The Big Picture - 200th Episode Mailbag Spectacular: Our Dream Double Features and Francis Ford Coppola's Marvel Throwdown | The Big Picture

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

We did it—200 episodes in the can. To celebrate, Sean and Amanda are tackling reader questions that run the gamut from Francis Ford Coppola's Marvel throwdown to the worst Oscar travesties of the decade (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by 'The Lighthouse' writer-director Robert Eggers to discuss how he made his stunning, flatulence-laden, Robert Pattinson–starring new film (1:11:40). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Robert Eggers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Coming this Tuesday is the Ringer's third annual NBA Palooza, celebrating the tip-off of the 2019-2020 NBA season. Make sure you're subscribed to the Ringer's YouTube channel so you don't miss our day-long live stream, including the premiere of the new season of NBA Desktop, the fourth installment of our Take Hunter series with a surprise twist, the unveiling of the Bill Simmons' Lakers wine bottle team, and a live Ryan Rusillo podcast to go along with so much more. Again, you can check all that out at youtube.com slash The Ringer.

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbin. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the movies. Amanda, it is a very exciting day. Today is the 200th episode of The Big Picture later in the show. I have a great conversation with the writer-director Robert Eggers, who you may know from The Witch. He has a new movie out. He completely batshit and, in my view, wonderful The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. We talked at length about the making of that very complicated movie. But now we go to a mailbag. And we have asked listeners of the show to ask us questions. And

I think there'll be two different versions of these questions. One, I just want to say, thanks everybody for listening to this show. I think I've been doing it since January of 2017. And I think it really got its legs when Amanda joined permanently on the show last October when we started doing the Oscar show. And it's been really fun. And I'm surprised by how it's grown. And I'm surprised by what it's become. But I really appreciate everybody investing in it. And thank you also for all the questions. Yes. We got ratioed in a great way. It was really, you were all very committed, a ton of questions. It's like a nice little corner of the world. So thank you. And

that is my feeling about the two different types of questions. Some of them will be, tell me more about Marvel, you jerk. And some of them are personal interrogations of our view of the movies and our relationship and our relationship on this podcast. So I look forward to potentially violating both of those things as we go through these questions. So maybe without further ado, we should throw it to our trusted producer, who I also would like to thank for getting us to 200, Bobby Wagner. Bobby, take it away. All right. So the first question comes from Adam Wells, 1985. It's a timely one. Between the Scorsese, Coppola, MCU, and general IP dominance once again causing stress over the state of movies and filmmaking, what are some recent trends in the industry that are good both now and for the future? Or are we just doomed to Disney dominance forever?

This is a tricky one. Let's just give a little bit of context. I'm going to read the comments that Francis Ford Coppola shared over the weekend. Please do. Hallelujah and amen. I'm greatly excited, Amanda Dobbins. When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he's right. Because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. I don't know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it's

not cinema. He didn't say it's despicable, which I just say it is. This is something that Coppola said in Lyon, France, while being given some award. And I'm curious about the origin of this comment because I haven't seen the video or the audio anywhere. Just what I presume is a translation of sorts. Nevertheless, what a flex. May we all one day be Francis Ford Covillard receiving an award in France and just being like, fuck this shit I don't care about. Which, let's be real, there is a deep strain of crotchety old guy just being like, no thank you throughout this. And you have to recognize that even as you are celebrating the darts that they are throwing

at everyone else. And that was a very important development this weekend. And then James Gunn's Instagram post in response was one of the great, terrible social media moments of my life. Someone needs to take the passwords away from James Gunn. Someone, like, really take him away. It absolutely seems like he's running his own social media accounts, which, frankly, he's too rich to be doing that.

He should be employing a social media manager and that person should be saying no. Also, obviously, he has gotten into some trouble in the past for running his own social media account. James Gunn's message and his response to this and the Scorsese comments from a couple of weeks ago were a bit unfortunate, I found. Not just because they seemed like the responses of an overly sensitive artiste who felt like his dad had taken away his toys, but because the accompanying photo on Instagram was a photo of Groot and Rocket Raccoon connecting and touching hands or touching branches, as it were. And it's just we're in the realm of the ridiculous. Now, I do think that I made a passionate defense kind of not against Martin Scorsese's comments, but just trying to put them in context. And I think you're right here that this is Coppola doesn't have to care about these movies. And what he wants to do is go watch La Strada in a big movie theater and hope 4,000 people show up.

And that's just not what movies are. And we're pretty practical about that on this show. He has more than earned the right to say whatever he wants to about movies. He made The Godfather and The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. He's in the inner ring of the Hall of Fame in the history of American cinema. Is he a little crotchety, though? He's a little crotchety. Yeah, of course.

I think the delight that I am taking in this, I can only speak for myself. You know, it's fun to have unlikely allies against parts of movies that you're not particularly interested in, but it is just also a lot of people behaving badly in public, which is just very funny. Like, that's actually my pure delight in this, is that they say some ridiculous stuff, and I think there is a grain of truth, particularly towards what Scorsese is saying in terms of how it's changed the way we make and watch movies theme parks yes and then James Gunn and all of his friends and you know all the the many fans of the Marvel universe who are expressing themselves in some interesting ways on Twitter we see you don't think we don't and then just the back and forth, it is a firestorm

for no reason. And it's really, really, that's the funny part. But these are also big issues that we do talk a lot about on this podcast and kind of existential ways of how superhero movies and how theater going and streaming services and the conflation of business and franchise and IP elements in Hollywood are changing the types of movies that you can see. Yeah, I think we're always putting this in the context of, is X dying? Is the cinema dying? Is this kind of a film dying? Is the four-walled experience dying? Marvel movies are not dying. They're not going anywhere. Comic book movies are not going anywhere. They might be changing a lot in the next few years, but I think that a lot of what is happening

with Scorsese and Coppola is, it's not like they said this after Iron Man came out. They're saying it after 11 or 12 prolonged years of dominance in which it feels like the only thing that can work is this kind of a movie. To get back to Adam's question though, which I think is an interesting question,

are we doomed to Disney franchise dominance forever? Yes and no. I mean, we were doomed the minute Star Wars came out, right? It's not as if we just started getting franchise fever. that are not always the best films, but they can get the most people into the theater or in front of their screens in their homes. So I think that there are a lot of good kinds of trends happening right now, none at a mass scale though. Would you agree with that? Yes. I think, you know, we were talking just before we started podcasting about,

a lot of people went to see The Lighthouse this weekend and a lot of people, Jojo Rabbit did pretty well. It did. You know, there is the, Parasite is obviously having a huge fall and continues to be really successful. So people will go to the theaters in small doses to see any movies. That's great that it still has is not even close to the amount of money that the franchises and particularly superhero movies are making. And so, you know, last year was documentaries and theaters, and that was very exciting. And this year has seems to have changed, though there are a lot of documentaries you can

watch on streaming. So there are a lot of small trends. I agree that Disney is still the elephant in the room. It's always been the elephant in the room. I told you I had a theory about Marvel movies and superhero movies is about this is my new thing this weekend I think they're just Facebook what does that mean so I think that they have they have changed the way that we make market and watch movies to the extent that just all the systems around it have totally had to readjust which is very much what happened for Facebook in terms of like how you get information, which is both news, but also how you communicate to your family, like where you go to seek entertainment. There's just an entire realignment around this one platform. It's also been in the public consciousness for long enough that a lot of people are starting to question its long-term effects on the industry,

but at the same time is so embedded within society that it's like too big to fail. So we all kind of know that maybe it's not the greatest for us and maybe that we're dealing with the unthought consequences of this seismic change in the industry, but also it doesn't matter because your grandma is still just going on Facebook and or to see every single superhero movie because that's just how you do movies. It's just that's how entertainment is now. That's the one key distinction in your metaphor, though, is that old people are mad about Marvel and old people fucking love Facebook. Yeah, but sure. It's take relative or person in your life who you don't really communicate with

that often or doesn't always see things the same way that you do. And they're just kind of like, oh, whatever. Like, I will check out this meme and or I will go see this movie. And that's also that's another comparison, right, of these movies. I know I'm a great learning. They're really not for me, but they bring moments of joy. They are can be entertaining. Like Facebook does have its benefits Facebook has a lot of benefits and Facebook has not only just made things you can laugh at but re-engineered the way a lot of people can access the internet and communicate with each other and there is good in that as well as evil and I'm sure that there's good in Marvel movies and how there is people

connects to no it's it's brought me uh Captain America's ass and it's brought me some good banter. You and I basically, the first time we hung out was after a screening of the original Avengers. That's right. So it brought a friendship. That's right. That's very nice. To extend that metaphor, I don't know how we fixed Facebook. Long term, I think that that's like really, and I don't know what the long term ramifications of Facebook are going to be.

I think we're all still grappling with that or even just beginning to ask those questions. And I think the same is true for the franchise wars. I think that's really, it's bigger than just Marvel. It's the IP wars. No question. And I think you've put your finger on something interesting, which is that when we talk about people being in a bubble, we sometimes think that the bubble is very small and contained. And sometimes the bubble's big. The Marvel bubble is big.

People were really mad at Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. People who probably like their movies, but have ultimately decided to quote unquote side with Marvel, which is a corporation that makes movies

about guys in spandex. And that is just a very strange outcome that we find ourselves in. But, you know, I've said it many times. I think it's legitimate for James Gunn to feel proud of the thing that he did. His movies are actually quite strange. And they are in their way about the themes of family,

which is a personal expression that he is trying to make inside of the system in which people will go see these movies. Should he have put that Instagram post up? Perhaps not. Nevertheless, we're going to get more superhero movies, and we're also going to get more Martin Scorsese movies because we're seeing one this week. It's called The Irishman.

Very exciting. Everyone can win. Everyone can win. I don't think that's true at all, but these two people fighting can both win. I mean, that's another thing that's really fun about it. It's like two super powerful, successful groups who have everything that they want,

and they're just like whining in public because their feelings are hurt bobby what's next there was a few people that asked this but i d pernitzky was the first one who did it so uh have you guys seen the wife yeah we saw the wife yeah there was a whole podcast there was a lot of people who asked um what is 2019's the wife and he takes there real quick? I haven't seen Harriet yet, and I'm not sure if I will. I have seen Harriet, so I took one for the team on that one. We have gotten really good this year about—we've gotten judicious but also expert at seeing everything. So we're talking about The Wife in terms of like a thing that we can't believe exists, and we haven't seen it. Well, you know what I think is going to happen?

I think that we should redefine its identity. We should say that this is more like the movie that we can't believe this is the movie that is getting all this attention. Not just because not a lot of people have seen it, but because it seems perhaps not worthy of its attention. But it was also

because you couldn't find it. You guys had a hard time even getting it on VOD or seeing it in the theater. You're right. God bless even getting it on VOD or seeing it in the theater. You're right. God bless the guy who sent me the screener copy in the mail. That's how I actually did get a chance to see it. So I know what my answer is for this one. Go ahead.

Mine is The Two Popes. Because I still cannot believe that we're doing a Green Book Buddy comedy about the Catholic Church in 2019. And everyone's like, oh my gosh, everyone left Telluride and was like, this is going to be an Oscar favorite. I have not seen it. I don't know when Netflix is going to show this to me. Probably never given their track record this Oscar season. So I just, I cannot believe that this, I'm sure it's lovely. I'm sure you had a great time. I saw it and I liked it.

Okay. All right. Have you seen the two popes doesn't have quite it and I liked it. Okay. All right. Have you seen The Two Popes? Doesn't have quite the same ring to it. It's pretty close. It's pretty close. What's next? Pretty much everyone asks this every time we put out a mailbag for anything, but it's like your dream team.

If you had to pick one director and actor who've never worked together to team up, who would you choose and what genre of movie would it be? Did you answer this? Do you have a clear idea? I have two, actually. Oh, fire away. Okay. So the first is just Amanda Kaur through and through, but Sofia Coppola and Claire Foy.

Oh. Do you have a sense of what kind of a story you'd want to see from them? I think it would be about, I think it would be a quiet film about someone who is working through some personal demons, but doesn't really express them by awards. Just based on, you you know and maybe i don't actually really have a setting it would it would be interesting to see sophia do something in the uk i feel like restraint but also um the you know gilded visual aspects have possibility for her i just really you know, Claire Foy works in close-ups. Claire Foy's face can do amazing things. She doesn't need a script. And Sophia, I think, is a wonderful screenwriter and I love her, but, you know, it's not a lot of dialogue.

Yes. You have to be an expressive performer to work in a Sophia movie. And you have to have presence. And I would also just like to see Claire Foy do something other than play a wife to a historical person. Completely fair. You know, for years, my answer to this question was I wanted the Coen brothers and Denzel Washington to team up. I thought that Denzel's energy is unlike any energy that they've ever had before. And they're always able to bend actors to their will. Somehow they always get actors on their frequency.

You wouldn't necessarily even think that George Clooney was a fucking goofball, but you've now seen him be a goofball in three or four Coen Brothers movies, and now that's part of his persona. I kind of want to see weirdo Denzel. Lo and behold, he is appearing later, I guess next year, in A24's production of Macbeth, which is going to be directed by Joel Cohen and co-starring Frances McDormand, his wife. Tremendous. Which is, I don't even know what to make of that. Now, this is the first movie that Joel is making without his brother, Ethan. So, it might not have that right down the middle classical Cohen brothers feel, but nevertheless,

I'm really looking forward to that movie. I don't have like a great answer for this. I've always wanted to see, I've always thought Jim Carrey mismanaged his pursuit of seriousness. I always thought the kinds of movies when he was like, take me seriously, that he tried to do were not right. And I always thought Adam Sandler had a much better sense of how to transform himself. So I'd love to see somebody like PTA

take a crack at Jim Carrey to kind of like break down that myth and then rebuild it, show him really quiet and really vulnerable. Eternal Sunshine is incredible. That's probably like the closest he got to something along those lines.

But I'd like to see him with one of our American masters doing something. Because even like Milos Forman he's worked with and Gondry, but none of these guys are American. It's a little too experimental. Exactly.

Something that is like, what is his punch drunk love or phantom thread? That's what I would like to see. I have one more quickly for you. Go. Nancy Meyers and Jennifer Lopez. Oh, yeah. Let's go.

Do you think JLo is going to make good movies now? I have no idea. Because as we discussed on our episode about Jennifer Lopez, she's not historically made a lot of great movies. No. It's really up and down. But Hustlers made $100 million this weekend. It crossed $100 million. So she's in like rarefied air where this Oscar, theoretically Oscar movie is also a commercial hit.

Yeah, but she's also going to perform at the Super Bowl. She's got a lot of things going on. I know. She's busy. Yeah. What's next? Okay. Steven Elliott asked, why hasn't there been more buzz about Queen and Slim?

I think, Sean, even on this podcast, you've mentioned it a couple times and been like, this is a big studio movie with Daniel Kaluuya in it. So Amanda and I have seen the movie. I think we are forbidden from podcasting about it. Maybe the social media embargo is open, but everything else is closed. I think we have a question about embargoes coming later in this episode. It'll be interesting to dig into that. I think we can say that there are things to admire about it and there are things about it that didn't totally work for me. I feel like you feel the same way um we'll talk more about it as we get closer it comes out I think November 27th uh right right around Thanksgiving weekend it's a it's an interesting movie and it's an interesting

entrant into the Oscar race in terms of buzz it's at the AFI festival is when it premieres that's its official premiere so that might be part of your answer, which is that we critics have seen it in an embargoed setting, but it hasn't been at a festival. Not enough people have seen it to kind of to be doing that online. You got to see this movie six months in advance. Yes. And we will. I don't know if we're going to put buzz behind it necessarily, but I've been in the Daniel Kaluuya fan club for years now, and I'm not moving out of it after seeing this movie. Likewise.

One thing I can say. What's our next question? It's from Nate Schwartz. This is possibly my favorite question. Amanda, if you were the casting director for a biopic about Sean, who would you cast as Sean and why, and then vice versa? So can I go first? This is tough. This is dark.

It's dangerous. This immediately occurred to me. And I don't know how you're going to feel about it. But I ran it past my husband. And he said it was okay. Ed Norton. Oh, my gosh. Which is that there's both a physical resemblance.

Sure. You know, stature, head shape, hair situation. Yeah, sure. And an aggressiveness and a chattiness. but, you know, an intellect behind it. Thanks. But can I also say I first read this question and I thought I was picking a director for your biopic. And obviously my instant, like before I finished reading the question answer was Fincher.

So I guess I'm just making Fight Club. That's honestly what happened that's that's painful um so now say whatever you want me and my toxic masculinity over here i didn't intend to do that i know that's that's fair future big picture guest edward norton he will be appearing on this show uh later this month fairly soon that's that's legit i think that there's like a kindness in there. Okay. I didn't mean it as an indictment, and I didn't actually start from the Fight Club thing. You love Fincher, and there is something in that that speaks to you.

And, I mean, you have to consider physicality when making this decision. If we're going director for your story, it has to be Nancy Meyers. Yeah, thank you. If Nora Ephron were with us, it would be Nora Ephron. But it's Nancy Meyers. Thank you. I feel understood right now. As far as actress, I think that there's a person that I think could credibly play one

version of you that is an actor right now. Okay. I think that's Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who like you have a resemblance. I think you have a similar energy. But the person who I think can get the high key Amanda, the astral plane Amanda. I'm really afraid right now. Is Anne Hathaway. Okay.

That seems fair. I accept. Do you have, like, because, you know, Anne Hathaway obviously can communicate, I think, both intelligence, charm, a kind of, like, rigid competence, a kind of like on the ball nature, which I think is a part of your identity. But her characters can be a little high tuned at times as well. She can also be Rachel getting married. She can be Rachel getting married. Well, I wasn't thinking that.

I was thinking more the intern, not the... Love the intern. Can't wait to talk more about the intern later in this podcast. No, I accept. It's good. I wouldn't wish Rachel getting married on anything. Yeah, it's like a type A type, you know, neurotic energy. I relate to it.

I've met Anne Hathaway in person. She's lovely. She's a great actor. Great actor. What about an old school? Do you have an old actor? For you? Yeah.

I mean, Jimmy Stewart, I guess. Oh, wow. I love that. Blanky. I wish I could get into that energy. And like doing, you know. Damn. Just talking a lot to try to

like glide over stuff i'm just straight up not that likable like i know myself i would not define edward norton as likable but that's like that's the generous public facing sean i'm not doing like demons sean right now but ed norton has a little bit of like his head drops down and he's like a little bit of a dick like he's got that kind of energy. That's my energy, I think. That's why I picked it. You cast me correctly. Okay. I'm trying to think of an older actor for you. I think you need like a Barbara Stanwyck type.

It's like, I'm not taking shit from you. I'll take it. Okay. What's the next question? This came from a lot of people, but specifically David Merkel. He says, for Sean, how do you prepare for interviews with filmmakers? That's a good question. I do try to rewatch as much of the filmmaker's work as I can.

I probably have more fun prepping for older filmmakers, but I probably have more fun interviewing younger filmmakers because they're more likely to want to explicate everything. So I'll rewatch movies and every once in a while I'll read a book, but for the most part, I'll just go back and read feature stories. The same way you would prepare for working on a feature story about somebody, it's not so significantly different. I tend to write out all of my questions and then never look at them, even though I ask Bobby, our producer, to print them out and have them in front of me just in case, but I try not to break eye contact

when I'm chatting with people. Do you memorize them? Not exactly, but I try not to break eye contact when I'm chatting with people. Do you memorize them? Not exactly, but I try to arrange them. You know when you study for a test and it's always easier to type out or write out your study notes because they get lodged into your brain? I think it's the same kind of math. The follow-up question here is, what do you do if you didn't like or even hated the film they're promoting, which is an interesting question.

I would never have someone on whose film I hated. That would be a strange choice, I think. I don't view myself or this show as a strictly journalistic endeavor in which we are gathering information about the state of the industry. I do, because of what you were saying earlier about Parasite is having a nice year.

And we, even though it's not a lot of people could see it, we devoted an entire episode to that movie because we want them to see it. And we did, I feel comfortable evangelizing for movies. Likewise, I'd like to talk to filmmakers who I think have done something interesting, who I at least want people to understand it. And sometimes I don't want to get too deep into the philosophy of the show, but I do like talking to very commercial filmmakers about very commercial films, which I don't think any other show does. And I don't think a lot of people talk to Ruben Fleischer about making Zombieland Double Tap because they think, oh, it's just like a zombie sequel. But I'm kind of interested in the mechanics

of how that movie happened and how his career happened. So that doesn't necessarily mean I think Zombieland Double Tap was the best movie I've seen this year, but I thought the idea of it and some of the things in it were kind of fascinating. So that's how I try to choose people to come on. Yeah, if there's something interesting. Exactly. David Merkel also wants to know if either of you have thoughts on doing any more fave swap episodes. Do you think the podcast could sustain that? I mean, just wait until February 15th. We get past the Oscars and there are no good movies. I think we'll have to find one. Is there some, I mean, you've asked me to watch Four Weddings and a Funeral, which I, candidly, I started but have not finished. Don't tell me these things.

I'm sorry. Just pretend that you're watching. It's not that hard. Okay. I'm not sure what I would want you to watch. Spider-Verse was such a special movie. Yeah, no, it's true. I was thinking there is probably some action movie that's like a really pure expression of the form that I just have not really seen.

Have you seen Alien? Yes. Okay. That shit is fantastic. Yeah, that would be a good one because I want it to be something kind of like Spider-Verse that has some ideas in it. Right. That isn't just like watch Predator. Predator is sick, sick but like i don't know if that's a good conversation yeah well but i do i do think there are a lot of people who view action movies as not even view that sounds really condescending like a good action sequence

is a form of art in its own and it's a visual language that i don't totally know how to watch and i was thinking about action movies in the context of Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. Because some of that for me was just being like, what the fuck is happening on this screen? And where are my eyes supposed to go? And how am I supposed to process this information? And I think there is probably a similar thing where action sequences are just kind of like, all right, well, they're punching. And I don't know. You know, let me know when the plot happens again.

So if there's something that illustrates that choreography and that, the artistry that goes into that. Maybe like the Wild Bunch. Have you seen the Wild Bunch? I have not. That might be a good one. Okay. That might be an entree into how a genre changes, how you shoot a shootout,

what happens when movies get bloody. That's the first time a movie really got bloody. Okay. So we'll table that. Maybe a Four Weddings and a Wild Bunch podcast down the road. What's next? Jake Honchop asks, did you guys ever have aspirations to be more involved in the movie industry? Acting, directing, writing, anything of that sort?

I'll say not seriously. Okay. I'll expand on that, but what about you? I think not at all. Yeah. Like, never even occurred to me. And I remember a moment kind of in being a young journalist when I realized a lot of people have spec scripts that they've been working on, which I really admire because I'm probably too lazy to do it. But I was like, oh, I never even thought that that was something that you could do.

Yeah. I have not gone down that road in particular. I, when I was a teenager and was starting to get a little movie crazy and started reading a lot of movie history books and the making of movie books, I got really interested in the idea. And then when I had the chance, I went to Ithaca College and I thought the two best majors at Ithaca were film, the film program, and journalism. And they were in the same building and I could the two best majors at Ithaca were film, the film program, and journalism. And they were in the same building, and I could have gone to the film program and probably would have had a slightly different life,

and I decided that I wanted to write and I wanted to edit, and that was the career that I wanted to have. You know, we're doing some movie stuff here at The Ringer, but it's not the same as kind of being a screenwriter or being in production or being a director. Like at this point, it would be impossible. I definitely did not want to be an actor. I don't have. I guess I did get forced into all the performing arts stuff as a kid. Did you do plays in school?

Yeah, I was in Tom Sawyer in seventh grade. Did you play Tom? Yes. No, I didn't. I played like his sister or something. I don't really remember. And then we did Charlotte's Web and I had to be one of the geese. And I think that was when I was like, sister or something. I don't really remember. And then we did Charlotte's Web and I had to be one of the geese. And I think that was when I was like, I'm out. You have strong goose energy. Thank you. That's really rude.

That's the rudest thing you've ever said to me. Geese are such majestic animals. They fly with such grace. I don't know. It maybe wasn't what I wanted to be expressing in eighth grade in Charlotte's Web. And that was kind of out. But I guess I did have such a I've mentioned before, I played a lot of instruments. I was in choirs. I had dance training. I like I I don't know how I wound up doing all that stuff, because frankly, I'm not particularly talented at it. But I had a taste of it and was not for me.

I've never even really tried it. I never was in a musical or a play. I guess I have been in one second of like Take 102 or, you know, that's really the extent of my acting. I mean, this in a way is a performance every day. It truly is. I think if people met me, they'd be really surprised by how much I'm not yelling about the MCU in person. It's actually debatable, but...

That's your rude comment for the podcast what's next alex tyra tayra sorry alex uh channeling the press box pod here given the many mediums writing podcasts events twitter through which people discuss and critique movies do you think this is a high point for film discourse interesting question first of all shout out the press box one of my absolute favorite things we make here at the ringinger, Dave Shoemaker and Brian Curtis. If you're not subscribed to that show, please subscribe now. I think you'll enjoy it if you like this show. I don't think it's a high point for film discourse. I don't either. back and forth, which has been a bit ugly. I will say it's obviously been democratized in a huge way for good and for ill. One, there are a lot of voices writing about movies now, podcasting about movies, appearing on YouTube, talking about movies that never would have had a chance 50 years ago.

And we valorize Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris and Roger Ebert and the greats of film criticism. Those are all white people. There's a lot, you know, there are a lot more not white people talking about movies and changing the way that we think about movies, which I think is really valuable. Simultaneous to that, there are way too many people

who don't know what they're talking about talking about movies right now, who have not done the work, who have not thought deeply about film. Simultaneous to that, there are a lot of people who maybe haven't done the work, but still bring a valuable perspective. And so I feel like it's nuanced. There are some highs and

there are some low lows. What do you think? I agree with that. I mean, it's messy. And I think it's really crucial to point out that there are just not only so many people who are able to talk about movies and be heard in a way that would not have been the case even 10 years ago, but also how we talk about movies and what people are seeing. And as you said, sometimes there are people who are, you know, maybe not trying to be an academic film critic, but are seeing movies in a different way. I'm not an academic film critic. I'm like, come from the pop sensibility of like, I just like going to the movies and I like to bring curiosity and rigor to it. But, you know, I think that that has shifted. And as someone who likes viewing movies that way

and thinking about movies that way, I really enjoy it. I think I'm a person who just actually really does value well-written criticism. And it's a really tricky time for that for a lot of reasons um facebook screwed up the media so there aren't that many people who are being given the opportunity to train and learn how to write and the types of criticism especially written criticism that do do well on the internet are often kind of not related to the movie at all so i I think that's a tough thing. However, made a list of some critics. Yeah. I really enjoy.

I'd like to hear. I have some too. Manola Dargis. Maybe you've heard of her. A number one. The best. Tremendous. Writing for the New York Times, obviously.

K. Austin Collins. Cam to us. Our homie Cam. Yes, who was at the Ringer for a while and now is at Vanity Fair and is my favorite critic working in part because I never know what he's going to think, which is really exciting. Probably the only working critic for me who has the power to write something that switches my brain on. Yeah.

I'm obsessed with this stuff and I'm thinking about this and I read a lot of criticism. He's the only person who consistently turns an idea into something that I couldn't see coming, which is impressive. Right. Alison Wilmore, who is now at Vulture. Obviously, Wesley Morris, our friend. That goes without saying. Mark Harris, who has really informed a lot of how I understand the Oscars and the industry and continues to be a huge resource just on his Twitter feed. And Adam Neiman, who writes for us at The Ringer and who sees movies very differently than I do. He is far smarter than I am and is looking at it with an intellectual and academic rigor that I often lack. And I learn something when I read him. It's a great list.

I would definitely agree about Adam as well. I think Adam was one of those guys who before The Ringer started Chris always had his finger on him and said like this guy this guy is really really good and I frequently disagree with Adam like I disagree with Adam about the lighthouse about waves about a bunch of movies this year that have come out that I absolutely love and these aren't like convention you know commercial films they're they're art films that he didn't like and I liked a lot but I do also always learn something reading him. I find him to be kind of fearless in the way that he talks about movies, which is, I think Cam is similar.

Cam is unafraid to say like, here's why this doesn't work. And it's not always easy to do that. I think in addition to the writers that you talked about, it's an interesting moment for movie podcasting. You know, you mentioned Alison Wilmore. I've said before in the past that film spotting SVU and then the show that she and Matt Singer were doing years before that for IFC was kind of my entree into movie podcasts. And I always loved the show that they did together.

And now there's a couple of shows. I think our show has been influenced by that somewhat, a man and a woman talking excitedly and sometimes disagreeably about movies. I think what Amy Nicholson and Paul Scheer are doing on Unspooled is just a fascinating project. Obviously, we've made shows with Amy here.

We're a bit biased, but she's tremendous at it. I've shouted out Blank Check a couple of times, Dave Simms' show, which is just really, really, really fun. You may have heard

of The Rewatchables. Oh, yeah. That's a show here that I think has a slightly different ethic about what is and is not a good movie, but one that I always kind of appreciated. It's literally the same thing that I felt when I was reading Bill Simmons's columns in the late nineties and early two thousands where I was like,

no one ever wrote about sports quite like this. And no one ever made a movie podcast quite like the rewatchables, even though there are dozens of shows where people rewatch movies and talk about them. There are a lot of other good shows. If we forgot your show, I apologize, but not really. Yeah. What's next? This is an interesting follow up to the democratization point from above.

This comes from Nick Provender. Do we prognosticate too much for there to ever be a true oscar surprise again i think it's actually more likely that there's a total surprise yeah because there's so many people in the academy now i agree but i also think it's we just live in an information overload and everything is so you know you make fun of me for being like okay here is how the hype cycle of this controversial thing is going to go. And I'm not always right. I didn't really see the Joker stuff coming as intense as it was.

Tight. Joker's about to make $900 million. Y'all lost your heads. But I do think that there is, it's such a controlled environment and there are so many people paying attention. And you also just have to think about the fact that, like, we're, the people prognosticating are paying a lot more attention than say 70% of the Academy. So that is definitely true. At some point you just kind of, it's a numbers game and you do have a handle on what's happening. So I just, I also just think we think it's so much that nothing can really be a surprise. Like you and I made a video last year where we just did the case for every single,

the path to every single nominee winning best picture. It's like, okay, here's what has happened for Vice to win, which Vice was never going to win. But I like did my own like carry on Homeland board trying to figure out everything that's going on because that's just, that's the nature of the game right now. I will say the one addendum that is key to understanding this stuff is that Moonlight won. Moonlight won Best Picture. Now, obviously the circumstances under which it won were ridiculous

with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway up there and the wrong envelope and all that stuff. But Moonlight winning was unlike anything that had ever happened at the Oscars ever. And that was only a couple of years ago. That's true. So I think with that in mind, it just reveals to me that I don't really know what's going on inside the minds of Academy voters. Right. And there's many more thousands of them than there used to be.

And all of these people are different kinds of artists. It's not just, you know, it's still 75% men and a lot of people over the age of 50. But it's the dynamics have changed. I think the only other thing is that what feels like a total shock is very different in an information overload era where you think you have the odds on everything, and we're talking about it for 20 different ways, and we're all very confident that we know what's going to happen, whether it's about the Oscars or about sports stuff. I really do feel like I'm a spectator to the ringer sports coverage, but there's just always a really defined narrative of exactly, you know, we've got a plan and then Kawhi Leonard

does whatever he does. And then four bounces the glory. But it's just because we were so confident. We have so much data and numbers and we have overanalyzed things when it that when it doesn't go exactly as you think it's gonna go you're just like oh my god who could have seen it coming the great surprise of the decade and it's like okay moonlight won because donald trump had been elected president what like three or four months ago don't be rude it's a beautiful film i love moonlight and it like i think there's video of me just like screaming because for once in our lives the academy did the right thing We're rewarding the actual best picture in Moonlight.

But I do think some of it was just our overconfidence. We think we know everything. We're not quite in prediction season. It'll be interesting to see how we decide to do a series of predictions episodes of this show. Because I think once November strikes is when that stuff starts to go into a high pitch. But I do feel comfortable in saying that via write-in ballot, Thanos will win Best Supporting Actor, which I'm super excited about.

I love you, Thanos. Okay, Jeegs asks, I don't have a particular question in mind, which a lot of people started their tweets with. Just leave that part out. Editing. Yeah, ask some questions. Yeah, exactly. I just want some time allotted for Sean and Amanda to vent about a movie that particularly affronts them, even better if it's a movie that people like.

I need to know what your answer to this is. I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Did you? Yeah. Okay. I got some suggestions from people in my life. You ready? Yeah.

I would like to rant about the murder on the Orient Express from 2017. Did we see this together? Which Sean and I saw together with our spouses on opening night in a full theater in Pasadena. We were the youngest people by 30 years, which is saying something. I believe Sean was like 30 minutes late and didn't miss a thing. That's probably true. I got two problems here. Number one, you're remaking Murder on the Orient Express.

Classic Agatha Christie. Probably the defining Agatha Christie mystery. Great movie. Has already been made in 1974. Directed by Sidney Lumet with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, who is the central detective. All right, so Kenneth Branagh decides that he needs to be Hercule Poirot

and remake this movie. That's fine. Whatever Kenneth Branagh's up to now. Good for him. Remakes the movie, all-star cast, and then decides that he is just gonna insert some total non-canon love backstory for Hercule Poirot, who this is not on the record, but I have to assume if you read the books, Hercule Poirot

does not date women. Okay. He doesn't date women. He has like, they don't say that. Is he a eunuch? No, I believe that he- Is he asexual? I think he's implied to be gay. He has like a psychic character, Hastings, where they have like a professional relationship. But I think you're supposed to mean to understand that there's something more off the page.

Something Holmes and Watson. Maybe reading into that. Okay. I'm just saying, nowhere is like Eric Quilparo mooning over some like random woman named Laura I can't even remember what her name was who died in like when she was 20 or something and that motivates his work to solve crimes of the upper class like in England from 1920 to 1970 what are we doing and

the movie has so many flashbacks to this like phantom woman with no character backstory just dying and he's like oh i'm so sad so i must solve this mystery how about you solve the mystery because you're trapped in a snowdrift on a train with a murderer that's enough motivation i don't need this non-canon stuff additionally amanda is so mad right now additionally at the end they set up the sequel death on the n, by some guy rolls up to the Orient Express. The train has entered the station and they're like, solved the murder. Not going to tell you how it's spoiled, even though it's like the most famous mystery of all time. And they come up and they're like, Mr. Poirot, there has been a murder on the Nile.

And he's like, yes, I will go there. Okay, here's the thing. Anyone who knows anything about Hercule Poirot knows that he has to be on the scene from the beginning in order to be able to solve the mystery. He needs the clues from before the murder. There's always like a very tightly woven, like you're looking at me like I'm crazy. No, this is great because you have been yelling at me about talking about the details of Marvel movies for years. And this is the same crazy mind shit. But it's just, it's in the text.

All these mysteries are is that Ergo Baro shows up somewhere. There's a cast of characters. It's like, hmm, something's afoot. Then someone dies. And he uses, like, some random, like, snippet of paper that he found tucked, tucked like in the fireplace the night before anyone died to solve the mystery. He has to know all the motivations. And if the murders already happened, he's never going to be able to solve it. So they're making this second movie, a remake of my favorite Agatha Christie movie, Death on the Nile.

And he can't solve the mystery. It's ruined before it started. Kenneth Branagh is trying to break the cannon over his knee and reimagine it. Okay. Rebuild it. Great. He views Agatha Christie the way that we view Stan Lee. We take all the best parts and then we reinvent.

No? No. It's also just like... You are so mad. The novels are 150 pages. There's nothing extra to reinvent. You just got to stick to the text, man. Stick to the text.

But so the funny thing about this is that this Death in the Nile film that you're talking about, as far as I know, is in the annual Venom Joker slot next October, which is one of my favorite movie scheduling choices in years, frankly. And the idea of the Hercule Poiro expanded universe taking the filling in that gap is just as perfect movie stuff um i don't have like an a super passionate film like i certainly not as passionately as as you feel i mean you've read like a dozens of that kind of christy novels at this point but it is about a movie based on a novel and it's a book that was recommended to me by your husband it's a book called zeroville which is by your husband. It's a book called Zeroville,

which is a novel by Steve Erickson. Oh, yeah. A great film writer and also an accomplished novelist. And he published this movie, I believe in the 90s, or excuse me, he published this book, I believe in the 90s. And James Franco adapted it about four years ago. So it had been long in the works. It had long been imagined to become a film. And this is Franco kind of pre-crypto cancellation. And the book is very peculiar because it essentially takes a figure who may or may not have some sort of mental or social disorder and thrusts him into 70s New Hollywood. And so he's greatly inspired by the films of the 50s and 60s. He has a tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on the back of his bald head, but he encounters a lot of figures throughout the film, among them a John Milius type and a series of actors and actresses

from that time who he sort of falls in love with and becomes overwhelmed by and he becomes an editor in Hollywood. The book is a pocket history of the new Hollywood and also a kind of fascinating portrait of somebody slowly losing his mind. The movie is very bad and it's very bad because it has done one thing which is that it has decided on a tone that is the wrong tone this is like a noir style book and here are the people who are cast in the film all of whom are great performers james franco appears as vicar vicar the lead character megan fox is in this movie seth rogan is in this movie will ferrell is in this movie danny mcbride is in this movie. Dave Franco, of course, James's brother. Craig Robinson, Horatio Sands. You would think that this was a sequel to Blades of Glory or something, but it's not. It's just a complete fucking bummer of a movie. So what you're saying is that James Franco failed to read The Room. Perhaps. So yeah, I can't say I'd recommend Zeroville the movie,

but I would absolutely recommend that novel, which is such a good book. What's next? Ann Stone asks, can there be actual aesthetic or stylistic trends in cinema anymore? Or has the ease of production and distribution nowadays made it such that all styles of movies are basically being made at all times? Well, they're not making romantic comedies anymore, so. Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, it depends on how you define aesthetic or stylistic, right? Because in some ways that can mean genre.

In some ways that can mean the way a film is shot. In some ways it can mean, I don't know, the way that a movie sounds or where you see it. I don't know. Even talking to somebody like Robert Eggers for this episode, he made a movie in a square aspect ratio in black and white. And it feels very claustrophobic. And the sound design is really ratcheted up. And it's a very severe film. But also, it's a very visceral film.

There's a lot of flatulence and snoring and burping. And I never really, if you go back and watch Murnau's films or Frank Borsage or somebody like that, none of that stuff is in those movies. So he's kind of like combining Dumb and Dumber meets Faust or something. But I don't, I mean, it's kind of like, is there anything new under the sun kind of a question? And I don't know. I mean, we always do. We see new films that like inspire us, but it's hard to innovate on filmmaking right now, which is part of what Coppola was saying that he tries to do when he was giving that speech. He's like, I view movies as kind of like an ever-evolving medium, and I think of myself as an amateur, and I'm always trying to learn new ways to do stuff.

But the technology is pretty advanced right now. Right. And there's not a lot of room for experimentation and failure. And I, you know, even I think you on this podcast sometimes will just be like, this didn't work. And you can be kind of hard on something, but that is part of the artistic process, right? And instead what happens,

even if it's, you're not making a superhero movie, but if you have one type of movie that works, whether it's a genre or stylistic or even a conceit, then, you know, eight similar movies are being made within

the year because there just is the run to what works. That's right. This is part of what I admired about Gemini Man. Gemini Man is not really a successful movie and it has not been a successful movie at the box office, but it was trying to do something new. It was trying to shoot something in that new frame rate that makes people feel uncomfortable, but is aspiring towards something that will probably ultimately happen once the technology catches up to the aspiration. So we'll see. What do we got next, Bobby? Okay, Perkins.

I'm really excited to hear your answers for this one. But Perkins asks, after listening to the Rewatchables, remember the Titans pod to pitch the next great sports movie, podcast and director. I don't think I can answer this. You can't?

Why not? Because I've pitched something. Oh, okay. That i think is the real answer okay i don't really think i have one um you know i haven't put something like formally to a company but it's like it's an idea that you don't want to give away my favorite sports movie as we all know is moneyball and i don't know so i guess i would want a Sorkin-esque person to write a sports movie. What sports haven't had a good sports movie in a while? Don't want to watch an NFL movie.

No, thank you. I know. And the answer is probably remake Wimbledon, but good. Are you familiar with the film Wimbledon? I certainly am. In fact, I've seen it. Yeah. Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst.

Exactly. And tennis players who fall in love. Well, I guess he's a washed up tennis player and she's a rising star. He might be an instructor now. I'm also possibly confusing. Wimbledon came out very around the same time as Match Point, which involves a tennis instructor. Early aughts. Yeah.

So. Wouldn't call it a tennis movie. Well, but it's definitely Matthew Goode in Tennis White's Walking Around, which has stayed with me. So, yeah, let's remake Wimbledon. OK, let's have Sorkin write it because that would be fun. Who should star in it? Who are kind of. Lanky ish.

Well, I guess you don't have to be lanky. Maybe Ed Norton and Anne Hathaway. There we go. Sounds great. Okay. What's next? Rob Cameron Fowler, what untapped IP or genre

do you think will or should dominate when slash if, I guess, the superhero saturation subsides? Well, I don't think that... I can't predict what the movie IP will be. I can say that fantasy is going to have a much longer lifespan than all this other stuff. And if you look at all the things that are in production, His Dark Materials premieres on HBO in a couple of weeks. We're getting a Lord of the Rings series from Amazon that is probably going to be the most expensive piece of

filmed content ever made at the end of the day. I think it's going to be a billion dollar project and there's never been anything like that before. Those sorts of things never expire. And I think they'll kind of continue on in a way. It's a little hard to say like, what will be the next Western? What will be the next gangster movie? What will be the next superhero movie? I don't, I don't specifically know. We don't, do you, is there a new form of sort of subgenre out in the world right now that we haven't totally experienced? Like fantasy, I mean, I don't, not really that I can think of. There have been so many failed artificial intelligence films. I was going to say that this, I mean, this is not a genre. This is like a different medium, but that I just think will

infiltrate movies more they haven't figured out how to make a video game movie yet they haven't figured out how to marry those things but you know even when we were talking about Gemini Man like clearly the future the aesthetic future of movies is more in line with video games and there is that immersive iterative these are all types of source material that people can get lost in and that are kind of never-ending in terms of the things that you can do with it that literally don't have an ending.

I think that's a great answer. I think the kind of choose-your-own-adventure-style film-going experience, film-action experience is probably in our future, maybe not in our lifetime, but in our future. All right, Leah asks, as a big fan of movies and TV, any advice on how to transition into an aspiring slash amateur movie critic? I used to give advice

to people all the time on how to get into this business and I don't try to do that anymore. I think it's really hard right now. The one thing I would say is identify a place that you really want to contribute to and understand why you want to contribute to that place and put all of your best ideas together and try to get in the door that way. It's not easy, but all of the old canards about work for free, hustle as hard as you can, work 18 hours a day have all become super fraught now. And you actually can't give advice like that anymore because our expectations around what is and isn't worthwhile work have changed. So and the media has changed a lot. Yeah.

And especially the culture media has changed a lot. We just have seen the kind of degradation of things like Entertainment Weekly this year. You know, like the playing field has just been so radically shrunk down. It's a little hard to give sincere advice on how to be successful. Yeah, I have less practical advice because I would agree it's a tricky time for the media industry. It's a tricky time for most industries. It's hard out there. But I'm going to lean into the amateur movie critic aspect of it. If you're just someone who would like to learn how to express yourself and, you know, kind of communicate what you think about movies in more effective

ways, just honestly watch and read everything that you think about movies in more effective ways. Just honestly watch and read everything that you can. There are so many people who just start talking before they know what they're talking about. And you can sense those people in public and you can sense those people in your personal life. But I really connect to a critic when I'm like, well, you know something that I don't. And you've clearly really thought about this. And it comes from an experience of expertise. And the only way to get that is just to like sit and watch and learn and listen. Great advice. What's next?

Summit Sarkar asks, it used to be the case that movie stars would put butts in seats. Now we don't have a lot of new stars and it's all about established IP. Even for megastars like The Rock, do you foresee it ever tipping back in the other direction? And if so, what might be,

what might lead to that? No. I think if the system has been, has been strangled, suffocated, so as not to produce new authentic stars in the same way, then I don't know how it ever starts again. I think at least for people going to a movie theater,

the answer is no, but that's more about technology and how we consume things than the failure of a personality driven experience. I still think that personality driven entertainment is the biggest thing that we have going because it's social media and you attach to a person, you know, influencers. You attach to a particular thing, but if you're really invested in an influencer, why would you go to a theater to watch a two-hour movie of that person when you can watch them on YouTube or on Instagram?

So I don't think stars are going away. Movie stars, maybe not. I think that historical definition that we've talked about a lot, which is sort of the Julia Roberts, the Denzels, the Tom Cruises, that's obviously over. That doesn't mean that

my little sister won't watch every single thing that Chris Evans does forever. You know, he was, he, Captain America was a Trojan horse for him. You know, he literally was inside of that costume

and then created a kind of a fan base that he wouldn't have had otherwise, which is powerful, but I don't think it's the same. I don't think he would be able to draw $150 million worth of people to his version of the firm anymore. And that's, what's really changed.

Can I just say really quickly, I think because of what Amanda described, like the influencer and social media thing, like this applies more to a non-fiction work like for example i just went and watched rhythm and flow because i like cardi b and i like her presence on instagram and she's the same person in a non-fiction tv show so i mean maybe that's the future of it like right more documentary style stuff you watched that on netflix in your home right i did yeah there you go, honestly, podcasts are a part of

this. There is a whole universe now where you hear a person on a podcast and then you think, I like that person. Did they have other things? And then you find the other podcasts that they make and then it's spiders out from there. It's more a series of smaller executions and looking to identify the people where they are, not trying to build a massive ship around them. You know, Cardi B is doing a hundred things. And if you love her, you'll invest in all of those things, whether it's a perfume or a Netflix show or a new single or her Instagram account. And it is, and I think Amanda has always been really,

really smart about identifying the way that celebrities are like truly successful in the 21st century. And it's really doing all of those things now. It's not just the movie. Right. That's why when you asked me, is Jennifer Lopez going to make another movie? No, because, I mean, Jennifer Lopez was a decade ahead of everyone else in this. I know, but I love good movies.

It's a real problem. I know. You know, maybe they'll become the passion project to an extent they already are. Like Jennifer Lopez didn't do Hustlers for her bottom line. You know, something else paid for the Porsche that A-Rod bought her. I'm just guessing. Love Porsches. Yeah.

What's next, Bobby? Tyler wants to know your top five do-over movies. Movies with a good premise that were mishandled. And then I guess how you would fix them. I don't have five. I have five. Okay. Oh my God.

You really, you love to do your homework. You are the ace homework person I've ever met. I like to prepare. You do. Give me your five. Okay. Recent one yesterday. Just please queue up my breakdown for that one. Yeah. Okay. Not a bad movie. No, but again, did not stick the landing and it's not what, it's a great premise. You had it instantly and I was, and I, I thought the main performance was fantastic, but I just wanted more. Okay.

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. Oh, intriguing. With Leo as Gatsby. I feel like that movie has no legacy. None at all, except for that one gif of him cheersing. That's right. Yeah. That's right. It was a huge hit, though.

Sure, but it wasn't very good. I remember actually— It seemed to misunderstand The Great Gatsby. It did. It definitely. I remember actually. It seemed to misunderstand the great Gatsby. It did. It definitely understood Lana Del Rey. That was that entire movie was built around that Lana Del Rey song. That was tight though. Which is a fascinating snapshot of that moment.

Yeah. I like that he did that. Yeah. I just think that you could do Leo as Gatsby, even directed by Baz Luhrmann. I would give him another shot. Okay. That's a good suggestion. Yeah.

Even though no one would need to remake it because it was a big fucking hit. I don't. Listen. These are my answers. They asked the question. What's your third? Okay. This is a controversial one, but it's coming from my personal place of love.

I would remake The Bling Ring. Whoa. I wanted more from that. Yeah. Wow. You just killed Jesus on this podcast. I didn't kill Jesus. I loved Sophia.

That's your Jesus. I didn't kill Jesus. That's your Jesus. I didn't kill her. I said it was from a place of love. Oh my gosh. That hasn't held up for me the way the others have. It was kind of hustlers before hustlers with none of the follow through. Yeah, and with none of the energy. And there is like a real LA versus New York aspect to that.

And I think like it's an interesting and complete movie from Sophia I don't even mean to say that it's bad but it's not totally what I wanted from the bling ring the bling ring to me I am more interested in the ideas of the fame obviously that are that's all I'm ever interested in as we've learned. And that obsession and the hustler culture of LA. And there was sort of like, Sophia was making the ennui, these people will never be a part of this delusion aspect of the bling ring. I think that's part of it. I just would have pushed the levers differently. You want to share a couple more? Sure. Duplicity?

I think this is an underrated classic. Just my take. I enjoyed it, and I rewatched it recently. I also stan Tony Gilroy. And again, I would let Tony Gilroy take another shot with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. I don't totally know what's happening in the in the like the third three quarters in I'm just like I don't really know what's happening and I think well I said I would keep the cast because I really like both Julia Roberts and Clive Owen do they have chemistry I don't know I think I think I think supposed to for the movie. That's a different thing. But, you know, there's something missing from it. It just feels like a movie that Gilroy offered George Clooney. And he was like, no, I'm not going to do this. Yeah. And if it were George

Clooney, it's a different and better movie. I agree. And I like Clive Owen and his career is in kind of a weird place post Geminiemini Man, but just it needed George. That was my take on it. I agree with you. You got a final one? Yeah. This one's for you. Shoot.

Molly's game. Yeah. Yeah. Not even that I had a nice time. I have some notes about the Kevin Costner stuff. You don't need that part. Yeah. I should have put that down.

I love Sorkin, love Chastain, love poker. I would keep everyone involved. I'd just be like, let's try again. Let's use what we've learned. We needed to skinny it down. We needed to not just make it shorter necessarily, but more focused. It would have been a great A Week in the Life of a Figure kind of a movie. And I didn't totally think that that framing device with Idris Elba as her lawyer

and like all of those sit down conversations really, I didn't totally think that that framing device with Idris Elba as her lawyer and like all of those sit down conversations really I didn't think it was necessary yeah now far be it for me to give Aaron Sorkin lessons on anything

but I that movie felt you know not unlike Uncut Gems like it was made for me yes it was like my favorite actress

with whom I am in love my favorite screenwriter maybe not my favorite screenwriter but a screenwriter that I adore certainly probably my favorite screenwriter, maybe not my favorite screenwriter, but a screenwriter that I adore. Certainly, probably my favorite screenwriter. Directing his first movie. Except for Nora, sorry. Except for Nora. But tons of great things about it. It's about gambling. It's a true life story that is a great read. It's about Hollywood. It's about so many great things. It just totally doesn't perfectly land. I'll use that as one of mine as

well. Okay. Here are a couple for me. I won't belabor this. Solo. Just let Lord Miller finish Solo. I just want to see that movie. Okay. I didn't belabor this Solo just let Lord Miller finish Solo I just want to see that movie I didn't love Alden Ehrenreich I think there were some problems with the whole conception of the character

and the way that they did it but I want to see that version of the movie I don't care about Ron Howard's idea about Star Wars I do care about Lord Miller's

because of the Spider-Verse thing that we're talking about those guys have proven time and again that they can make things that I don't necessarily think I'm interested in

like the Lego movie or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and reinvent it in an interesting way. And I just want to see that version of the movie. Second one, Public Enemies, Michael Mann's movie. This is just a miss. It's a miss and it starts to signal like a turn in his career. I'm not quite the same man and knight that Chris Ryan and Bill Simmons are but I'm close I'm really really into about six of his movies and this one it feels all miscast

I wonder if you just switch Johnny Depp and Christian Bale and you make Depp Elliot Ness and you make Bale the cop if the movie works a little bit better

I don't know we could try it they should mix up the whole cast in a lot of ways there are a lot of really famous people in that movie.

And I was just talking to somebody about it recently, and it's shocking how not good it is. Yeah. Number three, Hancock. We talked about this on the Will Smith podcast. Incredible premise. I'd like to see the version that is R-rated and is Vince Gilligan's script

and not the watered-down version of the movie that we got. But I'd like to keep Will Smith and Charlize Theron. Funny people. I think the first hour is the best thing Judd Apatow has ever done I think the second hour second hour plus yeah I was gonna say um does not work at all and there's way too much Eric Bannon and Leslie Mann stuff going on and it's too far away from Sandler and Rogan and where how Leslie Mann fits into that story and I'd like to see just a different version of the second half. I think that that could have been an absolutely beautiful James Brooks kind

of a movie, which we don't get anymore. You know, I feel like James Brooks is probably my Nora Ephron in terms of like, we don't have a version of this anymore. We don't have broadcast news anymore. That was so broadcast newsy. It was the broadcast news of stand-up comedy, and it was going to be perfect, and then it just lost its way. So that's mine. What's next, Bobby? Matt O'Connor asks, and I love this question. If you could both go back in time and sit in on the set of a movie for its entire production, which would it be? Amanda is pumping her arms. There's only one real answer to this. Do you know what it is? I have no idea.

It's Ocean's Eleven. Oh, that's a good one. I have some other answers because there are other things I'd like to be a part of. But the only real answer is just is being on Ocean's Eleven, being the 12th on Ocean's Eleven. So you want to see a movie and have fun. Like you want to be on a fun set. Yeah, I have. Like I said, I have some other more curiosity answers.

But at the end of the day, are you turning down an opportunity to hang with Steven Soderbergh, our god, also Mr. Efficiency, so you won't be bored. It's true. Plus, Clooney, Pitt, and Damon in the We Do Pranks era. Who says no? Julia Roberts is running around being like, go away, boys. I'm here for it. I'm going the other way I want a long arduous painful shoot okay that is immensely frustrating for everyone involved and produced a complicated some semi-masterpiece

eyes wide shut okay that's I mean that's good answer that's the journalistic answer you want to see Tom and Nicole you want to see it fracturing and fraying yes in real time you want to see I don't know the most insane sex scenes ever performed ever in person i don't know i don't know if i do i don't know you want to see nick nightingale tinkling the keys uh so yeah i'll go with eyes wide shut what's next all right we only have time for a couple more um let's go down to this one from byronic gyro what might be a fun double feature of movies from different directors different decades and different genres well there are obvious answers you know

I know that you've been excited to program a week at the Arclight of Joker and Taxi Driver screenings which I think will be great I think those will do

really well come by for Amanda's double feature screening series yeah I don't know what's on your list here I did my homework yeah

alright you ready so this isn't quite a different genre but whatever I don't know. What's on your list here? I have a few. I did my homework. Yeah. All right. You ready? So this isn't quite a different genre, but whatever. We'll go with it. Working Girl, one of my all-time favorites. You could really do... You know what? I'm going to do four. Okay.

And this is cheating a little bit because two of these are Nancy Meyers movies, but whatever. Working Girl, Baby Boom, Devil Wears Prada, The Intern. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's good. Thank you. Is it four different decades? Baby Boom Devil Wears Prada The Intern oh wow yeah that's good thank you is it four different decades uh

I no because Working Girl and Baby Boom are both 80s Working Girl is 84 I believe and Baby Boom

is 87 I think or late 80s I have one this is the most obvious one imaginable for me but I would love

to see this in succession Treasure of the sierra madre scarecrow which is a really great gene hackman movie if you may not have seen from the 70s and there will be blood altogether so like those are three movies that are in concert with each other but they're not quite the same genre as well okay all right next one is from daniel mitchell why doesn't the academy release vote totals even a few years after the airing? They'd get even more discussion about movies,

which seems like a no-brainer. We don't know! Release the votes! Yeah, I mean, it was Bill Simmons who was the first person who ever suggested this to me. It's obviously something that would gamify and intensify the interest in the Oscars in a real way. We're in a high-pitched gambling moment right now.

This would also make the gambling so much more interesting. I don't know. I think it's because they're trying to spare people and the idea of saying the best of something in the arts is already kind of ghoulish. And there are a lot of people who already don't agree that award shows should happen. And so if one film gets 3,000 votes

and another film gets 112 votes, that somehow the 112 vote film would be embarrassed by that or its creators would be embarrassed. I think that's why they don't release them. But it's also, it's a quote local ceremony, right? And we spend so much time talking about it and so do a lot of people. But at the end of the day, it's a small group of people who mostly know each other and have worked together and are kind of preserving themselves. And I think they kind of don't want to let people in. It's kind of like the masters. Okay. Once a year, you get to come into our playhouse and see how we do things. But 364 days out of the year, stay the fuck out. You don't belong here here you haven't earned the right to step on

to our blades of grass they're very similar historically also both have complicated relationships to race among other things and women yeah

yes alright final question we'll finish on another Oscars one this is from Nate Netsley because we have two months left in this decade which wow

let's do some best of the decade questions regarding the Oscars what do you feel were the best calls by the Academy the worst bungles the biggest snubs

that kind of stuff just sticking with the decade here do you want to just limit this to best picture okay because we could go all over the place

with this category I mean best picture has been like terrible this year with the exception this decade with the exception of Moonlight

it's I was looking last night it's a real travesty it keeps getting worse I think there are some there are a couple of movies that won that I appreciate. I appreciate 12 Years a Slave.

Sure. I like other movies more that came out that year. I appreciate Argo. I enjoyed Argo. I appreciate Spotlight. Yeah, same. Same.

I don't think Spotlight should have won. You know, I have a bigger problem with Birdman winning. That was a tough year. I would say that the best win by far is Moonlight, and the worst win by far is The Artist. That's my take.

You kind of like The Artist, though, don't you? No, I fell asleep during it. I mean, which was nice is like the 45 minutes that I saw like through a nap in a screening room, you know, whatever. But obviously what The Artist represents in terms of its dominance at the Oscars is just good riddance. the 45 minutes that I saw like through a nap in a screening room, you know, whatever. But obviously what the artist represents in terms of its dominance at the Oscars is just good riddance. Yeah. Something that would never happen right now.

Weinstein movie, brutal campaign. Are we counting King's Speech over Social Network this decade? That's 2010, right? Yeah. Maybe you're right. Maybe that's the worst.

That's the single worst one for me. Do you believe in the Social Network is the best movie of the decade theory that we had? You do. Well, except Moneyball's also in this decade. So, you know, I have some emotional. I do. I do think that the social network is probably the best. It's also it was fascinating last week to watch Mark Zuckerberg trot out an alternate version of why he founded Facebook. And I was like, sir, we have a movie about that. And a lot of people did.

It's so embedded in the cultural consciousness that it's important in addition to being just delightful. So the best part by far about Mark Zuckerberg continuing to show his ass on issues like this is that there has been a long gestating feeling that Scott Rudin and David Fincher and maybe Aaron Sorkin would reconvene to do part two of the social network. Yes. This is like an unspoken, very quiet secret in Hollywood. And it's harder for David Fincher to make movies the way

that he wants to in the Hollywood system right now. Aaron Sorkin can go direct whatever he wants now. But we need this movie. Do it. 2021 needs the social network too. Because so much has happened in the intervening 15 years where that story leaves off that is so cinematic.

And it would be so perfect. And even further exposes the awfulness of this platform and all of the choices that that company has made. And it so proved, even if it wasn't detail specific and correct in its original telling, its vision for what was wrong with this situation was dead on, dead on. Preach. So we need that movie. So keep talking dumb shit, Mark Zuckerberg. How do we go out on this show? Thank you for all of

your questions. I think, I don't want to speak for Amanda, but How do we go out on this show? Thank you for all of your questions. I think, I don't want to speak for Amanda, but I think we really like doing this show and we appreciate it. We do. Thanks for going through 200 with us. We're going to do 200 more probably. Hopefully not in the next couple of weeks.

Who knows who else will speak out against Marvel and require a podcast. Yes, exactly. And if you want us to do a fave swap of some kind that you think would be entertaining, feel free to let us know what you think those should be. And maybe we'll do a mailbag again next year at some point. Sounds great.

Thanks, Amanda. Thank you, everyone. Please stick around now for my conversation with the writer-director of The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers. Delighted to be joined by the brilliant filmmaker Robert Eggers. Robert, thank you for being here. Thanks. Nice to be called brilliant on a Monday morning,

especially because I'm feeling lackluster. You look good. You should feel good. You've got the lighthouse out in the world and people seem to be really, really liking it. I was wondering, The Witch was such a surprise success. Did you feel like after that movie hit that you had a golden ticket of some kind, that you could do kind of whatever you wanted to?

If anyone's seen this misshapen beast called The Lighthouse, they might assume as much. But no, I mean, I didn't expect The Witch to find much of an audience. It wasn't that—I didn't think it was bad by any means. Uh, you know, and this movie and the lighthouse, like I'm not an alchemist in my cell doing stuff for me.

I do want other people to like, see what I'm doing. That's what we're, that's the point of this kind of creative work is to like, uh, share what it is to be human beings with other human beings. But I didn't think that many human beings would like the witch, even though I was trying to find an audience. So it was, it was crazy that it found the audience that it did. And, uh, it did open a lot of doors. Um i and i'm quite aware about how fickle the this business is so i i was trying to make some good choices and i was developing some some larger things i had the opportunity to make

to write some some some larger movies and and uh potentially get them financed but it was this weird thing uh on my slate that was the thing that finally got got greenlit and uh and and that and i think partially that's because it was smaller and so uh then so in rt features new regency and a24 gave me control and and uh i'm i'm while i'd like to make some stories for slightly larger broader audiences that are done in a way that I can still be myself, I'm going to choose control over scale every time. Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, two very recognizable actors that people love that could theoretically quote unquote open a movie. It's even more, it feels even more meticulous, more specific, more eccentric than The Witch in a way. Was that a kind of part of the conversation that you were having before the movie got going when you were talking to financiers and the people you wanted to work with? Were you saying, this is actually going to be very different. All of the choices

I'm going to make are not going to be like a typical movie you go see on a Friday night. Yeah. So I think very, very much so. So the, the, the, uh, two features and one, uh, limited series that I was working on, uh, were more commercial. So, so the, so the thing in my back pocket that I was writing with my brother was going to be weirder than the way she, you know, that was sort of what, that was what we were after. I, I did want to make something, uh, obscure because also it's, it, there's a, there's a rigor in writing something obscure that's different than the rigor of writing a traditional narrative. And, uh, and, and I wanted to kind of stretch myself in both directions, uh, in, in the process of trying to find something that someone would want to make. Uh,

but yeah, I mean, uh, there, I didn't pitch this really, um, because RT and a 24 was looking forward to working with me again, uh,

uh, because of the, the witch, you know, we already had that relationship in our, in our, in, in Regency had been,

we've been trying to find something. So, uh. So they kind of read the script and thought, okay. I think that that's a good thing in a way. Tell me about the actual writing of the script. You said you did this with your brother, Max. How do you guys write together? Where did the idea come from? Is one person sitting in front of a laptop and the other person is wandering around a room dictating? What is your collaboration like? My brother was working on a screenplay called Burnt Island that was a contemporary story. And he said to me, I'm writing a ghost story in a lighthouse. And when he said that, I thought that is a great idea. And I pictured a black and white crusty dusty

rusty atmosphere a boxy aspect ratio all the stuff that is the atmosphere and look of this movie the lighthouse that is expanding next weekend uh and um but my but that's not my my what my brother was doing but i uh my but later, my brother said that Burnt Island wasn't really shaking out. So I asked him if I could take a crack at the concept. So then I started researching, finding stories about real lighthouse keepers, researching lighthouses, realizing that there should probably be a mermaid washing up on shore at the midpoint. There should be a mystery in the light. There should be this foghorn from this particular period with this particular sound.

And that there should be flatulence, you know, within the first five minutes. And this was all before the witch was financed. So finally the witch came together and that was on the back burner. And then again— So this is five, The Witch was financed. So finally The Witch came together and that was on the back burner. And then again- So this is five, six years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then I called my brother up,

as I mentioned when I was developing these larger things, saying, let's do this together. Is your idea in the first place? So I downloaded him on all of my research and gave him the pages that I had written. And then we sat together and tried to outline the movie together. And then we sat together and, uh,

tried to outline the movie together. Uh, and when we got pretty close, I said, why don't you write an outline? Cause remember I'm writing like two other things. And, you know,

at this point, you know, uh, so, so you, you write, you write, uh,

so he, he basically, he basically, he did three outlines. Uh, the third one had a great first and second act. We never found act three in the outline phase, frankly. But we knew that there were things that needed to happen in act three, like Rob going up to the top of the lighthouse, for example.

But then he wrote act one. I revised it. He wrote act two. I revised it. He wrote act two, I revised it. And then I wrote act three because I, because in the process of rewriting act two, I, I, I figured, figured it out. And then from there, we just passed the drafts back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Um, uh, sometimes in Nova Scotia, when we were in real prep, there were certain things that I needed to revise myself but oftentimes

i would be uh inundated with other work and would ask max to please throw me a life vest and and figure out how to simplify a certain seagull sequence here or there uh you know what about the actual language of the script because honestly since i since I've seen it a couple of times now, since I've been seeing it, I've taken to talking a bit like Wake. And there's something that's obviously very rhythmic and very musical. Did you guys know right away that you wanted to have that kind of cadence of speech that's a little bit Melvillian, but that's not totally exactly what's happening in it? Did you guys know that it was going to sound like that? Short answer, yeah. But when one has these preconceived notions, it always is a bit in a Dionysian haze. It takes time for you to get your Apollonian specificity for what those notions are. So that means we wanted it to be in period-correct coastal dialects, obscure regional dialects. That was our best interpretation of period-correct. So yeah, it's New England. It's the 19th century.

It's nautical. Melville. Happy birthday. It makes sense. There's tons of other sources, Lighthouse Keepers journals, interviews with lumberjacks for rob's character but the the most helpful source was sarah orne jewett who was writing in the good old state of maine in the period that this film takes place and she was interviewing sea captains and sailors and farmers and then writing her main stories in dialect so

when max and i found her work we we'd really hit the jackpot and could find these two distinct voices. When I was writing The Witch, it takes place in the 17th century. It's early modern English. And thanks to Shakespeare and Milton and some other people you might have heard of, it's a golden age of English literature. So there's a lot of books about the rules of how to construct sentences in that period. Not so much for obscuro regional dialects from the 19th century. But my wife, Allie, found a thesis by a woman, Evelyn Starr Cutler, who her thesis was on dialect in Jewett and she broke down dialects and provided rules you know you don't say R on this word but you add R to winder you know window winder you know and and so then we could make sure that these seven things were always correct with Rob's dialect

and these 12 things with Willem's or whatever uh and and that became very helpful and and you know and and but but from the beginning my brother and i were writing in dialect before we had learned the dialect because that gets your mind to work differently than just translating for modern english as you know if you speak more than one language you know that they make your mind work in different ways and certain images and thought progressions would be different. So that meant that it took a long time to get to what we have. Obviously, Willem Dafoe's character, his accent and his dialect are based on something real. And to an untrained ear, it's talk like a pirate day, you know, grandpa dog from Peppa Pig. And to be honest, before we really knew what we were doing, that's what we were writing.

You know, just short of shiver me timbers. And yeah. Why is it important that these things be accurate? What is it about you that makes you want to make them accurate? I mean, it doesn't, does it, it doesn't really matter. You can construct stuff from your imagination and it can be just as, as good and powerful. But I feel like, uh, when you're, when you, for me personally, when I have this bar of accuracy, like I know when I, I know what it is and, uh, and, and, and my collaborators know what it is. And, uh, and, and, and my collaborators know what it is. So we don't have to belabor choices. We can just say, that's the button.

That's the lapel. That's the shoelace. That's the floorboard. That's the teapot. And we can move, move forward. And I also think there's the potential, uh, for more richness because, um, because you're not having to spend time inventing things right like you can spend more time uh recreating things so you have a larger accumulation of specific

objects and ideas and and thoughts and whatever to create this atmosphere and to create this world. Um, and I've talked about Tarkovsky occasionally, maybe more than occasionally where we, you know, I'm after very different things than he is as a filmmaker. I think he would hate my movies. Uh, but you know, now that I'm a bit older,

I can watch the mirror Zirkela and know Zkele, and know a little more about the context of his childhood and Russian history and World War II. But when I saw it the first time in my late teens or early 20s, I had no idea about any of that stuff. But it was the fact that in his specificity and his atmosphere, he was able to make it seem like I had the same childhood as him, which I didn't, you know? And so that was a real lesson for me in the kind of detail that it takes to really transport some someone does the the rightness the correctness of those details make it easier for you to conceive kind of the the wrongness the phantasmagoric aspects of the stories that you tell yeah for sure i mean if you can believe if the world is is so specific that the audience isn't saying i don't buy it. Like, you know, then, or rather if, you know, you know, like then, yeah, you can believe in a mermaid more or a sea monster more.

But again, like, do we not believe in Guillermo del Toro's ghosts and sea monsters in his like fabulously invented worlds? Like, no, but this is just my way. It's just my way in. It's the way I like. And I like researching. I just like, like, like I'm researching as a means to an end, but I also just enjoy it. Do you like it more than the filmmaking? I was very curious about that for you in particular, because there's some people who love to spend three months in the library and then this filming starts and it's like god this is so much harder my i i i look i like fairy tales folk tales uh mythology religion sometimes the occult more than i like

anything else and and and i like learning about the past maybe more than i like anything else like i would like i uh i would rather write a book or paint a painting, not that I would necessarily be good at either one of those things, about that subject matter than make a film that was like a modern action movie or romantic comedy that I didn't have interest in just because like I like making cinema. But knowing that I'm currently fortunate enough to be able to make my movies, my favorite part is being on set shooting it. So when I saw you over the weekend, Willem noted that you don't shoot coverage for your movie. Do you storyboard every single shot? Jaron and I shot list every single shot. And I would prefer to just shot list things and not storyboard things. But just because I think that there's in all the restrictions and rules and rigor and preparation that I have, the shot list still adds to a little bit more kind of imaginary flexibility. But the fact is we've got a marine unit. We've got safety divers

we've got uh uh practical effects and stunts and animals and yada yada yada people need to be on the same page um like we in order to to pull something like this off especially in a place i mean cape for shoes is a dangerous location when we first scattered the location, there were placards with men that looked like restroom sign men getting washed out to sea by waves and then other placards of brass memorializing people who've died there. So you got to storyboard so that you can communicate. So a lot of this movie was storyboarded. Did it need to be a challenging environment to make the film? Did it need to be a place where it felt like life was hard won? Yeah.

I mean, really quickly, like, no, I don't shoot coverage. Because you don't need to uh like if it's shot reverse shot then i guess that's a kind of coverage in itself um but but other than that like i like to make decisions and there's nothing that inspires me less than something that's shot like a tv show uh of course if the acting and the story is great it doesn't matter like how you shoot it um but uh but that's not what interests me and also i think particularly in something like this where the plot is quite simple um like you need that specificity of the camera to stay engaged i think it takes like in order if you're going to shoot something like a TV show, it needs to be like, you know, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones are often shot like TV shows, but people are into them because of the S-T-O-R-Y.

And my movie, this one, is a little lack on that. Not in a bad way, but it's more about, it's a simple story. It's a scene that repeats over and over and over again with changing power dynamics. And the changing power dynamics and Rob's descent into madness is story. You know, as Balanchine said, if a man takes a woman's hand,

what more plot do you need? You know, it's there. Anyway, back to the weather. Yes, like we chose a location that was uh terrible to work on uh that would that would deliver bad weather because that's what i mean it's a story about a storm that's so biblically terrible that they get stranded on their lighthouse station so obviously we needed to have bad weather to make the movie. So that wasn't easy, but it was essential. Did you look at any two-handers before you started making the movie?

I know you came from the theater, and obviously there are aspects of the film that are play-like, but there are aspects that are not at all. Movies that only feature two figures are rare, and rarer still now. Did you look at anything ahead of time? Yeah, yeah yeah for sure um i mean uh uh joseph losey and pinter's the servant uh my wife's stepfather peter turned me on to that like in my early 20s and and and that's a great uh clearly that this movie you know is indebted to to that uh you know the african queen and uh is is it you know uh treasure the sierra sierra madre is kind of a three-hander

uh you know but but yeah i come from theater i i performed in true west in in drama school um and uh and and yeah you can't once once i kind of thought this is going to be a two-hander about identity like you're going to think about pinter you're going to think about beckett who i feel guilty saying out loud even more than shakespeare uh you're going to think about shepherd uh you know it it's quite obvious you know uh and and how much how much are you conscious of that when you're writing that's that's another story but but uh but but i have seen and read all these things before was it essential to have movie stars in the movie that's i know that sounds like a frivolous question but i mean it in a serious way uh it wasn't essential uh like creatively is it essential like i guess not but but uh this movie

demanded extreme fine acting really like it's demanded people with with craft and experience so like uh non-actors are are not gonna tell this story they can't do this like there's i love films with non-actors and and uh and and i'd love to make uh i have a couple ideas for movies with non-actors that i would love to do um but but not something with this demanding text it's just not gonna happen probably um so then if so therefore you're gonna want the best people And the best people for these roles are Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. And yeah, they are famous, but they also have the right faces for this. I mean, I suppose if they were non-actors, Dafoe might even have less teeth and both of them might look even more weathered. But other than that, I don't know what I'd be gaining.

Yeah, the wicker brush beard really lives up, though, even though. Did you know that he could deliver that kind of? I guess he had that at Eternity's Gate sort of as well. Well, you know, yeah, he had a kind of post Van Gogh beard when we were talking. And then he said, you know, I've got to shave my beard around Christmas time for this play I'm doing. Every time I try to do Odefo, it's like a very lazy Jack Nicholson. He's like, I have to shave my beard for this play I'm doing in Italy. And, and, and I was like, well, like, please don't. And he was like, look in three, three months, I can grow the beard of a sea god. And he did. So that was lucky.

You mentioned that you really wanted to have a foghorn and the Fresnel lens. Why were those the two things that, the physical items that you needed to make this story happen? Well, I wanted to have a mystery in the light. And even though I maybe, I kind of, maybe I would have wanted to have set this even earlier in the 19th century because there's some, like, I think after 1860,

things start to get, and certainly after 1880, 1880 to 1930, like things kind of look pretty similar. Technology happens. You know, technology, yeah. You know, and so, so if this were sort of in the 1840s or the 1820s, I might've preferred, uh, that it was

a bit more primitive and, and, and, and, and, and yeah, primitive, but the light that would have been in a lighthouse in that period would have been many, many oil lamps with uh concave mirrors behind them and that contraption would rotate uh and send the light out to to to see it's a cool looking object but it's not something it's not an art deco spaceship it doesn't look alien like the way that a fresnel lens does hard to shoot that i imagine as well uh yeah there's because there's lots of like reflections and stuff but um but you know you'd be surprised it's harder to build one uh but um but yeah they just look so incredible so that placed me in the second half of the 19th century and then the bellowing foghorn is also just to me like really an iconic lighthouse thing it would be a great sound motif another two-hander

in cinema persona you know bergman has that foghorn uh or a similar one i think his is but whatever uh uh i could be wrong it's been a while but yeah and so that then then with that foghorn that's going to place us even later. And if I want the lighthouse station to be dilapidated, then the earliest I can set the movie is around 1890. Now, because pre-foghorn, they would use cannons or guns or bells, and that's not a lighthouse movie. Yeah. You know?

I get you. So I was rewatching The Witch, and it's a very precise film. There's the moment when a twig snaps, and your lead sort of cocks her head, and we realize that there's something amiss in the woods. It's very quiet, and a lot of the film is very quiet. This movie is sort of the sonic opposite. It is blaring as a movie. Is it difficult to make a movie this loud

with this many particular sound design choices? Because you can really kind of feel it in your intestines as you're watching it. Great. Yeah, trying to push those brown tones. Yeah, I mean, it was really hard. And any indie movie runs out of money in post. You know, like it just, it just always happens.

And, and, uh, like we were very lucky that our black and white double X negative has like very little latitude. So Jaron, um, has to know what the hell he's doing when we're shooting these scenes.

Cause when you're in the, the, the, the, the grade, when you're in the DI, you can go a little bit here or a little bit there and that's it there's not like it's not this wide palette the way you have when you're uh shooting digitally or or even color whatever so that meant that we could take days off of the the the grade and put that money into the mix because we needed it you know um yeah you have half the movie is a storm that we need to like always know is is is

there but we can't be playing the same note of that storm the whole time we need to find different gradations in that uh and and and additionally like there's all this music uh that's that is this maximalist brass uh aleatoric score echoing the sea and the foghorn and willem defoe's flatulence and uh and and these sounds need to weave in and out and be aggressive but yet sometimes subliminal and And then we've got to hear all this dialect that is hard to understand, you know, and, and, uh, and frankly, if you're in a very bouncy movie theater, like it doesn't quite hold up, you know, uh, it doesn't quite hold up. So, um, so go somewhere with good sound, but, uh, it was. And Damien Volpe, the sound designer, is really incredible and merciless.

And if I didn't like the sound of a lobster trap, he would haul a lobster trap up a bluff in Long Island and record it. And he and Rob Fernandez did a really excellent job on a truly difficult mix. You've mentioned the flatulence a couple of times. Have I? The flatulence, the snoring, the sweating. This is one of the most literally visceral movies I've seen. And you said that the flatulence occurred to you fairly early on. Why did you want to put all of those things into the movie? Because the movie is very funny to me. And I don't, I feel like some, some people are afraid to laugh when they're watching the movie at times, but if that's not the intention, I'm curious to hear about it. No, the movie in my, the movie is supposed to be funny. I think that there's an irony that some of the audience members

that are the most disappointed by this movie are ardent fans of The Witch who are going in expecting an oppressive, austere, super self-serious movie. And so then when, within the first five minutes, Willem Dafoe farts, they wonder, oh, what am I supposed to do with this serious fart?

What's a serious fart mean? But no, it's exactly right. It's, it's a, it's a joke, you know? I mean,

it's more than that. It's a deliberate display of power. That's what that first. And intimacy too. I feel like you are, they're trapped. They're trapped together. I feel like that was the thing that communicated to me right away.

Yeah. And look, there are this movie, like The Witch was really trying to be subtle. And the camera work was trying to not draw attention to itself. I don't think we always succeeded because we're still learning about how to make movies over here. But this was much more maximalist in every regard. And that's weird. It's weird to say, like, I'm going to make juvenile choices. I'm going to make grotesque choices.

I'm going to do over-the-top scatological humor. I'm going to have allusions to classical mythology and imagery that is like really on the nose in kind of an embarrassing way um i'm gonna say look at this camera move check it out uh that is i mean i don't really like movies like that so why did you make that i don't know it just it just felt like these guys were really going mad and and and that and and that kind of madness is absurd. A family member close to me once broke down in a fit of rage and was jumping up and down insane like Rumpelstiltskin. And I thought no one would believe that an actual human being would be making this choice to express their anger. But it was real.

And since the camera is in many ways Robert Pattinson, it needs to be as wild as his character. The hare, the goat, and the seagull, and these kind of anthropomorphized visions of mystic power. It's a theme now in two movies. What is it about conveying this kind of power into animals that is appealing to you? You and me and other people who are part of the secularized urban intelligentsia, like- How dare you? We aren't, you know, maybe we have a dog or a gerbil or whatever, but like animals aren't part of everyday life in the same way that it was in the past when folktales, fairy tales, mythology were created. And that's so animals are incredibly present in all of these things so if i'm going to be telling uh stories that are folkloric there's going to be important animal characters in them how could you live a life at sea and be surrounded by seagulls and not have

them be part of your belief system it's impossible um so so that's why the animals play a role in them. It's not purely masochistic reasons to have animals on set. It's hard to work with animals. Well, yeah, that's why I say masochistic. But the thing is, the hare was incredible. The hair was named Dizzy. And there was a young woman who did 4-H stuff. And she trained Dizzy. And Dizzy performed very, very well. Charlie the Goat from... Black Phillip. Yeah, Black Phillip.

He was impossible. I mean, I don't hold it against him that he didn't care about making my film because why should he? But you can't train a goat. Are you guys still in touch? No. Okay. No. No.

But you can't train a goat. Can't do it. Stubborn as a goat is a phrase for a reason. Now, the gulls were incredibly intelligent and incredibly well-trained. And these gulls were uh rehabilitated gulls who wouldn't survive in the wild so being trained to do things is is what is kind of like what keeps them happy you know you know uh because they're not out um stealing french fries from unsuspecting beach goers uh so so so so they enjoyed enjoyed jumping on a windowsill, pecking on a window three times,

flying away, and then getting a little reward from Guillaume, the bird trainer. There are gull trainers. That's a thing. Yeah. I mean, Guillaume does all kinds of stuff, but gulls as well. When you walked in, I mentioned that the movie did quite well this weekend. And I'm curious about your relationship to that, especially kind of in the aftermath of the Surprise the Witch success. Obviously, you make movies so that people will watch them and engage with them, think about them.

It's personal expression. But are you invested in the performance of this movie, which I think you would agree is unusual? Yeah, I mean, of course, because for two reasons. One, as I mentioned, like the whole point of doing work like this is to share it. It's lonely being a human being, man. And we need ways to talk to other people

about what it is to be us. That's why I'm doing this show. Exactly. No, you are. You are. Where are we? Where are we going? Where do we come from? That's what this is all about, right? But number two, obviously, if my film is well-received and or performs well, that helps me make more movies, which I would really like to do. Are you going to keep doing things set in the complex past? So far, that's all I've ever written. And I think I would be bored if I made a contemporary movie.

Or I'd be spinning my wheels researching things that didn't matter at all. And like obsessing over wallpaper in a way that doesn't actually matter for a contemporary movie. So it's just fun to do it like this. And I like to explore where we are and where we're going from where we came from. That is enjoyable to me. I remember around the time after The Witch, there was talk that you were going to do a Nosferatu thing or something that was more larded with IP awareness, for lack of a better word. Do you have a desire to kind of mix in the previously established stories and kind of break those up?

Because your stories have been, while they're very influenced by things, wholly original. Do you want to dive into something that audiences know about since that is such a big part of where the business is right now? I mean, it depends on the IP. You know, I mean, there's Charles Dickens and there's Stan Lee. Like, no offense to either of them. You know what I'm saying? But there's just things that excite me more than other things. I think taking on a big franchise is unlikely because, again, I like to have control. And the idea of having someone on set making sure that this works well with the action figures that they're going to be selling isn't super appealing to me.

But, you know know who knows and and it could be that like if i can't get anything off the ground and i like need to make some money like things will change uh but of course transformers 9 yeah but of course the problem of course if i'm at a point where i'm like desperate to do Transformers 9, they're not going to fucking want me to do Transformers 9. Do you want to go bigger on the next one at least? The thing I'm developing right now that was leaked earlier last week is bigger. Yeah. So. This is a Viking tale.

It is. Of some kind. Uh, so, you know, but the cool thing about that is, is a Viking revenge story. There's nothing helpful about making that, uh, obscure, uh, to an audience and about like not knowing objectives and, and, uh, and what the ending means and stuff like there's nothing, There's nothing helpful in telling a story like that. I'm not needing to invent action sequences to make the studio happy because it's a Viking revenge story. I feel like there are surprisingly few good Viking movies. Am I wrong about that? You're not wrong about that.

Why do you think that is? I can only think of the Vikings. Yeah, which is cool. I mean, I actually watched that recently. that you're not wrong about that why do you think that is i can only think of the vikings yeah which is your movie which is cool i mean i actually watched that recently um because it was on it was on the criterion channel so uh and so i got home late from copenhagen after visiting a viking ship museum and it was like okay you know whatever let's let's let's watch this and it was like, oh, okay, you know, whatever. Let's watch this. And it was fun. But, you know, Kirk Douglas doesn't have a beard because that's not going to sell any tickets.

So his father, Ragnar, has to say like, oh, my son scrapes his face like an Englishman, you know. And the only Viking that I know of without a beard was called Njal the Beardless because it was insane that he didn't have a beard. In fact, he was mocked and ridiculed and his sons could grow slightly better beards than him and they were called dung beardlings. And it was a huge affront to their masculinity, which was, of course, very important in Viking culture. So my Vikings will have beards. It sounds like you're deep into your research, as usual.

Well, I've been working on it for two years, so. Robert, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. I don't know if you've been able to see very many movies lately, but have you seen anything good? I haven't, you know, because I'm promoting this. I'm prepping the next one, which, by the way, may not happen. I've seen so many films fall apart, so here I am talking about Beards.

We hope not to jinx it. That's not the purpose. Good luck to you. Calm down, yeah. Could be old or new. I'll just say Trey Schultz waves. It's incredible. It's incredible.

One of my favorite things I've seen this year. What did you like about it without kind of giving anything away before the world has seen it well i like trey personally he's a really um incredibly intelligent wise filmmaker but he has a kind of broey vibe and which which is really unassuming and so so and i love and i love it uh and and he's just such a sweetheart but but But his film really floored me. And it's so earnest and so emotional. But also, you can see Malick and Cassavetes and other of Trey's influences, but Trey's taken his influences and really made, you know, talking about alchemy again, he's, you know, he's put them in his crucible and fired them up. And they've come out a Phoenix that is Trey Schultz.

It's not a sum of influences. It is something new. And I'm super proud of him. From Phoenixes to goals. Robert, thanks for doing this, man. Thank you to Robert Eggers, and thank you, of course, to Amanda Dobbins. Please stay tuned to The Big Picture later this week.

My pal Chris Ryan will be coming through to talk about the top 10 horror films of the decade. It is nearly Halloween time, so it is horror movie time. See you then.