Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Jeff Nichols, Freud’s Last Session, Arcadian & Inside Out 2

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

This week’s guest is writer-director Jeff Nichols, who is on the show to tell Simon all about his long-awaited, star-studded crime drama ‘The Bikeriders’, which stars Simon’s fave Austin Butler, and tells a fictional story inspired by the 1967 photo-book of the same name, which depicts the  lives of the Outlaws MC, a motorcycle club founded in McCook, Illinois. Mark will give his thoughts on the film when it comes out next week. He also reviews ‘Freud’s Last Session’, an Anthony Hopkins-starring drama based on the play of the same name, which sees the legendary psychoanalyst invite iconic author C.S. Lewis to debate the existence of God; and ‘Arcadian’, a post-apocalyptic action horror, which sees Nicolas Cage play a father living with his twin teenage sons as they fight to survive in a remote farmhouse at the end of the end of the world. The big review of the week is ‘Inside Out 2’, the follow-up to the now-classic children’s movie, which sees Riley, now a teenager, encountering new, difficult emotions like Anxiety. Timecodes (relevant only for the Vanguard - who are also ad-free!): 07:07 – Freud’s Last Session 12:24 – Box Office Top Ten 25:58 – Jeff Nichols Interview 41:26 – Arcadian Review 47:31 – Inside Out 2 Review 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] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com to see what it can do for you. That's betterHELP.com. An interesting thought occurred to me as I look out on my street. We've been in this house for 30 years and we have not been canvassed once by anybody for anything in three decades. That's how nail-biting the election is in this street. Not once. Nobody cares about our vote. You would think in three decades, some candidate or other might knock on the door and say, hey, how are you planning to vote? Have you

ever been canvassed at home? No, we had the Jehovah's Witnesses round once. And of course, when I was in- We've had them. Yeah. When I was in Manchester, you would get canvassed by parties you couldn't vote for. Like the revolutionary communist party would turn up at your flat and they would had them. Yeah. When I was in Manchester, you would get canvassed by parties you couldn't vote for. The Revolutionary Communist Party would turn up at your flat and they would tell you that the way that they were doing it was because they couldn't stand, if you spoiled your ballot paper, it was a vote for them. Therefore, all spoiled ballot papers were a vote for

the Revolutionary Communist Party, which of course annoyed people who just wanted to spoil their ballot papers. He was genius. I sent you a poster from the Revolutionary Communist Party and it's a big red post. It says, are you a communist? Join your party today. And then it says RCP at the bottom with a hammer and sickle over which in blue felt tip vote workers party and then there's an arrow towards RCP and it says MI5 trot losers. So the workers party are accusing the revolutionary communist party of being MI5 trotskyist losers. I've said this before, there was a brilliant book some years ago called Quite Right Mr Trotsky, which was a book about the rifts within the British left. It had a great section in it which

said, the best thing is you can tell what a British hard left party is like because of the name. He said, for example, socialist action are inactive, socialist organiser are disorganised, and socialist workers aren't. Well, okay. Well, that's very good. I'm going to look that book out. My point being is that even they, even the revolutionary communist party have not knocked on my door. At least did you have his witness's care. Well, the revolutionary communist party don't exist anymore. They don't exist. Having won the revolution, having prepared for power in their many conferences, they gave up the

ghost and turned into other things. Will Barron Well, obviously it's because they're MI5 trot losers. That's, I think, conclusive proof. What are we reviewing in this particular app? Jason Vale Well, we're walking the full length of the film counter in this episode. We have a review of Arcadian, which is a dystopian fantasy starring Nick Cage. We have Inside Out 2, the sequel to my favourite film of I think 2015, and Freud's Last Session starring Sir Anthony Hopkins at his most actively. Plus, our very special guest this week. It was Geoff Nichols, maker of Take Shelter and Mud, Midnight Special and Loving, who'll

be our guest talking about his new film The Bike Riders, which stars Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy and does sport the finest poster for any movie in the last 20 years. Our bonus premium reviews for The Vanguard Easter would be what? There's a new film out called The More and there are also two reissues, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 50 years old, and Star Trek III, The Search for Spock, 40 years old. Wow. Weekend Watchlist and Weekend Notlist, TV Movie of the Week, Inside Out 2 is released, as you just mentioned.

So we're going to be doing one frame back inspired by the travails of being a teenage girl. You get ad-free episodes of Ben, Baby, Smith and Nemone's Shrink the Box. Tuesday, it's Michael Scott from the US office, I think. Anyway, you can answer your film and non-film related queries and questions and Schmestchens. You can get it all via Apple Podcasts. What a glory that is. Or you can go to extratakes.com for non-fruit related devices. If you're already a Vanguard Easter, as always, we salute you. Andrew Leitch in London, long-term listener,

first-time emailer, imagine my surprise when at the London Stock Exchange's recent summer drinks party, the exchange's chief executive, I don't think we've ever had sort of a report from this particular- We haven't, we haven't. Institution.

The exchange's chief executive, Julia Hoggart, referenced the show. She said, and I quote, for those of you who know your Kermode and Mayo, the exchange may well soon be having its own fruit-based devices moment. Was she referring to rumours of a huge international business listing its shares in London, or is entertainment coming to market, as they say, in the City of London? There were a surprising number of knowing nods at the event from the assembled square milers. So does Blue Horseshoe love Anacot Steel? Keep on doing what you do so well. Andrew Leach in London. I knew it rang a bell, but I did have to check. Obviously,

that's Michael Douglas in Wall Street. It's a code for insider trading. That's what it is. He rings up Mr. Sheen and says, so you leave this message, blue horseshoe loves anacot steel. Obviously, we've been rumbled and Wittertainment Inc. is, of course, going to market. How much a share is going to launch at, Mark? Do you think? course going to market and you can buy. How much a share is going to launch at Mark, do you think? £1.25. Okay, so that's a pretty good offer, I think, for early subscribers. Vanguard Easter's get them for a quid, everyone else for £1.25, and it's all going to raise money to buy our own ship for other crews.

Which is a good cause. There is no cause better than us having our own ship. Ian from Worcestershire. As a long-term listener, I have enjoyed the occasionally recurring theme of nominative determinism that has popped up over the years. But after just watching the Taylor Swift Eras Tour on Disney Plus and sitting through the credits, because yes, you should still do this at home, I think we may have the GOAT, G-O-A-T, greatest of all time, as the kids like to say. What I hear you ask is the name of the keyboard player on the biggest, richest, most successful music tour in the history of recorded music? Dramatic pause. It's Carina De Piano. How about that? I looked her up and she's, as far as I can see, that's her real name.

Carina De Piano is the musical director of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour. It would just be, it would have been so perfect if she'd been a drummer. Yeah, well the drummer is Bob the Drums. Brian the drums. Brian the bass. It just makes it easier for Taylor to remember everybody. Who's that? Oh, it's Mr. Piano. Anyway, correspondents at koadamaya.com, tell us something that's new and out and interesting. Okay. Freud's Last Session, a drama starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Good as C.S. Lewis, who have a fictional,

probably fictional meeting in which they meet at Freud's house in London and argue about God on the eve of World War II. Here's a clip. Well, you have a wonderful home. Thank you. How long have you lived here? Oh, one year and four months. My daughter Anna tried the best to replicate our home in Vienna. You also are not a native of this country, am I correct? I was born in Belfast, but I've been here since, well, since I was sent to boarding school at the age of nine.

Yeah. We all try so valiantly to leave our past and our childhood memories, do we not? But they will never leave us, will they? Yeah. What the sorrows of the world. Hmm. Now, the reason I said probably fictional is because there's a thing at the end which says that apparently Freud met with an unidentified Oxford Don in the final days of his life. Could it have been C.S. Lewis? Who knows? For the purpose of this, let's pretend it was. So directed by Matthew Brown, who co-wrote it with Mark St. Germain, who wrote the stage play, which was itself adapted from a book called The Question of

God. And, you know, being a stage play adaptation, it is stagey. Freud has oral cancer, he's in pain, he's facing the spectra of death and he is intending to take his own life. C.S. Lewis, who became an atheist as a teenager, reconverted in the early 30s and the film has flashbacks to events such as C.S. Lewis's wartime trauma also explores Freud's relationship with his daughter, who is under his thumb, Anna, which is brilliant psychoanalyst in her own right, but is under his thumb, is also in a relationship with Dorothy, which he doesn't yet know about. There's a point in the film when Freud declares that when the time comes, he is going to take his own life, which apparently he probably did with an overdose of morphine. Here, the only overdose that's

been taken is an overdose of acting pills because there is lots and lots of acting. There's weird noises between lines. They're saying some things very quietly and then saying other things out loudly and then walking around gently complaining about teeth and gazing off stage whilst thinking about God. So, on the one hand, hand, Saranti is having a field day. On the other hand, God is doing everything, keeping everything dialed down, presumably because there isn't any space to do anything else. The script offers you a kind of Brody's Notes guide to the battles between rationalism and religion, you know, soul and psychoanalysis. It is very, very stagy, despite the fact that you've got these kind

of very cinematic flashbacks. Here's the weird thing. Unlike psychoanalysis, which I have been in for a few years, it doesn't dig very deep. There is a point in it at which Freud says, I'm less interested in what my patients tell me than the things that they don't tell me, which is the show don't tell thing, which is kind of ironic in a film in which there is nothing that is left uns tell me, which is the show don't tell thing. Which is kind of ironic in a film in which there is nothing that is left unsaid, in which there is nothing that is left undemonstrated and un-clarified. It doesn't matter. For those of the heart of

thinking at the back of the auditorium, there is nothing here that you will miss. We see flashbacks that would better be imagined. We have discussions that really don't need to be done that literally. Now, it may be that if you have just a passing interest in the subject of religion or psychoanalysis or Freud or C.S. Lewis, there may be things in here that you think, okay, well, I didn't know that despite the fact the whole thing is fictional anyway. I just thought it was. And now it's time for some acting. And I am going to act over here, and I'm going to act over there, and then I'm going to do... Just standing there going, okay, yeah, yeah, you just get on with that because obviously,

I'm the second banana in this, and there is no way I can go up against Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud. It did sound as though Sir Anthony was making absolutely no attempt at all at changing his voice. He's just being Anthony. He's slightly Welsh. Here's the weird thing. He has a non-specific middle European accent that every now and then becomes Welsh. What happens is, it becomes Welsh when he becomes agitated. So it's like the more agitated Freud gets, the more he moves into the valleys. It is the weirdest thing. So that is Freud's last session. Still to come, what are we talking about?

Arcadian, which is a post-apocalyptic drama, and Inside Out 2, which is obviously the sequel to the Pixar animation, and our very special guest, Jeff Nichols, talking about the bike riders on the way. Well hello there. Simon and Mark here to tell you about Indeed. Yes, Indeed is driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search. Match with Indeed. If you need to hire, then you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors,

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This episode is brought to you by the curated streaming service Mubi. Mark, some people know they love great cinema. Others haven't quite found out yet, but Mubi is here to help. What does Mubi have to offer people of all kinds this June? This month, Simon, as festival season approaches, Mubi are hosting some really exciting gems from recent years.

There's Gasoline Rainbow, which is now streaming on Mubi UK. That's the latest from the Ross Brothers, who made Bloody Nose Empty Pockets, which you remember I was very, very fond of. Then there's Great Freedom, winner of the Uncertain Regard Jury Prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and a stirring portrait of gay resistance and resilience in post-war Germany. So that's the Mubi selection of festival gems, what else is there?

Great Freedom is being featured as part of their film collection A Place of Our Own, Queer Spaces on Film. This is a selection of iconic queer titles and you can see such classics as Paris is Burning, which transports us into the houses and ballrooms of the 1980s New York drag and voguing scene. You can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash Kermode Meo for a whole month of great cinema for free. Right, it's time for our box office top 10, brought to you by, it doesn't say this, but I'm just going to go with it anyway, Comscore, who are so good. Actually, that sounded a bit Trumpian. They're so good. Actually that sounded a bit Trumpian. They're so good. They're so good. So good. We love the com score, don't we? We don't care about them. We just want their vote.

That's right. First of all, Hitman, because it's not in the chart. It's now on Netflix. But we did discuss this as Richard Linklater was on the show. So there are two lists of comments here, which are both very good examples of on the one hand and on the show. There are two lists of comments here, which are both very good examples of on the one hand and on the other, one of which is correct and the other is incorrect. Poppy Land says, it's a reasonable watch on Netflix, nothing cinematic about it, so not missing out by seeing it on television and it's better than a lot of their commissioned films. But the ending is a big letdown. It seems the writers couldn't work out how to resolve the, how was he going to get out of this dilemma that occurs in the

final act of the film. Starts okay, drops to Dullesville, picks up quite significantly, then cop out nonsense finish. Not a classic, you will only ever watch it once. On the other hand, Rob. Rob says, this weekend, one of my daughters, child three, and I watched Hitman. I had to persuade her to watch it. She was thinking it would be a Hitman movie. I mean, fair enough, really. Not that there is anything wrong with that. For me, I persuaded her to watch based on your review. We loved it. Child 3 was almost annoyed by my chuckles. I watched Fall Guy today and chuckled nearly as much. Ryan Gosling does this stuff in his sleep. The point is that Betty, Child number three out of four, did not want to watch Hitman because of the title. We have traversed titles

so quickly that we're now watching Taxi Driver this week. Much love to you all. And also, Richard Link later said very clearly that when they had the story, he thought this isn't a movie yet. And the two things that made it a movie were focusing in on a love story and giving it a third act. And so it's like, yeah, that's the thing. And that's why it says at the beginning, it's almost true. But then they say at the end very clearly that that key thing, that's not true. Mason- So that's on Netflix now. UK's number 75 is Deep Sea. Jason- It's really visually astonishing. I'm not sure that I understood all of it and I wondered whether it was me or the storytelling, but in the last act it pulls everything together

quite splendidly. Number 55 Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey 2. As I said before, this is the latest in what is being called the Pooh-niverse, although they should have called it the Krapniverse. The Matrix reissues a new entry at number 13. Christine says, Dear Tank and Dozer, Mark's review of The Matrix at 25 included a comment from the time of release, what does it mean? Over the decades, the Ruchowskis have discussed the film's origin as a trans allegory. People have written at length on the significance of the red pill, the colour of estradiol in

the US at the time, the fact that Agent Smith only ever dead names Neo. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? And especially Morpheus' description of gender incongruence. Quote, you know something, what you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life. Something's wrong with the world. You don't know what, but it's there like a splinter in your mind driving you mad." All of the above means that as ever you get out of a film what you bring to it. When I watch the screening on Tuesday at my local Neo-Odeon, I will be drawing strength and hope that trans people will survive the culture wars and recognize that there is no spoon. Love the show, Steve.

Down with the agents and up with the pink, white and blue haired feminists." And that's from Christine. So, The Matrix at 13. That is a brilliant email to which I have absolutely nothing to add other than that I'm going to go off and read those, read those pieces. Yeah, I mean that makes perfect sense and I really hope you enjoy watching it in the cinema and that it gives you everything that you want from it. Good. Number 10 is The Strangers Chapter 1. Finally caught up with this on what looks like it's last week in the top 10, so well done me. This is, as we said before, it's the first

part of a trilogy appendage to The Strangers from 2008, which was followed by Pray At Night, which I actually quite liked. I'm not entirely sure when or where this came out. I'll be honest, I don't care. Directed by Rennie Harlin, whose horror heritage includes Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and Exist the Beginning, which is awful. So, the story is two uptight folk get caught in a small town in Oregon. They stay in an Airbnb. They get terrorized by boogiemen. That's pretty much it. Apparently, of the trilogy, the three films were shot consecutively in Bratislava in Slovakia. And they did everything in 52 days, which makes you wonder what they did on the other 51. Rene Harlin said that directing the three of them was the challenge of a lifetime. I

suspect that watching the three of them is going to be even more challenging than just the making the first one. He's described all of them together as a five-hour story arc. There's an arc in this story. I can tell you, however, that the Mark Kerr Mode Appreciation Society, which really exists, it's a real thing. I'm not making this up. Every month, they vote for their best and worst movie of the month. This came in as the worst movie of the month. I'm very proud of them because they were not wrong. Number nine in the UK, 13 in the States is Challengers. Which I still think is great, but Child 2 went to see it and really enjoyed it and I was very proud

of them for getting it right. Number eight is The Dead Don't Hurt. This email from Ed in Romsey. Dear Smith and Wesson, I went to a screening of The Dead Don't Hurt last week, knowing next to nothing about it beyond the fact that it was written, directed, produced, scored and starring Viggo Mortensen. The title accompanied by an opening scene of a villain escaping a shootout made me think I was in for something rather pulpy. The very next shot, a vision of a knight in armour riding through a woodland, should have been a clue that I was in for something altogether different. What a beautiful, understated, and thoughtful film this was. The story was simple yet engaging

with complex characters given space to breathe in absolutely stunning landscapes. Vicky Kreeps was the absolute standout performance, but I will also tip my stats into Viggo Mortensen. Mark was bang on when he described him as totally serious about his craft. I was lucky enough to also see him in cinemas last week for the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring. The gravitas he brings to Aragorn alongside the twinkle-eyed joy of Sir Ian McKellen's Gandalf are a key part of what is beyond doubt my favourite film trilogy of all time. I know that the two have faced questions about returning for the upcoming Gollum film, but much as I love

Mortensen, I'd rather he didn't. Quite aside from the needlessness of the project, he is now the age that Sir Ian McKellen was when he played Gandalf. Quite frankly, I'd rather he keep making movies like this. More please. Tiggity Tonka down with Sauron and all other Dark Lords. Thank you, Ed. It's worth adding to this. Jason Isaacs. Hello to Jason, incidentally, which we haven't said hello for a few weeks. Jason has worked with Viggo and Viggo, look, I'm on first name terms with him suddenly, and said he's an artist. He's an artist who acts and an artist who directs and an artist who makes music. That's what he is. And I think the thing

when you watch this and very much like the previous film which he wrote, directed, starred in, scored, whether you like the film or not, and I did like this, but I think it's not for everyone, there's no question this is made by somebody who wants to tell this story in this way and means every frame. And I think particularly in the current environment, that is something to be loved and cherished. Fall Guys at Seven? I still don't understand why. I mean, so many people come to me and go, why did the Fall Guy not make the money he should have done? To which the answer is, I don't know, ask

somebody in the industry. I think it's a really fun popcorn movie and I've met enough people who have seen it and really enjoyed it. And I've also met people who have been put off by the, in inverted commas, you know, the negative stuff. I don't get it. I don't get it. It's a fun popcorn film. I don't get the problems with it. The Watched is at number six. So again, co-op with this because this was press screened on Thursday, which is after we record the show. If you press screen something on Thursday when it opens Friday, that's not really press screening it, is it? That's just doing an early preview. Also called The Watchers in Other Territories,

adapted from a novel by A.M. Shine, directed by A. Shyamalan, who is the daughter of M. Knight Shyamalan, who produces. Apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree. To go to finding his meaner, who's an American working in a pet shop in Galway. She has to take a parrot to Belfast and not making this up. She gets lost in the woods, which like the woods in several Irish films that we've seen in the last few years are scary, scary, ends up in a coop, which is like a structure with mirrors you can't see out of at night, where they're effectively watched like animals in a zoo by night. Then by day they can go out, but only to the point of watched like animals in a zoo by night, then by day they can go out, but only to the point of no return. The best thing about the movie is Alwin Fowary. Again, my thanks to you for correcting

my pronunciation of her name because she's fantastic. I first saw her in the survivalist. She was recently brilliant in All You Need Is Death. She's nevertheless fabulous. Dakota Fanning is pretty good as well. Also really good in Ripley, if you haven't seen Ripley on Netflix, worth seeing. I mean, it's somewhat perfunctory and it is kind of like, you know, an M. Night Shyamalan movie light. But then, you know, you could say the same of Brandon Cronenberg, who's working very much in the same field as his father, David Cronenberg, and I've never had a problem with that. So it's fine. I'm not sure why they didn't press screen it more because it's a perfectly fine, oh, it's that kind of movie. It's perfectly fine.

Furiosa, a Mad Max saga, is at number five. Again, the question everyone keeps asking, why didn't Furiosa take more money? I mean, look, I think Furiosa has languorous bits in it, which I wanted. After Fury Road, I said, I need some gaps in it. And you're a big fan of it as well, right? You really enjoyed it. Yes, I think it'll have done fine by the time it's all played out and hopefully it will make another one. I'd like another one. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is at number four.

I have been told by Child 2 to correct my original opinion that the first hour is slow. The first hour is not slow, apparently. It is world building. Garfield is at three. Yeah, well, we used to have Bill Murray, now we don't. If is at number two, number is world building. Garfield is at three. Well, we used to have Bill Murray, now we don't. If is at number two, number three in America. Which has done very well. Obviously, it's the half-term. If has done very well. I have a lot of problems with If and I don't think it's anything like as psychologically dense as it needs to be to work. But it's found an audience.

And number one in the UK, number one in the States is Bad Boys Ride or Die. Of course it's number one. It doesn't matter whether the movie's any good. That's a saleable franchise. Of course it's number one. That's exactly what we said last week and here it is, number one. Incognito Child writes via our YouTube channel, I saw it today. It's just another average popcorn film. It's not as good as The Fall Guy. It has a lot of really annoying camera angle movements where the fight scenes are concerned and dumb moments. Two examples, so this is a bit spoilery, I think. State Trooper Ranger, daughter of the captain, is the only person going into combat

zones without protective headgear in her team. And later, a gun is dropped in an alligator tank with the two leads stressing it needs to be picked up to shoot the alligator when he's looking at the other one with a rifle strapped to his back. Some of the funniest moments in the trailer are not in the film. Best summed up, and here's the summary from incognito child, John Wick on Skittles. But I did enjoy it. Of course I did. There you go. So with all those things, a sign off that definitely enjoyed it. Anyway, so that's the box office top 10. Which brings us, I have to say very, very reluctantly this week, to our laughter lift. Mark.

Yes, Simon. I've become a total convert to the majesty of the gang of four. So much so that this laughter lift will only be understood by you and a couple of other people But here we go Brilliant, I'm so obsessed with them that the good lady Ceramicist her indoors has told me that if I continue to make gang of four puns She'll leave me you stop or I leave she said which is it to be ether says I Opening track on entertainment. Boom!

We were watching the news the other night when Simon Calder came on to talk about airport security. The man is absolutely obsessed with travel. I bet even at home he's a tourist. Boom! Boom! The film, the song that they weren't allowed to do on top of the pops because they refused to change the word rubbers to rubbish. I'm not sure I agree with this best film of 1984 list in today's paper I said to her on Sunday. Naturals not in it. Oh for heaven's sake she said just eat your toast.

Just one moment I have to show you my biceps first. You know what they say guns before butter. This is genius. This is absolute genius. Simon Poole, you have excelled yourself this week. I mean, she got her own back though. I can't stand that podcast you do with Mark. You're just not great men. Anyway, what's still to come, Mark? I'm sorry. I'm incapacitated. But it's the first time I've enjoyed a laughter lift. Wow, wow, wow.

OK, still to come, reviews of Arcadian and Inside Out 2 and our very special guest, the Gang of Four, Geoff Nicholls, the guy responsible for the bike riders on the way. That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken. Hot chicken in the window. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee

with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Because the Skip app saves you so much time by delivering stuff like your favorite cool treats, groceries, and bevies, you get to spend the summer doing what you really want. Like successfully cutting your jeans into jorts. Yes! Shipping the kids off to summer camp. Yes! Or winning the annual Schellenberg Family Water Balloon Fight. Yes! Suck it, Aunt Susan. Yup, definitely the best

summer ever. Squeeze more summer out of summer with Skip. Welcome back, although if you're a Vanguard Easter, you never went away. Obviously, Jeff Nichols is our guest this week. His previous work, all involving Michael Shannon, includes Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special. We spoke to him about his new film, The Bike Riders, starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy and Michael Shannon. We'll hear from Jeff in a moment, but first here's a clip from The Bike Riders. What were you thinking back there?

What? Right there when you come chasin' in like that. Nothing, I saw you squirming off of them guys. What I need to think for. Hey, you and me kid. You and me, you crazy... And that is a clip from the Bike Riders, delighted to say, have been joined by its director, Jeff Nichols. Hello Jeff, how are you? I'm great, thank you for having me. Well it's very nice to see you and directors are still doing all the interviews, I guess

in different circumstances, your cast would be here. Yes. Are you very, I mean it's your first movie for a few years, are you quite excited to be sitting here telling us about your new movie? Oh for sure, you know this has been a journey of 20 years for me. I first found the book of photographs that inspired this project in 2003. So you know this is the culmination of years and years of thinking and work and so to have it finally in place, kind of locked in, it's really thrilling. Why so long?

I was really intimidated by this one. I think partly because of the time period, partly because of the accent, and partly because of the culture of these motorcycle clubs and gangs. It's not something I grew up with. It's not something I really knew. So I think it took me a long time to just get up the courage, honestly, to take hold of this world and this voice. Tell us about the book.

So the book is a collection of photographs that Danny Lyon took in the mid-1960s. He was a student in Chicago at the time, and he was looking for an outsider group to photograph. And he rode a motorcycle, so he got connected with the Chicago Outlaws. It turns out that the Chicago Outlaws grew to become the second largest motorcycle gang in the world. He didn't know that at the time. And the book is really not about that. It's really about the human beings that he encountered in this world, in this subculture. And the only text in the book, because Danny

was really into new journalism at the time, are just transcribed interviews that he did with some of the writers and one of the writers' wives. And they're beautiful. They just read like monologues from a screenplay Of course, there's no overarching story in his book. It's really just kind of to present these these people but but those monologues they say a lot and So we have Danny in the film. Were you always gonna have Danny?

He's I mean, he's not a narrator, but it's sort of he's a kind of a narrative through line Did you know you were always going to have him as a character because we see him at crucial points with his tape recorder And the microphone recording interviews correct? Yeah You know honestly just as a storyteller, you know, it was a good narrative device it it allowed me to Get these people talking because it's you know, because it's a working class subculture. It's not necessarily a place where people share all of their feelings and all of their emotions freely. So having that set up was a good way to get people talking, which is obviously what happened in real life.

But it also allowed me, narratively, to jump time. The film, the story in the film actually takes place from 1959 to 1973, but the bulk of it is happening in the mid-60s. But these interviews kind of allowed me to move throughout this story whenever I needed to. And presumably you had the original audio? Yes, yes. Which is a fantastic resource for you. Oh, it was incredible. I was kind of stalking Danny's website, which was Bleak Beauty. And one day, these QuickTime files showed up.

And I had been reading these interviews for a decade at this point. And this incredible, very thick Chicago accent came out. And it was a recording of the real Cathy. And her words already kind of jumped off the page but when I heard her voice it really cemented just how unique and how special this world was and so that cadence and that rhythm that really shaped my decision to kind of center the entire

thing through Cathy's voice through Jodie Comer's voice. So we have this shaped my decision to kind of center the entire thing through Cathy's voice, through Jodie Comer's voice. So we have this triangle of people at the heart of your story. As you mentioned, Cathy, Jodie Comer, and Benny played by Austin Butler, probably the best looking guy working in films at the moment. 100%.

I think every guy is going to be looking at this film going, damn. And Johnny played by the incredible Tom Hardy. So you have three people there that I think, most people listening to this film going, damn. And Johnny played by the incredible Tom Hardy. So you have three people there that I think, most people listening to this will go, yep, I'll go and see that. You've got that cast? Let's hope so.

So how did they come to be the triangle at the heart of your film? Well, you know, I have to give a lot of credit to Francine Masler. She's my casting director that I've worked with. Well, she should get an Oscar. Yes, she deserves one. She's my casting director that I've worked with. Well, she should get an Oscar. Yes, she deserves one. She's also the one that introduced me to Ruth Negga

on Loving, who was nominated for an Oscar. She was the first one to really start talking to me about Jodie Comer. I'm kind of ashamed to say I really wasn't familiar with her work. I hadn't seen Killing Eve yet. And when you start the casting process, you just start to hear these names. You have to talk to Jodie. You have to talk to Jodie. And fortunately, when

I did, she had read the script and she was interested in the part. I got a phone call from Francine, my casting director, right before I zoomed with Jodie for the first time. And she said, just just try to get her to say yes. And I was like, well, I'm just I'll be the judge here. But actually, you actually, by the end of that first call, she said she was interested and we were off to the races. But it wasn't until I actually was passing through London to speak to Tom Hardy for the first time in person about playing the role of Johnny

that I got to see Jodie's one woman show on the West End, Prima Fasci. And I walked out of that play just feeling like the luckiest director in the world, because anyone that was lucky enough to see that knows that it's one of the most incredible performances I've ever seen. And I knew I was looking at probably one of the best talents I'd ever work with, and that's Jodie Comer. When it came to Tom, I was friends with his manager, Jack Wiggum, because Jack's brother Shay is an actor that I was lucky enough to work with on Take Shelter.

So we'd been friends for a long time and it was no mistake that I sent that script in advance to Jack and of course he read it and said well Tom has to play this part because it's Marlon Brando and And of course he read it and said well Tom has to play this part because it's Marlon Brando and And he's the best we have he's the closest we have to Marlon Brando which I agreed with and Luckily, he read it and wanted to meet he had lots of questions. He's an extremely intense Person you get that impression certainly I compare him Less to other actors and more to just like a tornado or a hurricane. You can't take your eyes off of what he's doing.

There seems to be this subtle vibration right under his skin. And every time you put a camera on Tom Hardy, something interesting happens. That was certainly the case for us on set. And luckily he said yes. I think at some point, because he doesn't take a lot of jobs, at some point he just said, I can't imagine letting anyone else play this part. And luckily for us, he said yes.

And when it came to Austin Butler, I actually, Elvis hadn't been released yet. So I had seen him in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but wasn't really, really familiar with him. And we met in LA. He had gotten his hands on the script. And that's a part that I think a lot of young actors were interested in.

And I met him at a restaurant in LA, and he walked up the steps. He held out his hand to shake, and I immediately thought what everyone else thinks. This is the most attractive man I've ever seen in my life. And it was really, you know, beyond that it was really important for the role. And if you see the film, you know, you understand that these two characters played by Tom and Jodie are both drawn to this young man. And it's really what turns the plot and the narrative. And so I needed someone with that level of charisma and that level of attraction. And that was Austin Butler.

I'm fascinated by the voices that they all have. Particularly, you say you got two British actors in this quintessentially American story, but Tom Hardy's voice particularly seems to pitch it higher than his normal voice. And they have a particular accent that they have to hit as well. Can you say anything about how they sounded to you? Well, Tom's is unique. You know, I had all of these audio examples for all these other characters but I didn't have one for Tom's character. But there's a very particular part of the scene which is actually inspired by real life. The person that started this club originally got the idea by watching Marlon Brando in the Wild One.

And we actually recreate that scene in the film. And I think, you know, Tom developed the voice on his own, but the thinking was this guy is, well, for lack of a better word, this guy's a bit of an imposter. He is a family man. He has a wife, two kids, he's a truck driver, he owns a house. He's really not, you know, a hardcore free-wheeling biker. And I think when you see his character watching Marlon Brando in The Wild One,

he's playing that part. So that character is literally pretending to be Marlon Brando's character in The Wild One. And I think Tom really gravitated toward that. And that's where this voice came from. And I think it's fantastic. And it really kind of grows on you over the course of the film because he's such a good actor, he knows when to add weight to it, even at that high register. But then Jodie Comer is completely different. You know, I had probably over an

hour of the real woman. And Jodie's such a pro. One day she left set and she left some of her work behind. And as you know, having seen the film, there's a ton of dialogue that she has to deliver. And she'd phonetically broken down every single word into that accent by taking that audio. It's just tremendous amount of work. And what's really amazing about it is when you watch it,

it's invisible to me. Yeah, and we follow her, we almost follow her primarily through to the story We hear her words and we hear what she what she has to say She's the only woman that we hear from there are the women in the story, but I think she's the only she's really the the main focus Yes, you know the opening scene has actually a group of women in a laundromat and we didn't shoot it till the end of the film and a group of women in a laundromat and we didn't shoot it till the end of the film and Joey talked about how relieved she was that day because she actually had this other female energy around because the rest of the film

She's very much surrounded by a lot of a lot of guys It feels a bit like a black-and-white film. Did you ever think of doing it in black and white? It's funny You know I became friends with Danny Lyon the photographer that took all of the original photographs Many of which are in black and white. And he just assumed out of the gate, he's like, well, you'll shoot it in black and white. But the first book of his that I found was a reissue that actually had some of the color photographs from the 60s. And I think being born in the late 70s, to me, those color photographs really brought

that world to life. The black and white photographs are beautiful, but there's something about the density of the color in the clothes, in the bikes themselves, in the gas tanks and everything else. It just really, it made it seem real to me and a step away from affectation. So I was always really drawn to color. Why did this gang invite a photojournalist, for want of a better word, to join them? Because you would think they would be very protective of their secrecy and their product. Yeah. Well, I think that's kind of where the story comes from, is that they weren't a gang. They really started off as this regional club.

It's almost a social club in the late 50s and early 60s. It's a social club that attracts guys that live outside of the norm and possibly live outside of the law at times. But I don't think they saw themselves as particularly secretive or dangerous. And anytime I talked to Danny about it, I think they were pretty open to him. I think it wasn't a formalized gang. And that's really where the trajectory of the story came. Well, it's a prequel of sorts to present-day motorcycle gang culture. This is really how that started.

And you're really just dealing with, at the beginning, a group of friends. Geoff Nichols, thank you very much indeed for talking to us. Thank you. If you're wondering about the reference at the start of that conversation, I say to Geoff, we're talking to you. I imagine your actors would like to be here.

We recorded that in October last year. So that's a very, very long gap, particularly for me, to see a movie, do the interview. It's normally just a couple of weeks afterwards that the film comes out. So that's October last year. So we're at the tail end of the actor's strike, the actor's strike was still on. Anyway, that's why he was doing all the promo back in October. But you haven't seen the movie, but you have seen the poster. Yeah. I'm seeing the movie on Monday. Having listened to that interview, I'm really excited

about it. But the thing that really got me most excited is the poster is brilliant because it's got one of its, firstly, it's got that kind of throwback look to it. It also has the best hair on a movie poster. I asked him about that. Incredibly. I know. And when he said, you know, he's just one of the most attractive men you've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I remember when Baz Luhrmann was talking about him playing Elvis, Baz Luhrmann was saying that one of the problems with casting that role for Elvis was you had to get somebody who had the magnetism

that Elvis had and you either have that or you don't. And he has it. There is one particular shot, which you will see on Monday, and everyone else will see when they go and see the bike riders, which is clearly designed to prove all of those points that you're making. Where you go, this guy is James Dean and Elvis all in one. Quite incredible. Bike riders will be reviewed on next week's program. Is that right? I think I've got the time right. Yeah, next week's show. Okay. Meantime, look at the poster to whet your appetite. It is fantastic. What is out

this week? Okay, so also out this week, Arcadian, which is a post-apocalyptic creature feature with Nick Cage from director Ben Brewer, who was the lead VFX artist on everything everywhere all at once and gets a VFX credit here, and who worked with Nick Cage on The Trust. It's written by Mike Nylon, who has produced a string of Nick Cage films, including The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, if you remember, which was very self-referential. Anyway, so set sometime after an unspecified world event has ravaged the globe, turned into a wasteland where monsters marauded at night. At one point, in fact, two characters play a game called Crappy Apocalypse in which

within 10 seconds, they have to say what they think happened. One of them says, well, there was a virus in bugs. Another one says there was a purple cloud descended. No one's quite sure. Here's what Nick thinks. There are those who believe they came after the pollution people caused and they're here to cleanse the planet of the virus of the human race, so we'll all become extinct. Well, I believe the Earth is past the worst. I think the air and the water are getting cleaner. And I think there are more people than we know about. And some of those people, might as well just call them heroes, will come over the hills and save us. That's what I believe.

So, Nick Cage in uncharacteristically low-key form, so he's Paul, he lives in a remote house with his sons Joseph and Thomas, and every night they board up the house because the unseen monsters come at night. By day they do chores, although Thomas has started traveling to a neighboring farm where he's met and fallen for Charlotte. The setup of the thing owes a debt to It Comes at Night, which is a Trey Edward Shultz film in which it's a post-apocalyptic drama, paranoia about other families, other people. No one is entirely sure what the thing is that comes at night, so they all start to turn on each other. As far as this is concerned, this is at its best when you don't know what the threat is, when it's things scratching at the door, which is actually very

much like that kind of key scene in The Haunting. Or there's one scene in which a long spindly limb of something, you're not quite sure what it is, pokes in through the window and sort of worms its way through the living room. And you've got absolutely no idea what you're seeing. When the monsters appear, okay, there's always been this debate since things like Pumpkinhead, do you show the monster? If you don't show the monster, do you let people's imagination fill it in? But if you do that, are you shortchanging them? When you do see the monsters, there is stuff which is impressive about them. They've got this kind of frenzied biting movement, which is quite creepy and this weird circular

motion thing that they do. But in the end, they are definitely at their best when they're in our imagination. This kind of refers back to what we were saying before about Freud saying, it's not what people tell me, it's what they don't tell me. I don't know whether the film would have worked if you never see them, but I kind of wanted not to. The other thing is that although it's a Nick Cage film, he sort of gets injured at one point and then he's sidelined for quite a lot of the drama.

In the end, it's not really a Nick Caswell, and he is downplaying it. It's a strange film. It has some memorable moments and it has atmosphere. I think it is best before it shows its hand or indeed its teeth, but I did enjoy it. And I did spend, even when the stuff was on screen and I was thinking, I kind of wish that was

off screen, there was part of me that was thinking, yeah, but it's a creature feature. You can't completely shortchange the audience. But anyway, it's good fun and it's the least Nick Cage-y performance in a very long time. Mason- Explain the title or have I just lost something? Al- I just looked it up. Arcadian, relating to or constituting an ideal rural paradise. So that's right. So it's after the thing has happened the world reverts back to nature. So it's a kind of Eden-like Arcadia. There you go.

Mason- Thanks for the clarity. An email, I can't see who it's from, but anyway, thank you. Simon made a throwaway comment about people with plastics engineering degrees taking the Mickey about Mickey Mouse degrees. Please don't do that because it's not people with science and engineering degrees like me who are spouting this offensive rubbish. It's people with PPE, politics, philosophy and economics degrees. Degrees in the easy bit of the three subjects, degrees which if they weren't awarded by Oxford, they would certainly be calling mickey mouse degrees, which I know you all like this reference to. This is in private eye, Mark.

You might have seen this because you're a private eye consumer. Mickey Mouse Degrees Shock is the headline. The celebrated cartoon rodent Mickey Mouse today hit out at university degrees, which he described as pointless, silly, and of no value in the real world. He was particularly scornful of a course that he described disparagingly as PPE at Oxford. He explained that the course purported to teach students the rudiments of politics, philosophy, and economics, but in fact did nothing of the sort. He said a brief survey of recent graduates makes it clear that PPE

is a course cynically designed to attract students of the lowest possible abilities. He cited examples such as Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock, Jeremy Hunt, David Lord Cameron, and most notoriously Liz 49 Days Trust. I'm not making this up, he squeaked." And so on. Very good. So that led to the final. Tilda Cumm, what are we talking about? Inside Out 2 on the way. find out too on the way. I had an experience once with somebody who wanted to like role play like with relatives stuff. No, no. And I couldn't.

And I said, I said they wanted, they first said like dad, daddy. And I said, but so I suggested maybe like, I said maybe the most I could do is uncle. Okay, so that was just a snippet of an episode with actor and podcaster Justin Long. I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and I'm telling you, you need to listen to the full episode on my podcast, Dinner's on Me. Over a meal at Pine and Crane in downtown LA, we get into his love story with Kate Bosworth, his career and so much more. To listen, just search Dinners on Me wherever you listen to podcasts.

Correspondence at Keodomea.com. Right. Inside Out 2. A lot of people looking forward to this. Yeah. So, Inside Out 2, the sequel to Inside Out, which was my favourite film of 2015. The original, I said it was like a high-tech version of that old Beano comic strip, The Numb Skulls, because the action takes place in the head of the protagonist, who's the 11-year-old Riley, personified forces of anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, fear, doing battle for control of the emotions, dazzling stuff, hilarious, heartbreaking, really, really profound and brilliant. The original was directed and co-written by Pete Docter, who here becomes an exec, handing over the directorial reins to Kelsey Mann,

who is a first-timer. Amy Poehler is back as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger, Diane Lane and Karl McLachlan back as Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. Some other characters haven't returned, apparently there was stuff about negotiations on how much everybody got paid. Anyway, the story is that there is a button on the console of Riley's brain, which says puberty, which is about to be hit. Also, Riley about to move up to a new school, so we meet her on the ice hockey pitch where all the old emotions, anger, sadness, joy are on display. She and two friends are invited to go on a camp for hockey players. Sounds great.

Actually turns out to be a source of conflict because her old friends are going to go to a different school. She meets new people that she wants to impress. She's desperate to prove herself. She's wracked with insecurity. And all this is demonstrated internally by the arrival of a wrecking crew who demolish headquarters to make room for a whole bunch of new emotions while treating the old emotions as if they are old news. Here's a clip. I am truly sorry. I was so looking forward to working with you guys. Hey! What do you think you're doing? Get off me!

Riley's life is more complex now. It requires more sophisticated emotions than all of you. You just aren't what she needs anymore, Joy. How dare you, madam! You can't just bottle us up! Oh! That's a great idea! Ow! I can't breathe! I can't breathe! I got the mustache! just bottle us up? Oh, that's a great idea. It's not forever. It's just until Farley makes varsity or until she turns 18 or maybe forever. I don't know. We'll have to see. So the new adolescent emotions, anxiety, envy, embarrassment, and ennui,

deluxe accomplices as ennui. So here's the thing. So the first film had a really brilliant simplicity to it that masked just how complex it was. I mean, it worked and it worked because it was as deep as it was accessible. This throws a ton of more confusing, conflicted emotions into the mix. I mean, the fact that Ennui, as I said, Deluxe Ocopolis, yeah, Ennui. And it's perhaps fitting therefore, and probably appropriate, that a film about the teen years and about adolescence is harder to get on with than a film about childhood years. So what you lose is that thing that the original had, which is just that you look at it and you go, yeah, that's right, that's absolutely right.

That is exactly what the conflict of emotions is like. Although, I mean, there are plenty of moments when if you're a parent, there are things that you see happening to the Riley character that you go, yeah, that's exactly what happens in adolescence. And of course, you know, if you're closer to your own adolescence, you'll probably recognize those things as well. I mean, people always cite that thing in the, you know, the Kevin sketch when it's Kevin's birthday when he's about to go from 12 to 13 and suddenly overnight he becomes horrible.

As before in the first film, there's a quest. They have to get to the back of Riley's mind where Riley's sense of self has been sent along with some bad memories. Then en route, there's the stream of consciousness that they have to float down, which at one point gets broken up by the sa-chasm, which is a big chasm, which separates you from everybody else. And there's also, this time, Riley's belief system.

There's a self-authored belief system. So look, there's plenty of sharp moments. There's also a sense of too much going on. But again, that may well be appropriate for a film about adolescence in which, anyone close enough to remember it, well, the whole problem with it is there's too much going on. It's not clear-cut in the way that earlier life is.

Being me, I particularly enjoyed the specter of anxiety turning into a whirlwind that just burns everything up and can't stop and just overpowers everything. I was really entertained by the idea of Hon-Wi being a Frenchman. And there's also a very funny cameo by June Squibb as N as nostalgia who keeps knocking at the door going, do you remember when? They go, no, not yet. It's not the classic that the original was, but I think that has got to do with the fact that adolescence is completely different to childhood.

Also, like anyone who's dealt with being in a house with an adolescent or being an adolescent themselves, in the end, the film is lovable and the film reduced me to tears. Of course it did. It doesn't have the classic, simple, straight lines of the original. The thing about the original was I just thought anyone can watch this and anyone can understand this film because it's like the classic fairy tales. This isn't like that. But I think that's probably because of the years that it's dealing with. It, you know, it's pretty good. It's just inside out was perfect. But then, you know, adolescence is a lot of thing and perfect isn't one of

them. You have intrigued enough for people to think, yeah, I think that's going to be worth seeing and then maybe- Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's definitely worth seeing. Definitely. Yes. And my suspicion is that it'll be one of those things that the more you watch it, the more you'll see it a second time. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's definitely worth seeing. Yes. And my suspicion is that it'll be one of those things that the more you watch it, the more you'll see in it. As I said, again, the genius of Inside Out, the first one, was literally the first viewing. I thought, okay, this is like David Cronenberg's Crash or A Matter of Life and Death. It is a film

which is perfect. There is nothing wrong with it. And I didn't get that with this. But again, as I keep saying, that kind of is fitting in a film which is dealing with adolescents rather than childhood. That is the end of take one. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. This week's team was Lily Gulliver, Vicky Zaki, Mattias, I think I need to say thank you, Mattias, and also Beth. The producer was Jem, the redactress, Simon Paul. Mark, Beth, the producer was Gem, the redactor is Simon Paul. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, even with my reservations, Inside Out 2. We will be back with more stuff next week, or if you're a Vanguard Easter, take two

has already landed alongside this particular podcast. Thank you for listening. Talk to you shortly.