Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Has A24 gone too far with Death of a Unicorn? + Toby Jones

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Vanguardistas have more fun—so if you don’t already subscribe to the podcast, join the Vanguard today via Apple Podcasts or extratakes.com for non-fruit-related devices. In return you’ll get a whole extra Take 2 alongside Take 1 every week, with bonus reviews, more viewing recommendations from the Good Doctors and whole bonus episodes just for you. And if you’re already a Vanguardista, we salute you. Well hurrah hooray because this week it’s a Toby Jones show (not a Noby Jones show) and he joins Simon to chat about ‘Mr. Burton’. In this true story Toby plays the title character, schoolteacher Philip Burton, who spots the talent of young pupil Richie Jenkins in the Welsh mining town of his birth. Burton nurtures Jenkins’ acting flair as he becomes Richard Burton—taking his guardian’s name as the stage name by which he became internationally famous. The erudite everyman as always, Toby chats to Simon about accents, pyjamas, and the future of TV drama. Mark reviews ‘Mr. Burton’ too, as well as ‘Restless’, a psychological thriller about nightmare-inducing noisy neighbours—or at least they would be nightmare-inducing if Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) could get any sleep. Plus, A24’s ‘Death of a Unicorn’—the starry satire where Paul Rudd & Jenna Ortega’s father and daughter accidentally run over a unicorn on the way to visit the billionaire Leopold family (Richard E Grant, Téa Leoni and Will Poulter). Mark’s verdict on all  these, plus your correspondence on everything from search engines to The Stath—and memories of the late Val Kilmer. Timecodes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free): Restless Review: 09:35 Toby Jones interview: 31:28 Mr Burton review: 46:11 Laughter Lift: 56:14 Death of a Unicorn review: 01:03:11 You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail] And to find out more about Sony’s new show Origins with Cush Jumbo, click here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey Mark, I can't believe they've remade Snow White. What a classic, the Dark Forest sequence. Scarier than anything in the exorcist. Scard me for life. Not as scary as the Dark Web, however, but luckily you can stay safe from all the spooky stuff lurking there with NordVPN. It will protect you online with encryption and alerts to guard against hackers. No more poison apples then, or dodgy fishing pages.

Will it make me the fairest of them all? Well it can let you switch your virtual location in a hundred and eleven different countries so you can watch movies from all over the world. That's close enough. Oh hey I can even download the NordVPN app for an extra layer of protection on my phone. That'll be handy for online banking. That's right. Unwrap a huge discount on NordVPN by heading to NordVPN.com slash take. Plus with our link, you'll get an extra four months free on the two-year plan and it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. Check the link in the description. Hello, Simon Mayo here. And Mark Cumberbert here. 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 Shmestians. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple podcasts or head 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 get your podcasts. And if you're already a Vanguard Easter, we salute you. Now, I know I said I haven't got any band t-shirts. Hello, Simon.

Hi. And that was true until yesterday. Right. And I can see you're in a black and white t-shirt, Gang of Four. Gang of Four. And I'm also in a black and white t-shirt. There you go. Which is a fantastic print of the single of Ghost Town by the Specials on two-tone.

That's right. Which is majestic. And I'm wearing it because, first of all, the most important thing is it looks quite good. It looks great. That's the most important thing. It looks great. And also, Greatest Hits Radio, where I work on a regular basis, they've got this thing

called Cash for Kids, which is their big fundraiser, which they do every year with all the other power stations. And they've got together with Morgan Howell, he does the fantastic artwork of vinyl. Oh yeah, big labels, big labels. Yeah. And he's designed all of them. So you wear one of these and you feel righteous because the money is going to Cash for Kids and there's a Clash one and there's one for the jam and they're all amazing. What's the Clash one? It's the one with the revolver on the front and it's pink and green. Oh, okay. Yeah. Fine. Fine.

Fine. Fantastic. Yeah. You're absolutely going to love it. Okay. So well done to my bosses. So fashionable and righteous. How about that?

Which means smugness is inevitable. Stand by for that. The other thing I was going to mention, which is very, very exciting, is remember we were talking about alternatives to Google. I do. So I have heard about this, a number of people may well be ahead of us on this, but startpage.com. Have you heard of this? No, but I'm on the Intraweb.

So what do you write? You're writing startpage. So I got this from the Script Notes podcast, which I also listened to, which I've mentioned a number of times. And Craig Mazin has said, make the last thing you Google startpage.com. It's a Dutch search engine, but it has privacy as its main thing. It uses either Bing search or Google search, but they don't know that it's you and you don't get the ads and you don't get the AI nonsense. It works on my phone. I'm not sure about the laptop because sometimes

you need to go to Google. I'm doing it on the laptop and it's working on the laptop. It says the world's most private search engine and I've just put in, oh yeah, it's working. Huh. It may well be worth a go if you're looking for a search engine which ain't Google. And where is it? It's Dutch. It's a Dutch search engine company. Fantastic. It's just a thought. Other people may well like other things. I'm just passing it on

because it seemed like a good idea. Anyway, this is a tip-top podcast for a number of reasons, but Mark is now going to explain some of the line-up with some of the movies that he's going to be talking about. Yes. Well, we have a packed show. We're going to be reviewing Restless, which is a homemade British thriller, drama. Actually, weirdly enough, at some point in its description, it also says comedy, but I think that's the wrong thing. Death of a Unicorn, which is the new A24 film, which is one of two A24 films I saw in one day featuring Will Poulter and Mr Burton with our brilliantly special guest.

Mason- Yes, because this is a Toby Jones show and not a Nopie Jones show. Toby plays Mr Burton in that there film and super swanky bonus reviews in take two, Mark. Yes, in take two, we have bonus reviews of Sebastian, which again is a smaller movie, but very interesting. They've done very well in the festival circuit and Last Swim, which you may remember. I mentioned this time last year when I was at Berlin, because we saw it in the Generation Strand when it opened the Generation Strand. So both of those as bonus reviews. Okay.

Plus all the extra other stuff that you know and love so much, which you get every Thursday. All the back catalog full of bonus joy. I'm not quite sure what bonus joy feels like. Can I subscribe just to the bonus joy? You probably can. Go online for details. This from Richard Talbot in Hither Green in South East London. Long-term listener, first-time emailer. Dear freedom and speech, as well as following

your good selves for many years, I subscribe to various political podcasts and writers. One of my favorites is the excellent Ian Dunt, who is without doubt the swearest person that I subscribe to. His latest article is about free speech and Mark gets a commendation. Oh really? Yes. Are you prepared to be commended? I'm always prepared to be commended. Quote from Ian Dunn. On the Mark Kermode and Simon May film podcast the other day, something interesting happened. A listener pulled up Kermode on one of his verbal habits. He'd always pronounced Timothee Chalamet's name in a mocking way. They made a short rational argument. Why should someone be mocked for having a foreign name, especially given that he'd probably turn down the pressure

to anglicise it? At the end of it, Kermode simply replied, okay, all right, I'll stop doing it. He goes on to say, I loved him for that. It communicated a central truth. Free speech is not only about aggression, it is also about modesty. It is about receptiveness. It is actually about vulnerability. The idea was not that we would simply scream at one another. It was that we would listen, that our ideas would be improved by being challenged, that the only way for that process to happen was to allow the maximum degree of freedom for communication." You will not be surprised that the article is primarily concerned with events across the pond, including the capitulation of institutions in the face of tyranny and the arbitrary detention of people for expressing

views contrary to those of the tangerine tyrant. Thank you for continuing to be a beacon of cultural light and here's hoping this side of the water never goes the same way. Hello to Jason down with Swastikaars and up with free speech Richard Tilbert-Hithergreen in South East London. So there you go, you've been commended. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. I mean, the thing is, the argument that was made was perfectly reasonable and it was like, well, yes, in that case, we'll just do that then. It does always astonish me when someone is presented with a sensible argument that something they're doing isn't very, let's just say I should stop. Incidentally, mentioning in passing

sort of modesty. Can I just read you a very small bit of a text exchange that I had with Sir Sanjeev of Baskar, which was he texted me to say something about the show and I said, you know, what you're doing. He said, I'm in Budapest doing this Ruben Ostland film. And I was, okay, right. And then he said, anyway, I realized this text isn't going, he rambled on for a little bit. And he said, I send love and can say that Keanu Reeves really is nice and quantum baby. And I sent him back and said, sorry, you're in Budapest doing a Ruben Austin movie with Keanu Reeves. Because I hadn't been looking at the deadline thing. And he said, yeah. So, Sanjeev of Baskar is currently doing this Ruben Austin film with a cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Daniel

Brawl, Keanu Reeves, Nicholas Braun, Tobias Menzies, Connor Swindells, Daniel Weber, I'm sorry, I'm pronouncing some of these wrong, Wayne Blair, Dan Wiley, Lindsay Duncan, everyone in the world. And, and it said literally the end, Swedish artist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Sanjeev Bhaskar. So in the deadline article it lists all these famous men, then at the end it goes, and Sanjeev Bhaskar. Ask for the end. Ask for the end. Ask for the end. Ask for the end.

Also, on the subject of Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne will be on the show very soon because he is one of the stars in a new movie called The Amateur starring Rami Malek. And he is, having done the interview already, incredibly cool as he would imagine Morpheus to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm seeing The Amateur on Monday, which I'm very much looking forward to. Abbie and Hume, dear John Paul and Ringo George, you must have seen the Beatle Sam Mendes casting news. What do you think? To which I thought, I trust Sam Mendes to make

some brilliant films. It sounds like a great cast, which is Paul Maskell, Barry Keegan, Joseph Quinn and Harris Dickinson. Sounds great. It's a very good cast. There was a thing on the radio this morning in which they were talking about, is there any part of the Beatles story that has not previously been told? Actually, the person who was talking about it was Jane Ashby. Hunter Davis. Right, fine. But I am still, as you know, listening to the Beatles all these years, which is this day by day, hour by hour, blow by blow account of The Beatles. And we've been listening now for 30 something

hours. And in the car just a couple of days ago, Ringo finally joined the band. All right, Seth. It's like they finally become The Beatles. These movies will all be out by the time you finish the story, for absolute certain. It's just brilliant. I mean, honestly, it's so compelling. And every time then you have to stop and go, oh, because they're talking about the very first time they did the recording of Love Me Do or something and there was this with the drums and blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, let's see if we can find the recording of it on the internet because there's so much

of it. But it is absolutely compelling. But we've been there for, like I said, over a day of solid listening and Ringo has only just joined. It's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful. Well, I think all you can say is he's got a great cast and Sam Mendes is a great director. Yeah, and it's a great story. Presumably he has access to all the songs, right? He's got the rights because that's always the issue with Beatles stuff, isn't it? It's the right stuff. So imagine if he hasn't got four Beatles films to come with no Beatles music, apart from library music, which sounds a little bit twangy. Okay, correspondents at Kermit and Mayne.com,

tell us something that's out and interesting. Okay, so Restless, which is a, well, it's interesting how you describe it. It's a British drama. It's the feature debut from writer-director Jed Hart, rated 15 for strong language threat violence, drug misuse, part of that very British, I think, genre, the horror of bad neighbours. So, Lindsay Marshall is Nikki living alone in a house with next door used to be her mother's house, ordered life, nurse working long shifts, does yoga at home, cooks, listens to classical music. Now her mother is gone and new tenants move in next door and the new tenants are not good news.

They are a group of drink and drug crazed lunatics led by this one guy, Dino Asthmacalli, who snorts everything and then screams, I'm an effing animal. They play thunderous, awful, loud, beat noise all the way through the night. And when Nikki goes around to ask them to turn it down, she gets told I've had a couple of years with my mental health. Now I just want to kick back and enjoy myself with my friends. They also turn up with a dog that poos on Nikki's lawn and presents a threat to her beloved cat who promptly disappears. When a hapless friend comes around to visit, he is quietly appalled by what's going on next door. Here's a clip.

Geez, that's a hell of a racket your neighbours are making for a Wednesday night. They go all night, every night. You know, I haven't slept since this day at your place. I've never taken any drugs, nothing like that, but I feel like I'm on an E. Seriously? You can't have that. I think they've done something to my cat, Kev. He's not been back for days. What? Well, I'm going to go in there and I'll have a word for you. No, I wouldn't do that. They're not very nice. And they're not very nice, but he does go around and he does have a word and it doesn't end well.

So she goes to the police who aren't interested because they say it's a council matter. She goes to see her other neighbors who say, oh no, we don't want to get involved in any way. We're not hearing the noise because we're not right next door to him. And here's the thing, I don't know how you feel about this, but this is a scenario that just gets right under my skin. That idea of being trapped next door to something really, really bad going on. As I said, I think of it as very British horror. I'm sure it's international. The setup is well done and it's palm-sweatingly, oh, God, this is terrible.

The noise coming, the really, really thunderous noise coming through from next door. It's the kind of thing that would drive you to, well, you know, who knows what. And credit to the cast and crew that during that build up, although I found it very stressful because it is such a sort of realistic down to earth scenario that it was just like, oh, this is horrible, this is horrible, this is horrible. And so I was kind of on board with that whilst finding it really stressy. I mean, I can't say I was enjoying it. I was just finding it really stressful. So after that, when it moves into the sort of later act, when the movie gets into

much more sort of movie territory, what happens is that as the film then starts to sort of behave as a film would rather than as a realistic event would. It becomes part of that worm that turned revenge genre. I've watched a lot of movies in my life in which you go, well, this is fine up until this point, and then it starts doing this, which wouldn't actually happen. But in fact, there is part of you that thinks, no, I want the movie to go the way a movie would go. And I read one review of this that said that what the movie moves into is then wish fulfillment. And I thought, well, fair enough, but is that actually a criticism? Because the fact is, and actually, weirdly enough, when I looked the movie up on the Wiki page, and the Wiki page says, a British thriller comedy drama film. Now,

the word comedy is odd there because there's not very much that's funny about the setup, which is kind of like, let's say, paranoia inducing. But there is a sort of wryly comic element into what happens after she gets to breaking point, what happens after she is driven to the point that she just cannot deal with this anymore. And I have to say that for me, as the film started to turn into those, you know, what some people think of as unrealistic or sort of, I sort of started to think, oh, thank heaven for that, because the film is now starting to behave as a film in which it's not just miserable and terrible and awful actually. Now, I confess, and we'll address this matter

later on in the show, the way in which people individually react to films is a lot to do with them. And I do, it's just the scenario really, really speaks to me. I remember living in Hume when you were like literally cheeked by Jow, one of the things. And if people were having a banging party next door or above or downstairs,

that was your entire life, was you might as well have been in the same flat. But then, as I said, when the film decides to depart from what would actually properly happen and go into this is what the drama would like to happen, I was on board and I did find it appealing to an instinct in me that was going, yes. Mason- So that's a recommendation then I think. Toby- It is. Having said that, it was incredibly stressful for the first half. Mason- Okay. And that is restless. Toby- Restless. Yeah. Restless because she can't sleep, because she hasn't slept since they moved in. Mason- Here we go with the chart, poppickers. Box office top 10. First of all, that. is the end. I hope I've got this right. Eskil Wendell says, Mark and Simon had the pleasure

of seeing the end at Cosmarama, the international film festival in Trondheim, and to have a small chat with the director afterwards. He was very polite, even though he seemed very sleepy. The film for me was visually stunning with very expressive and symbolically loaded sets, which superseded any attempts at logistical explanation. This glamour fits the story very well thematically and it complements the great performances. I already liked Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton quite well from before, and I think they're both very good at playing people who are fraying quite seriously at the seams. I think that's probably

true. I asked Joshua Oppenheimer how he directed your pal George McKay, who needs to play someone trying to be mega-normal despite having lived his whole life in very abnormal circumstances, and whether it was deliberate that he should act like a real world victim of abuse, of course it was, he was constantly monitoring and correcting his own behavior to other people's. Joshua Oppenheimer taught quite eloquently of his own childhood experiences with improperly trying to manage his own emotions and the toll it took. He also told us about how he and George McKay worked together to find the

emotional core of the character and to ground him in real life. Maybe you focused on it in your interview, but I haven't heard it yet. We did talk about that in the video. I wasn't completely grabbed by the movie, but it was very ambitious for which it should be lauded. There's more correspondence about this in take two. However, that's the end, not in the chart, but there it is. I mean, look, I really like the end because of its ambition and because it's so unlike anything else that you're going to see this year. As we were saying after your interview with George McClive, if you haven't listened to that interview, do go back to the previous podcast and listen to it because it's a great interview. You ask him great questions and he being George gives

great answers. But I was just so impressed by the level of ambition, the level of out there. Now, it clearly doesn't work for everyone. And you used a phrase which was, you said you thought it was going to struggle, meaning it's not going to pack out multiplexes, of course it is. Yeah, that is what I meant. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I am a really big fan of it for the things that work, for the things that don't work. And I have a suspicion that the more one watches it, the more one will see in it. One thing I would like to say, I've read a couple of reviews that have said the music is monotonous. It isn't. I don't know what that's about. The music is not monotonous. The music is arch. And actually,

were I still doing the Scarlett Show, I would be playing songs from it on the Scarlett Show. Sikander 2 is at number 10. Yeah, so one of two movies in the top 10 this week that weren't press screened. This is Indian Punjabi language action thriller. There is another one, the Sikander 3, which is in the works at the moment. So if you've seen it, please let us know for next week's podcast, Correspondence at Curvenamejo.com. The Woman in the Yard is a new entry at number nine. So if you remember, last week's take two wascom. The Woman in the Yard is a new entry at number nine.

So if you remember last week's take two was delayed because The Woman in the Yard had an embargo on it, which was midnight. I mean, it was literally, it was as close to the day of release as it was possible to get. And what I said when I reviewed it was, well, there are some interesting ideas in there and Danielle Deadwiler is very good and I think Jamaquahyet-hra is an interesting director. The fact of the matter is it's full of atmosphere, but it's also boring. I think the fact that it hasn't taken the box office by storm. Bear in mind, this is a Blumhouse horror production, the kind of which are now considered to be regularly, reliably saleable.

This is evidently why it was that they didn't want any press about it. Number eight is L2 Empyran, also a new entry. So this is the second part of the Lucifer series. Again, this was the second one that wasn't press screened. This is apparently the first Malayalam film to be released in IMAX and Epic. I have to say, I haven't come across Epic before, but it is a language political thriller and presents a fictional storyline centered around the 2002 Good Right Riots. If you've seen it, please let us know.

Flow is a new entry at number seven. Both you and I are fans of this and I think it's easy to see why it has done so well around the world because it does speak the universal language of film. It's non-verbal. It just tells its story through images and sound without using language. Yeah, it is a of film. It's nonverbal. It just tells its story through images and sound without using language. Yeah, it is a fantastic film. Oh, there's an email from a guy called Paul. Tear ketchup and mayo heritage but lapsed recently, returned to the church, listener, first time emailer.

I wanted to write in after the recent discussion of Flow, particularly how beautiful and striking you both found the animation style. I wanted to highlight a fact about the movie that the 3D software used to animate the movie is a software package called Blender. Why should you care about this? Well, Blender is entirely free and open source software, and this is the first Oscar winning film to have been primarily animated with free software. What that means is that instead of being an expensive piece of paid, often subscription-based software like Photoshop, Blender is completely free. Anyone with a half-decent laptop can download it. Not only that, but open source refers to the fact that all of the development and code

is done entirely in public and in collaboration with the community, with major features often added simply by fans of the project who want to see something added. It is entirely funded by donations from users and technology companies who use the software. We live in a world in which we're increasingly becoming aware how the modern tech business and the capitalist forces behind it are damaging the world, whether that's harms of social media seen in adolescence or enormous data centers for AI. Nobody asked for burning the planet. As an electronics engineer who increasingly feels disillusioned with everything technological, it's a reminder that it doesn't have to be that way. We can create technology in a way that is fair and equitable, driven by people,

and used to add something meaningful to the world. Anyway, I thought that work was worth highlighting. Thanks for all the fish. That's poor. Well, that is a very, well, also nice Douglas Adams reference at the end. And also thank you for highlighting that because I did not know that this software was free and open-sourced. Fantastic. Thank you very much. I think I should watch Flow again and then download the software and make a complete pig's ear of animating something myself. Yes, because just because the tools are free doesn't mean the talent is.

Correct. And number six is Mickey17. Which I enjoyed very much. I mean, when it first came out, I said I thought it would struggle to find an audience. It had a couple of weeks at the top of the charts. It's now sort of on the way out, but it's done pretty solidly and I'm very pleased because I think I'm a fan of Bong Joon-Ho anyway and I think hats off to Robert Pattinson for delivering not one but two and actually arguably three great performances in the film. Black Bag is at number five. You know, it's a chamber play that happens to be an international spy thriller that works on the fact that it doesn't make any sense, but as an exercise in twisty genre stuff,

it works quite well and I did enjoy it. Nova Kane is at number four. Which is the one that can be said about Nova Kane. Yes, carry on. All right. Okay. Panic Lord on YouTube. Hello, Panic Lord. Just got back from watching it and had a blast. The whole cinema was laughing along. Nice to watch a film that's fun and doesn't take itself too seriously. That's what Panic Lord tells us.

I mean, I think the thing with Novocaine, it's fine. I can imagine seeing it in a packed cinema and doing okay. I mean, although it's not a whopping great opening. But as I was saying when I was reviewing it, if you compare the scenario to the scenario of Kick-Ass, it is surprisingly similar. And actually that scenario has turned up elsewhere as well as some people have pointed out. And I think if you remember how much fun Kick-Ass was, this sort of falls. I mean, it should be funnier than it is. I'm not saying it's a bad film. It's just it should be much funnier than it actually is. Bridget Jones mad about the boys at number three. Seventh week in the UK box office. And let's just remind ourselves that in America,

it went straight to streaming because over there they thought that's no market for that. A working man is a new entry at number two. Jason, in his professional capacity, working on a building site, but he also turns out to be an ex-royal marine. And when his boss's daughter goes missing, he just has to kill everyone until finally he gets her back. It's that film. Okay. RPM Belfast, also on our YouTube channel. This film could have been brilliant pizza and beers entertainment, but it was a mismanaged mess. The construction angle could have been cool, but it was completely underutilized. Where were the cheesy puns and jokes for tradies to appreciate? They gave us one job site shakedown and he went

from working man to fighting man in the first five minutes. The movie is devoid of humor and disappointingly hard. Locations were great, lighting was stylized and John Wick influenced infinite extras. Too many quirky hench cooks spoil the broth, but the bigger action set pieces felt cheap, quick cut and no framing of the space in which the fight took place, unlike a John Wick movie where we can see exactly what's going on. And the dialogue and acting were porno-esque and Reek of Stallone at his most wooden, think escape plan rather than rocky. This could have been more fun than The Beekeeper, but it wasn't. Think Escape Plan rather than Rocky. This could have been more fun than The Beekeeper, but it wasn't.

Yes, I agree with that. And the fun element is important. So just to refer back to, we were just reviewing Restless, okay? And you said, it sounds like a recommendation. I said, yeah, I found the first half very, very stressful. And then when it got into the kind of revenge drama thing, I just went with it. The poster for Restless has the tagline, loathe thy neighbor. Okay? And in a way that sort of tells you that the film has, I said it's got comedy in its listing, it's not really comedy, but it has a comedic element. The problem, the problem, I went a bit marching proud of that, the problem with Working Man is that it isn't funny at all. It doesn't have any humor in it and all the best Statham

stuff does. That's the issue here. If you look at all the best Statham stuff does. And that's the issue here. If you look at all the best Statham movies, I think the Beekeeper actually, this is partly true, there is an element of fun, but Working Man is just completely straight faced and serious and that's why it's not great. And number one in the UK and number one in America, Disney's Snow White. So let me bring you three contrasting opinions. Peter Oxlion. A nice 4K cleanup of the original would have been widely welcomed. Not this woke disaster. Kennyboy66 says, the simple fact for the majority is that we go to Disney films for easy, fun, charming movies. We don't go to be schooled in socialist fantasies, which I would say Kenny,

thank you very much for getting in touch. Maybe study what socialism is before you think that Snow White has anything to do with it. This from Liz, this genre or this film will not be for everyone. However, I do not think it deserves anything close to the vitriol that it has received or the 1.5 rating on IMDb. I try and all walks of- Okay, can I just say before you go any further, do not take anything from IMDb ratings, okay? They don't mean anything. I try in all walks of life not to, this is an email that is life affirming.

Okay. I try in all walks of life not to judge based on other opinions of something and teach to my eight-year-old son the same. He had initially not wanted to see it, having heard negative gossip and just parroting it to me. And wanting to teach a lesson in the dangers of prejudgment, I took him along to see it, warning him that we may not like it, but at least we can judge the film on its merits and our opinions rather than what strangers

on the internet think. Although it wasn't the best I've ever seen, I'm glad I gave it a chance, as it was so much better than had been reported. It was served up with a big slice of cheese, but the songs were fun and I enjoyed watching Gal Gadot playing to the cheap seats at the back, really embracing the camp of a Disney villain. The updating of the central character was needed, not out of place, much like the changes made to the live action Aladdin, but the basic beats were all still there and the central theme of beauty not being skin deep, not only being skin deep, and the power and importance of kindness and tolerance is as true today as it ever was, and a message I want my son to see. Halfway through he whispered to me

how much he was enjoying the film, which I took as a small win for going against all the noise, misinformation and politicised rhetoric spread about a film that simply wants people to be kind to each other. As the end credits rolled, a large percentage of the audience in my showing applauded, making me think I'm not the only one to think this. Wishing you the very best. That's from Liz. My guess is that, so clearly Liz and eight-year-old have been to see it. Had a good time. And Peter and Kenny Boy probably haven't. I do think that's interesting and I wonder if the applause at Liz's screening is partly based on that fact that it's sort of a backlash.

Probably the people applauding didn't think it was the most amazing film they'd ever seen, but they were pleased that they had gone to see it because there was stuff in there that they liked. Yes. Well, I think that's absolutely not impossible. I think that the whole anti-woke thing about, we've talked about this before, and in a way even saying the words, as I said before, if you are the kind of person that uses woke as a derogatory term in any circumstances whatsoever, find another podcast, go do something else because you just really know. I mean, I think there are loads of problems with that film

and I have an issue with the whole idea of Disney going back through their back catalog and doing the In inverted commas live action stuff. And I think there are very big problems with Snow White. But as we said at the time, I can also imagine that you could go and long see it with kids and kids would like it enough and that'd be fine. If people are bursting in spontaneous applause, that does sound to me like people responding to all the absolute nonsense, the shrieking, reactionary, gibbering lunacy of people who at the time that they wrote all these things, absolutely hadn't seen the film because it wasn't released. Um, and, uh, so yeah. And of course it's, it's, it's continued to, to, to wash its face financially because it is a, it is a

very, very recognizable, uh, IP and, and Rachel's egglar is very good in this. And it's, and Easter holidays are a, so it'll probably stay at number one. It'll do, it'll do fine. I mean, I. I wish it was a much better movie than it is, but I can imagine that, yeah, we've all seen this kind of this lunatic reactionary clap trap of people just screaming at the movie. And just yesterday, somebody sent me something on social media screaming at me for not, and I just, you know, just I love the block function. That's just great. But I mean, it's, it's, yeah, just

But to not, but to not, to take against it, and I suspect Kenny Boy hasn't seen it, because he doesn't want to be schooled in quotes, socialist fantasies. Just means that we put that kind of, okay, I'm reading it out because it was sent in, but I'm afraid it does reveal that you don't understand what the film is doing or what socialist fantasies might actually be. Incidentally, the socialist fantasy that is embodied by the story of the New Snow White is that after a period in which an evil overlord has forced the population into poverty and squalor, that Snow White and Robin Hood turn up and go, we don't want

to do this anymore. So if that's what you think is a socialist fantasy, then okay, fine. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, because that is showing people not wanting to live in a place. Yeah. I have to be honest, you know, having taken on board everything that you said about of showing people not wanting to live in a place. I have to be honest, having taken on board everything that you said about the failings of the film, and you did outline precisely why in your opinion it fails as a film. The longer it stays at number one, the better. It's going to annoy so many people. Don't you think?

I do. So more power to it. I do. So more power to it. I do, yeah. Anyway, after the ads representing capitalist fantasies, what's going on now? Well later on in the programme, we're going to be reviewing Death of a Unicorn. And before that, we're going to be talking about Mr Burton with a friend of the show and the specialist of special guests. Toby Jones, who will be along very shortly. But first, unless you're a subscriber and

part of the Vanguard, a little bit of capitalist fantasy. What's up, Mark? All's well. How about you? Well, I've been thinking about that cushion that we gave away at our live show. Yeah. That and the pencil case. Imagine if we had a load more that we needed to shift. Imagine the riches. Every bottom or pencil case in the country would be graced in some way by our presence.

Well, when you put it like that, we should have used Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide from people selling compasses to comfy cushions. It covers all your sales channels from a shop front ready POS system to its all-in-one e-commerce platform. It gets you selling across social media marketplaces. Oh, and it's full of the industry leading tools ready to ignite your growth. Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without learning new skills in design or coding.

And thanks to award winning help, Shopify is ready to support your success every step of the way. Sign up for a £1 per month trial period at shopify.co.uk slash curmode. Hi everyone, I'm David Duchovny. Join me on my podcast Fail Better where we use failure as a lens to reflect on the past and analyze the current moment. I speak with makers and performers like Rob Lowe, Rosie O'Donnell and Kenya Barris, as well as thinkers like Kara Swisher and Nate Silver to understand how both personal setbacks

and larger forces impact our world. Listen to Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, well, that's enough of that. So on now with the part of the podcast where we go from a Noby Jones show to a Toby Jones show. He joined us this week because Mr Burton is out. New film about the rise of acting legend Richard Burton from a Welsh mining village to international superstardom. That's thanks in part to Toby's character, Philip Burton, school teacher who nurtures the young Richard Jenkins acting talents that

will one day make his name famous. You'll hear my conversation with Toby Jones after this clip. Read that sign for me. Please close the gate. Gate, not gate. Gate. Please close the gate. Please close the gate. Gate. Please close the gate. Please close the gate. Listen to the vowel sounds. An actor must know how to extract their full value. Please close the gate.

Now, please close the gate. And that is a clip from Mr. Burden stars Toby Jones. So this is a Toby Jones show, not a Noby Jones show, which is always a very good thing. Hello, Toby. How are you? Hello, Simon. Thank you for gracing our podcast again. Very pleased to be here. Yes. You make occasional appearances and every time

I feel as though we have enough impetus to keep going for the next few months. That's a lovely thing to say. I feel very welcome. Introduce us to your movie. So this is the story on one level, it's a very simple story. It's about the discovery of Richard Burton, the film star and theatre actor and celebrity of my childhood, major sort of intergalactic celebrity of my childhood, and one of the most famous actors in the world, who I think possibly now needs reintroducing in a way to a new generation who maybe he isn't so well known to. Anyway, this tells the story of how he was discovered effectively by his English teacher and how the English teacher not only fired him up about Shakespeare, but also fired him

up as an actor and became a huge lifelong influence on Richard Burton. I mean, he was a friend for the whole of his life. Yes. And the legal guardian. And remarkably in a sort of medieval scene or a sort of Thomas Hardy scene, his legal guardian. And remarkably in a medieval scene or a Thomas Hardy scene, his legal guardian. So you are Philip Burton. What do we know about your Mr. Burton? Well we know quite a lot about Philip.

I should have explained that as well. Obviously Richard Burton only became Richard Burton when I adopted him. Before that he was Richard Jenkins. My character has always been Burton, Philip Burton, a single man who laterally set up a drama school in New York and was always writing books and was a Shakespearean expert. So he sort of had a late flourishing, not because of adopting Richard Jenkins as his son, but certainly helped by that, I think. So, when we start the film, so it's 1942, Port Talbot, so the war is on. It's very much painting a picture of a Wales that is long gone now. But you, you're in digs with Leslie

Manville. So, she's called Mar Smith and you call her Mar and I'm thinking, what this is? She calls you Mr. Bernthal. This is strange. They're clearly not a couple. No. Unless they're involved in some elaborate role play, you think. Yeah, anyway. Anyway.

So, it's you and Leslie Mamville and you appear as, to me, a very content man. Certainly in the first half of the movie, he put me in mind of Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road, a very kind of centered man who knew who he was and was content with life. I'm not quite sure that tells the whole story of Mr. Burton, the way you tell him. I did think you're enjoying this role. When you walk into the class and you start quoting Shakespeare and stuff, I thought you're having a great time here. Were you having a good time? I was having a fantastic time. I think the whole business of being an actor, this alien experience to working class people at that time that Richard Jenkins gets exposed to the world of theatre in the course of the

film. And I think that what Philip Burton has is he already has an understanding of how culture can give him a kind of a view on the world that liberates him in a way. I'm not sure how in touch with his own emotional life he is, but he finds a huge consolation in culture in general. And I think that's what he infuses his classroom with. And in a way, his classroom becomes a stage. Whether he likes it or not, he can't help but turn it into a stage. He's also an academic and an autoguide act.

Is he content? It feels as though he's happy with his lot. I think he is content. I think he would love to be part of the professional theatre. A bit like Richard Jenkins here, he's writing these radio plays, so he has some access into it. But he's largely content because he's become emotionally self-sufficient. And I think that something happens in his relationship with this boy that slightly, well, it does, upset him as well.

So tell us about Harry Laughty playing Richard Jenkins, Richard Burton. He looks amazing. Really, you can see how he will become Richard Burton at some stage in the future. So, fantastic casting. But how important to get the voice. Oh my God. I mean, even people who don't know much about Richard Burton know that this extraordinary voice from another age, incredible depth. I mean, in a way, when I was a kid and you'd hear Richard Burton, you go, is that a great voice? That just seems a very, very noticeable voice, but it's clearly very, very powerful. And Harry had to go on this journey.

And again, I'm not sure how familiar he was with Richard Burton to begin with, but he's made himself incredibly familiar with it. But he had to go on this very awkward journey that actors sometimes have to go on, which is you have to act getting better at acting. And I think he negotiates really, really well. And part of getting better at acting is developing a voice in that period because Shakespearean acting and the idea of inhabiting a theatre

was so crucial. There is something enormously also inappropriate about a schoolteacher becoming the legal guardian of a schoolboy. There is local gossip in your film. We hear people saying, what's going on there? That seems a bit odd. How odd was it? I think it was odd, but maybe not so odd in the way that we would see it now. I think there's two beautiful performances, one by Amy Fionn-Edwards, where the idea that somehow an escape route is possible from this penury that they live in and that somehow Philip Burton represents a sort of exit route, a potential exit route, it almost permits anything. So the idea of lodging in the same

house, whatever, just get this kid out of here, get this kid on the route. If you believe in him, please share that. There is no doubt that when you're acting it, when Harry and I were acting it, and those were some of the most interesting scenes to act, is the complicated suggestion of yearning, I suppose. More than impropriety, of just the sense of yearning, the sense of feelings that maybe Burton himself isn't totally in control of, but to the audience and certainly to Mar Leslie Manville are very clear. There are feelings that he may not entirely be in charge of with this boy.

Because there's a scene where you're both in your pajamas. I mean, you and Richard Burton as opposed to you and Leslie Manville. Where I was thinking, it's a great scene, but I was thinking, oh, I just don't do don't, don't do it. Oh good, you haven't. Yeah. But you have to suggest that that possibility is there. And that's great play. I mean, it's just fantastic. In a way, it was the scene that was most excited me about doing the film. And you knew that when you saw the script? Yeah. Because the situation that Richard Burton was in, he was 12th of 13 children, that kind of poverty, and an alcoholic father and a mother who had died a long time when he was

two, that kind of poverty is hard to imagine. And so therefore, when his sister is seeing a way out, maybe that's what you will gloss over. Yes, I know it's a little bit odd, but hey, this sounds on balance, a great idea. Yeah, anyway out, you know. And I think there is this extraordinary thing that this boy who seems an unlikely candidate is showing huge promise and is showing huge excitement

by just the business of speaking and Shakespeare. And I think he too, there is a journey he goes on where he begins to understand his desire to perform, to speak in its basic form in acting is about speaking another world into existence. Have you ever been in a rehearsal room, either for a play or a movie, where everyone's been getting down to it and doing a really, really good job, but there is some kind of hell-raising egomaniac who is just thinking, oh my goodness me, we're going to be in trouble.

You don't have to name names. But does that happen often? Because Richard Burton was like, you know, the hell raiser and alcoholic, certainly in this film, suggest how that actually would have happened, but completely unreliable until he gets on stage. Have you ever encountered that? Is that a rarity? Is that a stereotype? I think in a way that kind of behaviour has moved. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I think it's almost more dangerous now because it's done more privately. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse or whatever it is. You suspect it may be going on, particularly on film sets more than in the theatre. In theatre, I don't really understand how it was sustainable. I don't

understand how that behaviour could have worked. When you hear actors telling the story of how great the profession used to be when everyone was drinking all the time, you go, I don't see how it's even, I don't know how that could have been possible. Yes, because clearly, your Richard Burton in this film is drinking heavily right at the start of his Shakespearean career. Yeah, I think as well, he's also confronting his masculinity and what this job means for his masculinity. And I think that is historically correct that Burton had a complicated relationship with acting as work. How was this work and what did it say about him to be an actor? Can I ask you, while you're with us, Toby, about TV drama in general, when you did Mr. Bates vs.

The Post Office, it was a show that which we didn't speak to you then, but it was a show that became the national conversation. It jumped from being a TV drama to being a national conversation. And that's happened again with Adolescence on Netflix, where the Prime Minister has talked about it. It's on every chat show. But it does raise the very real question about how you fund these extraordinary productions. And I think Kevin Ligo ITV has said Mr Bates lost money because it didn't sell abroad. Is there a funding crisis for drama, TV drama in this country do you think? I'm told there is. I mean it's not my job in a way to know that other than that I notice that the main big funded period dramas certainly are coming from streamers now and one notices

certain production values creeping into dramas on TV. I don't quite know the future for drama. Drama will find a future but it's just I don't quite see how that is that that does the current nut to crack. Yes. Has it made a difference to the kind of work you're being offered? nut to crack. Yes. Has it made a difference to the kind of work you're being offered? Or that you'd be inclined to accept? No, I don't. I think I'd always go on the script.

I'd always go on the quality of the script, whether it was a kind of big budget thing or not a big budget thing. No, I think it's just, there's also this problem of IP, that IP is costing so much and marketing is costing so much for films. You know, I'm not saying anything revelatory when I say, you know, you must feel it when you see these films week in, week out, which are remakes, reboots, sequels, prequels, that there's a fear about unknown content, which is a slightly defensive age we live in. And I worry about that.

And so, yes, I'm very aware that we live in a culture of retrieving projects rather than minting new projects, much as there are heroic people out there trying to do that. And this is a film, Mr Burton is an independent film, which is well worth everyone going to see and supporting because it tells a terrific story. Yeah, I think so. And I'm glad you said that because I think one of them, it's extraordinary that a film of this scale can get a cinematic release. I mean, I know the BBC are going to show it, but it's a fantastic thing that a British independent film, a Welsh independent

film can be out there in this day and age with the forces that I've just outlined. Yeah. Were you and Harry very much aware that you were not Welsh? Well, yes, there was a lot of Welsh people around in Cardiff. That's not quite the same thing. Yeah, I was very aware of it. And I was slightly nervous when a key line was cut from the script, which was that Mr Burton grew up with English parents, even though he lived in Wales. So his accent, that explains your accent. When lines like that are cut, it's very nerve-racking when they say, oh, we didn't think we needed it. It was clear from your

accent. I went, well, I really hope that's true. Yeah, that's a compliment. Yeah. Yes, but you worry. And Mr. Burton is the movie. It's a terrific watch. And I think I'm right in saying Richard Burton's daughter, Kate, has endorsed it and said it's the centenary of his birth and a terrific reason to reintroduce people to the genius of Toby Jones as well as Richard Burton. What do we see when next Toby after this? There's, come on, am I allowed to talk about that? Yeah, funny enough, a Jack Thorne production.

Up with heavens above. Based on the Nick Davis book, The Hack, which has been adapted for TV. Jack Thorne needs a hit quickly, doesn't he? Otherwise no one's coming. He really needs to get working. Where do we see that? That'll be on ITV, I believe. Toby Jones, always a pleasure.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, where do you go with all of that? I mean, Toby is always so fascinating, so informed. Just listening back to the interview, I was annoyed that actually I missed a key question, which is it is true that obviously he was in the last show that was a real breakout of television and into politics because of the Mr. Bates versus the post office. And actually the first question should have been, what is it like to be in a TV show that stops being a TV show and becomes part of prime minister's question time?

But we went straight into funding. But I thought you had some very interesting things to say and as ever very insightful about Richard Jenkins and Mr. Burton. Yes. So, um, just to recap, as you've said, this is the story of the particular English teacher who saw this talent in Richie, I think, Richie Jenkins, and effectively gave him a name and a career through his sort of mentorship.

Harry Lorty is Jenkins, Toby Jones is, uh, is Burton. And as you said, the film's release coincides with centenary of the star's birth. Two things that weren't mentioned in that interview, it's directed by Mark Evans. We'll come back to that. Written by Tom, I think Bulloch, B-U-L-L-O-U-G-H and Josh Hyam. So essentially during the course of the story, we see Mr Burton taking the young Jenkins under his wing, both as a budding actor, teaching him to pronounce and project. And incidentally, I did a little bit of fact checking on this, the scene in which he takes him to the top of the hill to teach him how to project. Apparently that's true.

Apparently that really did happen. He did take him to the top. It was good. I enjoyed dancing. It was just, figure out how to stand shouting until it doesn't hurt anymore. And then there's a wonderful thing when he comes back down and you just hear Jenkins as he's going, going, oh, oh, and he comes by and then somebody says, is he all right up there? And Toby goes, yes, thank you. He's just acting.

He's just, which is lovely. And then as a sort of surrogate son, as I understand, he wasn't able to adopt him, but he became his legal ward and took his surname. And Philip Burton said that Richard was my son to all intents and purposes. I was committed to him. Whilst Burton himself said, I owe him everything. So I didn't know any of this story, I confess,

before I saw the film. I don't know whether you were familiar with it before, but I wasn't at all. So essentially the character that Toby plays, Mr. Burton, is a sort of thwarted theatrician. I mean, he writes plays and he gets stuff broadcast on the BBC, but as he says, but it's the local BBC. He fails to make the inroads into theatre that he really wants to. So perhaps there is an element

of what he's doing in taking this young protégé under his wing, which is a way of realising his own ambitions. Toby said in that interview that for him the classroom was the stage. So maybe he sees this as a way of fulfilling his own ambitions. But inevitably what happens is that when you take somebody under your wing like that, tongues start to wag, there's this insinuation that there are interests that are not entirely appropriate. And you mentioned there Leslie Manville's character perhaps seeing something that he himself doesn't see. And I thought it was really good to hear Toby say that the stuff he enjoyed the most was that tension in those scenes that they did together in which what Toby is doing rather brilliantly,

I think, is playing somebody who possibly is not completely in control of his own thoughts and emotions and ambitions. I mean, there is that sort of that tension. I also thought it was really astute that Toby said that what his co-star has to do is to act getting better at acting. And that is a really complicated thing to do. Acting badly is very easy, but acting someone acting badly, getting better is very, very, very hard. And then as the drama progresses, we go from that initial relationship and the development of that young talent into there's a period of estrangement followed by, at the point at which Richard Burton, as he then is, is now an actor but is now wrestling with the demands of, you know, is

this a real profession? What does masculinity mean? What should I mean? Again, weirdly enough, we were talking about adolescence before and dramas that have become part of the conversation. There is a whole thread going on in this about Richard Burton's own wrestling with what it means to be doing a job that perhaps isn't seen as a masculine job and what it is that he's meant to be. So I think the things I like are these. Firstly, Toby Jones has an amazing way

of playing an everyman with depth. So whether you think of him in The Detectorist, which incidentally I've just watched the whole of from beginning to end, as because it's just comfort television, I love it. Or Mr. Bates in the post office drama. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances is something that he does rather brilliantly.

And I think that in this, that phrase he used about the complicated suggestion of yearning, what a great phrase, I think he gets that just right. And I think actually the scenes with him and Lesley Manville are terrific. I'm really pleased that there was an opportunity to talk about that thing about the accent, about them taking out the line that explains Toby's accent is meant to be sort of marinated in English, rather than just being sort of purely Welsh. And I think that the relationship between the two central characters, that dynamic, that thing that Toby spoke of in that interview about, it's the areas that are not explicit that is where the real interest is. Because obviously on one hand, this is

a story of triumph over adversity, of somebody growing up in surroundings which are not immediately conducive to finding their incredible artistic talent and somebody seeing this thing in them. This is a story that movies tell all the time, the mentorship story. But what's really fascinating is what's going on around the edges of it. I mean, is the thing that's driving him because his own ambitions have been thwarted? Is the thing that's driving him something that even he can't really fully comprehend?

Is Leslie Manville's character seeing something that neither of them see? And is it really to do with, you know, what, as I said, what the masculinity thing means? I think it's really significant, this is directed by Mark Evans. I should say I am a huge fan of Mark Evans' work. I have always been a fan of his stuff. He made this incredibly nasty little horror film, My Little Eye. He made Resurrection Man, which is just

fantastic and has one of the best uses of a pop music needle drop I've ever seen. He made Trauma, in which I think he got one of Colin Firth's best performances at Colin Firth. And Colin Firth to this day credits working with Mark on that film as being a really big part of his career. Hunky Dory, he's some, no matter what genre he works in and he's worked in many, there's always something of grit and substance and it feels personal. It feels, but he's never made a film that felt to me like,

like production line. There's also a terrific score, John Hardy, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales performing the music. Apparently, and I didn't know this, John Hardy, nephew of Robert Hardy, lifelong friend of Richard Burton. So I've seen the film twice now, because I had spoken to Toby about it on stage a while ago. Then I watched it again coming up in the reissue.

And it offers up more on second viewing than perhaps you would see on the first viewing. The first viewing you could think, okay, fine, it's telling a story that's uplifting and telling a story. But it's, it's, it's the cracks, the edges, the things running. I mean, there are, there are faults. It's made for not a huge amount of money. And some of the landscapes have definitely been CGI'd into, you know, into the to create the but hey, you know, that's because they're working at the very, very edge of

the budget. And yeah, I thought you scratch the surface and there's more and more underneath. So anyway, lovely interview. Toby's great. Mark Evans, I'm a big fan of. And I thought it was an interesting story that I did not know. Did you know this story already? I did know something of it and I also know that some

of the biographies of Richard Burton have certainly been somewhat more explicit or in their suggestions as to what Philip Burton... About the uncertain yearning. Yes, about the uncertain yearning which became more of a certain yearning. But I have no informed information to bring you other than what I've seen in the film. So I'm happy to go with what they show us in this particular version. And I also think that in the clip that we played you between Toby and Harry Laughty playing Richard Jenkins. Harry Laughty is English, playing a Welshman, trying to anglicise his accent. I would love to hear from Welsh listeners, what do those accents sound like to you? To English, here's the Welsh icon, Barnard

Richard Burton. When you see the film, you'll see why they cast Harry Laughton because he, you can def, as I said, at the interview, you can definitely see how this boy is going to grow up to be Richard Burton. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But they are two English men being, being Welsh and I, to my English is they sounded very good, but, um, if, if you'd like to get in touch, Michael Sheen, let us know what you think. Well done for personalising that. With, to my English is they sounded very good, but if you'd like to get in touch, Michael Sheen, let us know what you think.

Well done for personalising that. Yeah. I mean, it's not just Michael. Obviously anyone can get in touch. Michael speaks on behalf. He does, he does kind of. Yes, he's the Prince of Wales really. If we've knighted Sanjeev, we could sort of make Michael, I suspect he probably

wouldn't want to be a prince. Is it possible to ask, is there a better and more decent person around at the moment than Michael Sheen? I think you see that's another of your socialist fantasies, which you just need to be stamped out. Correspondence of Kodomo.com. Anyway, so many laughs in the show already, but you wait because the laughter lift is going to put a stop to all of that. Here we go. Oh, uh, Hey Mark, I'll never forget what my granddad said to me before he croaked.

He said, Hey Simon, do you want it? Pardon? I have a heavy heart already with where this is going. I'll never forget what my granddad said to me before he croaked. He said, Hey Simon, do you want to hear my very accurate frog impression? Yeah, so you thought it was going in one direction and then it was it went somewhere utterly tasteful. Anyway, a very unfortunate thing happened on the way into Greatest Hits Radio

yesterday lunchtime. I shouted cow at a woman who was riding a bike down the high street. F off Simon Mayo, she said and she gave me the old two finger salute and she then rode straight into the cow. I mean, I tried to tell her. Anyway, I went to the pet shop with the good lady's ceramicist at the weekend as I'd promised her a treat. I had a good look at the lovely little guinea pigs. So cute. Excuse me, could I have one of these for my wife? I asked the ceramicist at the weekend as I promised her a treat. I had a good look at the lovely little guinea pigs. So cute. Excuse me, could I have one of these for my wife? I asked the shop assistant. Sorry, said, card or cash only, no swaps. I feel as though that's a Les Dawson joke.

Take my mother-in-law. No, really, please do. Anyway, what are you going to be going on about in the next section? Death of a Unicorn, A24. Here we go. Okay, we'll be back after some more capitalist dreaming. Thank you. By the way, the Toby Jones and Richard Burton, I mentioned to him that most of the time I'm aware of Richard Burton, I hear the voice going, no one would have believed in the last few years of the 19th century. And Toby said, that's the first time I heard his voice.

That was the first time on War of the Worlds, the Jeff Wayne version, that's the first time he heard it. I'm sure for many people that's the case. Yes. It's a bit like Alec Guinness being famous for Star Wars. Richard Burton is famous for doing the voices in HG Wells. Of course, the other thing one should remember is that one of Richard Burton's worst performances ever, and he would agree with this himself, is that he plays the main priest in Exorcist II, The Heretic, and he took it on because he

was in the middle of a quite expensive divorce that he needed to pay for. I mean, it is one of the most phoned in performances you have ever seen. It is just quite genius. I read an interview with him later on in which he was talking about the film, and it was apparent that he had absolutely no idea what was going on. He was just turning up on set, flying on the back of a locust, doing whatever it was that he had to do, and was going on. He was just turning up on set, flying on the back of a locust, doing whatever it was that he had to do and then going home. I thought he really, really had the measure of the film and good for him. I'm just consulting the iwitter.com map of listeners, which has grown fantastically.

For a while I thought our most northerly listener was still in Tromsø or Trondheim, but I'd like to say hello to whoever you are who appears to be somewhere way up north. It looks like the nearest town is called Aager, and we're in the north of Norway. But I think Aager seems to be the closest to our most northernmost listener. Oh, hang on. I just found someone else. Someone, oh, no, Tromso is back. I think Tromso is to the Tromso love party appears to be still and there's that airport because you've been there and everything. So maybe Tromso is still going to be our most northerly listener because I think Tromso is further north than Arga. but obviously my Norwegian geography is a little bit rusty.

An email here, gentlemen, with all the talk about final scenes being put in trailers, it's worth remembering that this isn't a new phenomenon and it can happen to the very best of them. The trailer for The Apartment back in 1960 included the very last admittedly brilliant line. Shut up and deal. No. Really? Wow. Here we go. Did you hear what I said, Miss Kublick? I absolutely adore you. Shut up and deal. No.

There's the trailer. Wow. Although actually, it should be said, in the past, trailers of movies would often tell, like old fashioned trailers, would often tell almost the entire story. Okay, well that explains. They did do that more often. Phil Painter in Hartford, thank you very much for sending that in. Michael in Dublin, Dear Wait A Minute and Aha! As a correspondent on your most recent episode pointed out, the last shot of The Dark Knight does feature in the trailer for the movie. However, this

isn't the most egregious piece of plot spoilerage in the film's marketing. At one point in the trailer, a character, Commissioner Gordon, if you're prepared to make this stunning revelation seventeen years later, is shown destroying the bat signal. In the movie itself, this character is shot and killed around halfway through the movie itself, this character is shot and killed around halfway through the movie, to only later be revealed to have faked their own death. Aside from the unlikelihood of such a major character being killed off in a franchise movie such as this, the fact that we knew they hadn't yet fulfilled the actions depicted in the trailer meant that the audience knew the whole thing was a bluff. Tickety

tock Michael in Dublin. Wow. So there you go. So maybe next time we have Mr Nolan on, we need to discuss trailers and information that he would like not to be included, whether he has any control in the matter. This is just a note to reassure all wittertainers and wittertainees about the impending Y2K38 problem, which was mentioned on this week's show, which we did discuss as something that we should all be fearful of. It really is not going to be a problem at all. I am a veteran of Y2K, and as the previous correspondent pointed out, Y2K was a huge issue that was averted by massive efforts of probably hundreds of thousands of people like me over several

years. But that effort won't be necessary for the Y2K38 problem because the Y2Q issue is due to hit in the next five years or so. And by 2038, we'll all be back to using abacuses. I'm happy to put mine at ease. So it's signed WA, which I'm told stands for who's asking anyway. What's Y2Q? Well, it's obviously something terrible that's going to happen a lot sooner. It doesn't say what? They don't say what that is. I think it's a zombie apocalypse, but anyway. Y2Q refers to the potential threat that quantum computers could pose to current public key cryptography, rendering modern encryption obsolete and impacting various systems and data security.

For those of you who know, if you want to be entirely secret, you go on Signal and then you discuss bombing the HOOTIs. Then you'll find that nobody knows about it at all and it all stays completely secret. We don't need to worry about Y2Q either. Right, Death of a Unicorn. Take it away. This is an A24 release. It was one of two A24 releases that I saw in the same day starring Will Poulter, one

of which was very interesting, one of which wasn't. So this is the feature debut from writer-director, now I don't know the pronunciation, Alex Schaafman or perhaps Garfman, but it's S-C-H, Paul Rudd, General Tager are Elliot and Ridley Kintner. Now, whenever I hear the name Kintner, you think Jaws, because it's the Kintner boy. So I don't know whether there's a kind of creature feature nod to Jaws in there. We meet them en route to a lavish home up in the Northwest Mountains, the Leopold estate. The Leopolds got wealthy through pharmaceuticals, we learned this from the Carr conversation, but they also see themselves as philanthropists preserving

nature. Ridley, who is the daughter, says, philanthropy is just reputation laundering for the oligarchy. She's come under suffering. She doesn't want to be there, but she's gone there to support her dad, because her mother has passed away. So he is widowed. And he has basically said, Please come on this trip with me. He is going to meet them because he's about to become chairman of the board of their whatever it is for family trust, but she doesn't want to be there. And they start rowing about these people that they're

going to go and stay with and they he takes his eye off the road and they hit something they hit something that looks like a horse. But then on closer inspection, when they go back, because it's not dead, it has a single horn, which when touched gives Ridley this mystical experience. It seems to be glowing and suddenly she's taken into this other world. They think, well, we have to do something with this, so they stick whatever is the horse with the thing in the back of the car. I mean, it's called death of a unicorn. So, we know it's a unicorn in the back of the car. And they decide to drive on to the estate pretending nothing has happened. Here is an excerpt of the trailer, which basically

tells you the whole story. The Leopolds donated this entire nature preserve. And they care about a lot of things, not just pharmaceuticals. Fine. I will sit there and smile. Sorry, we're... What happened? You walked from the airport or what? It's perfect timing. I need you to act like everything is fine. Is there something in your car? A lot of species in this area are rare.

What exactly are we saying this is though? I think we know exactly what it is. A horse-like mammalian. With some sort of protrusion or growth. It's a f***ing unicorn. And that is basically the key gag. So it's kind of, you know, we're up there with these horrible rich people, they've hit something on the way and it's a unicorn. And the creature then revives because it's a unicorn and is then promptly dispatched. And they quickly

realize that it's blood, I think we don't know whether it's blood, it's whatever it is that's in its body has healing properties. So Richard E. Grant is the sort of head of the family who is very, very ill. But he and they've said that this pharmaceuticals thing, so they immediately try to figure out ways of, oh, look, it's got these magical healing properties. How can we market them? How can we sell them? How can we make the most amount of profit and, you know, save on and live forever? And also there's a thing about she gets some of the stuff on her face and her acne clears up but of course this being the 824 thing oh it's not the it's not the lovely cuddly unicorns of it's the old unicorns of you know mythological

uh stuff in which they're dangerous and then the the joke becomes people get disemboweled by unicorns okay so it's it is a one idea riff, which is, hey, it's a unicorn and guess what? The unicorns are angry. And that idea might have sustained a short film. And it, cause it's sort of, you know, it's the Jurassic park thing. Oh, the dinosaurs, they're amazing, but now they're, now they're going to start to eat the, eat the tourists. When stretched to feature length, this is hugely underpowered. I have to say, I went from, I didn't know anything about this in advance, I only knew the title of it, and I'd seen that it was billed as a comedy horror.

I didn't know it was A24, I didn't know anything at all. It started, I was like, okay, well, I wonder where this is going. Then about 20 minutes in, it's like, oh, I like Richard E. Grant, I like Richard E. Grant, that's, that's kind of T. Leon, but both of those incidentally are and performances. It's very, very definitely and Richard E. Grant. And about half an hour, 45 minutes into it, I had lost all patience with it and it was starting to really, really annoy me. So it's rated 15 for strong bloody violence or horror, strong bloody violence, horror, gore, including the sight of people being impaled and disemboweled by fantastical creatures. And in a way, that is the whole movie. So the gag is unicorn horns pulling out people's intestines, which is funny up to a point. But the weird thing

is about the film, I don't know why they say when people do features, they think, oh, we're doing this. But actually we do have to have some seriousness. So there is a kind of weird little My Little Pony kind of ooga booga about, oh yeah, but they're actually in touch with the spiritual almighty and both the two central characters are suffering from this loss, but actually it's going to be all right because there's going to be father bonding. You go, I'm sorry, no, this is a film about people getting impaled and getting their intestines pulled out by unicorns and it's an eat the rich thing. Why am I having to sit here watching all the father daughter bonding? And that

juxtaposition of sweetness and gore is presumably the point of the movie. It's presumably the thing that they all thought was hilariously funny in the development meetings. But you know, it's like, if you're old enough to enjoy the gore, you'll find all the sort of, oh, river of life stuff just intolerable, as the father daughter bonding stuff is. And anyone who's in the market for My Little Pony philosophy won't be coming to see this film because it's a 15 certificate. It doesn't help that the creature effects are terrible. I mean, I know the movie's comparatively cheap, it's 15 million, but I mean, it's, we live in a world in which people are making, I mean, you just said flow was designed entirely from open access technology, which nobody was paying a huge amount of money

for. I'm sorry. Unicorn effects, this shonky, Jurassic Park was wet so far ago, so far ago. There's no excuse for creature effects being this terrible. The whole thing about, oh, they're rich, yeah, and therefore they're terrible. Yeah. And what? And so it's just, it is, and this is the second time this word has been used, it's smug. It's so pleased with itself. It's scrappy, it's ugly, It's poorly constructed. It isn't funny.

On the plus side, Will Poulter is good at doing the bratty, over entitled son, because Will Poulter is good in pretty much everything. But I just thought the rest of it was... I was watching it, I thought, okay, A24 have lost the plot. A24 have lost their mojo, this is the point that the wheels come off. And then later that day, I saw another A24 film, which also had Will Poulter in, which we'll be talking about next week, in which I thought, oh, the wheels are back on again. But it was like, what are they doing with this? I mean, it's a real mess of a movie. It's annoying. It looks horrible. The gags aren't funny. The gore is infantile. And I say that as somebody who likes infantile gore. And as I said, the entire movie, the entire movie can be summed up in the BBFC description, which is strong

bloody violence, horror, gore, including the sight of people impaled and disemboweled by fantastical creatures. Boom tish yawn. Thank you for your correspondence about Val Kilmer. We're talking on Wednesday lunchtime and it was announced this morning that he died at the age of 65 from pneumonia, according to his daughter Mercedes, and a whole bunch of emails have come in. My immediate thought about Val Kilmer was an interview. The only time I interviewed him I think was when we were still at Radio 1. So it was 93, 94. So it was for Tombstone. I thought his doc holiday was absolutely magnificent. That's one of his best performances.

I remember him talking about the accent that he used was an aristocratic Southern accent, which is now dead. And so there is no one that speaks this way anymore, but he'd found a recording of it, and that's what he based his Doc Holliday on. And I just thought it was absolutely fantastic. He had something of a reputation, I know, because we've mentioned this before. Even in the obituary pieces on the radio this morning, they were saying he lost work because he was difficult. Which,

if it makes it into a BBC obit, is an understandable. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. I remember reviewing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, in which he plays this character called Gay Perry. And he's really, really good in it. That's him and Robert Downey Jr., both of whom had had their issues. And I remember, let me just find this because I do remember being sort of surprised by how much I enjoyed the film. It's a surprise to George, but as Harry and Perry, they are both on their very, very best behavior. And in fact, as for Kilmer, he puts the caricaturally matinee idol good looks, which once fueled his narcissism to fine comic effect as the coiffured cad whose

machismo is only enhanced by sexuality. That performance was very funny because it sort of seemed to acknowledge, it was like, I know that I'm this kind of matinee, idle, handsome guy, and I know that that has got me into trouble in the past. The other thing is, just recently, Mark Jenkin, who's the guy down here in Cornwall who made Bait and has just made Rose of Nevada, did an introduction to The Doors, the film The Doors.

I'm not a fan of that film at all, but Val Kilmer's performance as Jim Morrison is one of the defining great rock biopic performances. And partly because he gets that, because Jim Morrison was hard work as far as anyone can tell. He gets all that stuff right. And as far as I understand, he did his own vocals. I think I'm right in saying that he did his own vocals. But Tombstone is I think probably one of his finest performances. And of course, he's very good in heat. Jack Burton, so this is what we've had in today. Jack Burton, my dad introduced me to

Westerns by watching Tombstone for the first time as a teenager in the early 2000s. I remember being blown away by Val's performance, his command over every scene he appeared in and the execution of the many one liners. He stole the whole film he appeared in and the execution of the many one liners. He stole the whole film and it led to a love of the genre. Theo says, I can imagine his passing will make my next rewatch of Top Gun Maverick, whenever that is, even more emotional. He's excellent in that scene. Liam says, Val Kilmer to me will always be Batman. I know as I got older that I will always remember him in Top Secret, which was his first feature film. He was a great leading man and character actor and he will be missed. Alan L says he was the first Batman I got to see in the cinema. I can still remember the audience erupting

into laughter at his big cheesy grin after he met Nicole Kidman on the rooftop. Russell George says, for me, the sun rises and sets with her man. Such a quick line in heat, but he delivers it in a way that shows more behind the betting addicted party guy that makes the moment when Ashley Judd's character gesture that the pickup isn't safe anymore poignant. Sebastian FK Svegard, which is a wonderful name. The Doors was one of my formative cinema experiences and holds a special place, but as the others say, his dock holiday was stellar. And similarly, Emily Lind says Tombstone, his Doc Holliday was maybe the coolest anyone has ever been or

ever will be in a movie. I'll tell you very quickly a story that Michael Mann told me. I never met Val Kilmore or interviewed him or anything, but of course we were at Radio 1 when the stories of him being very difficult were around. And Radio 1 did Heat as the movie of the month, I don't know whether you remember that. It was a remarkable film. I interviewed Michael Mann, I've interviewed him a few times since then. I said to him, what was Val Kilmer like to work with? He said, you want to know what he was like to work with? He said he was so enthusiastic about the project that he would turn up on days that he was not in

scenes just to watch the rest of the cast work. You've just made me think of when you said you hadn't met Val Kilmer, the one time that I did for that interview for Radio 1 for Tombstone. If I've remembered this right, and I'm fairly certain I have, it was the day of the interview was the day that it had been announced of his divorce had come through through or been granted anyway it was official. In my head at the end of the interview, I chickened out of asking about it. But actually in retrospect, I'm quite glad that I didn't ask.

Because obviously Radio 1 wanted a different kind of interview to the kind of interview that we do for this show. But actually, what is there to say to someone on the day that their divorce has been announced. So I'm quite glad that I didn't, but thank you for all the correspondence. Take two will have landed alongside this podcast at the same time, I think. It's not delayed, is it, this week? It's not delayed because there's no embargo schmargo stuff going on though. So we'll see you for that, unless you're not a subscriber, in which case I think you probably should be. So Mark, that is the end. I don't know why I'm saying Mark, that's the end

of take one. I'm just saying it's the end of take one. And also Mark, it's been a Sony Music Entertainment production. And Mark, I don't know if you knew, but this week's team was Jen, Eric, Josh, Vicki and Zaki. And the producer, Mark, was Heather. And the redactor was Simon Paul, Mark. And if you're not following the pod already, Mark, please do so wherever you get your podcast, Mark, was Heather. And the redactor was Simon Paul, Mark. And if you're not following the pod already, Mark, please do so wherever you get your podcast. Mark, what is your film of the week? I think it's going to be Mr. Burton. Thanks very much indeed for listening.

Get in touch if you can. Correspondence at Kerb and Amo.com. We'll see you soon.