The Big Picture - A Deep Reading of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ (Feat. SPOILERS) | Exit Survey

Episode Date: March 22, 2019

We react to ‘Us,’ Jordan Peele’s much-anticipated follow-up to the social thriller ‘Get Out.’ We give a spoiler-laden explanation of the ending, analyze Peele leveling up as a filmmaker, and parse some of the cultural (but largely personal) themes that peek through in the film. (Disclaimer: there are spoilers in this podcast.) Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. March Madness is here, and to help you with your bracket, make sure you listen to One Shiny Podcast with Mark Titus and Tate Frazier. Also, be sure to check out the Ringer's YouTube channel to watch Tate and Titus build their bracket and break down every matchup on their selection show, as well as Roger Sherman, who offers his three Cinderella picks for the NCAA tournament.

You can find those at youtube.com slash TheRinger. I'm Sean Fennessy. and I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the big picture a conversation show about the movie us the new film the second film from writer director Jordan Peele I'm going to say right up front we are going to spoil the hell out of this movie so if you have not seen Us, please walk away very quickly from this podcast. Can we just reiterate? We are spoiling Us. Turn it off if you don't want to hear spoilers. Amanda and I, right before we began recording this podcast, had a philosophical debate about the essence of spoiling. We're in complex times because a movie like Us is essentially bound by its spoilers. The whole story is, it's impossible to talk about without it. I wrote a whole column on TheRinger.com, you can read that, in which I danced around the idea of the ending

of the movie, but really it was much more about the kind of movie that Jordan Peele makes. This is only really his second movie, his first being, of course, Get Out, which was nominated for Best Picture, was an international phenomenon, I think kind of redefined what a horror movie could be in a lot of ways. Us is different, I would say. Amanda, you know, I'm going to throw some questions at you. We're going to talk casually, but excitedly and interestingly about this movie. I'm going to just start with you as a non-horror fan. You bravely went and saw this film. This is what everyone who's really excited about Us wants to hear is someone who's like too much of a wimp to see horror movies, in her opinion.

But I'm engaging. I'm going to try, folks. You're going to try. I mean, it's okay. You don't have to be a horror expert to enjoy us. And I think that's actually part of the fun of talking about the movie. But just as an experience, what did you feel walking out of the movie? I had a lot of questions, which I think was the point.

So in that sense, it was successful. And I think that is also a bit about the structure of the movie, which we'll talk more about. The second half is really loaded with a lot of ideas that come together very quickly and then the movie ends. And I have found that that is what really stays with me and also the various images. There are some really, really amazing and creepy images in this movie that have stayed with me. But funnily enough, I do think kind of the ending has stayed with me more or the questions than perhaps the premise

or the scares of the movie. Yeah, I think there's something very savvy about the design of the movie, which is as soon as it's over, you sort of want to rewatch it and see it again. And in order to of the movie. Yeah, I think there's something very savvy about the design of the movie, which is as soon as it's over, you sort of want to rewatch it and see it again. And in order to make a movie a movement, you need to see it multiple times. The most successful movies,

the Avengers Infinity Wars of the world, the reason those movies make a billion dollars is because people go four or five times and they go and they cry and they have emotional experiences with it. And I think Jordan Peele is a very emotionally bound filmmaker and he's creating relationships with characters that stick to you. You know, the relationship that we

had with Chris in Get Out was real. You know, we had a lot of empathy for him, even if that's a movie that ultimately is assailing white liberal guilt, which is something that I think you and I have been, we've victimized in that way. This movie though is different because it's about, it is about sort of everybody. It's a movie that is meant to be about America. Let's just talk a little bit about what this movie is. We'll sort of try to summarize it. It opens with a very specific declaration about the tunnels in America and how many of them are abandoned and unused and what is really happening inside of them. It very quickly shifts to a story set in the 1980s featuring a young girl named Adelaide Wilson

who is at a carnival, I guess, with her parents. And her parents are not maybe paying as much attention to her as they should. And Adelaide goes to what amounts to sort of a hall of mirrors, a funhouse room that is largely abandoned. And in that funhouse room, she encounters a double of herself. Yes. Someone who looks exactly like her. And it's not a reflection. It is largely abandoned. And in that funhouse room, she encounters a double of herself. Yes. Someone who looks exactly like her. And it's not a reflection.

It is another being. It is truly her. Now this is, in this sequence, there's some of, some like really awesome filmmaking. That's, this is where I was like, oh, cool. Like Jordan Peele's going to the next level.

It's just, it's very haunting. It's very beautifully shot. The way that it's lit is incredible. Michael LaBelle's score is amazing. And then we sort of flash forward from that moment. That's like a shattering, originating feeling for Adelaide. And then we meet the Wilson family in the present day and they're on their way to a road trip. Excuse me. They're on their way to a beach house vacation in Santa Cruz.

Yeah. Summer vacation. And we meet the whole Wilson gang and they seem like just a regular old American family, right? They're an African-American family, but that's sort of incidental in the telling of this story. Exactly. Yeah, they're in the car and they arrive and the kids are asleep in the backseat. And the dad is making fun of everyone for falling asleep and not participating in the car journey. And they are talking about the song on the radio. It is kind of your typical family

vacation fare. Yeah. And I think it's an interesting way to just make everybody relate to everybody right away. There's something like very Americana about that experience of being stuck in the backseat and having to listen to your dad lecture you about how powerful the song I Got Five On It Is by Looney is. Great song, by the way. The car, I believe, is a station wagon, like a newer model. But of course, it's very classic. Yeah, it's kind of Jordan Peele's Norman Rockefeller thing, and it's charming, but it doesn't necessarily seem like a scary movie for a while, and then the movie takes like a good, I don't know, 30 minutes or so to kind of kick back into that horror movie structure that we had right at the beginning with that very upsetting scene in that Hall of Mirrors. Yes, there's a whole bit with Winston Duke,

who plays the father, and a boat, which is very funny. It is genuinely, he is the comedic relief in the film for sure, but they are establishing the family dynamics, which I think is important because you are a bit invested in this family when things inevitably go south, but it is just funny and enjoyable. There's something that you learn right away, which is that something is wrong with Adelaide. You can tell immediately from, and Lupita Nyong'o plays the grown-up Adelaide,

really kind of an amazing performance. I think we'll talk about her a lot. I think she's maybe the single biggest takeaway aside from what Jordan did with the second movie and the ending that you pointed out at the top of the show. She's uneasy. She doesn't want to go to the beach. The beach is a reminder of this traumatic event that happened in her life. And there's just

something kind of biochemically off about her. And we can't quite figure out what that is, but Winston Duke's character just seems like kind of a doofus dad, like lovable, full of dad jokes, trying to make the best of his summer vacation. And she's just on edge for some reason. When you were watching the movie, what did you think was going on with her? Were you just like, this is just a PTSD situation? Yeah, they do at some point in that 30 minutes flash back to a scene after the fun house where young Adelaide is at child therapy and she's kind of outside the room while the parents are talking to the therapist and they're talking about everything that has happened to her since then.

She won't talk, something's wrong. And you watch Adelaide hearing that. And so PTSD is the clear example. We should also say, it's not that the beach is a traumatic place for her. It's literally the same beach. It's Santa Cruz. So she doesn't want to go back to a place

where something scary happened, which is understandable. And you just kind of sense that it's a little too close. Yeah. So there's my first question. Yeah. Why are they going back to the same beach where something terrible happened to her? Right. Well, it's a great question.

And that was one of the main notes is like, maybe you try to prevent, maybe you try to head that off if you're Adelaide, if you're adult Adelaide. You'd think she would, right? Yeah, of course. i think maybe she had buried what exactly beat which beach it was or where she had been well she's clearly not accessing it or talking about it because she it becomes clear that her husband does not know about the incident and she's buried it very deep and doesn't want to talk about it and so later that night while he's trying to seduce her which was a very funny moment, and she's just like 100% not receptive to it, and then explains why and starts trying to explain what happened to her as a child.

And he doesn't take it seriously because it sounds like she was just a six-year-old who got scared by something in a mirror. But it's clear that she hasn't felt ready to talk about it for whatever reason. Spoiler alert. There's no, we don't felt ready to talk about it for whatever reason. Spoiler alert. There's no, we don't have to spoil anything. I mean, we ultimately learn why, which is that the Adelaide we meet is not the Adelaide we met at the very beginning of the film. And things are not quite what they seem throughout a lot of this movie. Before we go any further, I do want to point out that there are so many little tidbits of self-referentiality and pop cultural ephemera sprinkled throughout this movie.

In that opening sequence that I mentioned about the tunnels, immediately after that, we get a vision of a commercial on a television from the Hands Across America movement. And it is a very slow pan into the commercial. Hands Across America was, of course, a sort of charity design in which thousands of people locked hands or locked arms rather across various states in America to fight homelessness. And you're familiar with Hands Across America at all? I was a little too young, but the image and especially the poster, the t-shirt that kind of recurs through the film was vaguely buried somewhere in my subconscious. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing. It's largely considered a failure. You know, it was a noble gesture

that was ultimately sort of illogical. And I thought that that was kind of an interesting metaphor that fits inside the story. And then on either sides of this television that we're slowly panning in on, we see the shelving units. And on the shelving units, you've got a copy of The Right Stuff on vhs and you've got a copy

of the goonies and you've got a copy of uh this movie chud have you seen chud i haven't capital c capital h capital u capital d it's a horror movie it's about um i'm not going to get into it it's probably too long to describe and most cruciallycially, Steve Martin comedy, The Man with Two Brains is on that shelf as well. And all of those movies represent something to this movie. And there are all of these little signature flashes throughout the movie that is, you know, is Jordan telling us as this guy born in 1979 that all of the stuff he grew up with is meaningful to the making of his story. The horror has this long tradition of wending in all of this stuff. You don't know as much about those movies. You're not as personally connected to stuff like that.

You haven't seen Chud. That's true. I have not seen Chud. So when you see something like that, you're just like, this is just set design. This is just a prop. No, because, you know, the right stuff signifies something to me. The VH, the concept of VHS, the 80s. And I think we've just been so programmed now to you see a specific film or movie or music reference that's identified by name in a movie and you know it's significant somehow.

We talked about this at length with Captain Marvel a couple weeks ago. I guess I don't know the specific horror references, especially for something like Chud. I don't know the specific horror references, especially for something like Chud. I don't know what that is. But there are certain horror references in this movie that even I recognized because, you know, I have seen some horror movies and also they do transcend the movies sometimes, like the twins in The Shining transcend culture and they're everywhere in this. So you kind of once you see enough of those movies and you see the kid wearing theaws shirt and you see another thriller shirt, like, you know what's going on. You understand that this is part of a thesis statement and you can kind of pull together what the thesis statement is. It is, although I think in some cases the thesis statement is like five thesis statements. And that's a little bit of a, it's not a problem that I have with the movie, but it's something that feels a little bit messy.

And we'll get into that as we keep talking about it but for example chud is here's the plot description of chud the plot concerns a new york city police officer and a homeless shelter manager who join forces to investigate a series of disappearances and discover the missing are taken by humanoid monsters that live below the city now you can see right so it's just doing all the reference work yes it's like all the footnotes and yeah but as we go through the first 30 minutes of this movie you don't need to know any of that stuff until we get to that moment in the house when suddenly doppelgangers of the wilson family appear in their driveway and i thought that the introduction of those characters was interesting because it was mostly pretty funny.

And Winston Duke is used largely throughout this movie as a kind of comic relief. And his character in some ways is almost operating in a different movie than the two kids and Lupita. And I don't mean that in a bad way. But he's having a kind of like a genuine response to the ridiculousness of the events, which makes it seem more like a sitcom. Whereas Lupita and the kids are having like a pure horror response. Do you have a fear of the doppelganger? like a sitcom, whereas Lupita and the kids are having like a pure horror response. Yes. Do you have a fear of the doppelganger? No, it's so funny. I heard Jordan Peele say that to you on the podcast you did with him.

It's like a very specific fear that has never occurred to me in my entire life. I assume if an exact replica of me showed up in front of me, I would be a little freaked out. But that's not the most scary thing I can imagine, or maybe even the 10th most scary, just specifically. Would you try to befriend your doppelganger? No, I mean, I don't try to befriend anyone. But I was like, I think I would be weirded out, but I don't think I would be weirded out. I think my first instinct would just be like, wow, that person looks exactly a lot like me. I wouldn't go straight to supernatural.

I guess I'm not really seeing the world that way. I would assume there's some sort of practical explanation. I don't know. The world's a big place. Wow. So if there's anyone out there who looks precisely like Amanda Dobbins, get in touch with us. I don't know.

Amanda's not afraid of you. A more reasonable explanation would be like, I had a twin and my parents didn't tell me about it that would be a reasonable explanation more reasonable than they're like

as a whole world of doppelgangers living under the tunnels probably you gotta call your parents it's not I don't think it would be reasonable objectively

but I think I would go to that before I would go to I'm in a horror movie and something creepy is happening and partially that's because I haven't watched that many horror movies and so my my brain is not wired that way. I've watched a lot

of family dramas with hidden children. So maybe I would go there, but no, I still don't even think within the context of a horror movie, that is the most, that's the scariest concept to me. I don't know. Someone with a chainsaw is scarier. I was raised on Freddy Krueger and you were raised on, I don't know, what is it? Flowers in the attic? What's the name of that? Yes. Well, that's a different thing. I mean, that's about incest, but you know. Sure. In the attic. Sure. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. I think I will say though that the shot of the four doppelgangers together in this movie is very chilling. It is. It's kind of classic horror movie image making. I would say that none of that stuff scared me at all.

I think it takes a little while to learn that the doppelgangers who have come to meet the Wilson family, like how truly malevolent they are before I started getting quote unquote scared. I don't really get scared of horror movies. That's not a brag. It's just as you know, our pal and colleague Chris Ryan likes to say that the sort of his nerve endings have been burned out a little bit by seeing so many horror movies. And that does happen. But I did feel like it was quite tense.

And that is sort of what I'm looking for. I'm kind of like looking to get onto the edge of my seat. And that's when the movie kind of kicks into high gear is when these doppelgangers show up. They enter the house. They sort of attack the family. get is I think a very specific and interesting creative choice which is Lupita's doppelganger character sits down the family and explains what they are and the thesis of the movie yes and at one point quite frankly says when they're asked who they are says we are Americans and on the one hand I thought that that was a cool choice and on on the other hand, I was like, kind of smacked my forehead because it requires a boldness to do your, your big metaphor out loud. And it also requires

like a little bit of, I don't want to say a distrust of the audience, but he's really underlined what he's trying to say here, which is that there is something inside of all of us that is terrible and that we are ignoring and we're sort of pushing away or burying beneath the surface. And I thought it was pretty early in the movie to say, here's where we're going. What did you think when that scene and Lupita's doppelganger character starts to explain where they came from and why? Remind me, does she do that much? I mean, she says we're Americans in that scene in the living room. And I latched onto that, obviously. And does she explain the full tethering at that point?

For the most part, she explains, you know, that there are shadows, that they are related, that underneath this country, there is a shadow image, a tethered image of every person. And whatever thing that person above the surface is doing, that person above the surface is doing that person below the surface is doing. So they do kind of explain this mythology that Jordan has been slowly compiling by showing us that copy of Chud and explaining in that little preamble about the tunnels that there's this whole world we don't know about. The clearest sign, you know, earlier in the film that something is amiss is we see a homeless man who Adelaide recognizes from early in the film. He's sort of aged 20 years or so, and he has been killed and brought onto an ambulance. And then a little bit later, her son sees that same homeless man, apparently with a bloody hand. And that is that sort of first instinct that there's a doubling going on here,

that there are two of everyone. And notably that homeless man was holding a sign that reads Jeremiah 11, 11, which is a biblical passage. Right. Do you want to read it? Shall I read it? Yeah. I've been waiting my whole life to read a biblical passage on a podcast. This is a big moment for me. Are you ready? So Jeremiah 11, 11 in the King James version of the Bible reads, therefore, thus saith the Lord, behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape. And though they shall cry unto me,

I will not hearken unto them. So this takes us back to this encounter between Adelaide and Red, her double. And there's that striking image that you see of Adelaide with the single tear coming down her face as she realizes that she's being confronted by both a true and a metaphorical evil. This is kind of a heavy stuff for a horror romp at the movies. Yes. I mean, I guess I wouldn't know, but in some ways that made it more interesting

to me. And in that sense, you asked, how do I feel about him just laying it out, laying out the idea? And in some ways it's really obvious, but in some ways it starts, it gives you the clue to allow for the different interpretations. As soon as she kind of gave her speech, I was like, oh, cool, this is about capitalism. And then I just watched the whole thing through the, like, as a comment on American capitalism, which, you know, in many ways, just a comment on America, which this movie is. But I think that is slightly different. Some people seem to have taken a more internalized view of what this is and about the evil in ourselves or whatever, which sure.

I mean, I think those things are interwoven. Exactly. So what motivates us to pursue more? Right. You know, and what motivates us to let people have less, let everyone else have less. Exactly. In that sense, because those are slightly different interpretations and you're seeing different things. You know, and what motivates us to let people have less, let everyone else have less. In that sense, because those are slightly different interpretations and you're seeing different things, it kind of works because it gives you a prompt to look at everything else a slightly different way. So I agree with you that it's pretty obvious and that's the We're Americans has really stuck with me.

But the idea of what does We're Americans mean is then explored through through the rest of the film and i think that's kind of interesting no that's a good good way of phrasing it that people are going to read this movie differently i mean i i think even you and i read it differently to some extent i think you could also say well this is about you know religion and the incursion of christian ideals inside of american society this is about politics and how a two-party system creates the above and the below. And there are some people who are righteous and there are some people who are buried. Like, there are a lot of different, and that's, that's unique. I think there's only a handful of filmmakers, especially filmmakers who work in horror, who have ever kind of been able to pull

that off. I think John Carpenter is probably the person who has best done it, who has said like, this movie is called They Live. It's uh an evil alien race that has overtaken our society but we don't know it and they're tricking us into leading a frivolous lifestyle by sending these messages to us at all times and it's like that is the flattest reagan era metaphor for our society as you could ever have but still it works yes and and still inside of a movie like they live you get this nine or eleven minute sequence in which two guys just punch each other and you're like i love how they're just punching each other and this movie similarly has these long sequences of the two doubles you know the little boy and his double the little girl and her double or winston duke and his double having these like

showdowns and these classic horror movie sort of fight and escape sequences. Are you able to watch that stuff with enjoyment or do you have your hands over your eyes at this stage? No, it's so interesting. So I don't have my hands over my eyes. It's not scary to me at all because a moment clicks in these scenes and you're like, oh, okay, they're fighting now. Okay, this is a chase scene. And I don't mean to diminish the amount of craft that it takes to construct a really great fight scene. I mean pacing the camera angles the everyone moving there's a lot of choreography and it can be really great as I think it was especially in that first house scene in us and it can be like really schlocky but no it's a known quantity so for me it's not scary

at all I'm just like all right this is the fight scene and what's funny is for me as a person who doesn't watch as many of these movies and who just generally a fight scene or a confrontation a physical confrontation that doesn't involve sex is not what I'm looking forward to in a movie so physical confrontation well yeah not feature sex is not what you're looking forward to in a movie yeah I just meant like as soon as you said a physical confrontation i was like well sex you know kind of is in some ways confrontation well no but and i don't mean to you know like consensual and permissive sex is important in movies and in life but extraordinary revealing podcast sorry but you know what i mean i was like typically just like the really physically choreographed aspects of movies are when my brain starts to wander a little you don't like to be startled

that's the thing that is scary for you exactly but other than that I'm just like all right this is happening and I'm kind of paying attention and I'm kind of actually thinking about what this movie means it's funny I I had kind of a different experience. I'm usually with you. I think it's kind of the like Jason is chasing after teenagers aspect of horror movies is not my favorite part of it. In this one, I felt a little bit differently. I felt like maybe it was just because I'm always thinking a little bit outside of the movie, but I was like, oh, this is Jordan's chance to kind of stage some interesting set pieces and do some interesting stuff. I was a little less convinced when I was listening to Red explain the concept of the shadow and tethering. And that stuff felt not forced

necessarily, but just like really explicative. It was kind of like the nut graph of the movie. And don't knock a nut graph. You're an editor as am I. Well, they can be valuable, but put nut graphs in your pieces. Yeah. I mean, most pieces are not metaphorical though, you know, and this one's very metaphorical, so you don't want to over-explain the theme of your piece. And I felt like it was doing that a little bit. And then the movie, once we get past that sequence and we start to understand a little bit more about what's going on with the doubling and why not just the doubling of this family but of other families, we very quickly learn. We go to Elizabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker's family's home. And that sequence to me was like one of the best in the movie.

Well, it was a true surprise. I did not know that was coming. And I was like, oh my God. Yes. There are more. Yes. When I saw the movie South by Southwest at the premiere, I felt like the audience kind of almost like came to life.

Yeah. And they felt like they were in a different movie with bigger possibilities. Where you're like, this isn't just what we saw in the trailer, where the Wilson family is being tortured by four people that look like them. This is a little bit more of a nationwide concern in a lot of ways. And I thought that there's a lot of great things happening there. One, just the lampooning of this sort of like upper middle class, Airbnb aspirational lifestyle, the sort of discontent between Heidecker and Moss's characters and how much they kind of hate each other, which is true of many relationships for people who have

young children. The music and the way that all of that beautiful sound system is playing high-key, lovely pop music set against terror is like a time-worn formula. What's the name of the system? Ophelia? Ophelia. Which is iconic. Perhaps some Alexis satire going on there. I also just think Tim Heidecker and Elizabeth Moss are just really funny and great actors.

And there's just an extended sequence here where evil Elizabeth Moss vamps. And it's in many ways the best part of the movie because she's just such in command of the light and the dark at all times. Where did you think the movie was going to go? Did you think that it was going to widen to something more grand when we got into that house? Or did you think like, oh, maybe just this kind of beach community is being haunted? That's a great question. I guess I didn't really think about it. It does move pretty quickly from their doubles showing up and they die real fast. Yes. And then Lupita's family shows up and then there's a battle and they they move. They turn on the TV so quickly and they really open the scale of the movie so quickly that I'm not sure I had time to think.

How big is this conspiracy? And I guess that's a testament to the actual those fight scenes in the house that I was very invested in what's going to happen and how are they going to kill these four people and they immediately moved on to the the CNN report of everyone everywhere which was a little creepy I felt like and it and that was an interesting juxtaposition because on the one hand they're just like four it's a family sitting in a room watching CNN which and and they are I was concerned for them I like, you need to be more active. You need to just not watch CNN right now. This is a great point. Which, but that's, isn't that a hallmark of a horror movie that you're yelling at the screen, get up, get out, you know, get out. And, sorry, it was working. And it also then moved the plot forward so quickly that I didn't have to worry about.

I thought that they, I guess I just thought they were going to keep running for a while. And so I was happy when there was suddenly a broader conspiracy. I think I like conspiracies more than chases, which is again, why the whole exposition at the beginning of the movie worked for me because then there was a conspiracy to invest in. There's something for everyone. Yeah. It's funny because when Jordan and I spoke a couple of weeks ago, he talked about setting up classic horror tropes and then trying to pivot away from them quickly set expectations and then pull the rug and that that sequence where they're watching tv to have the movie explained to not just them but to all of us is on the one hand kind of hacky and on the other hand kind of

fundamental to making a good horror movie or making a good thriller or a good conspiracy science fiction movie and I think he did it pretty elegantly. You know, you don't really feel, especially in that middle half hour, that sort of like second act, the movie is just really, really effective to me. Is there anything else that jumps out at you about the transition, especially like Lupita's ability to turn into a superhero during that time? Because she's like a killing machine. Yeah.

With the, it's the fireplace tool yes it's the hot poker yeah no they were pretty creepy i guess i we should talk about the kids who also get to kill some people and were pretty effective with it there was a great a frying pan moment or no it's a golf club i'm sorry which i enjoyed and then someone that the smallest the youngest boy, uses one of those really gaudy amethyst crystal situations that you see in Airbnb homes, which was a nice commentary, and he also makes good use of it at the right moment.

Good touch. I enjoyed that. Shahadi Wright-Joseph and Evan Alex are the two actors, the two young actors who play dual roles in this movie, and they're very good. They are. Evan Alex, in particular, the young boy, is very good in this movie and they're very good they are um evan alex in particular the young boy is very good in the movie and has a has a difficult role i think in some

respects and he was quite the firecracker at the south by southwest premiere oh really kind of grabbed the mic at some point and just started kind of freelancing his answer to a question oh good incredibly charming um and i also learned that shahadi right joseph is going to be in the lion king so she's probably going to be famous. Yes. So that's notable. Her performance as the double is haunting. Very upsetting.

Yeah. There's a great chase sequence with her as well on the road using a vehicle. I think that the movie gets a little bit more dense and complicated as we get into the third act. And I think that this is where a lot of the conversation and debate is going to happen because that's where we start to learn a lot more about the sort of underworld, this below the surface world that we know about. And then we get this crazy twist ending.

I wanted to ask you before we get to that about Get Out and whether you thought Get Out was more effective as a horror movie or a social satire and then use that as a way kind of into the us conversation. Well, I think you said earlier it reinvented what a horror movie can be. So I don't know whether it's fair to say I thought it was more effective as a social satire because I think it does work. It's very scary. It's very scary. It's very tense. What I liked about it is that there was more character and more development and less of the just running around

a house chasing each other. I think just kind of time-wise that doesn't happen until the, what, last 30 or 40 minutes of the movie. Yeah, we don't even really know what's going on fully until Rose doesn't give him the keys. But again again you know something is uneasy and something's off and that's interesting for me so i i just i found it unsettling and if not like totally jump scary and interesting and so to me that works as a horror movie and a social satire i I suppose, in terms of the ideas that we have carried out of the movie and that have become part of society, most specifically The Sunken Place,

but also like Bradley Woodford's character. I would have voted for him a third time. Yeah, the social commentary is what's lived on. Yeah, and I think that that is a fascinating burden for Jordan to bring into this movie um it's not a bad thing it just means that he has set a benchmark for what his movies need to do for himself even if that's unfair um but he seemed to when we talked he seemed to be open to that idea open to the idea of saying that i want to take on that burden and i want to say

something i think the only times when i struggled with Us was when he so frankly and clearly said, this is what this means. Get Out is not a subtle movie. In fact, there's an entire sequence in which Chris has explained to him, not only that CNN sequence in Us, what the brain removal thing is and the whole history of that family. They literally make him watch that and we watch it with him. So, you know, this is like a strategy to make audiences understand the point of your movie. But this one, even though it's not about race, which is a key element of the story of America, it being about like every single person in America is heavy, is heavy and hard to convince people that you've got the right idea about it. Yeah. I mean, there are just some things that aren't totally answered. I think that's part of the problem, right?

I feel like our interpretation that it's about America and the gaps between people in America, whether that be wealth, whether that be race, whether that be religion, whether, you know, just the ways in which Americans are pitted against each other in this place that is supposed to be an opportunity for everyone. And we know that's a lie and we know that what it was built on also. So that's all pretty clear. And it's just kind of how you choose to what emphasis you take from it. But there are some fundamental questions that I have about that setup that don't really get answered. Let's talk to each other.

Yeah, so we should just say eventually Lupita goes back to the funhouse, right? And then she takes the escalator down that we weren't seeing before and she winds up in the aforementioned tunnels, which look a lot like a prison and or a mental institution. Or, you know, which are often the same thing, which is a different podcast for a different time. And she is revealed. She finds the whole world of the tethered and finds this whole underground world of people who are trapped there and living lesser versions of a life now how and why they're there is explained in voiceover

and i've got some questions shoot i don't have answers yeah so i mean that's one of the things it's how and why they're there it's kind of explained that someone created are they clones or what is the functioning of the tether system in turn are they sharing a spiritual connection are the people below animating the people above like what's going on i don't have any answers right okay i have thought often while watching it about the twilight zone and i think that that's very purposeful jordan of course is relaunching his version of the twilight zone on cbs All Access this year. The Twilight Zone is my favorite television show of all time. And I think that there are some episodes in which logic is useful, and there are other episodes in which it is not useful. And I think often of the episode in which

a plane is flying from one destination to another, and then just seemingly radically, it travels into the distant past, into the land of dinosaurs. And we don't even really understand why. We can't figure it out. And it's meant to be, you know, this allegory about how time passes and the way we treat the moments around us.

And it's like a mediocre, it's like a B minus twilight zone episode but like there's never really an explanation for why that happened it's just a gateway to the conversation that rod serling and his writers want to have and i think that the tethered and everything that's happening underground is just a literally overwrought tool for the metaphor and i don't think there's like a real reason why you know red and adelaide are bound to one another other than there's some some i don't know spiritual religious correlation between birth and having something having a shadow beyond that like to explicate it more i think essentially ruins the the point of the

metaphor but that being said i think a lot of people walk out of this movie and be like so what's going on with those people underground you know like people who are not spending a lot of time thinking about like the wealth gap in america who are just like scare me yeah um don't don't won't fully grasp it because it's explained but it's not fully unpacked right i think also there's an argument to be made that to feel the full impact of the conclusion when lapita when adelaide is fighting her double and then the ultimate twist after that you want to have some sense of the connection between them though i suppose the flip side to that would be your point that maybe you're not supposed to understand the connection between them or maybe it's immaterial. And the idea of the doubles is just that there are other – it could be us.

You could be living a totally different life. Everyone is human and all it takes is a flip of the coin or whatever fate thing for you to wind up in another situation. I think that's what it is. I think it's for every person in this country who is enormously successful and lucky on a vacation in Santa Cruz. There is another person who has been relegated to a pitiless existence. And as an idea for us to talk about on a podcast, I think that's super rich. As an idea to explicate in the synopsis of a movie. It's a little confusing. Yeah. And that might be the ultimate flaw of the movie.

What you've just described. That might be the thing that I think people are going to be like, so what? Like if you kill the person underground, does the person above ground die? Like there's some logic questions that people are going to have here. And I think it's a little risky to kind of do the logic game with horror movies. They tend to like, what And I think it's a little risky to kind of do the logic game with horror movies.

They tend to like, Freddy Krueger is a manifestation of dreams, but he is also the haunted spirit of a man who was killed and has sought revenge on the children of the people who killed him with a knife glove. Like, you know, that movie doesn't make sense. It's true.

But it is about something that is about like when you go to sleep, what you think of, how real is it versus how much is it a manifestation of what's haunting you in your real life. And yeah, it's a powerful idea. It makes those Freddy movies really fun. The glove that we see in us is unmistakably a reference to Freddy Krueger's glove. It's just to get to the bottom of some of that stuff.

I'm curious if you have other questions like that, because I think it's interesting to kind of explore how they don't make sense to make sense of what the bigger thing that Jordan's trying to say. Yeah. And I think that's the main one. And I still got everything about like I took this in terms of capitalism and the American dream and participating in America and what success means at the expense of someone else, which is how our entire society is organized. So and that all came across me pretty clearly. And I think that there are a lot of, you know, from the tunnel looks like a prison.

They're wearing all of the tethered people are wearing jumpsuits that are either work suits or prison suits. You know, there is a lot of stuff going on visually to underline that. And there are all of these cues throughout the movie too. I mean, the one that sticks with me is that image of the Frisbee landing on a beach towel. And the Frisbee, of course, is a circle and it lands on a beach towel and the shape on the beach towel is a circle. And it's sort of like, it's one thing covering another thing. And it's like,

for every person that is imprisoned in this country, there is a person that is thriving on a beach somewhere. Like, it's a very, very direct, clear synchronicity between visual image and big idea. Yes. The logic, I'm not so sure. I guess you don't really need it unless you're trying to explain it to someone else,

which I did last night. I had someone who wanted it to be spoiled and asked me, and I was trying to explain it, and I kept being like, because capitalism. And they had a lot of follow-up questions. Was this just like a man wandering in the street? Who was this person? It was a friend of mine who wanted it to be spoiled, and so I obliged. You should consider that as a hobby. Just explain movies to people.

I would love to. We're doing it right here it right okay it's actually for money yeah um the logic makes sense or the movie is just so powerful in terms of images and you're there in the moment that it all kind of comes together and you get the message when you're breaking it down after the fact there are the holes which doesn't really matter if you're trying to explain it to your friend who wants to be spoiled that's like not what movies for. But when people do walk out of the movie and say, OK, what happened and are breaking it down? I wonder. I don't think it's a problem. I think what it does is inspires people to go back and watch it five times. But it'll be interesting to see how the discourse holds up to, you know, day five of being like, but how did the rabbits get there? Which how did the rabbits get there which how did the rabbits get there that's another one for you it's a very good question why do they

only eat rabbits why is that the the tethered people live below the surface in this seeming mental institution and there are rabbits everywhere now there's obviously like a very direct lewis carroll like follow the white rabbit thing here which is like a nice visual cue and it makes for a very evocative image in a trailer. Why the rabbit, like what the rabbits represent? I don't, I have no idea. Is it some sort of population thing? I don't know. I have no clue. Okay. What's up with the scissors? Why scissors? Well, I think that there's probably like a couple of interesting ways to think about that imagery. One, when something is tethered, you need to make a cut. You need to split that.

There you go. That's it. That's the one. I hadn't thought of it. The best way to do that is with a pair of scissors. Okay. That's satisfying. Yeah.

And I think that also is similarly acute to Freddy Krueger and kind of knife killers and all of these like 80s horror movies that he's making a reference to you know that visual image plus you know I think a lot of this is just about good branding I think things like the rabbit and the glove and the scissors are striking visual cues and we saw from the teacup and the spoon and we saw from Chris's tear and get out that Jordan just has an affinity for visual hallmarks for like this language that he's creating his little world, his universe. And one of the things that they did at South by Southwest,

the after party was just a, it was a gallery showing a fan art connected to the movie us, which no one had seen yet, but hundreds, maybe thousands of people had created fan art for a movie they didn't know about. They just looked at the poster, they watched the trailer and they were like, all this stuff is, all these visual signifiers mean a lot to me. I don't even, you know, that's maybe a commentary on the intensity of fandom in 2019. But I do think that things like the scissors, Jordan's very smart

about saying, if we do it this way, it will be more significant than if we just have like a kitchen knife. You know, it will make it more clear, the bigger idea of what I'm after. So I like that. I admire that. Even if it's, even if like the rabbits are also lacking a kind of logic. Yeah. But this is a key distinction that as soon as you said the scissors, when something is tethered, you have to cut it, you need scissors. That's very satisfying. I get it. And I was like, oh, okay. And I do ultimately think that there are more answers than not in this movie, but I like that. You want it to be satisfying and maybe it is over explained at times,

but everything has a reason or almost everything in this movie has a reason, which for me as a viewer is gratifying. I would be angrier if it didn't. So in that sense, I don't mind his extreme on the nose explication from time to time. Shall we discuss the final twist? Yeah. So the final twist, of course, is that Adelaide is not Adelaide.

Adelaide is in fact Red and Red is in fact Adelaide. When they had that encounter as kids in that hall of mirrors, in fact, Red swapped out her life with Adelaide that when they had that encounter as kids in that hall of mirrors in fact Red swapped out her life with Adelaide she switched places with her and I guess yeah by by grabbing her by the throat and dragging her into the to the tunnel and imprisoning her and going to take over her life yes and so it starts to become clear immediately why the Adelaide that we come to know throughout the movie, there's just something kind of off about her because she is not, in fact,

a genuine above-the-surface human, even though she's lived above the surface for 20-plus years. Right. And they flash back again to the scene of child, we now know to be red, outside of the therapy,

and you hear the mother saying again, I just want my little girl back, which takes on added significance now that you know it just want my little girl back um which takes on added significance now that you know it is a different little girl how sad yeah uh i gotta say i i don't totally understand what that did that specific storytelling choice other than just make me go like oh okay something happened because it's a movie that is so larded with metaphor and so larded with ideas well i have i have an idea i mean number one it's a good twist but also i saw this with my husband and he came home and he was like so who are the villains in this and obviously

it's awesome yeah it is us um which but it just complicates the idea of who is the villain in this movie because if Adelaide and family had just survived it and they beat the system, then it just means that you too can beat capitalism and you too can beat America and they would be the heroes of the movie. And I think that there's something about switching it in so the person who, I mean, technically the tethered are like the good people. So that's where I was going to go with this. I think that falls apart a little bit because it means that the people who are the monotonous drones confined to the basement

are heroes. Now, I think there's obviously something to be said for the vanquished dignity and frustration that comes with being poor or being marginalized in society or any of the various metaphors and social constructs you want to use to project onto the people who live under the surface. But I don't know if those are the heroes. And I don't know if it's quite so simple as Red posing as Adelaide is the villain.

And maybe that is the point. Maybe the point is just there's a murky moral valence going on here that everybody is kind of guilty to some extent. Yeah, I think that's part of it. And I think, I don't know, in that way, I guess it forces you to interrogate how you feel about the twist and how you feel about the various people in it because I think the tethered if they aren't the heroes then are at least like the oppressed people who have not done anything who caught the short end of the stick and my instinct when I saw the twist I was like oh, oh no, the wrong person made it. But is that right? No.

Like, you know, but so just to interrogate what that means and what it means to what is even the right person and who is even the hero in this system and can anything be possible. So cut back to the beginning of the movie. Yeah. Red posing as Adelaide when she realizes they're going to Santa Cruz and going to the beach. She's very uneasy. Yeah. Is she very uneasy because she knows that this revolt from the tethered is coming?

What is it that she's uneasy about? I mean, I don't think that she knows that the revolt is coming because she's been cut off and it is real Adelaide who has been in the tunnels all these years who plans the revolt. I think she's uneasy because like you don't go back to the scene of the crime, which, you know, whether or not this is a crime is another murky question for this, that this movie raises.

I don't totally think it is, but you don't go back to the scene of the thing. I guess. Don't you? I've not committed a crime in which I swapped lives with a doppelganger.

I mean, also, you know, this is clear, this can't be the only way to access the tunnels across America. So she's probably been. Well, I have an explanation for that, which is just that she's native to that part of the tunnel. Right.

You know, the person with whom she has swapped. And that person, because she is not a tethered, is the only person who could have ever organized and executed a revolt because she is aware of a life beyond this. Right. So it had to happen there. It had to originate there uh miles surrey has a piece on the site today about various theories and it asks an important question about what happens to the people and that to the tethered when the real person travels and specifically when they go out of the country extraordinarily good question i just i you know it's not clear to me whether

people are because they do establish at the beginning of the movie that the tunnels stretch across the U.S. So are people moving in tandem? They haven't established a lot of geographical necessity in the tethered. There's a lot they haven't established. Well, for sure. But, you know, that's a fun question to ask, right? It is. A less fun but I think more interesting question to ask is, after the screening, Jordan very frankly during the Q&A said that this movie is about, in the aftermath of Get Out, looking at myself and the things that I do and that I'm responsible for and whether I'm hurting people or if I am the problem as opposed to pointing a finger and saying white liberal guilt or a systemic and historic system of oppression is the reason that we have things are bad in this country and saying it's on me or it's on us together to put a fine point on it. Do you buy that as a credible theory?

And secondarily, do you think audiences will respond to that idea? So in the wake of say the first part of what he said. Well, Get Out is a movie that is obviously like, here are some things that are wrong. And here's why race in this country is the way it is at times. Because you've got a lot of people who think they're doing good, but those people are really doing a lot of bad as well. And you got to interrogate why those people think they're doing the right thing. Us is about the bad things that we all do. It is.

It's about my own selfishness. It's about my unwillingness to give $5 to a homeless person on the street. It's about my unwillingness to think more broadly about, to have more empathy for people. Like, I think that that's a very powerful conceit that probably indicts people's own selfishness in a provocative way. Yeah. But I don't think the people, when they go go to the movies want to walk out feeling like, man, I am the villain. I am the red in this story.

It's so funny because when I was not at the Austin screening, and so when you first said that, I thought he was saying that in the wake of Get Out, in the wake of having real success, because that was a breakout movie for him,

and now he is like a extremely successful director in hollywood and can do whatever he wanted and is theoretically like rising in the hollywood capitalist society i'm sorry to keep making this like a systemic critique but i just really saw it in those terms and so what does it mean to participate in a system and a society i mean you know we've learned so much about how screwed up Hollywood is, but... I mean, there are two big special thanks in the credits of the film, too.

One is Paul Thomas Anderson and two is Steven Spielberg. And those are sort of the two poles of mainstream Hollywood. Right. You know, one is very artistic and vision-driven and personal

and, you know, unbending to the will of any corporation. And the other is artistic and thoughtful, but a crowd pleaser. Somebody who makes movies for everybody. And I can almost feel the tension of those two special thanks happening inside of this movie. Jordan wants to be able to say, the problem is that we're a bunch of selfish assholes and that we need to look around us and realize how to help people more because we're not helping we're only trying to help ourselves and that is destructive and there's another part of him that is like you know it'd be sick if there was like a cool chase scene and a golden pair of scissors and we just

stabbed people and we just kept them on the edge of their seats the whole time that and those two things are what's happening inside of this movie yeah i. I just also see it in terms of, I'm just going full political here, but to succeed in America, to be a person who makes it and who can do what they want is always at the expense of other people. That is just how the system is arranged. And to choose to participate in that versus,

and profit and celebrate that versus the anxiety that must come with it. And, you know, especially since his last movie was about pointing out many of this, the social ills in this country, probably like the oldest and the primal one. Then to be lauded by that country, it's a complicated, and that system is a complicated feeling, I would imagine. I would not know. I'm not nearly as successful. But my son might say not at all. But, yeah. So I think there are a lot of different tensions in that way.

But it does, you know, this movie is called Us, which is also U.S. So there we go. Not lost on me either. Let me ask you a very direct question do you like this movie? do you like it? watching it? do you like thinking about it?

I like thinking about it a lot which maybe means that it's like a total failure as a horror movie I don't know because I'm not the I'm not the audience no I don't think that's true I

I enjoyed watching it I thought it was just really visually impressive a lot of like I said a lot of shots that will stay with me he's extremely accomplished I enjoyed watching it. I thought it was just really visually impressive. A lot of, like I said, a lot of shots that will stay with me. He's extremely accomplished and I liked the puzzle of it. I did notice that my theater was really quiet, which I thought was really interesting.

Not a lot of screams or not a lot of laughs? I think there were some laughs in the beginning, but there weren't a lot of screens. And there just wasn't sometimes it was a packed screening room and it's important to say that it was like an industry screening. So that is the problem right there. We're terrible. But, you know, normally you can feel an energy in something that is that packed. And it was, I guess a lot of people were trying to figure it out in real time. Yeah, so that is actually what is most interesting to me kind of at the end of this conversation. We're just predicting we're recording this on a Thursday before the movie's been released officially. And I think there's a lot of box office kind of excitement about this movie. It's, you know, tracking to make more than get out in its opening weekend. And Jordan Peele's quote unquote brand is much bigger than it was before. And to my question earlier about the sort of like finger pointing

that happens at the end of the movie and that turning that finger on yourself, I wonder if even something as dumb as CinemaScore will be like a little bit lower for a movie like this because people will feel indicted and or confused. And what it means to make a movie like that when there's a lot of anticipation for what you're making. I think the confusion would be the bigger problem. Because especially, you mentioned CinemaScore, it's people coming out of a movie and they're like, wait, what just happened?

And I think I did slack you immediately after seeing it. And it was just like, I have some questions. Not the first time I've gotten that note from you after a screening. It's true. I mean, that's basically, I have questions about all things in life. Yes. What makes me exciting. If horror satire is Jordan Peele's brand, I have some questions as Amanda Dobbins' brand. But I think I followed up pretty quickly with like, I've got some theories. Yes. That's fun. Yeah. And then, you know, it was basically, I got in the car with my husband

and I was like, here's my take. And he was like, here's my take. And we talked about it for a while. And that was really fun. And I think most people, especially people who are anticipating a Jordan Peele movie and connected with Get Out, that's what they're looking for as well. So I don't think it'll be. The question is only if you catch people, if you're pulling them at that first moment of like, huh, or if you're pulling them on day four of the great Twitter war of what us means, which is like coming and you can choose to participate that in that or you don't have to. It's up to you. But yeah, I mean, we're doing some of it here. I'm trying to do it in a way that is not like that ghoulish think piece thing.

Although, you know, we're going to write our think pieces and we're going to do our think piece podcast. I think that there's something really honest at the bottom of what he's trying to say. But when you make mass entertainment, it's very easy for that thing to be, I don't know, sort of like bent and pulled and stretched into the direction that anybody wants to bend it.

Like maybe he never even thought of the idea of capitalism, but you walked out and you were like, that's what this is. Maybe he never even thought of the idea of homelessness in this you walked out and you were like, that's what this is. Maybe he never even thought of the idea of homelessness in this country. I highly doubt that. But given the hands across America

and Chud being significant influences on this story, but you never know. And I think one of the good things, Get Out, I thought, was a very direct indictment of certain ideas. This one is much wider.

And like I said, I find that that's bold and a word that you hear about movies all the time is audacious, but this actually is audacious. And I'm so fascinated I find that that's bold and a word that you hear about movies all the time is audacious. But this actually is audacious. And I'm so fascinated to see how it's received and picked apart. It does feel like one of those movies that will be less overpraised than Get Out, but may have a more interesting and longer shelf life.

I would agree with that. I think a lot of people want to talk about it. And to your point about people feeling personally indicted and whether that's risky, listen, nobody in the world loves to talk about themselves more than like millennials on the internet. So I just really feel like engaging with people directly is actually very smart. People want to make it about themselves. So this movie made it about everyone. I think that that will, I'm sure people will be very angry about that, but in terms of it being discussed and living on, I think it's very, very smart. So that's probably another reading of it, which is that the truest evil is narcissism,

which we haven't even touched on either. Is there anything else that you want to say about this movie? We've hardly talked about the performers, which I think is interesting. I mean, Lupita is just astounding. It's crazy. It struck me as I was watching it that this is her first starring role. Which is also nuts. That's really weird. I mean, I presume that that's her choice because she has been 12 years a slave.

She won an Oscar. She's been in Star Wars movies. Never underestimate Hollywood. That's definitely a factor. I did think, though, that she really kind of brought it with both performances i read the choice to do that voice especially in the um explication scene about tethering when i first was watching i was like this is not working this sounds weird she's got a mouse in her throat she's doing something highly performative and then over time and especially after the reveal

i started thinking about all the choices that she made and why she made them and the intensity that she has in some of those scenes. And it makes a lot of sense. And it feels like there's an enormous amount of thought and care put into that performance. And also she's just one of those people who you just can't not look at her, you know, not just because she's beautiful, but because she has a kind of an ineffable hold on the audience. She has a movie star quality, for sure. I read Manola Dargis' review in The Times, which I thought was excellent. And she points out that the performance is such,

you really just feel like Lupita is two different actresses playing the two different roles, which it is so the physical choices that she makes. And, you know, that turns out to serve the movie very well. And it can be a little confusing at the beginning, but it's really remarkable. What else should we say about us? Will you be giving money to the homeless?

Yes. After this podcast? I think you might want to consider it. Yes, I will. Okay. Okay. I'm glad to hear that. Amanda, best of luck to you and all your altruistic deeds.

Okay. Thank you.