabitha. I had a thought the overnight feeds is the perfect opportunity for you to catch up, Tabitha, but you know best. We'll be back next week, and also there'll be a fantastic take two

which has landed adjacent to this one.