The Big Picture - A 'Big Pic' Gift Guide: 10 Blu-rays Every Human Needs. Plus: Park Chan-wook!

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Happy holidays! Actor Timothy Simons joins Sean for the ultimate gift: a conversation about how to build a Blu-ray collection—how to shop for them, what to play them on, the best ones to buy, whether it’s an addiction or not, and so much more (1:00). Then, filmmaker Park Chan-wook stops by to talk with Sean about his film ‘Decision to Leave’ (1:23:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Park Chan-wook and Timothy Simons Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Helwani. And I'm Chuck Mendenhall. And I'm PT Carol, and together we are 3PAC. Join us on the brand new Spotify Live app immediately after all of the biggest fights in combat sports. And also during the weigh-ins, because that's when the real drama happens. So what are you waiting for? Follow the Ringer MMA show right now on our exclusive Spotify podcast feed. And come join the best community in MMA. Peace! We're outta here. on our exclusive Spotify podcast feed. And come join the best community in MMA. Peace.

We're out of here. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the perfect gift for any movie fan, physical media. Later in the show, I will have a conversation with the brilliant filmmaker Park Chan-wook to discuss his new film

decision to leave a noir romance that is now streaming on Mubi. Director Park is a certified master, so I hope you will stick around for that discussion. But first, joining me on the show, a talented actor you will have recognized from such films as Inherent Vice and this year's Don't Worry Darling, as well as his extraordinary work as Jonah Ryan on HBO's Veep, it's Tim Simons. Hi, Tim. Hi, how's it going? Wait, who is he certified by? Me.

Oh, you've certified. Yeah, I established a company several's it going? Wait, who is he certified by? Me. Oh, you certified. Yeah, I established a company several years ago in which all of the film masters must visit me. And I decide whether or not they're certified as such. It's like a comic book grading thing where you send it in and then they sort of hermetically seal it? Pretty much. I'm also just like, it's like the post office, you know? It's like the different kinds of sizes of stamps. So you you can be like mid master that's like the 13 cent stamp and then mega master that's 42 cents got it he would be a 42 he's a mega master he's a part where do you put somebody

like a newer like sort of somebody on the come up recently who's had like a good run but maybe isn't like a a master master that that's all FedEx that's not really that's not really outside of my purview oh okay so you're only dealing with people just the greats the true greats um how are you what's up I'm doing great I want to say right off the bat I'm I'm I'm messing around with like a a new fun thing which is whenever I'm invited to be on a podcast I worked my I work my absolute hardest to absolutely fucking derail at every turn. I knew that. I want to let you know that. I heard you with the blank check, boys.

Oh, good. Oh, my God. It's all you making a mess. Oh, God. I love a mess. I love mess. So that's my goal for today. And I'm doing great.

I was telling you off mic, just wrapped up coaching second season of flag football, rec center, silver lake rec center league majors, you know, 10 to 11. Who were your coaching inspirations? Are you like a Lincoln Riley guy? You know, are you like taking us back to Lombardi days? Like who do you look to? You know, I think that I would love to the coach of Miami. I really like, I've seen all the clips of the coach from Miami and I wish, God, I wish I could be that chill. Mike McDaniel. Yes, Mike McDaniel. I wish I could be that chill.

But I came up and was coached by people who like sort of were Bobby Knight. Like I played basketball and my coach was a Bobby Knight guy. And so I haven't yet been able to get rid of the yelling thing. Oh, geez. But I try to do it in a supportive way. You know, I'm not trying, I'm not throwing anything. Okay. But like I will yell when I'm upset,

but I will also yell when I'm very proud of you. So you'd be like, that's a very good job. Yes. I'm very proud of you. Yes. Like when Luke would come off the field and he had a good play, like chest puffed up,

I'd be like, that's what I'm talking about. That's the kind of thing, you know what I mean? Yes. Do you think that that's a good energy to confer to your child? I mean, look, dad to dad, I don't know if I'm doing any of this right. Same, same. So I, I, what I, what I hope I'm doing, and I think my kids are at the age where we have to start putting this in there. What I hope I'm doing is I love the modern ideal of parenting of like much more nurturing and much more caring, much more feeling based. I love, I love that. Uh, I think it converge on over therapized and whatever, but what I think I'm trying to do right now is introduce this idea that like, if you want to score a touchdown, you just have to beat the other person. We're now past the point where they're going to let you and we're all kids and it's all fun. Like, let's try to beat them. And then it's then their responsibility to get good enough to stop you. And if they get good enough to stop you, you have to get better again. And I'm not saying everything has to be a competition. And I don't necessarily think, you know, like when it comes to like Oscars and Emmys and stuff, it's like, well, we don't need to rank art like this, but we're talking football, but we're talking football. We're talking sports. Like, you know, there are certain

things that you can do to try to do, you want to score a touchdown. So do this, you know? So I have significantly less experience than you in this field. But one thing that I have noticed as I read about some of the modern methods of parenting, and this is not, as listeners of the show probably know, this is not commensurate with my personality. There's like a de-emphasis on intensity. Every situation needs to be gentle and understanding and spoken very carefully and supportively in general i think that's a good approach just like you were saying yeah but yeah when you have to compete the word intensity matters it does otherwise why are you even doing it yes yeah and i think that there is like i mean

this is something that i'm just repeating that i do agree with but i think there is a certain amount of grit whether whatever your uh whatever your, uh, whatever your station is or whatever, you know, like there's a certain amount of grit that I think you have to try to instill in kids, especially out here in Los Angeles, where just everything's easy. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's always beautiful. Nothing ever gets messed up.

Obviously, like we also live in a neighborhood there, like, you know, that economically puts a lot less, a lot fewer challenges in front of them. So trying to put some grit into them is something I'm very interested in. And I do that by yelling. You put some grit into your lifestyle. I want to say it was a year ago. You sent me a very. God, what a great transition.

Thank you so much. I'm getting very good at these segments. Holy shit. Did you, did you guys all hear that? You hit me up and you had a very curious question that was like Christmas morning for me personally. What did you ask me? I can't remember the exact wording, but I think it was essentially, do you enjoy collecting Blu-rays? How is that? And the thing is, it's like, do you remember that episode of The Sopranos?

When, fuck me, not Ray Liotta, the guy who played Team 1000. Robert Patrick. Robert Patrick, who owns the sporting goods store. Yes. Where he goes to Tony Soprano and he's like, you know, why'd you let me do this? Why'd you let me sit at that poker table? The generic gambler and he's like you know why'd you let me do this why'd you let me sit at that January gambler the January gambler why did you let me do that and Tony just says because I knew you had this place when I ask you that question I've already lost you know what I mean like that's that's that's me sitting so had you and you had

embarked on a journey to begin collecting physical media. Yes. Why? I think it's, well, it started with number one, I would see, uh, there was something that was sort of very attractive about like whenever a director would come into a conversation, I would see the stack that you would put up of like their entire filmography.

And number one, that's fun. Uh, and then the second thing was, I was also in a period of time where we were hearing a lot of stuff about uh uh we were hearing a lot of stuff about movies that were hard to find or netflix was sort of retroactively editing episodes of tv and well what happens to that first one right um So it was kind of built out of that.

And then also there was the nostalgia factor for somebody who grew up. I think we're of the same generation. We grew up with physical media. We grew up with VHS tapes and we grew up and I worked in a video store. And so there was also the nostalgia for that. So that's sort of where it started.

The very technical, like what happens if Apple loses the license for the movie that I bought? I never actually owned that. that's my biggest passion point is i want to be able to hold on to these things for as long as possible and the state of the entertainment economy as you well know is fraught and complicated and ever-changing and even though everything seems deeply accessible right now for 399 it might not be that way 10 years from now. And so I want to be able to preserve it either for myself or for my child or just for my own like mental safety. There's something there that helps me. But for you, like, were you starting from net zero,

like a couple of years ago? Like what, you have a house, you have a family of kids, like there are things to consider. We can't have as much physical stuff when we have a family, for example. No, you definitely like whatever space I would have had to put these in is now taken up by Legos and whatever, like that sort of thing. So it's definitely like space is kind of a premium in that way. I had a few things. I wasn't starting from net zero, but there were a couple things. And what turned out to be one of my favorite movies, somebody recommended it to me like 12 years ago, Sorcerer. You couldn't find it.

And I had to go on Amazon or whatever and buy a copy of the Blu-ray. And so there was that. And then a friend of mine I had never seen North by Northwest. And he just, I was having a conversation with, he's like, oh, I love that movie.u-ray and a DVD copy of this Italian horror movie called Pieces. Oh, sure. So I had a copy of that. That was a really big one from when I was in high school. So there was not, but you know, they were just kind of all around the house. They weren't organized.

They weren't on a shelf. You know what I mean? So did you, so in my house. I actually have some questions about your story and we can, we can talk about it. Um, I, I, I, my garage is converted. It is a, it is a converted space and it is a TV. It is a small recording studio and it is all of my Blu-rays and a kitchenette. That's really, that's what's in there. Um, and I spent a lot of my working hours there and sometimes nighttime hours.

And if I didn't have a space like that, I don't really know what I would do. I wouldn't be able to have a standalone room in my home because my daughter would find her way in there. And she also has a budding affection for Blu-rays and would just pull them all off the shelf and hug them, which is wonderful for me, but maybe not great for the Blu-rays themselves. So if I didn't have that space i don't know what i would do so what did you do like did you did you build a room did you oh no shit out no are they in boxes you know in a closet we they're sort of in the closet our house is like kind of dug out of a hill uh and so in the bedroom there's like this in like

the closet part that you have to walk through to get to the bathroom. There is this sort of dug out thing that we made into shelves because it wasn't good for anything else. And I just we just put a bunch of other shit there. And like, you know, there's a lot of shoes and stuff. And so I just kind of got rid of all the shoes and redid the shelves. So I have a lot fewer shoes. I wasn't wearing them. It's the pandemic. What am I doing? Agreed. I So I have a lot fewer shoes. I wasn't wearing them. It's the pandemic. What am I doing? Agreed. I've thrown out a lot of shoes. Like, what do I need these

suits for? What do I need these shoes for? One pair of boots, one pair of hard bottom shoes, one pair of sneakers. We're good. We're good. And I, and so I put them all up in there. And that has the space that that has taken up has grown, know started out as just a couple and now it's four or five okay six you know so when you had reached out to me had you already started buying no what did i don't even remember what i said was i just like you gotta do it brother yes you basically were like this is all i've ever wanted anyone to say um i think i gave you a couple of tips on brands that i liked and my thoughts on maybe like Blu-ray versus 4K. And we can talk about that a little bit too if you're interested. But like, so what did you do?

Did you just go to Amazon? Did you go to a store? How did you start building? I think I started out on Amazon and realized pretty quickly. And I mean, like this is going to be a barrier. I don't want to, I completely understand that like, you know, buying Blu-rays and 4ks that can get expensive. It's expensive. Um, so I very quickly realized that, uh, that number can go up high. So I wanted to, at the beginning, I really wanted to make sure it was like, okay, the classics, the ones that I, like when I, if my kid were to walk in and see these,

would all of these be something, if my kid pulled it off the shelf, I'd be like, yeah, you should watch that. The ones that really make a difference in my life. I started buying those. And then I started, I was working on a show in Atlanta and I found out that pawn shops are a great Blu-ray source. I've never tried that.

It is. I'm telling you, I found this one place on like the northwest side of Atlanta called like E-Pawn or something like that. I don't know why they were called E-Pawn. I think they were trying to kind of build themselves as more like an electrical or, you know. I'm visualizing a Catherine Keener store from 40-Year-Old Virgin. The eBay store. Oh, no. A lot shadier.

Okay. A lot shadier than that. But I walked in and they probably had a thousand Blu-rays. Wow. And good ones, like good ones for $2. Oh, man. And this is the thing. Like you can go on Amazon and find them for $11 for like a good price.

Or you can go to a pawn shop and walk out with 50 for $100. And like I found Green Room. I found The Drop. And I mean, like classics that you're just building your library with. Yes. That's a very particular strand of acquisition for me. I sound like an absolute sociopath. I'm like a cattle farmer or something.

I love this. There is like basically any movie that has come out in the last 15 years where your relationship to it is, I really like that movie. Yeah. It's not, this is the canon. It's not,

this is a film that's meant something to me as a child. It's just, it's a movie I saw in a movie theater in 2014 and I thought it was pretty cool and I want to own it.

And, you know, we can talk about like the Criterion Bergman box set and we can talk about the warner brothers 50 years collection and like there is great value in those things i might even recommend some of those things in this conversation but there is a kind of like addictive wouldn't it be great for my collection if i just had green room that's a perfect example of a movie i'm just like that movie's really good and I want to be able to revisit it in the next 12 years.

Here's how I can guarantee that. $2 in a pawn shop. I love that. So did you actually walk out with 50? I think I walked out with 50 the first time. And then went back because the copy of Avatar that I got didn't have the disc in it. I didn't check.

And so when I came back in, I was like, hey, this copy of Avatar didn't have a disc in it. And they were like, just take another one like i don't know why the fuck you would bring that back we're a pawn shop why are you why are you no just take one just take one i need to have that kind of a relationship with some sort of blu-ray dealer so okay so you're you're buying them in bulk. Yeah. Do you want to admit how many you have now? Do you know how many you have now? I think I'm in the 400s. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah. So you've made incredible progress in like a year's time.

I made incredible progress in a year's time because of the pawn shop thing. I definitely had some like sort of larger Amazon orders and like there were some criterion sales. So that definitely, that definitely pumped it up a little bit so dangerous the criterion sale uh talk to me about your family's perspective on this hobby your wife uh like my wife is used to this now we're 20 years down the road of me being like i need this piece of plastic uh and to start anew at your age, at your station in life, did you have to convince her this is a good use of our cash and a good use of our limited home space? Or did you just barrel forward and say, this is, it's my time now? I think, I don't know that I would have used

those exact words, but I think when it started, it was like, well, this isn't going to take up a lot of space. You know what I mean? Like there are things that my wife does where she's like, I don't need to talk to Tim about this. You know what I mean? Like so much of our lives overlap and intersect, but there are moments where it's just like, we don't need to check in with anybody about this. Um, and you know, like she doesn't need to know if I spend $125 at a pawn shop in Atlanta. You know what I mean? Like, what'd you do today, hon you know, like she doesn't need to know if I spend $125 at a pawn shop in Atlanta. You know what I mean? Like, what'd you do today, hon?

Like, I don't know. I went out to lunch. I'm probably not going to tell her the pawn shop thing. Sidebar, did you put 50 Blu-rays in a suitcase? Uh, no, here's a good trick. Uh, if you work for a production and you're an actor in the production, you can just show up at the production office with a box and be like, Hey, can you send this to my house? Oh, unbelievable.

And it's always like an intern and they're just like, oh, he's in the show. I probably have to do this. You know what I mean? Oh my God. I got to get on a show. You definitely do. So I can get some more pawn shops. You could do this. If you just went up to like the front desk of like the Spotify. I don't want to abuse my power. It's not an abuse of power. It's just a simple question. And they said, yes.

That's really great. Okay. That's smart um so you you're doing this without permission yes and you're building uh-huh um you mentioned criterion yeah they're the gold standard right now they've been much in the news of late in part because this sight and sound poll came out so like they have many of the films that are on that list available in their collection but they also have a lot of kind of quote-unquote mainstream films increasingly more contemporary films from the last 10 years um are they your brand of choice do you even think about brand when you're buying or is it entirely about movie it's mostly about movie but i will not i mean i am sort of in trance this is a question that i have for you related to criterion like i don't know if i'm a basic bitch because i like criterion so much. Like, is it just like a marketing and branding

thing? Because the, the extras I will say are great. Like watching a, when I got into this, God bless Annie, God bless my wife. She actually did, uh, get me a couple for Christmas last year. And one thing that was great was that she was like, uh, I got you destri rides again. Oh, good. And it was awesome. I had never seen it, would have never watched it. And then you go into the extras and you watch... Is it Jimmy Stewart,

Destry Rides again? Yeah, Jimmy Stewart. And you watch and they give you the history of what Marlena Dietrich's career was like at that point. They put the movie in context with interviews

and all that kind of thing. And I love that. But yes, is it, am I a basic bitch? The answer is yes, but that's okay. I don't think there's a problem with that. Like sometimes I don't really drink Coca-Cola anymore, but I, when I have a Coca-Cola, I'm like, man, Coca-Cola, geez, they really do have the flavor. Like they just, they got it. They like, sometimes it's good. It's okay to just be the absolute best at the thing that you do and there's something uncomplicated about it criterion you know i think they their label confers a kind of taste and perhaps a kind of pretension yeah that makes that is like kind of

a class divider in some ways right it's like there's a guy over here that has you know every lord of the rings movie on blu-ray and then there's a guy over here that has like you know 800 of the 1200 films in the collection. And then there's us in the middle, right? Where it's like, I definitely want to watch Avatar on Blu-ray as much as I can, but it's also important for me

to discover Destry Rides again. So I think they serve this kind of fascinating mainstream, upstream identity that is very useful. Like once you get beyond that, and if like, if you know any other Blu-ray labels that are not just studio releases that are not criterion,

that's, that's where we're friends. Like that's where we're in a special class of we understand that there's a deeper world here to explore. So like, are you in that world? I am.

Okay. So like when it comes to like, so I was, so part of this was that I had, um, this all coincided with a lot of different things. My worry about the licensing of movies going away, of missing things, or just like, well, what if, I don't know, what if they blow up the server? I don't know. Yeah.

Well, these companies getting sold, I think, is the biggest thing. Like, Fox merging with Disney was kind of a panic moment for, I think, a lot of fans of older films. Yes. And, like, you know, like these classics that you might just not be able to find. And here they are like in a remastered quality that like is sort of like, this is what the filmmaker imagined. This is how you're supposed to see it. So there's that.

Um, so I found myself wanting to watch, wanting to watch something that was self-contained. Like I missed movies. I missed movies. I've been watching Like I missed movies. I missed movies. I've been watching a lot of TV. I missed them. I wanted to go back and fill in blanks that I had missed or just rewatch stuff that I hadn't seen in a while.

Well, let me interrupt you there because you've been charting your progress on this on Twitter over the last year and citing every single film that you've watched. Yes. Which of course is something I love and something I do as well. Why did you miss movies?

Like what spurred that? I think this would be like a part of me that... Have you ever bought anything at a pawn shop? Never in my life. I don't know if I've ever been in a pawn shop. You've never been in a pawn shop? I saw Pulp Fiction when I was 12 years old and I was afraid that there was like

going to be a samurai sword and a gimp and so i maybe i avoided it ah man they usually do have samurai swords and every time you're in one we're like oh fuck do you own a samurai no i don't but man every time i see one you can tell me if you have one i don't okay i don't i mean like i i trust me if i meet a samurai sword guy i'm gonna text them and i'm gonna be like hey man what's it like owning one of those uh uh one time i found uh i when i was a bartender i found and i don't know anything about jewelry and i found like this earring that had a diamond in it and i was like i'm not fucking turning this thing and this isn't going to lost and found i like went straight to a pawn shop okay and they were like what the fuck this is like this is the fakest

thing i've ever seen and they just threw it back on the tan i didn't go into one for a little while after that um uh were we what were we talking about we were talking about brands brands and i was asking you like why you fell back in love with movies so all of this then happened when i was in atlanta working on a show during uh like you know in the lead up to the Omicron surge, like last Christmas and into the new year, which, which just meant I had a lot of downtime and I was trying to protect the production, even though we weren't like in a lockdown, but I was like, I don't want to go out and get it. And I don't want to delay, you know, cause we had already had a shutdown. I think we were about to have another one and I just didn't want to delay it for anybody. And so I was spending a lot of time at the apartment that I was living in and I was watching a lot of movies. And, uh, and I think

so partly the reason that I wanted to get back into movies is when you think about some TV shows, there's always this thing of like, narratively, you know, the better choices for X, Y, Z to happen, but you can't have that happen because the show needs to continue. Yes. And I think a good example of that would be like the first episode, the first season of Homeland where like he needed to blow himself up.

He should have died. He should have died. And the entire show went downhill from there. And I'm not, this is, but also as an actor, I don't want to be killed off a show. So I completely understand this. And I'm not, this is, but also as an actor, I don't want to be killed off a show. So I completely understand this, but what I think what I was missing was we only have

two hours. Let's make the highest choices that we can, the highest stakes choices that we can. We wrap this up. You see the beginning, the middle and the end. And if it's well done and made with intent, like where every single shot that you're looking at meant something, I think that's what I was missing. You've just described why I'm hosting a movie podcast and not a TV podcast. It is the perfect delivery vehicle for visual storytelling because it leaves you satisfied every time. Okay. So that's fascinating. So I'm glad that you've fallen back in love. You've watched a lot of stuff. I can never tell if it's a rewatch or a first watch,

which is an interesting thing, but we don't have to go too far with that. I've been putting a little popcorn emoji if it's the first time I've seen it. And I also put a little plane emoji if I watch it on a plane, just because that can affect your... It's a notable caveat.

Yeah, it's a notable caveat. So you like Criterion. Yes. Oh, Arrow is fun. I i'm not i've never been although i am a horror person i've never been like a deep horror person and yet pieces was one of the first blu-rays you got i know that's a that's a deep cut that's a cult classic but i you know it's a this is not the first time pieces has come up on this podcast. Actually.

I mean, it's so good. And if anybody hasn't seen it, you obviously know that it has like one of the best horror movie endings that's ever existed. Yeah. I think that I, I really enjoy the horror movies that I like,

but I am, and I watch a lot of them, but I'm not somebody who considers myself a horror fan first and foremost although it's pretty high up there so Arrow I think has a lot of stuff that I would like um but they also go into like I think I have like a copy of Mallrats you know yeah they have some classics for sure yeah I think Arrow is probably the second best known of the kind of fetishistic collector companies and yeah like they've they released like a incredible 4k of suspiria for example like that's the kind of thing that they do is

they acquire rights of those kinds of classics for the most part and who else do we have we have shout factory shout factory and scream factory i think in the united states is a very very good brand that often revives i think forgotten studio product and does a good job with that. They have a Friday the 13th box set. They've released, you know, many of the horror franchises and reissued them. It's interesting that horror fans

are fetishists as well. And so they like the kind of physical product and the kind of like external experience of a movie world. They have t-shirts. They have dolls. They wear makeup. They get dressed up for Halloween.

Like the idea of kind of reselling them their experience of the movie i say this as somebody who does this stuff um is very powerful and so like you have you know shout factory has its own spin-off company scream factory that specializes in horror and then you have like even deeper kind of like exploitation companies like you know vinegar syndrome and companies like that that have an incredible content and curation that is like they frequently are issuing stuff that i'm like i've never heard of this film yeah um is it important that i watch it because the box art is so amazing i think i might have to like what's your relationship when you see something like that we're like fuck do i need to know about this man it's hard so vinegar syndrome has a couple

things that i really like and oh maybe when the maybe the thing that first was like, oh, you're going to start this is when Vinegar Syndrome actually released a 4K version of Rad. Yes, that's right. That's one of their more famous releases. And so that one- For listeners who don't know, what is Rad? Rad is a 1980s BMX movie directed by a stuntman with, isn'tie laughlin yeah yeah laurie laughlin's in it uh as like the romantic lead and it's just about like a small town bmxer um who just wants to who

just wants to race bikes and um a giant bmx uh race comes to his town um and the towns were rallies behind him uh to give him a chance in there and And at the end, he races hell track and, you know, gets signed. You know, it's really incredible. If you're a man in your 40s in America, Brad, it's probably important to you. I had a surgery when I was, I had like an ear surgery when I was in like the fifth or sixth grade. And so I had to stay home from school for like six days. And I think I watched it three times a day for six days in a row. It's a movie that I've seen probably more than any other movie. Okay. So you discovered that and then that led you to vinegar syndrome that led me to vinegar syndrome. Oh,

and then a shout out to, uh, a shout out to Videodrome in Atlanta, like a, a very popular video rental store. Like you have a video sticker here. It's like got that sort of vibe, like a really engaged community of people that go there. Like I would go in and talk to those guys about movies because I was trying to find the killer. I wanted to watch the killer and I couldn't find it. The John Woo films are hard to find. Yes. The Hong Kong films, yeah.

And so anyway, Rad Videodrome. Beyond that, there's like Eureka. Eureka and what are the others? So to me, there's two UK brands. And we should talk about region-free and whether you're a region-free person or not. Oh, yeah, I'm region-free. Okay, so to me, the two best right now are Eureka and Indicator.

I don't know if you're up on Indicator. I'm not up on Indicator. Indicator is amazing. Might be my favorite active brand right now. They mostly traffic in 50s, 60s, and 70s films. They do like box sets of Samuel Fuller movies and Columbia noir releases. And then they just do a lot of my favorite kinds of movies, which are just kind of programmers from the 1970s, like Richard Fleischer's The New Centurion starring George kinds of movies, which are just kind of programmers from the 1970s,

like Richard Fleischer's The New Centurion starring George C. Scott, which is like the 13th best known George C. Scott movie where he just plays an LAPD cop. And it's like a sad, downbeat, weird crime movie. And they have issued like a diamond, like a beautiful piece of art that you can hold in your hands and feel special. Even though, even the people who produced the film were like, yeah, it's just another movie we just put out in the world.

You know, it's an adaptation of a crime novel. And, you know, it's just another movie that's on the ledger. And they treat these movies, and all these companies do. Arrow does this, Criterion does this, Vinegar Syndrome. They treat it with a ton of respect. And there are a lot of extras. There's a lot of original art related to it.

They're finding academics and scholars to do three-hour commentaries making ofs they're unearthing these featurettes that were produced by the studio that are like nine and a half minutes long that always feature at least one conversation with a guy who's absolutely hammered like everything that you find in these things is great the region free thing i think is important because if you are a person that is aspiring to get into this and get addicted to this, as you and I are, you have to buy discs that are not made in America if you want to get real about your collection.

And because stuff is just not widely available here. And the Eureka Masters of Cinema series is like one of the great, it's kind of the UK's version of Criterion Collection in some ways. And they just have a lot of movies that you can't buy here. And so you have to get a Blu-ray player or a 4K player that is region free, which is something that like, you can find that information on message boards or if you have a friend who really cares about this, but if you don't, you

might end up buying a lot of discs that just don't work in your DVD player. So like at what point did that dawn on you? Did you know right away? Well, back when I got cast on Veep, a lot of the stuff that I wanted to go watch everything that Arm and the writers and directors that we were going to be working with had made. And a lot of it was not available in the States. And a lot of it was, um, this was also, I mean, when Veep started, it doesn't seem, I mean, it was definitely a while ago, but it doesn't seem that long ago, but I mean, I don't even think HBO go existed at that. No, I don't seem, I mean, it was definitely a while ago, but it doesn't seem that long ago. But, I mean, I don't even think HBO Go

existed at that point. No, I don't think so, yeah. So, I remember this too. I remember buying the thick of it on DVD.

Yes. And hoping it would work in my DVD player. Yes. So, like, I ended up having to get, like,

a Region B DVD player from somewhere and ordering from, like, Amazon UK, all the thick of it stuff, Brass Eye, the day-to-day, like all of that stuff.

So I was vaguely aware of this, the idea of region, DVD and Blu-ray regions. But I did go through on like, I think like boutique Blu-ray Reddit boards or whatever. That's the site. That's the, oh my God. What have we become? It's really sad. And yet the, that, oh my God. What, what have we become? It's really sad. Uh, and yet,

and yet I've never been happier. Um, the, I did get, uh, like a 4k Blu-ray player. Uh, and I don't think,

not like crazy top of the line, but just for like a region free. I think I play most everything through an Xbox, but like, uh, but for region, for anything that's not, uh, coded to this region, I play most everything through an Xbox, but like, but for region, for anything that's not coded to this region,

I use that 4K, that 4K region free. It was, I think it's like, I don't know, maybe a hundred bucks I think I got off eBay. Yeah,

that's the thing. I don't think you have to go crazy, right? Even like the, I feel like, you know why they're not that expensive? Because this is a dying art. Because this is a dying art.

Yeah, that's really depressing. Nevertheless, we'll get there. We'll get to that conversation. I would recommend, this is the one, I Because this is a dying art. Yeah. That's really depressing. Nevertheless, we'll get there. We'll get to that conversation. I would recommend, this is the one, I would recommend the Sony X700.

That's the one to me that is like, it's a couple hundred bucks. It's region free. It's 4K. It's Blu-ray. It's DVD. It's everything. It's got Wi-Fi capability.

It's just, it will basically play everything you need it to play. Yeah. And you probably won't have to replace it for like a decade. You know what I mean? And then that's like, that's done. You don't have to worry about that.

You don't have to think about, you can kind of buy anything you want and put it in there. And so if you get something like that, I think that's worth it. Do you care about the aesthetics of the thing, the Blu-ray, the box? People were asking about steelbooks because they heard we were doing this.

Yeah. Which is a somewhat recent trend of literally steel encased Blu-rays and DVDs that come in very beautiful boxes and that are like showpieces. It's like if you collect Fabergé eggs. They're kind of the Fabergé egg of the Blu-ray world. If you could get Fabergé eggs at Best Buy.

Yes, that are $19.99. Yes. I care about the aesthetics to a certain point. I don't. Because this is like something that could get expensive very quickly and it's more about curating a library than it is about a showpiece for something that really does just sit on a shelf i don't i try not to get caught up in cover art i try not to get in it caught up in oh this one is like this one is out of print you know so you can only find it on ebay for 120 i don't go there either yeah i don't do

that but i the pull the pull i look at it i look at it i think about it yep there's not a good rationale for it because invariably even though we're saying we fear these things going away forever if something is becoming rare it will eventually be reissued because it means that there's demand for that thing. And so I try to never pay more than $35 for any single film. Yeah. And I feel like you can get away with that because otherwise I think you're right

that this is a really expensive habit. And it can, I think it just takes like a little bit, like that sort of impulse thing of I'm just going to get that right now. If you just get through that first impulse thing, then you can never go over $35. But you have to be able to be like,

that's 42, I'm not going to do it. Yes. And like the third man Blu-ray that Criterion, like that's out of print, it's like a... I have it. You do? I do. I mean, it's often called my favorite film of all time.

It is, God, it's so good. Yeah.? I do. I mean, it's often called my favorite film of all time. It is. God, it's so good. Yeah. I did not buy that because, I mean, I think it's like a minimum. It's very expensive. Minimum $200 to $250. But eventually they're going to put it out on 4K. And then, I don't know, does that tank the value of that? I don't know.

See, like the value I don't care about. Like to me, this is not something I, well, I'm never going to sell it. This isn't baseball cards. Okay. There's utility, right? Yeah. And so, like, that was something I wanted to ask you about, which is, like, do you watch these? Yes.

Like, and how do you, do you buy without having seen something and then say, well, this is now on my list? Or do you buy because you're like, I want to watch this or I want my kids to watch this. Like, how do you determine when you're going to make a purchase? I think what I do is I definitely have bought some stuff sight unseen. Um, I, I think first about like,

okay, like if everything set on fire, if everything got burned down and I only had these, uh, that's sort of like the first mark, um, or if it's just like, I've seen this recently, I loved it so much. I just want it there. Like sound of metal, I think is going to be a hard rewatch, but they just were like, they did like a criterion release of that recently. And I was just like, I'm, I'm getting that because when I saw sound of sound of metal, I was like, every movie should be sound of metal. And, and I just, I wanted, it felt good to have it there.

And I think there is something about the, I do watch them. And just like we were having this conversation about tar, about how it's worth watching tar in the theater, because it makes you focus on it a little bit more. The fact that I have like gone to the little area where my movies are and I looked and I pulled one out and I brought it to the thing and opened it and put it in there adds a little bit of extra importance to my watching it that evening. And it's not something that I'm just that you just kind of have on while you look at your phone. You're now watching a movie. And I don't know what that I don't know what that little line is,

but it has changed my appreciation of these things. I love how you put that. That's completely right. It's a scintilla of effort that you're giving that is not just what's on the carousel on StreamRacks. I have made an active choice, not a passive choice, to fire up this movie. So I think that makes a lot of sense.

I'm getting, as my habit gets a little gnarnarly i'm getting a little out of control with buying stuff i've never seen and barely even heard of yeah god it's so fun it's a real slippery slope oh god it really is but you're like oh it's a classic i should have that yeah i'm like hearing you tell the death street rides again story i i i it makes i get some chills where i'm like do i should i how much should i be saving my money versus doing this but and yet if you buy one sight unseen and you watch it and you love it you feel like a fucking brain genius you're like i nailed this so hard this was so worth it and you know i almost feel like it's like traveling it's like you never regret you you never regret any money that you spent on travel and in this is a very tenuous correlation but i yes i have maybe bought a movie

that i did i need to spend that much money on a criterion version of a movie that i haven't seen give me one that you don't regret, but you're like, gosh, what about my kids going to college? Is that more important than this? You know what? So I'm a real big Roy Scheider guy. And Sorcerer.

Sorcerer. And because of Blank Check, recently All That Jazz. Oh, yeah. Which absolutely fucking bangs. What'd you buy? Oh yeah. Which absolutely fucking bangs. Um, and I, what'd you buy? The,

I think I went into, uh, uh, Amoeba ref. I went into Amoeba records and I bought, uh, the seven ups. Oh yeah. That's not a very good film.

Fuck. Well, I spent like $60 on it and it, cause it's out of print. There's a sick car chase in that movie. Is there? Yeah. Great.

It's going to be worth it. It's got Roy Scheider, Roy Scheider, and it has a sick car chase. I still haven't seen it. But I was like, that is one where I'm like, what are you doing? What are we doing here? Yeah.

Gosh. What about you? I don't think I need to own that one. I did watch it this year, actually. It was on TCM. And I was like, I've never seen this. I should check this out. And then I was really bored.

Oh, no. You know when sometimes a crime movie from the 70s is so labyrinthine that you're like, what's actually happening? Who is the bad guy? That's kind of one of those movies for me. What's one that I've bought that I've regretted? I did one last night. What was it? So I was reading Karen Han's new book about Bong Joon-ho, the director, which is a really, really good book.

I think it's called Dissident Cinema. And I was thinking about Bong because they just announced that his new movie is coming out in 2024. He's a certified master, right? No question. Okay. Also a South Korean filmmaker. And, you know, I love Bong Joon-ho. I love Memories of Murder, Parasite, whatever.

I'm a huge, huge fan. And I don't really like Okja. And it's the one movie of his that I've just really had a hard time getting into it felt like he kind of like shifted gears in terms of the tone of story that he was telling and I couldn't get into it and and I was just on the Criterion website last night and I was like I need to try this again and rather than go to Netflix which is streaming the film in perpetuity as far as I know and just watch it again was like, I should probably spend $29.99 on this movie.

And I did. And I woke up this morning and I was like, why did I do that? Because it was late and because you were looking at your phone in bed. Yes. That's why. And, you know, that can happen.

This is almost like a trigger warning for people who like to buy stuff. Yes. You're not... But I think we also got to, like when we talk about our kids and we talk about this sort of nourishment, you got to give yourself a little grace and forgiveness, you're not. But I think we also got to, like when we talk about our kids and we talk about this sort of nourishment,

you got to give yourself a little grace and forgiveness here, guys. I know, I know. Because you're not going to bat a thousand. I will tell you, I kind of regret

blind buying Blood Quantum. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Well, that filmmaker just passed away this year. He did? Yeah, yeah. A month ago, I think,

Jeff Barnaby, the filmmaker behind that movie, passed away. Okay, and not knowing that, I, of course, don't want to, I do not want to speak ill of month ago, I think, Jeff Barnaby, the filmmaker behind that movie, passed away. Okay, and not knowing that, I, of course, don't want to. I do not want to speak ill of the dead because I think that there were a lot of things about that movie that were really incredible swings.

And it was a movie that I am glad I watched. But after it, I was like, I don't know that I'm ever going to watch this again, but now I own it. And maybe I should have. Maybe I should have not bought that. You know what I mean ever going to watch this again, but now I own it and maybe I should have. Maybe I should have not bought that. You know what I mean? I do.

I do. It's another interesting example of a movie seen on a streamer, probably for, I assume you saw it on shutter before seeing it. Like, no, I blind you. Oh,

you blind bought it. Somebody was like, Hey, try this. And I was like, hell yeah. I mean, it is a very cool movie,

but there is a there's a valley of film that you can admire something and know you'll never revisit yeah and then is it worth owning yes and I feel like blood quantum exists in that world it's a tricky one um you're not gonna bat a thousand though give yourself a break well what kind of tv do you want you is a projector is it just like a flat screen? What's your setup? I have a 4K TV that is apparently not actually a 4K TV.

Okay. I don't exactly know how that works. Did you get it at a pawn shop? Yeah, my dude, I traded it for an earring that I found on the ground. I want everybody that's listening to know that I'm not a scumbag, but I'm not not a scumbag.

I feel like I've always tried to really find that good equilibrium. I can confirm that about you. You know how if a plane, if the engine dies, you can kind of glide it down? Or like a helicopter, there's a certain thing where you're like, we can kind of land safely. I feel like I'm trying to do that with being a scumbag. Floating right in between both of them. I am not, I'm neither falling nor flying. So, um, this you're deeply familiar with pawn shops, but you don't own a pawn shop and I've never, I've never sold any

tools to a pawn shop, but I've considered buying them from a pawn shop um uh so i i have a 4k tv that is i i don't think is a great one and here's another thing when we talk about this is something that came up recently okay so uh uh the battle of the bastards on game of thrones everybody's complaining about how dark it is and i'm'm like, part of this, there are two things going on. Number one, your room is not set up to watch this. And I'm not talking about like you have a screening room, but you have, your room is not set up to watch something that is that dark. We talked about this living in California.

You would watch Game of Thrones at 6 p.m. and shafts of light would be pouring through your living room. And it's like, you just can't see it because that's not how it's meant to be seen. Yes. And then also like the delivery system of information, like through those services

can sometimes pixelate blacks. And so when you're, so that is another thing about like Blu-rays is that the information is there and it's not dependent on something else. Once you have the connection between the player and their TV setup, anyway, it's just going to look better and you're going to,

you're going to watch something closer to what that filmmaker who made something with intention is true. You're going to see it closer to how they wanted you to see it. Um, so it's a respect thing. There's also that. So all this money that I'm spending is for respect.

I mean, in a way. In a way. You're in the business. You know what it takes to make this stuff. It's not fucking easy. It's not fucking easy. And when somebody does it well, it should be fucking celebrated

with full voice. So the 4K TV that I have is not great. And I'm kind of like, I've really got my eye on one for the year coming up okay um but i i think that the the difference like if you i don't think you need to run out and replace your television i think you're going to want to but you don't have to right and so i i have like a 4k tv that is kind of but is isn't and then then also an Xbox and a region-free Sony.

Those are what I run through. What do your kids make of this? Do they get it? Do they care about physical media at all? No, they don't. And I think they are used to a world in which everything can be found whenever they want it. Do you lecture them about how difficult it was for us to find things in the video store or how there was no internet?

No, I lecture them enough about, I lecture them enough about action and the playbook for flag football. You know what? The play is called hot dog and we're putting everybody to the left side to get the defense to the left side. So the center is going to run to the right side. And we are guaranteed a first down or a touchdown every single time. But if you don't run the play right.

Did you invent hot dog? We invented all of our plays were named after foods. So and so we had like subsets of foods like hamburger was a run to the right side. Cheeseburger was a run to the left. Like they were all like we had a bunch of motion plays. What's the weirdest food in the playbook? roll i love it that's great yeah that's awesome that's a great name for a play they were all like so all of the motion plays were sushi so there was sushi sashimi edamame rainbow roll sick um i yell at them on about enough stuff they don't need and but i do think i do think and this goes

back to the horror thing you were saying i think that that thing about why horror fans like the reselling the experience of the movie again a blank check thing because this is something that has sort of coincided with um blu-ray collecting is that uh uh alex ross perry talks about how halloween was a movie that was on everybody's shelf. And there's something about that VHS box, that VHS box that is special. And I, so I don't lecture my kids about this. I just want them to know that when they eventually they are going to be old enough to see some of these movies and when they walk in and they've walked past them a million times and never thought about them. But just like I did with the books that were on my dad's bookshelf or my mom's bookshelf or the movies that we owned at the house, there was there was like, oh, something happened.

My parents decided to buy that and keep it in their home where people could see it. So what is it about that? And I want them to have that feeling eventually of being like, my dad has these for a reason. So what's that reason? And I'm going to discover that on my own it's very perceptive I my parents were not VHS or DVD collectors by any means they had a lot of records but the thing that they had that I think opened me up to a whole portal and probably explains why I'm so interested in horror is they owned 12 Stephen King novels in paperback. Yeah. And they were visible in my house.

And so like, you know, Carrie and Needful Things and It, I could just see them every day. And when you're seven, you're like, what is that? And then you see Dracula on TV and you're like, what is that? And then you go down this unbelievable rabbit hole. I had an interesting experience, actually. I was sent a screener of this new movie called Skinnamarink. Have you heard about this?

No. It premiered at Fantasia Fest last year. It is kind of, sort of a found footage movie, kind of, sort of a kind of VHS homage film. The premise is very simple. It's like two young boys wake up in the middle of the night and their father is not in their house.

They don't know what's going on. And then they start watching cartoons. One of the most unnerving movies I've seen in at least a decade. What's it called? Skin and Meringue. Skin and Meringue. And I watched it on the screener. So the quality was not great.

And I watched it on a laptop and for a while i i i mirrored it to my television but it was skipping a little bit and i wanted to be really immersed in it and i was very unnerved by the movie which is very hard to do to me at this stage of my life but halfway through the movie i was like i really wish i had a fucking 4k of this and even though it's meant to be grainy like like the purpose of the film is like, it is largely set in a dark house in the middle of the night. And so you are looking into these pools of black, looking for something in the black.

And the director is forcing you to gaze at it for long stretches of time with no score, with no accoutrement, with barely any acting. And I was like, what I want is the highest possible version. Yes. Highest quality version of the shitty looking thing. Yes. Which I feel like is also a little bit lost in the streaming experience.

You know, it's not just the game of Thrones doesn't look great. It's just like when I watched the gray man, nothing against anybody who made the gray man. I'm like, this doesn't look like a movie. This looks like a cut scene from a video game but with ryan gosling walking around inside of it yeah and so i i feel like if you god bless chris evans

though who is having a ball i thought he had there are things that i liked he's he's having a blast um it's to me that's entirely about the way that movie looks that is just very confusing yeah um anyhow it's interesting that now i'm like when i even when i see a movie where i'm like i'm not sure if i'll ever see this on a big screen i'm not sure if evil it will ever get like physical distribution like ifc acquired it it's going to come out next year probably be on shutter uh-huh will i ever be able to buy it i don't know i mean that's a whole other thing is like the sound of metals and the parasites those are always going to get distributed physically, right?

There's going to be a market for those. But anything that is in that second tier has to be a real cult jam for a company to decide that there are 3,000 psychos like us who will pay for it. And so I don't honestly, if it's only three days, if all they need is 3,000 to keep putting these out, like I feel like we can get 3,000 of our friends together. Of course. You know what I mean, honestly, if it's only three days, all they need is 3000 to keep putting these out. Like, I feel like we can get 3000 of our friends together. Of course. You know what I mean? Yeah. We got to get them boutique Blu-ray, you know, get the army together. Yeah. I asked you to put together a list of the 10 best, the 10 that everybody should buy. Okay. Did you do that? I did, but there are a lot of qualifications to it. Okay. And part of that was because there's what I... So I think I made a top 10 list of movies, but also there are the philosophy behind it of why that would be on there,

which would then be applicable to the person listening. Okay. Can you imagine if you are still listening to this? I mean, hopefully people are. I mean imagine if you are still listening to this? I mean, hopefully people are. I mean, hopefully. I want them,

I want them to be too, but like, this is so nerdy and I love it so much. This is the essence of the show. This is what we're doing here. Honestly, like there is,

there are more than 3,000 people that care. That's the thing. That's good. Are there 500,000? Probably not. Are there 100,000? I think so. I think so i think so you know what we're leading fire away you're leading the revolution so i i've made 10 too and i made 10 in a kind of off-handed fashion because i do think what you said is right which is like just follow your heart for the most part

like my literally my number one on my list is just what's your favorite movie just buy it yes you know i mean just just buy your favorite movie just buy your favorite movie you'll never regret it anything that uh like sorcerer being uh on and off my favorite movie like it's always going to be up there uh that is one that i will never i might not be watching it every single day but i watch it all the time if you watch it once every five years, it's worth it. It's worth it. And it's just nice to know that you're always

going to have it there. So just buy your favorite movie. I think that's, so I would put, I would put Sorcerer up there. I think that was like the first place that I went. Oh, every year,

I would say twice a year, I watch The Raid and The Raid 2. Incredible, yeah. And so those are two that i put on their pair are they matched together or they're not you can't buy them together oh yeah everybody's got to go to blu-ray.com uh and uh because that's where you can like you can search by region and uh and that will also tell you they have reviews of like okay well is this like a good release is this a good transfer all that um so no i don't know that they are packaged together but like the raid and raid two uh is

movies that i've revisited great a hundred times um i put um uh rad is on there because again just like uh and also uh cloak and dagger which i think I got from Vinegar Syndrome or Arrow. I've never seen it. Who was the one that just did the box of True Romance recently? And they did a Robocop one, which is probably also... I think that was Arrow. Arrow, okay. So Arrow just released a really amazing Cloak and Dagger.

And the aesthetics of that are incredible. Tell me about Cloak and Dagger. Oh, you've never it's uh dabney coleman uh legend goat uh my buddy moo used to work at like at a bar on uh on sweetser and dabney coleman would come in all the time and he got to be like buddies with dabney coleman he seems like a guy who liked bars. Yeah, no, it definitely seems like a bar dude. Cloak and Dagger is basically, it's a little kid.

Oh, Henry Thomas from E.T. Sure. I think it's post E.T. William Forsythe plays a guy who owns like a video game store

in the mall. Henry Thomas. Is it a teen comedy? Is it a adult drama? It's like a thriller. It's like a spy thriller for kids about one kid's relationship with his dad.

I think the mom has passed away. There's like a kind of a fissure between the dad and the son. And whether or not it's real, the son creates this thing where he is given a copy of a video game by a man who's just been shot. And he tells him this number like, you know, 121,459. I see. Oh, this is a Richard Franklin movie. Okay.

So he then has to like solve, you know, like that number correlates to a score in the video game, which has these smuggled plans for a spy plane. But the movie is really about reconnecting, reconnecting a son and his father's relationship after the mom's death. I don't know if it's actually a good movie, but it's one that I watched so many times when I was a kid that when it came out,

I was like, who knows? You know, who knows where I could find this? This will ever exist. So that's one that's on there. Can I do a big honking name drop here? Yeah. I just had a conversation with Quentin Tarantino. We were talking about Richard Franklin, the the director of this film that's a pretty

big one uh that's really really good job but uh we were talking about road games which was recently on the criterion channel yeah which is franklin's like kind of big breakthrough movie um i've never seen this road games really really good stacy keach and jamie lee curtis it's about a serial killer and a trucker tracking a serial killer so franklin makes road games and off of road games he gets the assignment to make psycho 2 which is actually quite good um which is like i think a very empathetic portrait of uh anthony perkins's character um and then i i just didn't realize that the film that he makes after psycho 2 is cloak and dagger i've never seen it. I don't know it. It's good.

You should definitely. I mean, like, you should just buy it. It's got like a whole, like, you know, it's got like a little insert. It's got like the little ribbon. This is what happens though. This is what happens. Okay, Cloak and Dagger, that's a great one. It's right up there next to the True Romance and the Robocop versions from Arrow that like,

God, they look nice together. They're beautiful. Wait, so that's a couple for me. What do you have on have on yours so i think do we want to go all the way through and then all the way it's not really ranked it's more just like okay you should just buy these my list is like speaking of basic bitch it's just very very basic stuff yeah or if you're going to start you should consider doing x y and z now I just mentioned the Warner Brothers best of 50 collection. Okay. So this is retailing right now for $175.

I'm going to read just 10 of the films that are on the set. There are 50 films. And there are 50? Yeah. The Wizard of Oz. The Maltese Falcon. Singing in the Rain. Cool Hand Luke. 2001 A Space Odyssey. The Exorcist. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Superman. The Shining. Full Metal Jacket, Goodfellas, Unforgiven, I could go on.

These are all in this box. So if you are starting from nothing and you just spent 100 to your pawn shop point and just spent 175 bucks on this set. One Warner Brothers, of course, one of the three or four most important studios in the history of cinema. They have produced dozens of Academy Award nominated films that also happen to be great. They're not just, sure, they produce Chariots of Fire, which is okay,

but they also produced Goodfellas and Unforgiven. So if you want to just get a primer going, you know, like this is your first coat. This is a very good place to start. That actually, that is a really good place to start. actually that is a really good place to start um a couple of other ones something that came out recently is uh the apocalypse now final cut 4k

which every 18 months i feel like francis ford coppola is like i have some new ideas about apocalypse now and i'd like to reissue it in physical media i've bought every one great um final cut probably the best one so far okay it's not so re when apocalypse now redux was released there's a lot of pomp and circumstance about it went into movie theaters they re-added this entire sequence in the film of the french family living there this sort of you know colonized vietnam and kind of what their place is in this world that they had sort of taken over but as it was kind of coming apart at the seams it's an interesting strand of the story it's much slower than the rest of the film

and then now in final cut he's sort of like reimagining certain parts of that part of the film it obviously looks amazing because they've converted it to 4k but the other thing about the final cut 4k is like it features all of those extras that you're talking about features hearts of darkness heart of darkness the eleanor coppola documentary which is amazing which is incredible um and which also made me gasp when I first watched it because like there's the little title card that's like, we, you know, on this date in whatever year, they wrapped principal photography after like 370 shoot days.

I mean, give us some context for that as somebody who's been on film sets. That's fucking insane. Like I was on a show this past year called Candy and that was five episodes. But I think we had 50 shoot days to do five episodes. Like that's three months on a set is, it's gotta be like, you know, 60 days. I feel like big movies go for 120, you know, like. Like if you're like in a big movie, that's going to be 120. But holy shit. One of the most dangerous and laborious film shoots of all time. I mean, the fact that didn't,

I mean, like he was renting those helicopters from the actual military. And every once in a while, they would just be like, they would just get up and fly away because they needed to go be in the war. Like we just need them right now. And they'd be like, all right, we're done for the war. We just need them right now.

And they'd be like, all right, we're done for the day. Normal way to make a movie. Normal job. That's worth buying. You know what I wrote down is The Matrix. Yeah.

The Matrix was the first DVD that I owned. And it came in that cardboard kind of gatefold opening, you know, where it snapped shut. Yeah. And I just wore it out.

I just watched it all the goddamn time. You know, The Matrix has this weird reputation now of like red pill and blue pill. I'm not interested in any of that conversation.

Yeah, no, not interested in any of that. It's a fantastic movie. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievably well made. And it's a movie that it still looks very, very, very good.

And it looks very, very good projected in your home. Do you ever project? Not projected. I shouldn't say project. Just on a Blu-ray or on a 4K. It looks incredible. And it's a very loud film.

We didn't talk about sound at all. I guess that's also a factor. I'm still just using TV speakers in my screen. Yeah, mine too. I have like beams and stuff. Like I have Sonos stuff around my house, but not in my screen. Yeah, mine too. I have like beams and stuff. Like I have Sonos stuff around my house, but not in my screening room. I think cause I'm in my head, I'm like, this isn't my last house. And one day I will have a room that is the real room. Yeah. And so I'm not going to

overdo it right now. I know I'm with you. I think also there is that thing where it's like, I don't want to make investments in that until I actually get somebody who knows what they're doing to help me. Agreed. And that is sort of like, well, I'm just going to like save up for that because I don't know why it all sounds so bad. I don't know why the mixes are all weird. I know it's like a joke now with people just being like, oh, here's some action movies. We're going to just pump that volume up and here's some dialogue and just turn that all the way down. I don't know why that is. I don't know how to fix it. So also I have kids who are sleeping. So I'm mostly just like kind of listening to it low and putting on subtitles.

Ah, yes. So that's a good point. Watching with subtitles is I'm like fully there now with everything. I watch it with everything. Is that just because just the volume issue or is there a comprehension issue that you're interested in? I, well, there's a, I, I never, whenever I'm in a movie theater, it's never about comprehensions. It's just, I think it's just when I'm at home,

it's volume. And like, I, it would be, I could, I could make it out if it was louder. I just can't. I'm also like a little deaf. Like I, like I've been wearing hearing aids since I was a kid. So like, I like what is a normal good volume for me is not a good volume for the house. So I also have to take that into account. Got it. So I'm very much subtitles at home. Will you do AirPods and sync them to your TV? No, because I have to wear hearing aids.

I can't wear, no, like over the ear headphones all the time. I got a request. Whenever I have to like play somebody who's like a reporter who has to have like the little earwig or whatever, I'm always like, oh, this is going to be a whole thing. Oh, has that come up often it's comes up enough that i'm like you know or like if you go on live tv if you're gonna do like a a hit name drop by one time i went on uh svp i went on sports center with svp and it was fucking awesome but you have to wear like you're in the little studio what were you and svp talking about? Because when I shaved my head for the show, everybody was like, basically every time a bald person with glasses is spotted,

they have that segment of like, hey, I saw you here. That's right. And so he was like, okay, we had him on the show. You have to stop sending me this picture. Who's taller, you or Scott? I think Scott is.

Really? Well, I've never seen him in person, but I believe he's on the high side of 6'6". How tall are you? 6'5". High side of 6'5". I was going to say, you cut a taller image, a taller silhouette. I wish it wasn't that way.

You guys really need to get on the over-ear Bluetooth headphones while watching movies at night train. Like, you can't just be watching low-level volume. My head gets too hot. Like, it just... Maybe I need to get a new set. I have a pair of Bose headphones that are Bluetooth. Can you email me how to do that? This is also just like an old man thing of like, I don't know how to do that.

You can connect them to your TV tv this has completely changed my movie watching life like i watched movies starting at 11 like after my partner has gone to bed and i can hear everything perfectly shut all the lights off like it's it's changed my like 55 inch only tv speakers yeah it's it's amazing okay cool all right we just i'm gonna start doing that this is revelatory give me a couple more that you want to recommend. I put down out of print things that you like. So for an example of this that I wrote down was To Live and Die in LA, which does not have a US release. Is there an Arrow?

Is that also Arrow? I think there's an Arrow that I got. And that is something that i have that region free one for that's a great one william friedkin crime classic from the 1980s god it's so good um yes that is arrow i put down uh movies that i i okay so i love the movie black hat a big michael mann person so like i think one thing that you should do is buy the criterion of thief for all the interviews with Michael Mann that are in there. And also just, if you haven't seen Thief, it's incredible. So that's a beautiful one to have. It's not pretentious, but then also buy a copy of Black Hat and buy a copy of Heat because those are going to be like... Well, okay. So let's talk about Black Hat for a moment. Yeah, let's do it.

Michael Mann man an object of much fascination here at the ringer our mutual friend chris ryan one of the uh foremost michael man fans and and experts he's spoken with man a few times oh god uh can i tell you this is probably going to be more of a conversation for chris but my best memory from this year was reading the book heat 2 oh yeah it's so good my second best memory was listening to the audiobook of heat two the guy who does so i listened to the audio book that was my experience that guy with the trailer voice yeah it's heat two it's heat two coming around the corner here comes ethan yeah it's with the ancient cave to repeat her in his hand.

It was a lot of fun. It's a lot. So you're recommending Black Hat just because. Just because. Because I love that movie. Is it good? Is it good?

Yeah, is it good? It's incredibly good. And the other thing is... What about when there's a Getty image with a watermark on the screen? When it's like they didn't finish this film.

You know, when Chris Hemsworth is looking... He a couple things you know what you know what here's the thing no film is perfect and when it's really you know how many times I've seen Black Hat and have never noticed that because it's amazing time to go back it's um I'll go you know I'll go back here's the other thing is I'm all, then that's going to lead into this other conversation of, I put like the despecialized Star Wars on there. Because when you have a lot of free time in Atlanta, what you can do is find things like despecialized Star Wars

and you can buy a Blu-ray burner and you can actually burn your own Blu-rays. And this takes a little bit of technological massaging to get this to happen but you can do that with like the despecialized and then you can take and you can make like a little cover for it and you can also find the guy who made his own copy of the director's cut of black hat which was shown on fx one time and he had like a vhs i think he had like a recording of it that wasn't very good quality but he took the original version he had like a rip of the original version in high quality and re-edited it to the FX director's cut version. So I actually own Black Hat as like the released one.

And then, then I also have burned a copy of the Black Hat director's cut. You might have to go on the Black Hat rewatchables. Jeez. This is, it's, I, I don't have the passion for it.

Chris and I saw it together and is very similar situation to, uh, seeing Miami Vice with him. I love Michael Mann. I love Thief. I, you know, I, the passion for it. Chris and I saw it together and it's a very similar situation to seeing Miami Vice with him. I love Michael Mann. I love Thief. You know, Manhunter, Heat, everything.

I think they're all certified masters. Certified, certified, certified master. 9.8, graded 9.8. 43 cent stamp. Okay.

Blackhat and Miami Vice, which have become these objects of celebration amongst a certain kind of cinephile since their release, which have become these objects of celebration amongst a certain kind of cinephile since their release, you know, were kind of like had a muted response

and they have fierce defenders. Both times I saw those movies in theaters and I was one of those guys who was like, I don't think this is very good. And I have not rewatched either one since I saw it.

But when we saw Black Hat, Chris, I could see, wanted to scream, that was amazing. And I was so down on it that he almost couldn't be his true self. Yeah. But maybe it's time.

Maybe it's time to revisit. I think it is. So I was like Chris when I saw it in the theater and it bombed. Like it did. Hard. It bombed so hard.

I saw it in the theater opening weekend. I was like, I don't know why this is bombing. This is so good. It's so, it's so good. I only remember being alive the way that a Michael Mann movie

can make you alive when he's like having the knife fight amongst the crowd near the end of the film, which is just an amazing sequence. I just love, and this comes with now, I think maybe like learning more

about Michael Mann, that he, oh my God, he makes you invest so much in the idea that a lot of this hinges on tin future trading. And the man, if he can get me to be this emotionally invested, when there is a big reveal about tin futures trading, I can be like, fuck God, I love him so much. I love him so much. And I, maybe it was a Hemsworth thing. I think maybe there was a response

like, I don't buy this guy as what they're selling me. I buy every moment of it. Yeah. That didn't bother me as much. Candidly. It was more like, I felt like at a certain point, they just said like, you can't shoot anymore. You're all done. Let's leave today. Try to cut it together from what you've got. Like it's day 87. We're all done. And on done and on day 87 he was like you know when they did when they did apocalypse now they still had 240 days left um one other starter kit thing that i think people should get they've done this now for just one aspect of the alfred hitchcock oeuvre but the masterpiece collection which is a number of his films is now available on blu-ray. When I was a young pup collecting DVDs, there were a couple of different companies that issued various Hitchcock DVD

sets. And you can buy the 39 steps and notorious on the criterion collection. And I would encourage you to do so they're worth it. But if you, you know, again, if you're sort of like starting at zero, here's what you

get in the masterpiece collection which is currently 85 dollars saboteur shadow of a doubt rope rear window the trouble with harry the man who knew too much vertigo psycho the birds marnie torn curtain topaz frenzy and family plot and a load of extras for all of those films and one nice thing about this is 85 dollars for that and another thing that has been a boon for this is like i very recently re-watched uh um uh well i saw bamboozled for the first time i saw you tweeting about this stone cold spikely masterpiece unbelievable i don't know why it hasn't been more vocally celebrated it is i i could not believe what they were doing uh and unfortunately much like any shows you how dumb our country is that it's like still shit we're arguing about today totally well that's a movie that is the rare like

was too ahead of the curve in terms of the conversation like people are just not ready to reckon with what he was thinking about and what the filmmakers were thinking about. But holy shit, it's so good. And then that led me into Malcolm X, which I did. Here's one I don't regret it. You bought it. I did buy the Malcolm X 4K Criterion,

but from Spike Lee's shop, and Spike Lee, it was like autographed by Spike Lee. So that was like... What is the price tag on that I mean it was only like 50 bucks okay so it's not like it's above that 35 threshold but what do you do so will you watch that will you put it in a case somewhere I well I did watch it so like and this is why like this Hitchcock thing is interesting because I just like you making those stacks of like you know this director just passed away and like, here's all these movies that they made. There is something about having every movie by a director and watching them in or not having to go to a bunch of different places.

They're just there and you can watch them and you get a better sense of to Inside Man in a matter of like four days to watch the Spike Lee-Venn diagram overlap is so fun. This is a huge part of my experience of collecting and organizing the films. I do it by filmmaker. It's not alphabetical. Okay, I'm an alphabetical guy.

Will you do titles alphabetical or director alphabetical? Titles alphabetical. Oh, director's alphabetical is a pretty good idea. So I do directors chronological. So it's basically like there's a hierarchy that only exists in my mind and that's the only way I know how to frame it. So it's like, you know, Scorsese is right near the top, right?

David Lynch is right near the top. Tarantino's right near the top. But, um, a guy you've spoken to. A guy I've spoken to. Yes. yes um i just keep picking up the name that i keep dropping and picking it up again dropping it and picking it up again um and why did i bring this up oh because i'll we're doing a sydney lumet film on the rewatchables for next week which one i don't know i'd say oh okay um i don't i actually don't know if i'm allowed to say or not but anyway we're doing. And he directed about 40 movies.

And, you know, he's extraordinarily well known for six or seven of the all-time classics. 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network. He's made some movies that will live forever and ever.

And then there's this big old stretch between 1968 and 1975 where he made nine movies. no nobody's seen them like that it's not that they weren't popular at the time they were well-known films one of them is an adaptation of the group the very famous mary mccarthy novel one of them is this um uh thriller starring sean connery called the offense um i'm trying to think what else is in the mix there he made a number of films in this period and most of them are not available on blu-ray most of them are not available on dvd or at least not in this country and so for me to fill out my lumet collection is a real challenge

i thought of this when peter bogdanovich passed i was like saint jack is not on blu-ray and mask is on blu-ray but it's hard to get the u.s version that you want to watch and texasville is not on blu-ray and so to feel like you have again to use that word like a mastery of someone's career a full understanding of what they were doing like someone like spike 10 years ago you couldn't really find a lot of spikes movies and now of course he has been like fully recognized as one of the most significant filmmakers of the last 50 years but that's another reason to kind of like keep advocating i think for this format too is like we are building the entire history of movies yes this is the closest we can get to holding on to it yes and i i i'm not going to tell you i'm a film historian by any means but this it does it's

not just about like oh well i like that and I own it. There is something about, I am also educating myself about like the holes that I didn't know that I needed to fill. Like I didn't know that I needed to fill the Sidney Lumet hole. You know what I mean? And I'm now realizing like, and then you get to like, you know, and then there's also like a little bit of mystery about it. Yeah.

Well, that's the thing is there are discoveries most of the time. Like if you haven't seen Bye Bye Braverman, there might be a reason you haven't seen it. There might be a reason it hasn't been valorized. But occasionally, you'll run into one

that is something that is really meaningful to you. And we also come from a generation where everything was... And like this is... I mean, I don't know if Chris has ever

talked about this or Andy has ever talked about this. Like that... We came from a generation that saw the the the switch from physical music to digital music and and how it was it was hard to find and it was word of mouth and it was used cd source and there was a certain sort of hunt the quest the quest to go on and now just kind of everything is just right there and you can learn everything

and hear everything and and this does maybe scratch that ish a little bit too of like they're in the spotify recording studios right now for the record oh oh is that a company that does what does that company do um uh i for one welcome my new corporate overlords stream on that's all i can say uh i think there is something about that, that as well, like the film history stuff. And then also just like, you know, there was a,

there was effort. There was something that had to be searched out. I have a couple. I was going to say, give us a couple more before we wrap. Yeah.

I'm going to say, I have Interstellar on here just because it fucking bangs. Double Indemnity. They just released that, like a Criterion 4K of Double Indemnity. And that's one that like a criterion 4k of double indemnity and that's one that like you go back i go back to a lot and again like that's kind of a basic bitch thing like

yeah what you think double indemnity is good like yeah yeah but when you watch it you're like oh every movie stole from this movie every movie stole from this movie and then i would say like first if you're what i have uh who framed roger and Spirited Away on there just because then that can like if you have kids like it's fun for me to buy Who Framed Roger Rabbit but it was also so

it holds up number one. One of my favorite movies of all time. It is not nearly as problematic as you might think it would be. It definitely holds up and introduces kids

to a bunch of film noir tropes that they will then understand when they're older. And also meta storytelling, you know, like there is something about watching animation collide with the real world that I think resets your brain a little bit in a powerful way, or at least teaches you like it's okay to just smash stuff together, which I love. And I had actually written down, I don't know how much I, how good I feel about strictly supporting Amazon, but Amazon does have an exclusive

that's like the collected works of Miyazaki. It is every Miyazaki film. Oh, okay. It's like 150 bucks. You can just have that forever. You can have 12 of the greatest films ever made. And if you have kids, we've already watched some Miyazaki

and I have a 17-month-old. So it's like... I've never witnessed anything better than watching my neighbor totoro with my kids because there is something like me watching them watch it made me understand it in a way like they just fundamentally understood it in a way that i was like trying to establish some sort of logic and they were just like no like we get this a hundred percent and i do think that like walking by because i'm i'm gonna trying to i do i have like walking by, because I'm going to try and

I did get like three or four of the Mizuyaki Steelbooks. Yeah, of course. Sure. They're beautiful. They're beautiful. There's no shame. But every time I walk by them, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm going to get back in there. It reminds you that that beautiful movie exists and you should watch it again. Go back to those. You know, I thought about this as

HBO Max is going through some evolution right now. Oh, I hadn't heard. haven't heard some changes and uh i welcome my new corporate overlords well they have studio ghibli right now and that was that was greeted with great fanfare when they were hosting those films which had been very hard to see for a while um especially on a streaming service but maybe they won't be there forever you know i just don't know it's just impossible to predict what's going to happen in that respect. So anyhow, I'm going to throw on, I want to throw on this one more thing because if there is like sort of

a December gift buying thing, I would say that if you are not buying one for yourself, if you're buying some for someone else who is either into this or you know the kind of stuff they like, I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with going to the Criterion website,

looking up the genre that they like and getting something or of stuff they like. I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with going to the Criterion website, looking up the genre that they like and getting something or a director they like and just getting them one of those, even if it's something they haven't seen because watching Destry Rides again on New Year's Eve last year was like a real highlight.

You know what I mean? This is literally how my family shops for me. This is what they do. They're just like, I think he probably likes this if he's never seen it even better. Yes. And that's, it's, it's, it's frankly easy to shop for us. It really is.

I mean, like maybe I, I really, I didn't do this for me. I did this for everybody in my family who has a really hard time shopping. Do you think they're going to listen to this podcast? Uh, no, I don't. Okay. And I kind of don't want them to because they will realize how much i've been thinking about this and i have been trying to hide this from them i've been trying to hide this like it's a gambling addiction you're out now but i'm out you're out of the criterion closet oh god um

someday i'll get invited in there but i gotta do some research before i get in you would do great you would be an ideal guest. Just pitch yourself right now. Okay. Hey, guys. How's it going? Tim Simons. Wouldn't it be great if I was in that thing? Do you have anything you want to plug? No. Are you not on anything, in anything? No, I just...

That's also been something I've been doing. Not plugging? Yeah, not plugging. It's been great. Is your aspiration to be a world-renowned podcast guest? I feel like if that comes, it'll come organically. What if I told you you are? Then it's done?

I mean, look, that's for the public. I can't make that. I have to be certified. I have to be a certified master by the person you're certified. We're not there yet. We're not there yet. This is your first appearance.

First appearance. I'll get there. 13 cents. You know, it'll happen organically if it's going to happen. But no, I mean, like, yeah, there's, I don't know if I can Google it. What's Tim Simons got coming up? I don't know. You know, you always find that out. You're always good in everything that you do. Thanks. Especially this pod. Tim, thanks for doing it. My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. Okay. Let's go to my conversation with Park Chan-wook. In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no.

Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage, bacon, and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A? Yeah. There's the sausage bacon and egg, a crispy seasoned chicken one, mmm, a spicy end egg, worth the detour. They sound amazing.

Bet they taste amazing too. Ah, wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax at participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Director Park, thank you for being here today. You've never made a film quite like Decision to Leave.

When did the idea for the film first strike you? 제가 원했던 것만큼 사랑 이야기 그리고 낭만주의적인 성격을 가진 이야기들이다라는 사실을 제 생각만큼 사람들이 알아주는 것 같지 않다고 느꼈습니다. 그 원인이 뭘까 생각해 보니까 폭력과 섹스 묘사가 강하기 때문에 그 인상이 강해서 알맹이를 잘 못 느낀 것은 아닐까 생각해봤죠. 그 이유에 대해서 생각했을 때, 강력한 성격과 폭력의 이미지가 인간에게 강력한 인상을 주게 되었고, 그 속에 있는 스토리의 중심을 깨닫게 되었습니다. 그런 요소를 좀 줄이면서 I decided to make a project that levels down those elements and focus on the romance at the core of the story. When you're developing something, is it an image or a story concept

or even genre that comes first for you? It's always a story. This work was inspired by music, but also by the song, Ange, which appears in the movie. 즉 영화 속에 등장하는 안개라는 노래에서 영감을 받긴 했습니다만 글쎄요 그렇게 생각하니까 또 대답이 달라질 것 같기도 하네요 이 노래는 영화 속에서 많이 연주한 것 같아요. 제 답변을 듣고 나서는 조금 변화가 있었어요.

노래에 대한 생각이지가 있었거든요. 뭐냐면 안개 속에서 뭔가를, 어렴풋한 형체를 안개에 가려서 흐릿하게 보이는 그 형체를 실루엣 같은 그것을 보려고 저것이 내가 사랑한 나를 떠나갔던 연인인가 하는 마음에 눈을 자꾸 비비면서 똑바로 보려고 하는 긴가민가 하면서 보려고 이렇게 얼굴을 내밀고 그렇게 애쓰는 어떤 남자의 모습이 떠올랐으니까요. 그리고 그는 이 흔한 사람을 보고, 그런 사람처럼 보이던 사람을 보고, 그는 자신을 궁금해하고, 그는 저의 남자라는 것인가? 그리고 그는 그의 눈을 감고, 그의 얼굴을 닦고, 더 깨끗하게 보이려고 하는 것을 볼 수 있습니다. 그래서 그는 그 노래 듣는 때 제 마음속에 있는 이미지가 되었습니다. 그런 순간마다 인공 눈물을 넣는 그런 행동도 나온 거죠. 그리고 이포의 도시의 아이디어가 그곳에서 나왔습니다.

그리고 그의 눈앞과 detective의 아이디어에요. 영화는 알프렛 히치콕의 작품과 비교해 보입니다. 특히 그의 로맨틱 미스터리와 로베카, 노토리아스, 그리고 Vertigo의 작품입니다. 당신은 Vertigo가 지난해에 당신을 직접 인사시켰다고 말했습니다. 영화에는 당신의 영화에서 Vertigo-esque foot chase 시퀀스가 있습니다. 이 영화에서 그를 만들면서 그의 작품을 생각했을까요? inspired you in the past. There's even a Vertigo-esque foot chase sequence in your film. Were you thinking of him specifically while creating this movie? Yes, surprisingly, not at all.

But the fact that so many people watch it is so much that it has a deep influence on my mind. Surprisingly, I wasn't explicitly inspired by those films, but the fact that many people have been noticing that comparison does seem to mean that Hitchcock has left such a deep influence deep inside my mind.

Hae-Joon suffers from insomnia in the film. Can you talk about using that as a storytelling and film editing device as we experience much of the movie through his eyes? Yes. The insomnia is a problem that this man has reached a certain age as a successful police 경찰관으로서 가장 젊은 나이에 특정한 계급에 도달한 인정받는 에이스 경찰관으로서 그리고 훌륭한 아내를 가진 행복한 가정을 꾸리고 있는 사람으로서 겉으로 보는 것과는 다른 그에게 어떤 문제가 있다는 것을 암시합니다. 그의 과정은 그의 외곽에서 성공적인 detective가 되었을 때의 모습을 보았습니다. 그는 아주 젊은 시절에 그의 자리에 왔습니다.

그는 좋은 아내를 가지고 행복한 가족을 가지고 있습니다. 하지만 그는 그 안에 깊은 문제가 있습니다. 그것을 거의 취미처럼 생각한다고 하는 대사가 나오는데 잠을 못 자기 때문에 그런 일에 대해서 몰두하고 있는 그런 면도 설명이 되죠. 그는 그의 취미는 그의 밤을 보며 다른 사람들을 지켜보는 것과 그의 잠이 없다는 것을 이 취미에 설명합니다. 긴장을 풀어주고 마음을 편안하게 만들어준다는 그런 존재를 드디어 만났다는 그런 계기로서 작용할 수 있도록 만들어진 장치입니다. 가장 중요한 것은, 설의 만남을 통해 그가 그의 마음을 편안하게 만날 수 있는 사람을 만날 수 있는 중요한 스토리입니다. 그리고 사실 제가 이런 성인의 사랑 이야기를 만드는 데 있어서 불가피하게 밤에 함께 있다. 그들은 점점 서로에 대한 애정을 확인한다. 이런 상황에서 섹스 장면을 보여주지 않으면서도

이들의 친밀감 이들의 호감 이런 것이 아주 효과적으로 잘 표현하기 위해서 설애가 특별한 자기만의 방법으로

그를 재워줄 수 있다. 그게 호흡을 맞추는 행위로 말하자면 섹스를 대신 표현한 것이라고 볼 수 있겠죠. together at night and you want to show them slowly confirming their love to each other without a sex scene I realized this could work as an important replacement for a sex scene since we see these two characters slowly get closer and we want to try to effectively portray this emotional closeness and we see Seol-hye use her special method to finally put him to sleep and share the same breath together in the same space so you you could almost say that this was a replacement method for a sex scene. I found the film quite funny as well. And the way obsession can drive a person to do ridiculous things. You mentioned you wanted to make a romantic film,

but can you talk about blending romance with humor? Because it's not something that's easy to do. 로맨틱한 영화가 되었다고 하셨는데, 로맨틱한 영화와 희망을 섞는 것에 대해 말씀해 주실 수 있나요? 쉽지 않은 일은 아니기 때문에요. 때문에 관객들과 영화를 볼 때 어떤 장면에서 막 숨죽이면서 긴장해서 영화를 보는 그런 순간을 함께할 때도 기쁘지만 무엇보다도 웃어줄 때가 제일 반갑습니다. 영화가 재밌는 걸 듣는 걸 정말 고마워요. 제가 영화 만들 때 굉장히 중요한 것이었기 때문이죠. 물론 제가 영화을 보고 조용하고 떨린다거나, 하지만 제가 영화을 보고 웃는다거나, 그들은 웃는다는 걸 더욱 행복하게 느껴져요. 그런데 이 영화에서 사실 가장 쉽고 짧게 대답할 수 있는 대답은 이런 거예요. 사랑에 빠진 사람만큼 사람자가 보기에 객관적으로 보기에 우스꽝스러워 보이는 사람들은 없죠.

I guess the shortest, easiest response to your question would be this. There is no one as foolish as someone who is in love. From a third person point of objective view. 가장 짧은 답변은 이렇게 되어있습니다. 3인의 관점에서 사랑하는 사람처럼 누군가가 사랑하는 사람처럼은 없다는 것입니다. 보이는 그 사람들의 한 행동에서 우리는 굉장히 우스꽝스러운 면을 발견할 수 있을 거고요. 그렇다고 해서 그것을 비웃는다는 것이 아니라 우리 자신이 그런 경험을 해본 적이 있기 때문에 자기 자신의 과거가 기억이 떠올라서 슬며시 미소짓게 되는 그런 류의 유머이고 싶었습니다. funny. But you're not laughing at their actions. You're laughing because you've been in their same shoes. And you're remembering your past of having been in love and gradually smiling. That was the kind of humor I wanted. There's a sense of disorientation in the story. And sometimes it can be tricky to follow what's actually happening. Was the intention to unnerve our expectations

by withholding or even confusing the audience during the story? It is very difficult to have that adequate amount of that happening and walk that narrow line. 쉽지 않은 일입니다. 그 일을 적당한 수준으로 하고, 그 길을 걸는 것이 매우 어렵습니다. 뭐냐 하면, 관객이 짐작한 대로, 이 사람은 이런 사람이겠다, 저 사람은 저런 사람이겠다, 저 사람은 저런 사람의 성격이 저렇겠다는 예상, 그리고 장르의 관습상 이 이야기는 어디로 흘러가겠다는 예상. 이런 것들 그대로 따라가게 되면 긴장이 없는 뻔한 영화가 되어버리고 말겠죠. 이런 전략을 다 만들었다면, 그것은 너무 흥미로울 것입니다. 그런 인물이 되어버리고 말겠죠. 그리고 장르적인 즐거움, 장르 영화만이 줄 수 있는 즐거움에서 너무 멀어지게 되겠죠. 그리고 장르의 모든 재미가 제공될 수�해보려고 하는 그런 창작자로서는 그 두 가지를 잘 조화시키는 것이 몹시 중요합니다. 이 단어의 더욱 격렬한 정보를 말하는 것에 대해 이 장르들이 정말 의미 있는 것에 대한 범위를 확대하려고 노력하고 있습니다. 그렇기 때문에 지금 당장 모든 순간마다

그냥 모든 순간마다 다 속속들이 이해하지 못하더라도 약간 좀 궁금한 점을 남겨두더라도 영화를 계속 따라가다 보면 결국에는 다 그런 궁금한 문제가 해결되기 때문에 약간의 긴장한 상태로 계속 영화를 따라가기를 바랍니다. 모든 것을 이해하지 않더라도 모든 순간에 모든 것을 이해하지 않더라도 아직도 생각에 질문이 있을 때 영화에 따라서 계속 따라가고 있다면

그 질문이 결국 답변이 될 것이라고 바랍니다. 그래서 영화 시청 경험은 그 행복한 텐션이 될 수 있습니다. 그리고 플러스 상의 반전이라는 것이 있잖아요. 그런 행복한 텐션이 생길 수 있습니다. 충격적인 반전이죠. 그러나 헤어지기 여신 같은 영화에서도 반전은 있어요. 그러나 그 반전들은 올드보이같이 한 방 커다랗게 한 방을 때리는 그런 반전이 아니라

매 순간순간 아주 작은 것들이 계속해서 이어지는 그런 반전들의 연속체로서 영화를 만들고 싶었습니다. And in terms of reversals, for instance, if we take the example 연속체로서의 영화를 만들고 싶었습니다. 그리고 다시 말해서, 예를 들어, 어린이의 경우, 여성의 딸이 되었을 때,

이 영화의 한 번의 충격적인 다시 돌아가기 때문입니다. 하지만, 이 영화의 결정을 통해, 다른 것을 시도하고 싶었습니다. 그 한 번의 큰 다시 돌아가기, 그가 시청자들을 충격시킬 때, 제가 원하는 것은, 더 작은 다시 돌아가기, 다시 돌아가기 이후의 다시 돌아가기입니다. Instead of that one large reversal that will shock audiences, I wanted to have a continuation of smaller reversals, reversals after reversals. This is one of the first films I've ever seen that makes texting seem cinematic. This is a smartphone movie in a lot of ways, and it plays a critical part in the story as a translator and a container of clues and communication.

Can you tell me about why you chose to make phones such a part of the story? I wasn't originally intending it to be that way. 전혀 그런 문제에 관심도 없었고 되도록이면 피하고 싶은 그런 장면들이었죠. 그런데 현대인의 생활을 묘사하는 데 있어서 그것 없이는 불가능하더라고요. 한국 사람들은 이런 전화기를 가지고 핸드폰이라고 부르는데요. 그것이 말하는 것은 글자 그대로 손에 늘 붙어있는 것 말하자면 신체의 연장이라는 느낌을 표현하는 말이라고 생각합니다. 한국 사람들은 핸드폰을 휴대폰으로 말하는 것을 사용합니다. 그리고 저는 핸드폰이 항상 손에 붙어 있는 것을 생각합니다. 몸의 연장으로 볼 수 있는 것입니다.

그런 만큼 일상생활에 있어서 떼어놓을 수 없는 그런 디바이스인데 애초에는 제 영화가 고전적인 우아한 영화를 목표했던 만큼 이런 것들을 사용을 최소화하려고 했지만 그것이 불가능하다는 사실을 깨닫고 오히려 그렇다면 더 활용해보자, 더 영화의 주제를 담고 있는 것처럼 활용해보자는 생각으로 바꿨습니다. 처음에는 핸드폰을 사용하는 장면을 제공하고 싶었는데, 불가능하다는 생각을 했을 때, 전혀 안전하게 사용하고, 영화의 중심적인 템을 만들기로 결정했습니다. 손으로 쓰는 편지가 있을 테고, 점퍼를 친다거나, 이런 또 어느 공중 전화기 가서 전화를 한다거나 이런 방식을 쓰겠지만 지금 그럴 수가 없기 때문에 이것을 전화기를 내려다볼 때 어떤 마음으로 타이핑을 하느냐,

이런 문제를 좀 더 잘 표현하고 싶었어요. 다른 시절에, 캐릭터들이 서로의 달콤한 말을 적용하는 동안 어떤 감정을 가지고 있는지에 대해 더욱 집중하게 되었습니다. 이 아래쪽에서 카메라가 찍죠. 로우 앵글로 찍죠. 항상 그래 왔죠. 그것은 너무 자연스러운 일인 것이 내려다보고 있기 때문에 카메라도 내려가야 이 사람의 표정을 잘 포착할 수 있기 때문이죠. 당연한 일이에요. 당연한 결정입니다. 캐릭터가 타이핑을 하는 동안 눈을 감고 있는 것이라서

카메라가 낮아야 합니다. 그런데 거기에 내가 그런 생각을 하면서 하나 더 해본 것은 똑같은 로우 앵글이 뿐인데 그 위에 레이어를 하나 만들어서 텍스팅하는 하나하나 쳐지는 글자들이 보인다. 말하자면 우리의 카메라가 폰 안에 들어있다는 식으로 본다면 어떨까 하는 생각을 해본 겁니다. 그때의 컨셉은 뭐냐면 이 폰 안에 내가 사랑하고 보고 싶고 메시지를 전하고 싶은 그 여자가 이 안에 들어있다. 그 사람을 향해서 나는 지금 메시지를 핸드폰 안에 담고 있는 것입니다. 그래서 당신은 그녀에게 문자를 적립하는 동안 그녀에게 바로 들어가고 있었습니다. 섞는다. 수사를 하면서 이런 것들도 역시 어떻게 생각했냐면 주머니가 많은 옷을

입고 다니잖아요. 이 형사는. 그런데 이 사람이 그 많은 주머니에 넣고 다니는 것은 그 안에 무엇이 들어있을까가 중요한 궁금하게 만드는 것인데 거기에는 형사들이 늘 가지고 다닐 만한 것은 없다는 거예요.

권총도 없고 수첩도 없다는 거예요. 그 대신 엉뚱하게 립밤이니 물티슈니 무슨 브레스미트니 이런 것들이 들어있는 거죠. 우리 수첩이 많은 포켓을 가지고 있는 것이죠. 그래서 포켓 안에 있는 것에 대해서 자연스럽게 궁금해지죠. 그리고 우리가 알 수 있는 것은, 수첩을 가지고 있는 것에 대해 일반 수첩이 안 가지고 있는 것입니다. 예를 들어, 총을 가지고 있는 것입니다. 수첩에 대해선 입범이나 세안기 등의 것들이 있습니다. 그래서 쓰지 않는 대신 스마트 워치를 사용한다는 것이죠. 스마트폰의 활용에 있어서 제가 가장 마지막에 추구한 그리고 가장 잘했다고 생각하는 것은 통역 앱의 사용입니다. 그리고 영화의 마지막 장면과 함께 사용하는 휴대폰은

제가 가장 기쁘게 하는 것은 통역 앱의 사용입니다. 한국어를 꽤 잘하는 사람은 할 정도 있지만 그래도 자기 마음에 너무 절박하고 다급할 때 갑자기 한국말 잘 당하고 떠오르지 않고 흥분되어 있을 때, 그럴 때 설에는 그냥 중국어를 해버리고 맙니다. 이 캐릭터는 한국어로 아주 유용하다고 할 수 있겠지만, 불안하고 급하게 하고, 이 뜨거운 감정들에 가득 찬다니,

그녀는 중국어로 말할 수 있습니다. 그녀는 이전과는 상당히 다릅니다. 우리가 서툰 외국어를 사용할 때 어쩔 수 없이 보이게 되는 조금은 위축되고 조금은 상대의 눈치를 살피게 되고 조금은 주저하게 되는 그런 상태에서 벗어나서 지극히 당당하고 위험 있는 그런 모습으로 바뀌죠. 그리고 여유도 생기고 그런 일이 생긴과 동시에 혜준은 그리고 관객은 저 사람이 무슨 말 하는 건지 갑자기 답답해집니다. 너무 궁금해지는 거죠. 혜준과 관객이 이 상황을 보고 그들은 어떤 일이 일어나는지게 느껴질 것입니다.

그동안 우위에 섰다고 생각하는 이 권력 관계에서 갑자기 이제 바뀌게 되는 거죠. 역전되는 거죠. 헤드윈이 위대한 기능의 기능은 이제는 역전이 되었습니다. 그래서 통역 앱을 통해서 전달되는 그 목소리가 전해주는 내용에 대해서 아주 뭐랄까요. 애걸하는 마음이랄까. 뭔가 간절히 원하는 그런 마음으로 하나하나를 듣게 되죠. 그런데 그 목소리는 너무나 건조하고 너무나 감정이라고는 담겨 있지 않은 그런 기계적인 목소리죠. 내용은 정확합니다만 감정이 담겨 있지 않설의 전설은 모두 없어집니다. 그렇다면 관객은 그리고 혜주는 이제 머릿속으로 방금 전에 보여줬던 설의 표정, 눈빛, 손짓 이런 것을 떠올려야 합니다. 그래서 이제 관객은 혜진과 혜진이 전설의 전설의 전설의 표의 손짓과 얼굴 표현들을 기억해야 합니다.

그리고 설의 목소리, 그 음색과 어떤 부분에서 떨림이 있었는지 이런 것도 다시 기억을 불러내야 합니다. 그리고 설의 목소리를 기억해야 합니다 내용과 결합시켜야 비로소 완벽한 뉘앙한 사진을 얻을 때입니다. So with that translating app, I wanted to invite a fresh twist to the basic premise of film watching experience in which a character is talking and the audience is naturally bound to understand what they're saying. I love that. That's amazing the amount of thought you put into it. I wanted to ask you about the mountain and the mountain sequences and how you filmed them because they're so extraordinary.

Can you just talk about using that as a set piece in this story that you returned to? 이 살인미스터리를 해결하는 가장 결정적인 순간이니까요. 그렇기 때문에 혜준이 올라가는 모습과 그 같은 위치에서 설에는 어떤 표정이었을까 하는 것을 혜준이 상상하는 모습을 아주 행동의 매치컷을 정교하게 해서 마치 둘이 한 장소에 있는 것처럼 그렇게 편집을 했습니다. 혜진은 서열의 표정과 감정, 서로의 과정을 각각의 각각의 장소에서 그리스도로 이루어진 것을 생각합니다. 이 모든 과정은 정확한 맞춤형으로 그리스도로를 통해 연결하고 동시에 발표하는 것을 볼 수 있습니다. 면밀히 보면 알 수 있는 일인데 두 사람이 올라가는 시간태가 서로 다르기 때문에 설에는 아주 해 뜬 직후에 아주 이른 아침에 올라가는 거고 설에는, 그리고 해 주는 늦은 오후에 올라가는 것이라서 광선의 온도가 달라요.

그래서 색 보정 과정에서도 그것을 아주 신경을 써서 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다.

서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다.

서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다.

서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다.

서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게 만졌습니다. 서로 다르게여왔습니다. 보통 산을 올라간다, 암벽등반을 한다라고 하는 것은 어떤 성취를 느끼기 위해서 하는 것이죠.

높은 데 정상을 정복한다, 그래서 큰 만족을 얻는다. 그것을 목표로 하는 일이지만 그렇지만 혜준이 그렇게 능숙한 등반가도 아닌 사람이 겨우겨우 너무 힘들게 무서워하면서 겨우겨우 올라가서 그 정상에서 얻은 결론은 자기가 살아난 여자에게 속았다 그런데 헤드슨은 피곤하지 않은 클라이머가 아니라, 그의 피곤함과 두려움을 겪고, 마지막으로 높이게 되었지만, 그는 사랑하는 여자를 끌어안고 죽음을 겪었다고 알게 되었습니다. 그것은 거의 예상되는 결론이고, 혜주는 그 예상된 결론을 그저 확인하기 위해서 올라간 것 뿐이죠. 하지만 이 시선은 예상될 결론이고, 그는 이 예상을 확인하기 위해 바다에 올라가기 위해 예상될 수 있는 결정이고, 그는 이 결정을 확정하는 데에 단순히 산을 걸었습니다. 마지막에 나를 기다리고 있는 결론은 허문뿐인데 그것을 알면서도 거의 알면서도 꾸역꾸역 올라가야만 하는 그런 인간의 초상같이 느껴집니다. 그 장면은 10미터 정도 되는 가짜 암벽을 만들고요. 거기서 와이어를 달고 아주 안전하게 찍은 다음에 주변 환경들을 다 실제 산들을 찍어와서 합성을 해서 만들어진 장면이에요. 테크니컬로서는 10m의 거울을 만들었고,

그 장면을 안전하게 촬영했고, 그 다음엔 산골을 촬영했고, 그리고 배경을 CGI한 것입니다. 그리고 나서 제가 중요하게 생각한 것은 마지막 해변, 영화 제일 마지막에 해변에 거대한 바위가 있는데 그 바위가 어떤 산내 모양을 연상시킨다는 그 점이 중요했습니다. 그리고 그 바위의 가장 중요한 효과는, 바닷가에서 큰 rock을 볼 때, 그 산의 모양을 볼 수 있는 것이죠. 형태를 갖고 있는 그런 참 교묘하게도 절묘하게도 그렇게 생긴 바위를 실제로 찾을 수 있었어요. 그래서 그 바위 안으로 바위 사이에 난 길로

선해가 이렇게 들어가면서 사라져 버리고 또 해준도 똑같은 길을 가고 하는 그런 이미지를 만들 수 있었습니다. 물론 이 바위들은 파트 1에서 동일하지 않지만 길을 가고 하는 그런 이미지를 만들 수 있었습니다. rocks and Hyejin follows those same paths through those rocks. So I really liked that by the end of the film, we could have one frame in which both the mountain and the oceans are in it together. Director Park, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen. Have you seen any good films lately? 죄송한데, 게이머델 토로의 나잇메어 알리가 가장 좋았습니다. so much for doing the show. I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Thanks so much to the certified master Park Chan-wook, another certified master,

Tim Simons. Thanks to him. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Please tune into the big picture next week, a little special situation for you. One, we're talking about the whale. We're talking about Brendan Fraser building his Hall of Fame. We're talking about the Golden Globe announcements. We're also inviting on for the first time, Zach Barron. Amanda Dobbins' husband, one of my best friends, and he's never been on the show before. See you then.