The Big Picture - ‘Nosferatu’ and the Top Five Vampire Movies, With Robert Eggers!

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Sean is joined by Chris Ryan and Rob Mahoney to discuss the new Robert Eggers vampire film, ‘Nosferatu,’ releasing on Christmas and starring Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgard, and Nicholas Hoult (1:00). They discuss the original ‘Nosferatu,’ now more than 100 years old, Eggers’s vision of the character and story, and the long history of vampires in cinema, before ultimately each sharing their five favorite vampire movies (43:00). Then, Sean is joined by Eggers to talk about the production of the movie, why vampires persist in storytelling, the themes of the film, and more (1:11:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan, Rob Mahoney, and Robert Eggers Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the 100-year-old German expressionist film classic. This is Eggers' third time on the show. He explains in great detail how and why he made this movie. To put it bluntly, he really knows his worlds. He really knows his craft. He really knows why he built them. Stick around for that conversation. But first, we got to talk about the demon.

We got my two demons here, my demon boys, my demon babies, Rob Mahoney, Chris Ryan. We are in Congress with the Beast, I like to think. I've been filing down my teeth for this one. You guys really are. I've been looking forward to this episode for a very long time. And I think you and I talked about it like four months ago. I've been looking forward to this movie for a long time. I have as well. We're talking about Nosferatu,

which is a very exciting new film that is essentially what I just described. It's a remake of a classic film, and it is so much more than that, and it is also not much more than that at all. So let's just jump right into it. CR, Nosferatu, what did you think of the movie? I was bowled over by the design and the cinematography

and the execution of it and uh like not very like emotionally connected to it at all I was uh I was kind of surprised I went in relatively blind no like not reading a lot about like his intentions or what was gonna take place and was a little surprised at just how faithful it was yeah um which I can't wait to talk to you guys about because I wonder whether or not he addressed that with you, Sean, but like, why? Why do such like a kind of on your knees, hands clasped, like, let's do the most religiously like accurate version of this demon, of this anti-religious figure, you know? And it was kind of surprising. Midway through, I was like, oh, yeah, like, I actually knowigious figure. And it was kind of surprising.

Midway through, I was like, oh, yeah. I actually know this story. I know this story. I've heard this one. But then I guess that frees you up to just notice things in the corner of frames and in the background of frames. Rob, what did you think? I'm all along the same lines. I think it's much less twisty than his other movies.

And I was kind of waiting for that turn, waiting for some deviation, and it's not there. That said, I think you're still held so captive by the effects in this movie, by the tension of it, by the visual styling,

as you mentioned. Like, I still felt unsure of what was going to happen second to second in a way that made for a really satisfying viewing experience. So it's like,

you know the story, you know the beats, you're still going to be fucking terrified by it and I would love to meet the person who isn't. Yeah, I'm pretty much on the same page. I was captivated by the movie.

I love this kind of movie. I've been a huge, huge fan of the Eggers project. I have felt over the last few years, he has been kind of upending the expectations of these classic genre or mythological tropes and stories and fables and finding new ways into understanding what they mean to us and what they mean to him.

I'm not sure if this one totally gets there ideologically or emotionally the way that I felt like The Lighthouse did or even The Northman did with especially some of that psychedelic Pegasus imagery near the end of that movie. But there's just a level of craft in this movie that is very, very few people can accomplish

what he does. And if you care about that sort of thing and can be cowed by it in a movie theater, man, he's cooking. You know, he's doing the thing that he is so good at. Why he made it is an interesting question. We did talk about it. I was fortunate enough at my screening

to see a Q&A with him afterwards between him and Guillermo del Toro. And it was like Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron talking to each other. I was just like, these are the two guys who just get this more than anybody. They've felt these ideas more deeply in both good and bad ways. I think in a way, they both get to be so down the hole of their interest that sometimes it feels like no one else can enter the hole with them. But in that conversation, tons of things that as I was watching the film, I was like, is that right? Why is this like this? They just talked about openly

and they would just be like, for example, I don't think this is a spoiler to say this, but fairly early on, there is a staking sequence of a vampire in an open field in Romania or Transylvania, wherever they are. And the stake is metal. And the reason that the stake is metal, it was explained to me by Robert Eggers, though not in the film, is because when you would stake a vampire in this mythology,

you would stake him to the ground so that he could not get up again. Gotcha. So, wooden stakes and that version of vampire storytelling is something that evolved over time, but is not quote unquote historically accurate to the occult. That's a cool detail. Yeah.

I liked hearing it as someone who's seen probably 200 vampire movies in his life. Yeah. I didn't know that and I'm happy to have known it. I don't know if that makes it a better movie. Yeah, it's weird. It's like I was thinking about all my favorite vampire movies and they all have scenes where someone definitely explains

all the vampire stuff. They're just like, in this iteration of vampires, they can do this. This works. This doesn't work. No garlic. Yes, crosses. Let me throw something out at you about Eggers.

Can we start there before we go into the movie itself? Which is that he's the doom medal Wes Anderson. And that a lot of the same critiques people throw at Wes Anderson, which is that you are working with these dioramas and that everything that we see and hear is precisely fixed by you and that there is not a lot of

accidents or life or spontaneity to it and that your movies are essentially emotionally vapid. I disagree with it. Wes Anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers. I find his films incredibly emotionally moving even more so as he gets older. I feel like he's tapped into

a kind of somber knowingness that maybe his early movies didn't even have. So I feel resistant to throw that same criticism at Eggers. Where it's just like your movies are about you having all the control over everything I see and feel.

But nothing in this movie is like actually about being alive. But what do you guys think? In fairness, this movie is also about not being alive. It's true. Important plot points. But like there are ideas in this movie and there are themes in this movie. But I think what he really wants to make is a fucking Dracula movie. And he wants to make the perfect Dracula movie

that he's probably been seeing in his head for his entire life. Well, what do you think? Because I do have some information regarding that. I would say two things. One, everything in his movies does feel so considered, like down to these iron staking details in a way that makes me feel immersed in the world

in a Wes Andersonian sort of way. Like I am in it. From minute one, I am grabbed by the throat of this movie. I am locked in. And because of that, I think I have a lot more latitude for whatever it is, whatever kind of ride it wants to take me on. I agree with you that overall, like emotionality is not always the most vivid part of the movies that he makes.

That said, I think all of his movies have a lot to say about the way human beings interact with mythology, right? It's not just reinterpreting myth. It's what are we doing with myth in real life? Like all the superstitions that you get a nose for out to even in things like the witch, where it's like all of the paranoia that's emerging from believing someone to be something else, which is a huge part of the vampire story in a lot of ways too. It's about the ways that we as humans harness our fears and our paranoias and how we wield them against each other or how we try to protect ourselves and ultimately fail. I think this one is particularly complicated in trying to understand the Eggers story as a director because it's a movie that since The Witch came out, he has said he has wanted to make.

It's a movie that he has staged a stage adaptation of this story at a very young age and has clearly just been consumed by this movie and by vampire movies and Stoker's novel and all of the things that are a part of it. And so it's just like when all you want to do your whole life is tell these kinds of stories, and

particularly this story, there is invariably something kind of airtight and impenetrable about it because you can feel how long he's been wrapped around it. Like the lighthouse feels like something that developed over time as he got older, as opposed to something that was just like, this is so dear to me.

This would be like me making a Transformers movie, you know, like nobody could really get their way in. It's not Megalopolis though, right? It's not. It's not been poured over to the point that it's come apart. It's not overthought at all. No, it is still this very like sharply constructed thing.

And maybe it's because it has the framework of it being a remake and a remake of a kind of odd thing, which is that Nosferatu comes after Bram Stoker's Dracula, but precedes the Hollywood film. And so it is sort of an adaptation,

sort of not. The characters are not the same from the Stoker novel but some are similar and some are not. It's not quite the same adventure story. It's a little bit of a, it's a story about obsession

and lust and disease between two and three people really. It's a fairly contained story and so him having that framework from the Murnau movie I think really works in his favor in some respects and works against him in others because through 45 minutes of the movie to your point I was like okay so he's doing that movie yeah you know he's not straight up going too far

away and in fact like during our conversation there's one fascinating fabulous sequence in the 22 movie where the demon is leaving his estate in Transylvania or Romania or wherever. And he's putting caskets on the wagon so that he can head to Germany to come to his new estate that he has acquired from Hutter. And Murnau in 1922 manages to shoot and film and cut the sequence where like the caskets like magically float

onto the top of the wagon and it's you know very early cinema technology and it's like it is when you're watching the movie it is it catches you

yeah and he chooses not to do that sequence at all in the movie which is interesting because you you could do it now in an amazingly

interesting way even in a practical way you could do it in a fascinating way and I asked him about it and he was like, yeah, I just didn't think that was cool.

Like, I didn't want to do it. And I was like, but you did like the whole other movie. Like, you did everything else. Which is interesting that he still is applying directorial vision.

Like, he still has his taste inside of this type of box. But he's still 13. But he's, yeah, he's got his idea of what works and what doesn't. And we should say that this movie stars Bill Skarsgård as the title character,

Nicholas Holt as Hutter, I guess the envoy from a real estate agent when the demon reaches out and says, I would like to buy a piece of property. And Lily-Rose Depp, who I think is really ultimately the star of this movie, as the woman who has a profound psychic bond with the Nosferatu character, the Count. Lily-Rose Depp is an important person in Chris's life. She is

of course the daughter of Johnny Depp and an actress in her own right, accomplished actress. She's also the star of the television series The Idol. Yeah, Chris was telling me all about it. It's own kind of vampirism. Yes, that's exactly right. She's like a blood bag for

Dracula's modern and past. Well, maybe that says it. So you felt, I think my big takeaway from this movie is, wow, she's pretty, she's incredibly gifted. I think this is like a great, great, great horror movie performance. And it's a very fine line in a horror movie performance.

You can really overdo it. You can really undersell it sometimes when you're working in an auteur horror environment. I thought she was phenomenal both physically and emotionally in a movie that could have been harder to connect to.

What did you think? This is like an Olympic gymnastic performance. I think the physicality of it is super athletic, super interesting. She does a lot of tongue acting at a certain point. I'm like, I've literally never seen that happen before. That's the thing, is that what she does physically,

I was kind of, Rob and I saw this together on a very slow drive back down the five. I workshopped, what if they had swapped Emma Corrin and Aaron Taylor Johnson into the Nicholas Holt and Lily Rose Depp roles? Because Aaron Taylor Johnson and Emma Corrin are lively and have like kind of like a much more naturalistic feel to them. But that's kind of the point is that these two people are open to this kind of persuasion, this kind of connection, maybe this kind of persuasion this kind of connection maybe this kind of of experience you know because they are so kind of flat and then as Lily Rose Depp

becomes frankly more possessed over the course of the movie it's hard to imagine anybody else doing this but I get I get the compulsion because like Emma Corrin every time I see them on screen it's just I want more like I want I want a variety of roles I want to I want to see what they can do like Aaron Taylor Johnson is getting to be maximum ham, which is my favorite mode. He does a lot of great things in a lot of movies. That's my favorite mode of his. But I don't want

to short shrift Nicholas Holt, who has a good portion of this movie, not quite to himself, because you've got Orlok kind of lingering in the background, slightly out of focus. But him progressively losing his shit and getting laughed out of Romanian villages is a highlight

of this movie for me and I really love it. Honestly, it's happy Holta days because we got this and The Order and you're number two. Yeah,

we were just talking about it earlier this month on the show just how he has suddenly found himself at the center of movie culture in an interesting way. I guess he just did

a reunion interview with Hugh Grant on the award circuit because of About a interesting way. I guess he just did a reunion interview with Hugh Grant on the awards circuit because of About a Boy Days, which I thought was sweet. I'm a big fan of Holtz, as I said,

on the show earlier, and I think he's very well suited to this. You know, Hutter is like, he's the ultimate cuck. He is the, he's the original cuck.

Yeah. The ending shots of this movie are just like Pete Cucktoe. Yes. Observing what has transpired. It's unbelievable. Yeah, so I enjoyed him.

I agree with you too about Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin. They're both great. They're both... They're doing what... They're sort of surrogates for the audience. Where they're just like, this can't really be what's going on, right? It's like, this is depression.

It's like, you just need to get a good job. Yeah. Is this movie scary? I think so. No. Not scary? You don't think people are job. Yeah. Is this movie scary? I think so. No. Not scary? You don't think people are going to be scared

by this movie? I'm just not scared because like... You're dead inside in this way. I am dead inside. I was waiting for Art the Clown to come.

No, that's a Nosferatu sequel I would watch. Yeah, it would be awesome if like the CR cut was like, all these caskets open and Arthur Clown and In a Violent Nature guy jump out. There you go. It's awesome shit. That's good.

But that would not have been scary either. This is why AI is going to happen. Please don't give them any ideas. The reason I ask that is because one thing that Eggers really just doesn't do is jump scares until this movie. This movie is the first time he's really used conventional horror tactics and right out of the shoot.

In the first five minutes, that sequence is, I think, really effective, right? At the first two minutes of the movie, where it's sort of in Lily-Rose Depp's mind and she's having kind of like a waking nightmare about her connection with the Nosferatu character. Say his name. His name is Count Orlok.

Yeah. And we do, we respect him. We respect him in this house. Thank you, Orlok, for all you have given us. I want to talk a lot about Skarsgård and Orlok

and I think Chris does too. But he, you know, those hard smash cuts and the shrieking sounds and basically the James Wan style of filmmaking is applied here by a filmmaker who is otherwise, with the exception of maybe like the mermaid freak out in the lighthouse, like a couple, maybe one or two moments in The Witch. But for the most part, he doesn't use that stuff. And I noted with some interest that the producers of this film are Chris Columbus and Eleanor Columbus, who he told me reached out to him after The Witch and wanted to work with him.

Chris Columbus. Like as in Chris Columbus. The director of Home Alone. Yeah. And who is a traditional Hollywood storyteller to the fullest. And my suspicion is that there were some suggestions to maybe commercialize the film somewhat. Does this feel commercial? Ultimately, no.

But one thing about Eggers is that he's been able to find a big audience by pretty much sticking to his guns. Yeah. You know, these movies are, even if not all of them are box office successes, The Lighthouse was the OG, oh, wow, it made that much money,

A24 movie. Like, there's a bunch of those now where We Live in Time makes $25 million, and you're like, oh, wow, that's actually, Her movie like there's a bunch of those now where we live in time makes 25 million and you're like oh wow that's actually a heretic made 30 million dollars that's pretty good I think that lighthouse made like 20 million dollars in 2018 when it was released which is crazy because it's Robert Pattinson farting on Willem Dafoe

in a lighthouse same for me nevertheless I don't know what do you am I over reading like how much he's attempting to like bend to the will of an audience in the filmmaking? I just didn't see it as that commercial an endeavor. I think the biggest payoffs are

the way that a story you know is realized to maximum possible like creepy gothic effect. For someone like me who I am somewhat horror inclined, but not, I'm not in the streets like Chris is in that way. I find it creepy enough. Like I see that opening sequence and like, I don't think it's a spoiler to talk about literally the opening sequence of the movie, but just the way that the vampirism is shown on screen and conceived as this like physical, violent, animalistic, like straight to the

heart kind of action. Like I'm just like horrified to see it again. And so I'm spending the whole movie in dread just like waiting for the next person to get bit and the next person

to get attacked. And then there's this whole like, obviously there's always like a psychosexual thing with vampires, but Lily-Rose Depp is sort of like moaning,

undulating in her own way. And Orlok is doing a weird like, again, animalistic convulsion. There's a lot going on. I'm sure we can unpack it.

I really like all that stuff. We can talk about it when we get into the movie. If three dudes would like to unpack that, we can. But there's a lot. Were you openly fist pumping when Lily-Rose Depp was throwing, thrashing her body and moaning? I was actually thinking of, like, could we overlay the Tarantino monologue about Like a Virgin, but for Nosferatu? It's like, Nosferatu is about this chick, man, and she meets this guy.

Wow. Is Ellen Hutter a dick tease? I believe that's the phrase that Quentin uses in that scene. I found this movie really disturbing, but not scary. I think part of that is just, this is just a little thing about me I don't really find dreams very scary

especially represented on screen so I'm not an Elm Street guy like I find like the like it's happening in your head part

to be a little bit kind of like of a distancing honestly makes you're one of the most even keeled guys I've ever met so that makes a ton of sense

there's a lot to be scared of in our waking life you know what I mean sure yeah rats among them apparently. are also pretty pedestrian too. What would you say is the number one nightmare

you have? It's all TMJ related. So it's just always like TMJ. Your jaw? You're just clenching too tight. It's like my teeth are clenched. My teeth are falling out.

Stuff like that. Sounds like Orlokian to me. Do you think I've been Are you the demon? Is that what we're saying? You've been visited in the night. I don't have nightmares. I am the demon.

I'm really going to step in like sometime at some point some like Romanian football manager is going to come across this. You have been watching my highlights for years. Don't spoil. Don't spoil Orlok, please.

Do you think the movie is sexy at all? In the aforementioned way, sexual. Not sexy. Hell yeah. You just went home and knocked one out. Okay. I do think that we probably should talk specifically about Orlok and the decisions that are made around Orlok.

If you don't want to hear anymore, we really haven't spoiled much of the movie, but I think we're going to spoil, not plot points per se, because the plot is sort of unspoilable, but the decisions that were made, and I could sense that Eggers was a little concerned about this as well

when we were talking to not kind of give away too much, but I think the choices that he makes that deviate or that are meant to be more faithful to the occult study that he's done are interesting and fun and are kind of a reason to see the movie, honestly. So if you don't want to hear any more, fast forward, we'll talk about vampire movies in about 15 minutes. Spoiler warning.

So I mentioned the metal stakes thing. And that was, when we got to that sequence in the film, I was like, what is this? This doesn't happen in Nosferatu. I don't know who that guy in that casket is. And then I started feeling like, is this a dream, a nightmare? What has even happened? I believe that predates the carriage sequence where the carriage comes to pick up the ghost carriage.

Yeah, that's the carriage. Don't get in the ghost carriage. As a general rule, just don't do it. I loved that scene, though. The spinning carriage. Yeah, that's the ghost carriage. I mean, don't get in the ghost carriage. As a general rule, just don't do it. I loved that scene, though. The spinning camera and the way that it turns. Oh, my God. Like, all the stuff

from the Carpathians and, like, the tracking shots in as he's going into the camp is just incredible. That stuff is amazing. And then he does eventually arrive at Orlok's castle and he enters

and, you know, they're there to do a real estate deal. It's just straight up Redfin what's the market on derelict castles do you think I don't know

I mean it seemed like he wanted something a little bit more like a two bedroom you know like an expanded studio and there are so many Nimbys in Visper right now

which is like I don't want any Orloks in my honestly fair a lot of time in the movie is spent on like signing and reading documents,

which is not something I expected, but that is also faithful to the original. The Count is not fully revealed for an extended period of time. We see him in a kind of blur

in the distance in the background of the movie. We do hear his voice and you gave us just a little sneak peek of that voice, which I thought was incredibly effective and funny and also somewhat unintelligible at times.

But Skarsgård has put clearly a vibrato and a beaver carcass into his throat at the same time. And it never breaks. I thought an interesting comparison was the way in which Coppola depicts Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula and how he gives him a bunch of different characters to play based on time of day, amount of blood he's been getting, whatever. And his voice changes with those characters. The old man, the young swan. For sure.

Yeah, mustachioed guy. Skarsgård never does that. He actually, like, even by the end of the film is still pretty decrepit. He's getting his hair back. Shout out to him. I mean, he is near Turkey, so he could probably go

get the plugs. He's kind of got like a Jude Law thing going on, actually, yeah. But yeah, he always keeps the voice. He always keeps the voice. And it was,

it's a choice. I love it because I was a voice guy myself. A pioneer in the field. I definitely thought of you and all of the rich material you would get out of it. You got to bring Orlok to the rewatchables. How have we not done some extended bit

where you're a voice coach to the stars? Well, no. I mean, I was joking with Sean the other day that like, let me ask you, what do you think Orlok's favorite Big East team is? Providence! This is a big move for Providence, I gotta say. Really, really a high point.

In addition to the amusing voice, when he does eventually reveal his face, we see that he has a mustache. Yeah. A very prominent mustache. Robust. Robust mustache. An impressive mustache.

Do you think that's real or do you think that's some turkey fakery? That's got to be turkey fake. They don't come in like that. You mean like, do they just, I think everything

Skarsgård is doing is like slapped on him. Yeah. You need to be like literally a police officer in 1987 in Teaneck, New Jersey to grow that mustache. And if you're not,

then you can't. You can't do it. You have to be in cop land. Or a Romanian count. I loved that mustache. And if you're not, then you can't. Can't do it. You have to be in Copland. Or a Romanian count. I loved the mustache. That was another moment where I was like, this is a very small choice

that changes things very significantly for me. As Eggers said, I think very fairly, he was like, look at a photo of a count in this part of the world in the early 1800s.

They have mustaches. It is like a class signifier that they have a kind of manicured facial hair. So, I enjoyed that. Can I reveal something along these lines? Yes. The first elective course I ever took in college was this course called The Vampire in Slavic Cultures. Hell, yes. It was just like, oh, this is in the book.

There's a class about vampires. I'm locked the fuck in. This is when 30 Days of Night came out. We went at the class to go watch it. See our classic. It was just like, oh, this is in the book. There's a class about vampires. I'm locked the fuck in. This is when 30 Days of Night came out. We went at the class to go watch it. See our classic. It was wonderful. Needless to say, the mustache game among all of these would-be and supposed vampires

is off the fucking charts. I can't imagine. So clean-shaven Dracula, again, I get the count visage. I get that certain versions of Dracula are supposed to be more appealing and sexy in a way that this one is not. But yeah, if you want to be true to form, he's got to have the stache. He's got to have the thick, somewhat unintelligible accent.

All that stuff really, really worked for me. Me too. I couldn't think of another mustachioed vampire. No. I'm sure there is one, but I couldn't think of one. Yeah. Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. He's a bloodsucker for sure.

I enjoyed that and then you also indicated the blood sucking happens essentially from the breastplate in this movie and not from the neck which apparently is also

I guess historically accurate in so far as there were closer to the heart. Yeah. And I think that beast-like tendency that you're talking about too that animalistic portrayal of Nosferatu is really cool and really great.

And the thing is, Dracula is more suave. He's more suave in the Stoker novel too than this figure. You know, Orlok is a ghoul. He is a beast. He is something from an underworld. Yeah. And so I like that choice and I like the sort of like ferocity and speed

that he attacks with and then everything else in the film is so slow moving. So those sequences give you like that, if not that fear jolt, that energy jolt. That pop. Yeah, that really helps. Yeah, there's something cool about over the course of the film.

Obviously his psychological telepathic hold over certain people, the Renfield character who's, you know, Canuck, and then also with the Lily Rose deaf character,

that it makes his physical approaching like that much more terrifying. But also really interesting because you're like, but he's not getting any like that much better looking. Like it's not like

he's going to come and be like, charm all of Europe and take it over. It's like there's a very specific mission that he's on. any like that much better looking. Like it's not like he's going to come and be like, charm all of Europe and take it over. It's like, there's a very specific mission that he's on, which is to like inhabit this woman. I think he is, he's grosser than a lot of other Draculas in a lot of different ways. Like the nails, this movie overall,

any vampire movie has its share of blood given the subject matter. But this was like a lot of drooling and dripping and just like goop, a lot of goop. It is. More so than I even anticipated. Also, there's just lots

of attention paid to the sort of like deteriorating nature of his form. Yeah. You know, that he has like these sort of like scars and torn body parts.

Yeah, he's gross. He's disgusting. As you would imagine a beast like this would be. He would not look like Bela Lugosi like fresh out of the sauna as he does in the

original Dracula film. Thematically, as I was watching the movie, and I'm kind of desperate to have themes in my movies and tend to work hard to find them, but I was like,

there's a couple of choices that are made in the movie that are really cool. You know, the idea of the plague coming when Orla comes and the rats come aboard the ship, obviously a reference to the bubonic plague.

And I was watching it. I was like, this is a very cool way of rendering the same panic so freshly out of COVID-19. And I asked him about it and he was like, nope, that was not something I was thinking about at all. Did you know that there was COVID? We didn't discuss really the details. And we can talk about that momentarily. I imagine him just listening to like Austrian opera all day and not knowing like,

does he know Juan Soto is a free agent? I don't know. Please don't utter his name, the beast's name. The other thing was, one of the things that I think is great about the film, and this is present in the original film, but maybe contemporarily feels even deeper, is it's a great story about women's repression

and sexuality and desire. And Lily-Rose Depp, as this figure, who in our culture alone is already a deeply sexualized person, the whole movie is oriented around what she wants and feels she needs because at war with the expectations of her own femininity at that time.

This is a great idea that powers the movie. And I was like, did you talk to Lily Rose Depp about that? And he was like, nope, we don't talk about themes. I was like, okay.

I mean, is it okay that it's still there? Like, I really, I found it to be a strange conversation, honestly. So do you think that he's like, this is like a biblical, mythological,

old story that has like self-evident ideas and themes. And my job is to execute those. Or is it that these are my interests? Perhaps that scholarly approach is what's happening here. These primal feelings. These primal, like, Northman is about vengeance. It's just like, I will avenge my father. It's one of the oldest stories we've got. This idea of sexual desire that is both illicit

but also maddening is a very old idea. So I feel like he's trying to get back to the original sheet music with his works. No, I think that's well put. I just wonder when you live in modern times and the ideas resonate to this day. I find that, I don't know,

were there any other ideas that you kind of felt just below the surface of the movie that resonated for you in any way? I mean, I think the one you identified about femininity is, you almost don't have to talk about it on set. It is that obvious.

Like every time her character complains about anything, it's like, here, let me chloroform you to sleep. Let me tie you to this bed. It's all kind of right there. But overall, I think it's a lot more about people wrestling with things

that are so far beyond their control and trying to rationalize ways to do it. And maybe the only character who has a clear-eyed vision through that is Willem Dafoe's, who seems to have a pretty good grasp on everything that's going on and a pretty good grasp of the fact that he,

are we kind of in spoiler territory? Sure. Like, can basically take the men to get out of the way and run a fake false flag mission off to the side so that the actual work can get done. I thought that was like

a really clarifying perspective in this movie. Everyone is like fumbling around, staking bodies that may or may not be vampires, like trying to figure out what the rules are for this version

of Count Orlok like all this mythology is confounding them no one has an idea what to do except the one guy who's like a crazy kooky doctor

who's basically been outlawed by society he's just like an alchemist yeah he's the ball knower of this movie certainly I wonder

so thematically I thought actually one of the more interesting things that I thought they hammered was the economic anxiety and class stuff, which I don't remember from previous iterations of the story per se.

They little women did, you're saying. They really brought it up. Just the idea of like him signing away his wife or unknowingly, but then that fight that they have, which is so electrifying, where she's just like, well, show me the gold then. Like, show me what you sold me for.

All the stuff where there's that edge to Holt's relationship to Friedrich, where it's like, you've lent me money. It's okay. You're staying with me. It's okay. But I can always kick you out. And that kind of like,

the sort of edge to the 19th century version of capitalism that's going on there, and this guy climbing this mountain to try and get his piece of the world and only to find the devil up there. I thought it was really fascinating to watch Eggers play with, but apparently it wasn't on his mind. Well, I like how you described it,

and you made me, I think, understand it a little bit better, which is that these things are sublimated so deeply into the structure of the original stories that you don't have to spend too much time overwhelmingly thinking about them. But all the things we're talking about are such modern concerns. The idea of ownership and property and power

and the sense of loss there. But like in 1922, in post-war Germany, ownership and land and power and the rebuilding of a social structure is like definitely on murnau's mind um yeah you should read up on it uh maybe maybe his next film will be a war film about vampires you can watch that and find out now that would be good that would be good that would unite the last couple of big pictures it's true it's. That's our flag. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of criticism of Eggers over the last couple of years

that he's a guy who likes to play dress up but doesn't maybe think too hard. And I've been a very staunch defender of the strategy and structure of his movies. But it's funny to talk to somebody who's just like, don't worry about that dog. This vampire is sick. But I imagine, you haven't talked to

Wes Anderson before I never have I've never spoken I would imagine that if you asked him about Asteroid City and you were like this is obviously about grief and this is obviously about like the memory of love and he would be like it's also about what I think UFOs in Arizona would look like you know like and it's like yeah You know, like, it's like, he would be like, it's about like, I wanted to make something that was about this particular moment where science fiction and reality kind of merged. And I don't know.

I think that I personally get Wes Anderson more than I get Robert Eggers. I think I respect Eggers more than I love him with the exception of the Northman, which was very meaningful to me as a man who's been trying to avenge his father for quite some time. I felt seen.

But I fucking dug Nosferatu man. It was good. Also how much of that do you think is the vampires are sick don't think about it too hard and how much of it is leaving the gap? No that's what it is. I mean some filmmakers love to talk about theme and they love to say like here's what I was going for with this one.

I like those conversations. Those are easier for me. It's not as fun to interview a filmmaker and be like, let's talk about theme. And he's like, good luck to you, sir. Maybe he's like, this is Hamlet to me. You know what I mean? Like the themes are like, it's the theme is already, you should know that already because of like the reason why

this story still seems to resonate with a lot of people is because it's road tested you know so I don't really have to explain it part of that too

like one thing we haven't really touched on is in all of his movies there's a lot of weird magical stuff happening almost none of it

is good it's all like creepy and horrifying and monstrous and this I think playing with this idea that if there is some great power

in the universe that is beyond us we probably don't want to fuck with it too much. I'm not sure if that's the reading though because I tend to feel like he most closely associates himself with the characters who get caught up in those worlds. Well sure but they get like wrecked by

would-be mermaids. Or they ascend and become they find a family of witches together you know. I guess that's true. So you see The Witch as a found family movie. A hundred percent. I'm not even joking. I really think that that's what that movie is about The Witch as a found family movie. A hundred percent. I'm not even joking. I really think that that's what that movie is about is that sometimes you're born into a circumstance

and you're like, these are not my people. Who are these people? My parents are aliens. They're God-fearing Catholics living in the newly established lands of America. I am a witch. Where are my witches at? That's what that movie is about.

And it's great because a lot of people have an experience like that. So I think you're right that what he shows you in these movies is that those things are very dangerous and powerful. For sure. But not necessarily bad. And in fact, like if you want to talk about the ending of the movie. Yeah.

Which I think is great and beautiful and so amazingly shot. The last 30 minutes of this movie are incredible. It's awesome. It rips. Yeah. From the moment that the rats are scurrying across the pavers

in Germany, I was like, oh yeah, he's in his bag. But that final moment, which as you pointed out, like Willem Dafoe sets up the false flag operation,

everybody moves over here, Nosferatu and Ellen are able to have union. She sacrifices herself ultimately and he dies on top of her when the sunlight is revealed, executing their plan.

And then that frozen image of him on top of her, effectively at completion, at the completion of our story, and then having... He's definitely spent. Yeah. They both are.

They have been drained, so to speak. And... That was a pun, guys. I have a lot of regrets being on this podcast I had a career before this what do you mean?

you're only elevating you're levitating like Orlok's spirit he's been arguing about Dyson Daniels I know that's the real work and then this

you know sort of like renaissance painting of a decaying demon on top of a woman. It's kind of beautiful. It is wonderful. If you see something in a movie and you're like,

I think that was the shot that's been in your head for 15 years. And you're like, I'm going to make the movie so I can do this shot. And that's always really awesome when you see somebody get it. And just like the flowers and everything. It's just, it's really breathtaking.

It's really good. This is a really, really good movie. I think I like picking it apart because I'm a little obsessed with his movies. So invariably I'm like, what about this? What about this? But if you enjoy the Eggers project, I think you will very much enjoy this. But, you know, Chris said something very funny to me the other day, Rob. He had a

very strong take on Dracula. Now, obviously, Nosferatu isn't Dracula, but he basically had a very strong take on Dracula. Okay. Now, obviously, Nosferatu isn't Dracula, but he basically is. He's Teemu Dracula. So, what's your take, Chris? Vampires rule, Dracula drools.

Vampires are fucking incredible and just awesome storytelling mechanisms and engines and also just like fascinating creatures that you can do so much different stuff with.

And I would like to say we did it. We're done. Eggers, Coppola, Murnau, we've got them all. You guys don't ever have to do this guy wants to buy a house.

I better go to this mountain and sign over my wife's soul to him and then he comes back in a crate and then we have to stay here. What if it's a musical? You know, what if it's a comedy? I'm loving it. I don't know.

You know, I just, I think that the Dracula character, he's not one of my guys, to quote Marc Maron, you know? And vampires, though, are fucking fun and exciting and scary. And it really, some of my most watched movies of my life

probably are vampire movies, but something about Dracula just misses for me, man. It's interesting because this is not stopping. Like, just last year, we had The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield. Right. We have the Hotel Transylvania movies for kids. We had the Dracula Clays Bang miniseries on Netflix

a few years ago. Like if you go back and look, I just searched for a letterbox list just called Dracula and I found one and it has 110 films on it. Good Lord. And that, you know, of course that includes all the early, the Browning movies and the Universal Horror movies and it includes all the Hammer films. I mean, Hammer made like 15 Dracula movies in a very short period of time. And it does not stop. People love this story. They love this character. I think it's all the things we talked about.

It's the psychosexual nature of things. It's the suavity and the beauty. It's the terror, the elegance combined with like a true monster movie. So it's interesting

that you say that because vampire movies that are not Dracula stories or should maybe, I should say because vampire movies that are not Dracula stories, or maybe I should say even more so that are not like truly European, tend to be like, whoa, vampires, they're going to fucking explode everywhere. And there's like guys with shotguns. It's just like, let's make T2, but with a guy who sucks blood. And this is contained to this very elegantly rendered story

of a lost time in history. I don't really have an observation beyond that. Do you like Dracula? I like Dracula, fine. I'm not opposed to your overall thesis here, though, which is we know the story. Frankly, Nosferatu feels like it closes the book on it a little bit for me.

It does. I have a hard time feeling like I'm going to watch a Dracula rendition that's going to leave me more satisfied with the story than this. Interesting. And so I'm cool with every other vampire story you want to tell, any genre, any time, any variation. You can only see the mirrors. Maybe they can walk at day now.

Whatever it is you want to do, I'm here for that stuff. Those daywalkers are just, they're trouble. They're diabolical. What's your, like, what makes a great vampire movie for you? I think it's the setting and setup.

So for the top five that I have, I think part of it is like the vampires are incidental to the fact that it's a great idea for a movie. It's like, what if we put vampires here? And so I think I can go for vampire movies that are romantic, vampire movies that are action movies,

vampire movies that are straight up horror movies, vampire movies that are travel logs. But I think it's got to be everything but the vampire

has to be there for me and then you put the vampires in to twist it up a notch. Okay. So Sinners is coming out next year which is Ryan Coogler's

new film which is not beingogler's new film, which is not being sold in the teaser as a vampire movie, I don't believe, but as far as I know, is straight up a vampire movie, which I think is in the post-war South. Wow.

It looks like it, based on this teaser, yeah. Which kind of speaks to the point that you're making, which is like a very cool action movie from Ryan Coogler set in the post-war South, but vampires,

is great. Like that's just, I'm in, like tickets sold. And then I don't, we've talked about Chris Nolan's next movie like 300 times together, Chris and I on this pod recently.

Charlie's Throne. Has she been cast as well? Yes. What? What's the list right now? Where are we? It's Anne Hathaway's Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o,

Matt Damon, Tom Holland, and Charlie's Throne okay top fives now I did I did do this in 2022 which I had completely forgotten about

Van Lathan and I and you can here's why I forgot about it Van Lathan and I did an episode and by episode I mean an 18 minute conversation about the film

Morbius which is also a vampire movie based on a vampire comic book in the Marvel world that stinks. And we talked about our favorite vampire movies. So I thought, one, I wanted to hear from you guys which ones you like. And then I'll just do five more.

I'll share the five I did in 2022. I'll do five more. I made a list of vampire movies, as I often do. There's 300 fucking movies on the list. Like, there's just, if you are into this stuff, there's a lot of fodder but um some of these we've talked about over the years not all of them any what any thought that you put into the kind of vampire movie that you're looking for in your top five i mean having just done this with the world war ii exercise too i was struck by the variety of what's available and how much you can draw from and so like the question of what makes

a good vampire movie for me is very hard. Because sometimes I do just want vampires getting shot with steak guns. And sometimes I want moody vampires finding themselves. The loneliness of a vampire and the loneliness of the people they prey on is often what draws me to these movies. So I think if there is a theme maybe too strong given all the movies I picked, but that's kind of a unifying idea. I feel like maybe I should become a vampire. Yeah?

Because like that loneliness, you know, I like to be up late. I like to just sit in my cave. Are you sure you're not a vampire? Well, I certainly have the pallor. Prove it.

I, no. I do have canines. Oh, no. I do have the classically sharp canine teeth. What is like the thing blood test equivalent that we could like run on you

to prove that you are or are not a vampire? I guess we just got to throw you out in the sun and see what happens. Your wife ever just to be like, it's me. It's me, I'm a telluride. How is Alice doing today, Eileen? You will make sure there is coffee for me when I get back from Toronto Film Festival. Three tickets for Moana 2, please. I'm not a vampire, I promise.

In 2022, my five movies, which I don't think are represented. Actually, one of them is represented on Chris's list. And I want to let Chris talk about it. So I'll share mine afterwards and we can just jump into our list. CR, number five, what do you got? Twilight. Yeah, of course.

Edward is the real Dracula. Edward is the guy that I would be like, I get it. I get why she's thrown it all away for this guy. A soy boy? Yeah.

It's an awesome setting for a movie in Forks, I think it is. Yeah, Pacific Northwest. Yeah, in the Pacific Northwest. And the idea that like mild cloud cover protects vampires. That's all they is. Pacific Northwest. Pacific Northwest. The idea that mild cloud cover protects vampires.

That's all they need. That's all they need. I have seen this movie so many times. This came out at a very special time in my relationship to my wife. It is kind of... Phoebe, should we watch Twilight again? Are you a Jacob or Team Edward?

Phoebe. I love these movies. And there's some diminishing returns as you get to the breaking dawn. But this first one is actually a really good fucked up teenage love story that then turns silly at the very end. And I think transposing the idea

of this old ass man who looks disgusting and has a psychological hold on you, turning it into Jordan Catalano, and having him just be... A little paler. A little sparklier. A little paler, but incredible speed, incredible dexterity,

and eye coordination off the charts. Hitting the whole Dalton Connect, right? Yeah, and I think also for a lot of people out there, this is the vampire story. Honestly, weirdly enough, these movies are bad. You know,

I know that they have a huge fan base for people who are roughly 12 years younger than me, but they're not good. What if I'm five years older? Yeah,

Bob waving from far away. Bob, you love the Twilight movies? I don't, I mean, I wouldn't say that I think they're good movies, but I do kind of have a distinct love for them.

This is the movie that I've seen in theaters more than any other movie ever because like when I was in seventh grade, all of my friends were like, we're just going again. Next weekend rolls around, we're going again. For like three months straight. You know, it was like end game before end game.

There was also like a very fun Obamacore moment of like this in Hunger Games. There was everybody who's just like, I'm very excited to see Twilight

on the screen. Twilight was very good. It was like the book. I want to see the next Twilight movie. Zillennial culture salutes you, Chris Ryan. You're on the award.

You really do stand up for them. I think I've seen this one the least. It's never too late to rewatch. It probably is the best one, but like I think I've seen this one the least. It's never too late to rewatch. It probably is the best one but like I think the Twilight movies

are very underrated in the like you're in a hotel and you needed something to throw on in the background like it's on TNT watch. Yeah. Elite.

Like I'm just like let's watch the fucking softball scene. Let's watch the weird CGI baby. Like I want all of that stuff even more so than I want the original.

Twilight rewatchables would do fucking insane numbers. I'm just saying. And where would that be happening? Live from Forks? Yeah. It's funny. My friends of the New Beverly have started programming it,

I think on an annual basis. And the screenings, just to Bobby's point, just do gangbusters apparently. Like people are showing up in costume. And, you know, obviously the movie is a huge phenomenon. As an actual movie, I think Taylor Lautner is like a significant part

of this film. Yeah. Is he a significant part of this one? He's not a significant part of the first one. He comes in as a character He gives her the truck.

He's just seeding the relationship. He's like, I got a haircut and got swole. And then he just gets lapped by Pattinson by the end.

It's just not even close. We obviously, I salute Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Of course. I'm very not even close. We obviously, I salute Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. I'm very grateful that they were able to make these films have success

and now just do weird shit in perpetuity. So they are important. Rob, number five for you. Robert Pattinson, one of the greatest press runs of all time because of this movie.

You know, he was just shitting all over the movie and the experience the whole time. He's the GOAT. I mean, yes. Maybe I was influenced

by those quotes that he shared during that time. I am here to represent the two genders, I guess. We got Twilight in camp one. My number five is Blade 2. Love it. Speaking of Guillermo. Speaking of Guillermo. Also, stop me if you've heard this before. There's a new breed of vampire, guys.

You know, it's crazy to think about and we need Blade to hunt them for us. That's really what we need Blade to hunt them for us. That's really what we need to happen. Fully snipesified. I consider this like the elevated version of the original Blade model. I would like to read for you the names of some of the blood pack that he works with in this movie. The pack of vampires who are under his command.

Well, there's one that we must salute because he has recently fallen and we miss him dearly. Please feel free. Lighthammer, Priest, Chupa, and Donnie Yen's Snowman. Really, really something. But Chris Christopherson also a legend in this movie. But it's got everything you like

from Blade, the vampire clubs, the motorcycle fights, plus vampire government. And that's really where my interests lie. It's an incredibly fun movie. It is truly the flip side to the Twilight coin.

Blade? You don't care. Blade's cool. Is it because he's black? You don't like him? One of these days we're going to fucking get canceled because you keep

pushing the envelope. I'm asking you a pointed question about portrayal in film. I'm just going to be the sidekick on McAfee who's like looking down the barrel of the lens

just like, what am I supposed to do here? When do we get Mahershala's movie? What the fuck is this? It's just going to be the sidekick on McAfee who's like looking down the barrel of the lens just like, what am I supposed to do here? When do we get Mahershala's movie? What the fuck is this? It's not going to happen. Never. I don't think it's happening.

I thought he was like a major part of the next phase of the MCU. They're just like... Wasn't it in Eternals when we heard his voice at the end? What movie was that

where you hear his voice? Also Harry Styles? Was that... He appeared in the, yeah, in the final, the stinger of that alright very cool movie

Eternals my number five that is not my number five but is my number five is Martin which is a very cool movie that George Romero made in the 70s

it is very little seen is much more available now than it was five or ten years ago but set in Pittsburgh it's about a young alienated teenager,

as so many of these movies are, just like Twilight, who thinks he is a vampire and starts to act like a vampire, but may not actually be a vampire, which is, you know, an interesting psychological study of a moment of change in a person's life,

but also to the point of Eggers' film, there was a lot of vampirism in Romania and Transylvania in the 1800s, and there were men who were incredibly violent and who would rape and murder women. That's real? What did they do? They believed that they needed

the human flesh to regenerate. Let me dig back to my freshman elective education. Get in there. So there is that and then there's also the like, oh, everyone on literally

the other side of our border is a vampire. Like, oh, the Roma people over there, they're definitely sucking blood and killing people. So that's where it's hard

to separate the mythology That was the original build the wall, as I recall, was to keep out the vampires. Who was like the Steve Bannon of vampires? I'm here from the war room.

We got bloodsuckers. Maybe it was Bram Stoker. I mean, he wrote that influential bit of literature. He would have been the angel studio. Steve Bannon actually would fit right into

the Nosferatu with the clothes. He's got like seven garments on. Yeah. Do you think it was between him and Willem Dafoe for that role for The Alchemist? The kids were out of control for Dafoe.

He was just in prison, so it didn't work out. I enjoy Martin. You should check that out. Chris, what's your number four? I cheated because we're not ranking Fellini movies here. So these are two films at number four. I think I've seen the two of these films combined 500 times.

They're my vampire action movie go-tos. John Carpenter's Vampires and 30 Days of Night. John Carpenter's Vampires is James Woods as the Catholic Church's chief vampire assassin. Yeah. He plays a man named Jack Crow. Is that a lifetime appointment

or how do you get in there? Yes, and his sidekick is played by Daniel Baldwin who plays a man named Tony Montoya. It's fucking awesome. It's set in the Southwest. It's a lot of John Carpenter

doing John Carpenter things and this was actually like his last like successful movie pretty much that's crazy have you revisited

this one recently I love this movie we have talked about it before this was actually I believe Van's number one when we talked so he loves this movie as well very Vancore

as well as CRcore it's just an awesome cable Saturday afternoon movie 30 Days of Night I've talked about before one when we talked. So he loves this movie as well. Very VanCore as well as CRCore. It's just an awesome cable Saturday afternoon movie. 30 Days of Night, I've talked about before, David Slade's night set, like Eternal Barrel Alaska.

Just an all-time vampire elevator pitch. And it's just so great. It's like, where would vampires be most at home? At the place where the sun never comes up for a month. And there it's Danny Houston is the chief vampire in this one.

It's Josh Hartnett is like the sheriff. And it is so gory and bloody. And vampires all like move really fast and are super strong. And it's. And they've got like shark teeth. It's like their whole mouth is teeth. That was going to be my question. What is your preference on the vampire teeth experience?

Because, you know, Danny Houston in particular, he has like a hundred pointy edged teeth. But, you know, the classical Dracula is just the two. I think I'm a classicist, honestly. I love the experimentation, but it's a classic. I'm a mid-century modern, you know? I think something where you change into something pretty scary is better than just like,

oh, I have one long tooth. Okay, cool. Very cool. Normal stuff. Number four, Rob. I'm going to keep it Guillermo. Kron cool. Very cool. Normal stuff. Number four, Rob. I'm going to keep it, Guillermo. Kronos. His first movie, another really tight

vampire story. Very small cast. I think it kind of plays with a different idea of vampirism, which is like, everyone is on the search for eternal life

throughout these sorts of movies. What if it turns you into a vampire? And the side of vampirism that is actually more of a curse to participate in. So, I have a turns you into a vampire and the side of vampirism that is actually more of a curse to participate in?

So I have a lot of time for that and the sort of holy grailification of the vampire idea. Also, Guillermo just has such a knack for the mythology

of this stuff and of these worlds. So I have a lot of time for Kronos overall. I think it's just a really well executed, especially first film, just kind of blew me away.

I haven't seen this in a while, but whatever, the scarab. It's like a golden scarab executed, especially first film, just kind of blew me away. I haven't seen this in a while, but whatever the scarab. It's like a golden scarab beetle that stabs your hand. Yeah. And I want to say there's like a little insect inside the golden beetle.

That little creature design is like a, it's like a echo signal of what's to come when he gets like a hundred million dollars to make a movie. You know, he's so good at that level of design. It's a really good movie, Kronos. I like that pick. My number four is a movie

I watched last night for the first time. I was looking around for another Universal film because obviously when the Todd Browning movie in 31 came out, it was a sensation.

It vaulted Bill Lugosi to become a huge star. Unfortunately, Dracula dies at the end of that movie, so it's a little hard to make some more movies. This movie is a proper sequel to the original Dracula.

It's called Dracula's Daughter. We didn't know in the original Dracula that Dracula had a daughter, but this movie presupposes that she did. And certainly does. Dracula's Daughter

is really interesting. It is like part of the universal assembly line chain of films. And this is a vampire movie about a woman kind of coming to grips with uh her father's death she believes that if she is able to destroy her father's corpse that she will be set free from the curse of vampirism can i say that that's not how this stuff works yeah there's some invented mythology in this movie. But the movie, which is directed by Lambert Hillier, has great tone, atmosphere, very unsettling kind of movie.

Very short, it's only 71 minutes. And it is very clearly a crypto-lesbian drama and one of the original portrayals of gay love between two women in a movie. And there are a couple of other examples of this. I just watched another Val Luton movie like a few months ago that also features this kind of relationship. But if you look at it through that prism, it's just another great reading of like what you can do with a vampire movie.

The obsession that we see between Orlok and Ellen in the movie is the same between these two women in this story. One kind of like raven haired, seductress, and another kind of blonde, innocent. So very cool movie. I mean it's actually a really good segue to the number three

for both of us. Oh yeah. Fire away. Yeah. Only Lovers Left Alive. Yeah. Jarmusch's Jim Jarmusch's

2013 movie with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. Maybe my favorite Tom Hiddleston performance. Honestly the role they were both meant to play. Yeah.

They're so good in it. What if the two coolest people literally of all time were vampiric lovers who lived through centuries and fought and left each other and came back to one another? And it has... It's this moment in Jim Jarmusch's career where he kind of gets some mainstream notoriety

for a couple of his indie films and then starts to work with bigger actors and then takes on this project that's essentially taking his tone and applying it to work with bigger actors and then takes on this project that's essentially taking his tone and applying it to big genre movies. Westerns, vampire movie, zombie movie.

This is one of my favorite films by him, but it's really the central relationship between Swinton and Hiddleston is so fucking awesome. If you haven't seen this movie, I honestly recommend relationship between Swinton and Hiddleston is so fucking awesome. And it's just like, if you haven't seen this movie, I honestly recommend this

the most out of all of the movies we're going to talk about today. It has such a cool musical sensibility too because he's like, obviously this musician has lived hundreds of years

writing a bunch of mostly funeral dirges. Like, I mean, it's almost like fuzz rock. Yeah. It's like one of the white stripes or vampires kind of.

And I think it's set in Detroit which is probably the only vampire movie that operates that way. I think it has a couple things going for it that other vampire movies don't. One, this idea of blood

as almost like a hallucinogenic drug more so than a life force. Like they do need it to survive but it gives them a high. I mean it's very much a stand in for heroin.

Oh completely. It is so heroin chic the whole movie and it's very clearly mapped onto what if you just sat around and listened to Scott Walker and Lou Reed 80s records?

Like, that's basically what they're doing in the movie. So it's very, very, very cool. And also the part that it, because it is in Detroit, in Decay, I think it's as much a movie about like what vampires

make of us as, you know, as opposed to what we make of them or what they make of each other. It's like, what do you do with an eternal life when you see humans just fucking up everything that they touch? Speaking of them or what they make of each other. It's like, what do you do with an eternal life when you see humans just fucking up everything that they touch?

Speaking of fucking up everything they touch, my number three is, I don't know if this is one of my favorite vampire movie, but it's a very cool film that is somewhat related to Martin, which is called Trouble Every Day. It's a Claire Denis movie from 2001. Stars Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dahl.

And it is, once again, about a movie about people who think that they are vampires and who wreak fucking havoc. And there is like an extraordinary kill in the middle of this movie. It's related to another movie that was on my previous list in my mind, which is called The Addiction, which was an Abel Ferrara movie starring Lily Taylor in the 90s.

And they both have these kind of centerpiece murder sequences that are very unnerving, but weirdly very sexual. The Addiction is a little bit more of a parable about aids trouble every day is something else something um i feel like uh the larry fessenden movie habit which is really cool but fits into this as like a trinity absolutely yeah independently made using that genre trojan horse to explore something bigger in the culture but trouble every day is a very very cool and kind of mystifying movie at the end when you get to it and vincent gallo like i'm not spoiling it he just kind of decides like okay i think i'm done with that and they like get on the road and just like so you just had an interregnum period of your life in which you were a vampire if you told me

vincent gallo actually believed that i would believe that it does it does seem believable uh okay number two chris uh i got near dark uh which which is Catherine Bigelow's southwestern travelogue about a couple like basically a Bonnie and Clyde Badlands kind of situation where you know this couple is wreaking havoc throughout the southwest and falls in with

a group of like traveling vampire criminals Lance Henriksen Bill Paxton just like the James Cameron, Catherine Bigelow, all stars are in this. And I think it kind of has, it's the perfect marriage of like a director with this very high style

and this very hard genre thing. But then it's like, let's actually like imbue this onto like a real world situation. It's just a fantastic, fantastic film. I'm not up on this at all. I gotta catch up. This was my number one

when we did the list originally. This movie is in desperate need of a 4K restoration. They should put this movie back in theaters. They should put it on physical media. It's very hard. I don't know if it's hard.

You probably could just rent it. Yeah, I think you can get it, but it's not a great print. Not a great, yeah, not exactly. Just a rip-roaring movie. And then when it's not, is a very ethereal coming-of-age story. Great movie.

Okay, number two, Rob. Yeah, I think we share a number two. We do share a number two. Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I think has a lot in common with those fraught two in a way. Like, I believe in rewarding vision with a list like this.

Like, this is a movie that has a clear sensibility. I think it deserves placement on production design and costuming and Gary Holdman going so fucking hard every second that he's on screen in this movie. An absolute style icon. You were talking about the various Dracula's that we see. I prefer steampunk little blue glasses. That's kind of my preferred Dracula mode. I just think it's, it's a really cool Dracula adaptation

in which he almost gets to be like kind of a wolfman version of a vampire. Also a kind of beast. Definitely more of a beastie vibe. And plus you got Keanu in there cooking too, getting worked over by Dracula's brides. I think it's just a really fun time. I revisited this movie for Megalopolis

and I was just blown away and I probably hadn't seen it in 20 years and I was just blown away by the level of craft that's going on. It's a classic we didn't know how good

we had it kind of movie. Also one of the great movies of like one of the great texts that people wrote about at the time when it came out

because there was a lot of access to this production. There was a lot of writing on this as is with many Coppola films. And just the controversial about like casting Winona and Keanu and these parts that probably required

like British theatrical presence. And it's an awesome movie to go back to. I think Winona's pretty good. I mean, Keanu was kind of famously not good. He's struggling. He's like, whoa. That looks like a vampire. Shit.

But that character is struggling. That's the thing whoa. That looks like a vampire. Shit. But that character is struggling. That's the thing. I almost don't mind it. I think that's totally credible. Okay, Chris, number one. My number one is Lost Boys. Joel Schumacher movie from the 80s starring Jason Patrick and Kiefer Sutherland

and Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. This is, I think for for me gets at the thing that like is the young at heart part of the my fascination with vampires which is like they just seem cool and how dangerous that must be if you actually like let it play out this is one of the great settings of any movie which is this northern california beach amusement park town so most of it takes place on this boardwalk where the kids all have jobs or hang out and ride motorcycles.

And a gang of vampires are marauding around this town. And I don't want to give too much away about what happens, but a lot of it is about fitting in as a teenager and trying to figure out your identity. Are you a vampire or a vampire killer? And it's fucking amazing it's so it's such a great movie to re-watch over and over again i find myself delighted every time i watch it and this is probably the vampire movie that hit me right as i was coming into consciousness about what they even were so it's like you always remember your first love uh i like this movie a lot too and is the perfect setting

for Joel Schumacher's whole deal. Like visual schlock obsession. The saxophone scene. Yeah, yeah. You know, his like sense of, you know, started out as a costume designer and his sense of staging is always really good and his like scripts

and idea of plot mechanics are always like quite bad. But in this world, just like honestly in the Batman movies, it's like let it rip. You know, that's the whole point of the Joel Schumacher movie is we're not trying to make a serious work of art here.

We're trying to have a fun movie. So great pick. Rob, what's your number one? My number one, you know, someone here must respect Swedish cinema. This is actually probably the right pick. I legitimately didn't put this on my list because I knew you would. I take that as a high compliment.

Let the right one in. Must be on this list. There are not a lot of feel-good vampire stories out there. I would say Only Lovers Left Alive kind of gets close. It's pretty bleak. Especially the end, yeah. Attempted suicidal bullets are made in that movie. So it's like, it's a bit of a heavier watch overall.

But this is about like two lonely kids finding each other. And I think it plays on the vampire myth in an interesting way. Like, yes, it is. There's, it holds no punches ultimately and gets very, very violent. I think the fact that it doesn't hold anything back is what makes it so good. And what makes it so that when you do see a little vampire kid and a little human kid doing Morse code through the wall at each other. Yeah. Like, it's just so endearing.

And I think ultimately using that, you know, in the same way you were saying as vampirism or vampires as a way of like fitting in or finding your boys. This way it's like, how do you stand up to a bully? And one answer is make friends with a vampire. What is your take on the Matt Reeves remake it's pretty good I just don't it's one of those like what's the point a little bit it's very faithful but I thought it was pretty cool I thought Richard Jenkins is really good in it

the cast is unreal yeah this is another example though of what we were talking about before where a Swedish apartment like complex in dead winter is like an awesome place too. So cool.

Also just very hard to make a credible film about the emotional connection between two 10 year olds. You know, I mean that's like a hard movie to make and that both of the actors

in the Alfredson version are so incredible especially the young girls. Such a great actress. It's a wonderful movie. I'm glad you picked it. Because there's kids too there's also the dimension

of like what it's like to be the caretaker for a kid vampire. That's such a great little wrinkle in the story. It's like, what if Renfield was your babysitter?

Just a super good idea. So my number one on this list is Fright Night, which is a movie that I also hadn't seen in a long time and I re-watched during the spooky season.

It's just like, such a fun movie and I had forgotten to your point about Eggers being very excited to make a movie gloopy like the practical gross out effects in Fright Night are amazing the final 40 minutes

in Chris Sarandon's house where like he's transforming into like a bat demon and they're killing the other vampires and the familiar in the house and his death like all that stuff is so wild but it's also what you're saying, which is just like, it's a cool teen comedy

about a guy who's trying to get laid and also, like, is super into a TV show and he meets the host of the TV show and they go on an adventure together. Plus, Chris Sarandon wanting to kind of, like, fuck everybody's mom

and also drink their blood. It's just a super fun movie. You know the remake's not bad. It's pretty good. Is it Tennant? David Tennant's the new first? Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell.

And Anton Yelchin. It is pretty good. I got onto re-watching it because I had re-watched Child's Play on a plane which I think I talked about and I was like Child's Play is a very

very good film. And Tom Holland the director who's like pretty underrated I think this was his first movie as a director and he wrote a bunch of stuff like Cloak and Dagger

before this before Spider-Man you mean not that Tom Holland it's unfortunate Tom Holland as a spermatozoa you know well that's everlasting I haven't

seen him age a day that's a really really good point that's our list my list from 22 was Salem's Lot the Toby Hooper miniseries which was recently remade not very

successfully from Dusk Till Dawn which I fucking love. The Addiction which I just mentioned the original Dracula from 31 which is still great

and still plays really well. It does not feel like an old movie at all and then Near Dark as I mentioned. I'll throw out the film version of What We Do in the Shadows

and the TV version which might at this point eclipse the film version. They just did a college basketball March Madness episode of what we do in the shadows. Providence. Any other honorable mentions? Anything else you want to shout out before we go to Robert Eggers? I mean, since we were talking so much Nosferatu, I think the Herzog Nosferatu is kind of off to the side a little bit. Thirst. Blood for Dracula, I think the Herzog Nosferatu is kind of off to the side a little bit. Thirst.

Blood for Dracula, I really like. The original Buffy movie. Oh, a girl who walks alone at night, right? Yeah, that's a great movie. And similar to your, like, thinking you're a vampire

phenomenon, I actually really like Vampire's Kiss a lot. Not really about being a vampire, but about thinking you're a vampire. As we know, you are cage-pilled.

Sure. And so it is one of the er, crazy cage texts. It really breaks open the whole case for us. Whose list do you think Robert Eggers would like the most? I genuinely think he would want to throat punch all three of us. So,

with that in mind, let's go to my conversation with Robert Eggers. Robert Eggers is back on the show. Hey, Rob, how are you? Great. Happy to be here. When did you first see the Murnau Nosferatu? Do you remember? Yep. Nine years old. My mom helped me acquire a VHS we had to mail order for. And yeah, it just really stuck with me. I'd seen the Bela Lugosi version and, um, a couple of the Christopher Lee versions. Um, but I,

something about Max Trek's performance and the simple fairy tale, uh, telling of, of the Dracula story, uh, the, the haunting atmosphere. Um, yeah,

it really stuck with me. What did your parents think when their nine-year-old was really into german silent cinema uh status quo you know like i i was into weird stuff and but yeah i mean my dad is a shakespeare professor and my mom like you know had a kids theater company so it was like you know a household where that kind of thing was perfectly fine how How did you feel it like manifesting? I know you wrote a stage play of sort of an adaptation. Like did you, when you were nine, were you like, I want to make the things that I'm seeing?

Yeah, no. I mean, I think I definitely thought about the idea of being a film director as a kid. But yeah, I did a lot of theater growing up and I had the opportunity to do senior directed play. And I thought like, maybe I'll do Nosferatu and as a silent film on stage with black and white costumes and black and white sets. And,

and then I said that maybe it was dumb. And my friend, Ashley Kelly Tata, who's now a prominent theater and opera director, she said, no, that's a cool idea. And so we directed it together. And then it was seen by this guy, Edward Langlois, who had the only cool theater in southern New Hampshire that was doing Duchess of Malfi and Sam Shepard instead of My Fair Lady. And he invited us to do a more professional version of it as his theater and it changed my life and cemented the fact that i wanted to be a director so like before i knew

that i wanted to make a movie of nosferatu like nosferatu sort of like symbolically was like uh you know my primal narrative that made me like want to do what i do or something you know so back then to some to some extent did you find yourself like intellectually disassembling it when you were younger and thinking about why you liked it of course not yeah you know i mean i barely i i like i can barely do that now even though i like that's what i'm being asked to do like all day long every day um you know but i but but obviously i had to explore that in when i did approach writing a screenplay because you know how do i make it my own why why do i want to do this like what you know and i think what was nice about the galleon screenplay uh that aptate that

adaptation that is more now's film is is that that simple or fairy tale structure has a lot more enigma and a lot more question marks so it's a frame framework where i can you know put in what i'm the most interested in you know and and i i wrote a novella in trying to like figure this all out to embellish ellen's backstory and childhood and understand or lock and uh create a vampire mythology based on folklore and a cult that was that sort of uh had some consistency to flesh out other characters and and that was like uh but the first step in in in sort of making this movie a reality and that happened like eight or like nine or 10 years ago. Yeah. So I feel like, I think we talked on the phone in 2016. Sure. And you had been, you were going to do it or you were thinking about doing it and it

was after the witch and it had been discussed and obviously it didn't happen for a variety of reasons. But do you think that the version you would have made then would have been significantly different than where you are now? It was only because of my lack of ability, but not because of what I wanted to do. Like the movie hasn't really changed since then too much. I mean, the script has gotten tighter and gotten better

and like less expositional and whatever, but it is the same movie, you know? What abilities have changed in that time? You know, I've gotten better at making films. I've matured as a human being. I've grown closer

and more fluid with my frequent collaborators. So many things. I think the the northman was um such a tall order and and and it was way too big for my britches and and it was like trial by fire and and um after that i came out thinking like i know how to direct a movie now like i'm not convincing people that i know how to make a movie in theory like i actually know how to direct a movie now like i'm not convincing people that i know how to make a movie in theory like i actually know how to direct a film so it was great when noseratu finally happened to go into it with more confidence not to say that we didn't challenge

ourselves as filmmakers we we you know all of my team were trying to deliberately bite off a little more than we can choose so that you know so so that we can stretch ourselves and get better and also stretch further on the next one. But yeah, it was a good time to make the film. Is there a big anxiety of influence when there are several iterations of a story that come before? Will you look at them or not look at them when you're preparing to make it? I looked at every

Dracula and vampire movie. I would say that there's definitely some quoting of the Todd Browning film a little, but other than that, like not a, not a ton.

Uh, I, it, it, and, and, and the movies that were more influential to this movie, aside from Nosferatu were not Dracula movies.

Um, and I, I, I watched the Herzog version and the Coppola version a lot as a young person. So in the 10 years of trying to make this, I deliberately didn't watch them. I know that those influencers are there. They could not be.

I watched those movies a zillion times when I was younger. But I did want to try to deliberately distance myself from them as they were the more recent, uh, strong versions of the story. But at the end of the day, you have to respect what came before you. And,

and, and while I want to do my own thing, it, you know, you know, as much as like, like the makeup design, the costume design of Orlok is like is meant to be radically different,

but I also have like the fingers, the shape of the skull. There are certain things like the hump back, like there are certain things that I also wanted to acknowledge, you know? And I think, you know, me, Bill Skarsgård, David White, the prosthetics designer, and interestingly enough, Robin Carroll, the composer, I think were the people who fought the most weight of like, oh my God, we're doing Nosferatu. But when you're there, you just have to kind of like let go and be or you're going to fail.

There's a very surprising name in the credits. Chris Columbus is a producer on this movie? Yes, Chris Columbus of Home Alone and Harry Potter and Mrs. Doubtfire fame was the main creative producer on the film with his daughter Eleanor. But yeah, Chris and Eleanor have a company called Maiden Voyage that the main thing they do is support first and second time filmmakers. And on The Witch, when we sort of were doing posts with Monopoly money, they came in to help finish that movie. And Chris has been a mentor ever since and but but on this film you know uh chris and eleanor were there every single day uh by the monitor you know on on set for all of prep and

chris was you know we are very different filmmakers obviously but having one of the masters of orthodox hollywood storytelling being there as an advocate it was incredible and also you know uh he was there as a great voice to sort of counter my arty farty inclinations you know and and i don't, I'm certain the film wouldn't, you know, be what it is, hopefully good, without Chris Columbus's input. Was any of that instinct around, forgive this word specifically, but like a kind of commercial sensibility that you hope could be suffused

within the things that you're doing? No, I mean, I would say no, but, uh, but I would say that just, you know, um, in the,

you know, Jared and I do these long, um, unbroken shots. Uh, and in doing that, there is like a slight rewriting of the script and streamlining things. So one thing can lead to

another so that we don't have to put in edits there are scenes with shot reverse shot like editing's great but like but you know often this is what we're doing and chris would be going coming through our storyboards and saying you know where's this story beat where's that story beat you know like like you missed it know, it's in your script. You have to articulate it. It's not enough for them to say the line. We have to see it visually. You know, and that care was incredibly helpful.

That's really interesting. I mean, you know, the Northman feels like this incredible exercise in the freedom of open space. And this movie is sort of the opposite. It's very contained. It's a lot of small rooms. Yeah, I think audiences will feel how they feel. I'd feel like

these oners are a little more invisible in this movie. Like in The Northmen, it's a little bit like, look what we're doing. Which sucks, but it is what it is. Why do you say it sucks? I mean, just when you don't want to... what it is you were you know um but why does it so how do you say it sucks i mean i didn't i just

just when you don't want to announce your bravura like i say or i mean sometimes it's fine too but i think in in general i wouldn't want that and i think that a lot of times you don't in this film you don't even notice that you're watching a one or it just kind of happens. It's definitely true. Um, and, and I think, I think some of that is,

you know, because of the chamber scenes, um, and you know, like this isn't revolutionary stuff we're doing, you know, you can see it in 1940s Sherlock Holmes B movies, you know,

which then they're doing it just to like make their day, uh, you know, but it is, um, uh, you know, I think it's, it's a nice for, for me, like as an audience member, I find it like more in, in a little more engaging and with my period world building and everything, the fact that you're just kind of like sucked into this shot that keeps on going like unconsciously, you like don't feel the artifice of the cut. That said, you know, like the scenes that are shot, reverse shot or whatever, you know, working with a great editor like Louise Ford, that also has its own like emotional, in seeing face, face, face, face. Uh, but the other thing about the oners that I really like is making them because what happens is that like all the actors are dependent on each other. They're all, you know, dance partners, but so is the dolly pusher. And so is the focus puller. And so are the carpenters who have to like move walls that are hinged to get the camera out,

like the walls out of the way to move the camera in the middle of the shot. And so there's a tremendous amount of focus on set. And I also think that everyone feels like they're making the movie. Everyone feels collaborative. You know, people aren't just sitting around waiting for the next setup.

Like everyone's engaged. And that is also like just an enjoyable way to work. Did you know that before the Northmen that that creates like, I guess, a more of a team atmosphere? Yeah, I mean, we had done, you know, shots like that on the lighthouse and to a lesser extent on the witch too.

But it was, you know, something that we were continuing to work on and explore as a movie watcher yeah you like having a consciousness of the filmmaker making moves like what's your how do you i mean the best movie you're just watching it um and uh and obviously it's hard for me it's it's hard for me because i make movies not to be into mindsets. But if there is a movie where I'm not thinking about the filmmaking, then I know that it's extra great. Sometimes I'll watch a movie and just be like, wow, the camera works so awesome. But I'm not even paying attention to the story.

That's probably not good. Um, even if it's, even if it's enjoyable, but I, you know, but obviously I watch movies, uh, repeatedly. So there can be a great movie that you get sucked into. And obviously I'm not like blind to the fact that I wouldn't have how they're shooting it to some degree, but then I'll watch it two times, three times, however many times I need to, to learn what I need to learn from it. You said there were other movies that were not vampire movies

that were meaningful influences on this. What were some of those? I mean, the primary one would be Jack Clayton's The Innocence, shot by Freddie Francis, who also shot The Elephant Man and directed many, many Hammer horror movies. And, you know, The Innocence is probably the best ghost story and, you know, ever, like,

movie, ghost movie, I'm sure. Yeah, I'd say yeah. And certainly one of the finest gothic horror movies. And if you pay attention to the camera work, it's very restrained. It's very elegant. And it tells the story without doing more than it needs to. What about the creature design? You mentioned, obviously, it's a collaboration with the actor makeup effects there's like a you know even in the trailer

there's the restraint with not showing how bill looks creates a sense of anticipation did you guys feel like a certain pressure to do something new or different or elevate what the yeah i mean i mean like look like max sh Max Shrek created this iconic thing. And Kinski did his version of it. And then Defoe does the shadow of a vampire, and it's a comedy. But I think we needed to do something different. Even though, again, I'd do some things to acknowledge Shrek

and his makeup that he designed himself, by the way. But I think... to do something different, even though, again, like I do some things to acknowledge Shrek, uh, you know, and his makeup that he designed himself, by the way. Um, but I think, I think like,

uh, you know, in order to be, this is supposed to be a horror movie, right? And, um, and obviously vampires have over the course of the 20th and early 21st century, become more and more romanticized. And, you know, Kinski's sad vampire to Gary Oldman's, like, anti-hero,

like, vampire, you know, and now, and then climaxing with, like, Edward Cullen's sparkling vampire, who's, there's no threat at all. And it's great. Like, the pliability of the vampire is awesome. And I like Blade. But this is a horror movie. And the vampire needed to be scary again. So obviously, given my approach, that means going back to the folklore and understanding why were people actually afraid of things that they thought

were real vampires uh and so the folk vampire is a walking corpse uh you know i closer to a zombie visually um and so so so then i ask myself you know what does a dead Transylvanian nobleman look like? And this is my best effort as far as the facial features, the hair style, the attire, the whole thing. There are a couple of really striking things about it that I want to ask you about. One is the voice. And I don't think I heard when you and Guillermo were talking talking i don't know if you talked about that at a certain point what the decision that i guess i just i you know that's i wrote orlock to have a very deep powerful booming voice but also like a sort of like a a pained breath because he was he's decayed and and and it's almost like you know if he he i guess he's in like a static version of some kind of decay but but but it's is it but it sounds like it's getting worse every time he breathes uh and that was in the script and something i

developed with bill and he also worked with um i was a Eunice daughter is an opera coach to like, which is not for singer, but she, she coached him to lower his voice in an octave for the, the role. I mean, I didn't think that it was digitally manipulated in any way, but it does have that sense of like,

it is from another existence. It doesn't feel natural. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think basically the only things we did to it is like amplify it because obviously like you know like having that not be your normal register like he couldn't do it quite to that volume on set but it was but it's the same sound

you know um the mustache i don't it was this coming out um you know? Um, the mustache. I don't, it was just coming out. Um, it will come out after the movie. Okay. Yes. I mean, find a picture of a Transylvanian nobleman without a mustache. I mean,

like, you know, just so if you don't want to Google, just picture Vlad the impaler, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, and so I guess talk to me about that.

We have talked about something like a version of this in the past, but this sort of like desire to have for some millitude to something that may be myth or a cult, like finding a truth in something that may not be real and why that is. But it be, well, it becomes more, you know,

the, the more the physical world and the, and the mindset of the period is, specifically with quote-unquote accuracy, which is impossible, but my best interpretation of that, the more you can buy into the metaphysical things like a vampire existing, I think. At least that's what I've been doing the past four times. Trying to get closer and closer to that. I mean, I'm just doing the same thing. I don't know if I'm getting closer. Well, there's a couple of other choices that I thought were interesting,

like the staking being metal and the rationale for some of that. All of this comes from the research you know and it's like obviously you know anglo authors said vampires must drink blood from the throat because like that's a good place to drink blood from you know but in the folklore like if they are drinking blood at all which sometimes they don't, sometimes they strangle their victims. Sometimes they fuck their victims to death. Like it's very often from the chest because of old hag syndrome, like waking dreams where you feel that pressure on your chest. So that's something that I went with.

And yeah, and very often in Transylvania it's, you know, iron stakes, cold iron is what you would want to use and staking them through the navel rather than the heart. And the, the, the, the origin of the staking goes back, you know, before these kind of Eastern European folk vampires, like many of the bog bodies in Scandinavia and the British Isles were staked with hazel staves. And the idea is to keep these fuckers there. These are malevolent people who we want to be kept in their grave.

Stake them down. Did you see the new guide madden movie i haven't the bog bodies play a role in that movie yeah it's funny that that's happening at the same time as this um obviously like you were thinking about this long before but the movie really reads as a kind of like a covid pandemic kind of a film too because of the plague and you know yeah i mean that's you know part of the original obviously but yeah i just just sort of the interesting timing had you had you thought about it at all when you were making it because there's like a kind of paranoia in a town about what is really happening well i mean

yeah yeah i mean but of course i wrote it before covid um but you know interestingly the more now film came out a couple years after the spanish, and this is coming out a couple of years after COVID. I mean, actually, pre-COVID, I had a lot of the townspeople wearing face coverings in the script. And I took that out because it just felt like I was trying to say something about COVID, which I wasn't. But it's going to resonate anyway do you how does that strike you when like someone reads something into a movie that was not your intention but like could be supported by as long it's it's great you know i mean i think um you know i don't make movies with a message i don't think about like you know i want to tell the you know like a feminist horror story

whatever I like I just it's not how I work I just try to be in the world but obviously I don't live in a vacuum and so like things are just gonna come into it that hopefully work with people also when you're dealing with fairy tale myth fable folk tale these are archetypal stories which can be read in many different ways you know and that's uh that's why people keep staging Oedipus and keep reading Hansel and Gretel you know it's it's hard not to watch the movie though and see coherent themes like even if I don't know if your intention was not

to make Ellen like a representation of something about how women's sexuality is repressed for example yes in a 19th century context but then you know people can like again for me it's like with this film

for her it's in me, it's like with this film for her, it's in a 19th century context, but like, it doesn't mean it doesn't resonate for people today. I, you know, say like, you know,

the woman's voice not being heard, but there are, you know, other ways that you can read it too. And, and, you know, and like,

I mean, people have been talking about, you know other ways that you can read it too and and you know and like i mean people have been talking about you know the election and this movie which was certainly not anything that who is who in the story right i mean i'm not even gonna go there but you know uh i don't have any election questions on my docket here for you today um i was curious about what your conversations are like with lily rose depp because she's asked to do quite a bit, both physically and in terms of the typical performance. Will you talk about like themes like that that are in the story?

Do the actors want to hear those things or they just want to hear about the world that you've built and kind of executing on that? I don't, I mean, it happens particularly in theater, but I don't know why you would want, which I love, and my approach in many ways is similar to a theater approach, but I don't know why it would matter for you to know the themes. Like, you know, as an actor, like, what do you, you know, because that's not your job. Your job is to be in the moment you know like i think some of the problems with like the stanislavski approach is that you are like thinking about the arc of your performance which again in theater like it kind of makes sense because you're doing a lot of this work but in on screen you just need to i mean i also think

in theater too but particularly on screen you just need to be there in the moment yeah you know and so so like did we talk about themes like maybe probably but you know mainly it's like okay like how how do we map and choreograph ellen's physical arc of all of these different, like, hysterical poses and possession fits and things? How do we make them build? How do we make them grow? How do they evolve? What do they say about where she is but but you know and and that's but that's sort of you know myself and marie gabrielle rhodie the choreographer need to be like the sort of uh god figure overseeing that and then and lily needs to learn it and then be there you know and she's and you know the performance is so raw and so powerful. But then where there is that kind of attention to detail in all the story beats is also interpreting a text. And obviously Lily's getting all this incredible praise

for her physical performance, as she well should, because it is incredibly challenging, incredibly tiring physically and mentally and you know and i should say like you know a lot of people have wondered if this stuff is cg enhanced but this is what she is physically doing uh but also you know she does these two like she has all kinds of but there's two long monologues one of them is a is a disjointed memory of her childhood another one is a telling of a dream and those monologues are really hard to do you know that those those are crash and burn like those are kinds of additions you never want to like audition with monologues you never want to audition with because because they're so tricky to to like

make a connection and she does them know, very powerfully with, with a lot of nuance. Can you tell me a little bit about scares? Cause your last couple of movies didn't really, were not defined by scare moments. This is more of like the traditionalist horror sense. There's some, I guess some scary moments in the,

in the lighthouse, but there's, there's, I mean, not really like a mermaid reveal or something, you know, a couple of things, but, um, there's, I mean, not really like a mermaid reveal or something, you know, a couple of things, but,

um, this movie, you, first of all, right out of the shoot and the kind of cold open, we are terrified. Well, I mean,

it's, you know, there's a reason why the horror movies often have that, like, uh, you know, that kind of scare in the beginning because then you're concerned about what else could happen for the rest of the film

and adds a degree of tension free of charge. But I think approaching Nosferatu, which in many ways, obviously there's horror films before Nosferatu, but in many ways invented the horror film, I felt like, you know, we needed,

like, I think when Hutter threw the lid off the sarcophagus in 1922, that was a jump scare. So, so here, even though I've often derided jump scares was, you know, I,

I have like a handful of them in the movie, but I do feel that, you know, they are in, they are supporting the story that you know they are in they are supporting the story you know like that you know they they move they all move the story forward they're not just like a set piece for the sake of it um but also you know we know they're coming and and that's okay but as a fan of yours i was not expecting them and so when i got them i probably was even more scared than i normally would because i didn't think that you were going to do them.

That's just my personal experience. That's cool. I mean, you know, it was, they're hard to do. I mean, I actually, I have, I respect James Wan even more like having like tried my hands at it because they are hard to do. He's particularly good. He's very good. They always work and and uh and it is it is a real it is a real craft and it is yeah harder hard to do um i wanted to ask you about one thing that isn't in the film that is in the

mernau original that feels related to my favorite little sequence in the movie, which is that the casket, the casket's being elevated onto the back of the wagon in the original film, but then the sort of carriage scooping up Nicholas Holt's character. I feel like they're sort of like

almost in conversation with each other, but how much did you think about what to include? Because that's such a magical woman in the Murnau film. Did you want to not repeat certain things that felt like kind of critical to what he was doing versus introducing your own versions of those things i mean i think i think that the vampire looks a little ludicrous like running around carrying his

coffin under his arm like and and so i didn't want bill to have to do that and so you know simon mcbirney like brings the sarcophagus like on the uh skiff to the to the manor house and that that was fine with me um and you know and then i you know, and then I, you know, the, the, the carriage sequence was something that was really fun to do. And, but I decided, you know, wouldn't instead of Dracula being in disguise as the carriage driver, maybe there would be no driver. Maybe that's more interesting. Certainly harder to shoot.

Yeah. Can you tell me about it? Cause it seemed hard to do. Oh yeah. I mean, it was was like we just basically built a carriage where we could hide the driver and inside you know so but you know okay are you happy with it i feel like every time i talk to you at the end of a movie and you're like i'm not quite like totally satisfied you always there's always things that are never going to get there, but, but I, I've never, this is the film that out of the gates,

I am the most pleased with. It was the first time in post-production that I didn't want to just like jump off a bridge every day. Like I'm in very, I'm always very engaged in post-production. Like I know a lot of great directors who like go away for two weeks check in i'm there every day in the edit room like really involved but on all my other films i've just been like like just also writing the next thing and trying to like distance myself

from the movie and here i didn't feel that i was still going home watching one or two horror movies every night thinking like how can I make it better? You know? And just, and was just, it was very engaged with it the whole time. Is it very close to what the storyboards were and what you expected? Anything meaningfully change in post-production?

Um, no. Like you wouldn't see a movie and be like, actually we should do it like this or I should reorder this or this. I mean, I think that obviously some things change. And obviously, like it's, you know, Louise Ford like doesn't get enough credit because of the oners and because, you know, her best work is invisible. And, you know, she has the tremendous challenge of when me and jaron's clever shots don't work and then we have to like you know get ourselves out of the corner that

we've painted ourselves into and and and and also because the shots are so designed and every edit is like designed like we have to also if we get out of a shot early or whatever or lift the scene it has to look like it was designed to go there so it can be very hard you know and you and and also the other thing is is that these these oners when there's a lot of characters in them and they take up a big important scene you can be sitting with one of them for months and then realize you know like maybe we need to use take seven instead of take eight and all of a sudden like the whole movie changes you know it is it's it is um interesting but i there wasn't any major things on this one there was no additional photography

uh you know there was just sort of honing and and finessing you're gonna keep making movies i always feel like you're like get to the end of one and you're like kind of like i don't i don't know i don't know no no no i mean i'll i desperately hope people keep letting me make, make movies. Like, yeah, I, I, I love it. Are you, and you're writing right now? I've got a lot of stuff going on.

I always have to have a lot of things going on. Cause you never know what's going to work. I mean, you know, this didn't happen several times and it happened. Like I absolutely thought I was making, going to be making not this as my next film and here we are

do you have any other Nosferatu-esque like totems of film history that you are interested in digging your teeth into I'm sorry that was a bad one

you know no I was just making a weird face because like a few people have asked me this you know I mean

there are things that I would like to do that are famous properties but like, should they be done? I don't know. You know,

should this have been done? I don't know, you know, but I feel like vampires and by their nature are kind of iterative. So like having the reverence for the history and like watching all the hammer movies, you know, if you,

if you know it, then make a new one. Yeah. I mean, Robin, the composer was like, you know, you know, when this was finally going to happen, we were at the pub. And he's like, well, he's British, so he's the slang.

But he's like, well, mate, you know, no one can say you didn't fucking think about it hard. Yeah, that seems true. Rob, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Could be old or new. Could be anything. I'll just, there's, you know,

I'll spare you from my Russian silent cinema and just say that I really enjoyed The Substance. Can you tell me why? I'm very interested in your take on that movie. It was just, i have some good friends who i respect who like really didn't like it and had very lucid reasons for it but i just you know it was just incredibly sound like it was it was the whole thing worked and was of a piece and, and it was like well crafted and very enjoyable and like good performances.

And yeah, I just enjoyed it. That would make for an interesting double with your movie. Sure. Transformations. Robert Eggers, thank you. Cool. Thank you to Robert Eggers. Thanks to Chris and Rob.

Thank you to Jack Sanders. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Later this week, it's time. The Brutalist boys have arrived. Let's get brutal. We're talking about Brady Corbett's The Brutalist. See you then.