The Big Picture - Dissecting 'Mother!,' the Most Controversial Movie of the Year | The Big Picture (Ep. 26)

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins, and K. Austin Collins attempt to wrap their heads around Darren Aronofsky’s controversial new film, ‘Mother!’ Learn more about your ad choic...es. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, just want to give a quick spoiler alert for this podcast. We're going to be talking about quite a few of the details of the movie Mother, so if you haven't seen it or don't want to know them, please tune out now. Hello, my name is Sean Fennessy. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and here's the big picture. On the eighth day, we podcast. Today we're going to be talking about Mother, which is the new film from Darren Aronofsky. You may know Aronofsky's films. He's made Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler. He's a very controversial, fascinating, visceral filmmaker.
Starting point is 00:00:32 Mother might be his most controversial movie yet. To talk about the Mother saga, I'm joined today by culture editor Amanda Dobbins. Hi, Amanda. Hi, Sean. And staff writer at The Ringer, Cameron Collins. Cam. Hi, Sean. You guys ready to cry and weep and explain why this movie is so important and not important?
Starting point is 00:00:48 I don't think the crying part is going to happen for me personally, but yes, I'm ready. I'm ready to be Michelle Pfeiffer ruining everything for everyone. So let's explain to listeners what Mother is, because it's this interesting thing that is a controversy that is largely unseen. It's a movie that only $7.5 million worth of people saw this weekend, even though it opened in 2,200 theaters across the country. Amanda, how would you describe Mother to listeners? Am I doing the honest version or the version that the studio and Darren Aronofsky presented to the world? Let's go studio first and then we'll explore what it really means. Right, because this is the controversy is that not a lot of information, or it's one of the controversies, that not a lot of information about the film was given to people. What we knew is that it had some goofy punctuation in the title and that it starred Jennifer Lawrence.
Starting point is 00:01:39 And there were enough kind of teasers, trailers to hint that it was going to be weird and a little horror adjacent. And also if you know Darren Aronofsky's work at all, you know that it's going to be a little weird and horror adjacent. But that was it pretty much. So Mother is essentially the story of a woman who is only identified as Mother. She lives in a home. The film takes place entirely inside this home. She is married to Javier bardem who is known as him they have visitors to their home including ed harris and the aforementioned michelle pfeiffer
Starting point is 00:02:12 they are only identified as the man and the woman and then more people start visiting their house javier bardem's character is an artist creator of some kind jennifer lawrence's character is essentially a stay-at-home wife a home, a person that is helping to refinish this home that has been burned in a fire. And then madness ensues. Describe for me both of you guys as the movie starts to take shape and we start to sense that there is something more metaphorical and allegorical in play, what your reactions were individually. Cam, we'll start with you. I knew some weird shit was actually going to be up as soon as the movie starts with the image of a woman on flame being burned alive and crying. I kind of figured that Rosemary's baby was maybe wrong.
Starting point is 00:02:54 And I sensed that we were going to do something with – I mean the Jennifer Lawrence character is a very, very, very doting artist wife slash muse figure. So I knew that the movie was either going to not be self-aware or be self-aware. And I mostly spent the first 40 minutes wondering which would be worse. And I'm not actually sure where I land on that, really. That's an important part of this because I think a lot of people still don't totally know whether they hate this movie or not. I think a lot of traditional film goers came out with a very, very angry feeling. And the movie notably received an F CinemaScore, which is a service that essentially tracks people's reactions to movies after the first night of screenings. And it's typically
Starting point is 00:03:42 more indicative, I would say, of the way a film is marketed rather than the actual contents of the movie, because it's really larded with expectation and it's not about quality per se. However, there is this long history of movies that are pitched one way and then are delivered in another way. The Box, for example, was a mystery horror thriller that people thought was going to be a little bit more conventional than it ultimately was. Amanda, what about you? When you first saw where the movie was moving to, what direction it was taking, what was your response? Cam points out that it's pretty obvious from the first shot. The opening scene after the shot of a woman on flames is Javier Bardem taking this sort of mystical crystal that we can talk about what it symbolizes later on.
Starting point is 00:04:32 But he puts it in its little holder and then the world around him turns from ash to life. And Jennifer Lawrence is turned from ash to life and she wakes up. So you're aware pretty quickly that there is something else going on here. There is a mystical, if that's the right word, element to this. And then, so I was a little confused by that and also a little wary. It should be also noted that I went to see this film on Sunday. And by the time I saw it on Sunday of opening weekend, I went in with some expectations of my own. The takes had been roiling by then.
Starting point is 00:05:11 Yes, exactly. I was aware that I was walking into the Thunderdome a little. So I was, and again, also this is a movie by Darren Aronofsky, so I had some personal expectations as well. But I think it is pretty clear. And then there is just such a strange and intentional tone throughout even the first 40 minutes. Jennifer Lawrence is very uncharacteristically subdued. Even beyond a stranger shows up and in the house, which is a pretty classic uh-oh sentiment. There's just weirdness in the way that the film is made.
Starting point is 00:05:44 And I suppose that's a testament to the way that the film is made and i suppose that's a testament to the filmmaking that you know that something is off and there's a very strong clue of there is something weird going on here there is some metaphor at work basically flashing lights it's indicated clearly that she and the house are both this sort of like living symbiotic organism and that she has the ability to sense how alive or not alive the home is. And from that moment, essentially, from when we see that, from when we see that crystal that Javier Bardem's character is holding, you know, you sense that there's something mystical,
Starting point is 00:06:15 but I'm not sure that I necessarily saw it as becoming biblical. And I think when Michelle Pfeiffer's character and Ed Harris's characters arrive on the scene, it becomes fairly evident that they are stand-ins for Adam and Eve. And when their two sons arrive, it becomes fairly evident. I was going to say the sons. You know, were the indication for me. Because they could be weirdos.
Starting point is 00:06:34 Right. When I knew it was like the Cain and Abel thing, I kind of was like, oh, all right. Right. So when the two brothers arrive on the scene in the house, it becomes evident within a minute that they're they're recreating the cain and abel story from the the old testament yeah you know prior to that i would say that it was very evident to me the moment we see um ed harris's character vomiting after a long night of drinking with javier bardem and uh javier bardem's character slides his hand down the back of ed harris because we see that he has he's bleeding from his back because he's removed his rib to create oh yeah I think that as soon as the barfing happened I was like
Starting point is 00:07:13 oh I'm grossed out so if you see the wound there and then magically the next morning Michelle Pfeiffer's character arrives on the scene essentially Eve has been birthed I want I do think it's fun to kind of keep unlocking some of these choices that he's making. Some of them are really on the nose and some of them are a little bit more subtle. What's a subtle one? Well, I think that the rib was fairly subtle. Apparently, yeah. I'll tell you what's somewhat confounding to me is there's a moment shortly thereafter
Starting point is 00:07:40 where Jennifer Lawrence's character, who is experiencing these sort of like, not quite seizures, but these like dizzy spells. And she finds herself going to the bathroom quite often and she takes a tincture and she needs to sort of like clear her head. And at one point she sees that there's something in the toilet. And it appears to be organic and maybe even an organ of some kind. We don't know. And it sort of like twitches and explodes into a pool of blood. Right.
Starting point is 00:08:07 And then she flushes it down the toilet. I've seen people say, oh, well, that's the rib. That's like the remnant of the rib exploding. But I don't know. It could be something else. I couldn't really wrap my mind around what that was. Is that just a tool that Aronofsky is using to make us feel uncomfortable? As you said, Amanda, a lot of his movies toe the line between this sort of like physical thriller slash horror movie.
Starting point is 00:08:28 But, you know, there's no resolution in a small moment like that. We never actually find out what that meant. And I think the movie has this series of reaches for meaning in visual gesture. But there's no resolution, right? Yeah, I think reaches for meaning is perhaps the key phrasing there. If you get to the central metaphor, which is that she is the earth or mother earth, I took sort of all of the weird – the house breaking down and there's a blood spot in a plank of wood that keeps popping up. And it's not – I didn't – if there there's a biblical so i'll give you my reading on that one you want to hear my interpretation so cain slew abel and in the space where he's murdered
Starting point is 00:09:11 we see that there is a blood stain and jennifer lawrence is working very diligently to kind of remove the blood stain and she cleans it off and then she drops a carpet over it and then the blood reappears and we see the blood almost like bleeding through the ground into the basement and my interpretation of that is that that is like a remnant of original sin it's like the first murder that and we can't humanity can't shake that sin that has been committed and so it persists through the house and it like bleeds through the house and and almost like destroys it the way that acid would burn through the piping in someone's home. Is that exactly what Aronofsky intended?
Starting point is 00:09:48 I have no idea. I buy that. I think that makes sense. And I kind of took all of the weird, the gross out things that you can't trace to be some sort of humans ruining the earth in various ways. I took it very literally to mean that humans have ruined planet Earth and they can't coexist and we're all to blame and Darren Aronofsky hates us. Cam, were you – in the moment when you were watching the movie, were you looking for clear parallels and trying to resolve those metaphors? I generally try not to because – A, because despite having – because of Aronofsky actually circa Noah, I've had the Holy Bible app on my iPad for moments like this, for movies like this. Because there's a moment where it was like Noah and it was the Coen brothers, the serious man, where I was like, I feel like if I knew more about like the religious texts here and if I hadn't like flaked out of bible study when I was a kid I would be
Starting point is 00:10:46 unsure footing here so I always try to be prepared but I was also just so interested to be honest in the very deliberate emphasis on the selfish artist and the the selfless like frankly ingratiatingly selfless muse thing that that also complicated all the biblical stuff for me. Explain that a little bit because it's sort of a – it's a parallel metaphor that is happening in the movie that has almost nothing to do with either the ecological or the biblical sentiments that he seems to be trying to get across. Right. I mean just the – I mean Jennifer Lawrence is really into this house. And she – when Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer show up, she's cleaning up after everyone. She's playing very much the hostess.
Starting point is 00:11:30 She's cleaning while he's writing. She's asking him about his writing. Like things that are very familiar tropes to me in terms of like artists, wife, artist, muse relationships. The thing I was uncertain about was whether there was a critique that was happening there or what. I mean, but it was definitely very obvious. But when you throw something like that in there, then it's sort of like, okay, mother is mother earth. Javier Bardem is, is he God to people? Essentially God, yes. But he's also like, if we just strip the God part away and make him a creator and we think about artists as creators, then it's like I kind of need both of these things.
Starting point is 00:12:09 I can't just have it be an environmental allegory and it can't just be an artist's allegory. I kind of need them to be working together because on either end, those things aren't as interesting to me as the implication of artists thinking that they're God. Let's do a deep reading of some of that, Amanda. What do you think he's referring to when he identifies the relationship between a tortured male artist and the woman who is quote-unquote serving him? It might be about Darren Aronofsky. And I just, you know, Cam would like to reconcile the two storylines. And I don't know whether you guys have read any interviews of Darren Aronofsky,
Starting point is 00:12:45 but he is a devoted environmentalist. Yes, he is. And I believe this is in the Tad Friend profile in The New Yorker we'll come back to. A classic. One of the articles I read before this podcast, he was talking about how all of the work that he does that's not film is about the environment. So the way that the two storylines are reconciled are in the fact that Darren Aronofsky made a movie
Starting point is 00:13:08 about his internal struggle. That's what it is. And that's valid or not valid. But I think Cam is right that there is both the creation struggle and trying to work in a common about the environment. And that is very hard to pull together. And I'm sure Darren Aronofsky has
Starting point is 00:13:25 been feeling that it's hard to exist in the world and bring all those things together. And that's why he wrote this movie about it. Yeah, it's interesting. I certainly sensed by the end of the movie, I walked out thinking, she's Mother Earth. I got that part. And I definitely walked out thinking, this is also about the Bible. And my Roman Catholic upbringing was sort of like pinging the references every time. It was like the sight of a frog indicated the plagues and a breaking sink indicated the flood and Noah's Ark. And it's kind of a parlor game that he's playing a little bit.
Starting point is 00:13:59 But it does feel like centrally, ultimately, the thing that he is most committed to and that sort of like resolves the movie in many ways is the relationship between Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence, what he puts her through and what she has to sacrifice in this movie. Which, you know, we don't have to go too far into what happens in the film. But, you know, it's like literally a war of attrition. And then ultimately there's rebirth. And Javier Bardem gets to move on as he always does and no other character gets to live in the same way. And there's something very notable about the writer-director of a movie
Starting point is 00:14:35 concluding his film that way, right? Yes. Can I just say that Javier Bardem is a poet. Having dated a poet before, besides the big house part, You felt some, it resonated with you? Listen,
Starting point is 00:14:52 if it's a movie about a poet, then I get it. Then there's like no mystery. Yeah, just to echo Kim's thought, if it's a movie about a late 30, early something, 40 something dude who is struggling to be an artist, I also get it. Right.
Starting point is 00:15:12 Then it's like, okay, so this is what this movie is about. Cam and I have both been single in Brooklyn. It's totally, yeah. I mean, but like I think that's why I like need that to be a part of the movie that it can't just be an allegory because that's, because it's a while before Cain and Abel show up and it's a while, at least for me, before I realize that Michelle Pfeiffer is Eve. Mostly what you have for the first 40 minutes, if you're not picking up on those things, is, wow, this is a really
Starting point is 00:15:35 shitty relationship where she's just spackling and it's like his childhood home, right? And she's like doing this for him and it's very selfless and it's very selfless. And it's Jennifer Lawrence really, really, really doing that in the way that I've never seen her be the doting wife or something. Yeah, it's unusual. It's an unusual thing for her. I found it to be a slightly – a strange fit.
Starting point is 00:16:01 You know, I have a theory about Jennifer Lawrence, which is that she's been miscast in every film she's ever been in except for Winter's Bone. Yeah. I think you could make the case that Katniss Everdeen is kind of close to some of her skills, but that she is most effective when there's something that is very grounded about her. And The Hunger Games are obviously not grounded because they're YA dystopia. This is a hard left turn for a very successful actress. And, you know, certainly she seemed very taken with the filmmaker and very taken with the set. She specifically in interviews has not been shy about talking about the allegory.
Starting point is 00:16:39 She's wanted to get in front of that because I think there are a lot of things that happen in the movie that are very upsetting to her character. And I think she suspected, she of things that happen in the movie that are very upsetting to her character and I think she suspected she identified that there might be some conversation about when a woman is beaten or raped or like just abused for two hours kind of what that
Starting point is 00:16:55 communicates to the world and she very clearly in the press has said what Darren and I wanted to do was to tell a story that looked at the history of the world and where the world is going and was kind of not afraid to get haughty in a way that a lot of actors and actresses are often very reluctant to do. Unless they date Harvard auteurs. Well, that could be a factor. an interview in the New York Times and it came out after the film so they were able to both Aronofsky and Jennifer Lawrence talk about
Starting point is 00:17:28 it with more specificity and I thought it was interesting in this joint interview they disagreed over how much should be presented ahead of time and Jennifer Lawrence was very much like for the reasons that you were just saying and let's
Starting point is 00:17:43 make it clear that it's an allegory. Let's make sure that everyone can understand everything that's going on. And Darren Aronofsky did not want to do that because he is the director and this is the film that it is. He won. So let's – I'm curious about that. So this is all sort of related to the success or failure of the movie sort of as a box office proposition and also as a piece of art. Would it have been better for this movie to have been completely straightforward about just sort of generally how insane it is and how – you know, it is imaginative and creative.
Starting point is 00:18:15 It's just sort of like off the rails within 30 minutes. Would people have been more accepting? Would this podcast not be happening if we had known more about it ahead of time? Would – it depends on what the messaging was. Like would a movie make money for saying I'm an environmental allegory? I don't know. Probably not. No.
Starting point is 00:18:41 I mean it would have to be – because I also think that like Noah is about the environment for him. It would have to be a blockbuster. It would have to be – I mean Noah you can solve so many ways. It is the story of Noah's Ark. It is also a story about the environment for him. It would have to be a blockbuster. It would have to be, I mean, Noah you can solve so many ways. It is the story of Noah's Ark. It is also a story about the environment. It is also Aronofsky trying to combine biblical tale with a story of evolution. But it is also a Russell Crowe movie. It has block people, rocks, who are supposedly archangels but who are also like fighting war.
Starting point is 00:19:04 So it's like you can sell that anyway. You can sell it as a Christian movie I guess but you can also sell it as a blockbuster. But this, it's like I can't think of any way of spinning this that's meant to replicate like a Black Lives Matter protest or the scene that's meant to replicate like war criminals murdering hostages. There are images that you could kind of compel people to show the extremism of the movie, but also the sort of visceral tension that is happening
Starting point is 00:19:39 throughout the last 45 minutes that would tell people this is not just a weird movie about Jennifer Lawrence being trapped in a house, because that's kind of all you really get. Yeah. That's true. I will say, Sean, your reaction coming out of the movie, and I think you saw it on Saturday, so it was before, it was heating up, but the kind of controversy that we're now addressing hadn't really started yet.
Starting point is 00:20:02 Classic Saturday morning screening for me, which is the truth of my sad life. But you came out and you said no one told me how insane this was. Everyone is underestimating that times a thousand. And I feel like even in the conversation, divisive is the word that has been used. But divisive does not really capture kind of just the bonkers, the experience. And I do think that there – I think it might have helped if there was a way to just communicate this is out of control. This is just 2.11. This is really wild.
Starting point is 00:20:39 Because some people actually like that. I mean Cam loves that. That's why I got the movie for Cam I think. And there are a lot of people like Cam. They're just like, yes, let's go. Let's see someone wilding out. So that's like an entree into a good part of this conversation, which is I'm not sure that I aesthetically and intellectually really identify with this movie or even like it. I'm frankly a little undecided about it. But I read your piece and I read Tony Scott's piece in The Times and I read Rex Reed's piece.
Starting point is 00:21:06 Those were the three reviews I read immediately after I saw the movie. Part of the reason I didn't know how crazy it was is because I just didn't read about it. I made an effort to restrict detail. And I think a lot of critics made some interesting choices about what they revealed and didn't reveal. I thought you did a really nice job, Cam. But there is something fundamental about the way that movies are marketed and communicated to audiences now that even if you don't read any criticism you've got a pretty good handle on where something's going sure and that was not the case here like at all not at all
Starting point is 00:21:34 they did not show you one tenth of the the tone and the approach that the movie was going to take and that's interesting i guess it's notable that the movie's made for only $30 million, which to Paramount Pictures is a pittance. And it stars Jennifer Lawrence. So on Saturday morning, I was quite confused as to how it even existed in the world. I've come to understand over a couple of days that getting J-Law attached to a movie in and of itself kind of buys you $20 million. Plus, Darren Aronofsky has now made two really successful movies. I think Noah has not necessarily aged well in a lot of people's minds, but Black Swan is like, that's a crazy ballet thriller that made $300 million. That's an achievement in the 21st
Starting point is 00:22:16 century. So I guess it's kind of interesting that it exists to me and that it was released by a major studio. I'm not as shocked by it as I once was. But I don't know. Were you guys expecting something on a grander scale, on a smaller scale based on what was communicated? Well, first of all, I'm jealous of everyone who saw it. I saw it at a critic screening. While on the whole critics are assholes, like we're very polite when it comes to watching a movie. So no one's going to like walk out.
Starting point is 00:22:41 I'm jealous of everyone who – because I think that's part of the experience of this and the way that like you go to like a certain movie theater on a certain day seeing a horror film and you know like – you know what the participation is going to be. Or a comedy like when I saw Girls Trip. Like everyone laughing is a part of the experience of that movie. see it again just to experience the energy in the room when things really hit the fan in that movie because I think I missed something by not being able to take the pulse of the people around me because critics are always – if things get bad or weird, critics are always like, hmm, which is not the way that people I think should be reacting to – we'd said the spoiler warning already, right? Yes.
Starting point is 00:23:24 Yeah. So like with the baby, with the crowd surfing baby. There's a baby that is born in the film and then something quite upsetting happens to the baby. Right. Sure. In the critics screening, there was no reaction really that I recall. And I think I wanted to be around people when that happened. I want to know when people
Starting point is 00:23:45 left. What was the reaction in your screening? It's an interesting question. So Jen Yamato at the LA Times wrote a piece yesterday about this movie and about kind of the general reaction to it. And she included a line that is almost exactly the same as something that I heard in the theater. She said she heard it in the ladies room after the screening when she saw it over the weekend. And I heard it in the theater as soon as the movie ended, which is that is the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. Someone said that out loud at the end of the movie. And, you know, I saw it at the Hollywood Arclight, which is famously a very artist-friendly viewing environment. Typically people, one, they typically work in the industry. Two, there's a lot of applause at the end of movies here in Hollywood. And this was the
Starting point is 00:24:24 opposite of that. This really made people feel something. It was not just visceral but like emotional. And they were – as opposed to tears or joy, they were like, man, fuck this, which is – that's a choice. And I think in some ways he probably feels like he succeeded if he knows he's getting that kind of reaction. What was your reaction, Amanda? I have the most boring reaction because I just found it to be kind of trite and I haven't thought about it since. And I think.
Starting point is 00:24:53 That's amazing. That's why you're here today. And, you know, I think this was from the Vulture interview that he did afterwards. And Darren Aronofsky said he wrote this script in five days. And I'm like, I can't believe it took you five. So, well, you know, it really is copy and paste from the Bible with some, oh, but I could also work in the environment because that matters to me. And I don't think he certainly succeeded in creating a mood. And it really does become batshit at the end in a way
Starting point is 00:25:25 that I was not expecting. I will say the reaction in my screening at the Arclight on Sunday was silence except for my husband who was cracking up
Starting point is 00:25:34 which echoes the, like he was just openly laughing. He was enjoying it. That mirrors Tony Scott's review that said this is a hoot.
Starting point is 00:25:42 This is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. I thought it was pretty funny too. There is an interpretation there that totally makes sense. And I think that that was probably the only time that I thought that Darren Aronofsky was aware of what he was making. And I wouldn't quite say in on the joke, but is intending to push buttons, is trying to get a reaction, which I respect on some level. I always like a certain amount of public assholery.
Starting point is 00:26:13 This is not my particular brand of it. You know, I do think it's a weird time to try to play a trick on everyone who's buying a ticket to a movie. It's a good point. It's a very good point. Let's use that as a way into a conversation about sort of, you know, Jennifer Lawrence and Aronofsky and where their careers go from here. And also sort of what's the legacy of a movie like this that will not ultimately have a
Starting point is 00:26:35 very wide audience, but is already burned in the brains of those who have seen it as like a freak out movie, which has a very specific type. I wrote in a piece this week about the movie that I think Aronofsky is just going to be fine, kind of regardless of what happens here because he's a privileged person in an industry in which he's had success. He got to make this in the first place. Right. So that tells us a lot. Jennifer Lawrence, I think, has had kind of a stormy couple of years in terms of the choices she's made.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Where do you guys think she's going to go from here? Will she now lean into something safe having had this experience? I think that she is also in many ways in a privileged position and can do a lot of things. And I think this movie for her is just like, I'm going to do something weird. In the way that Natalie Portman in Black Swan, yeah, she'd done some weird stuff,
Starting point is 00:27:22 but not like psychodrama ballet weird. Not like Aronofsky weird. Same thing for Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream. I think actresses in particular get the weirder, maybe more fucked up roles in his films. You've identified a trend. Yeah. Well, I'm just going to go ahead and point out that she started dating Darren Aronofsky as a result of this experience, which is not the reaction I would have had. And I think Cam certainly has isolated something, which is she was clearly swept up in this experience.
Starting point is 00:28:00 She talks a lot about how traumatic it was for her. And I think she kind of had – she was hyperventilating during the climactic scene. It was really a full experience for her. And, you know, I suppose that in working with Darren Aronofsky on that, you become closer, you feel challenged as an artist, you get swept up by this guy who wears scarves a lot. I get it. She's 26. It happens. It still is interesting and it's been a particularly tough year. Passengers in this is not a great one to punch for her.
Starting point is 00:28:33 And it's also just kind of a tricky time. We require, celebrity requires so much exposure at this point. We were talking about this on Jam Session earlier that you get tired of everyone. And I think she's kind of,
Starting point is 00:28:46 this is a bad time for her to not have a great movie role. So yeah, she had an Oscar nomination for Joy, which is a weird for David O. Russell, weird movie. Not weird in the way that Mother is weird, but I do think, you know, when you consider that in the context of the X-Men movies that do think, you know, when you consider that in the context of the X-Men movies that she did, Hunger Games, this is someone who started at Winter's Bone. So she started
Starting point is 00:29:10 outside of the mainstream and then Surprise became part of the mainstream. That was her first nomination. She, I think, is more interested in being at the outskirts than her career has tended to suggest. And I wonder part of the reason she's so excited to be in Mother is because it's not X-Men. It's not Hunger Games. I don't think she wants to be pigeonholed as a movie star, but I think being a movie star is what allows her to make choices like this. Careful what you wish for. The minute somebody doesn't want to be a movie star, they are not a movie star. Let's wrap up with this. How do you think Mother's going to be remembered as?
Starting point is 00:29:47 A great experiment? A colossal failure? Not at all? A unique try at something that the movies don't have very much of these days? None of the above? Someone is going to try to make it into a cult classic. I don't know if they're going to succeed, but I see that coming already. They're going to try.
Starting point is 00:30:04 And good for them. Whatever. What if that someone is Darren Aronofsky? I think it'll be around. I think people are going to rent it and hate it, but they're going to say that they saw it because it seems like a thing that it's fun to have seen, even if I hated it or didn't hate it. Amanda? I think that we will get a couple more mother ripoffs from Aronofsky wannabes, which I'm very disappointed by. Obviously, it didn't make any money, but it didn't cost that much money.
Starting point is 00:30:33 And eventually, it will make enough money back or people will be curious enough on DVR and be like, oh, should I watch this? And then turn it off after 20 minutes because it's crazy. Everyone going on dates with movie dudes in college right now, I feel for you. I feel for you. Oh, my God. Imagine all the people who are like, let's go on a first date to Mother. Hey, have you heard about this movie Mother?
Starting point is 00:30:56 I can't. That's an excellent place to wrap this up, guys. On the ninth day, we're resting. Amanda Dobbins, Cam Collinsins thank you for joining me thanks for listening to this week's episode of the big picture next week we have a great conversation coming with the legendary british filmmaker stephen frears who has a new film called victorian abdul So please check that out. We'll see you next time. long. It was even before podcasts were having this. These guys spent their whole life arguing with each other. And now we just record it and they go at it. They talk about
Starting point is 00:32:08 everything pop culture. It is one of the most popular pop culture podcasts. Especially valuable during Game of Thrones season. But they'll argue about movies, music, TV, you name it. The Watch. One of the best pop culture podcasts on the internets. Subscribe now
Starting point is 00:32:24 wherever you get your podcasts.

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