The Big Picture - Our Top 5 Fantasy Favorites: ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘House of the Dragon,’ and ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

George Miller, the beloved filmmaker responsible for the 'Mad Max' films, 'Babe,' 'Happy Feet,' and more, has a new fantasy film called 'Three Thousand Years of Longing' out this weekend. Sean is joined by Joanna Robinson to talk about the movie, and our undeniable fantasy moment (1:00). Then, Owen Kline talks to Sean about his debut feature ‘Funny Pages' (1:09:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Joanna Robinson and Owen Kline Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name is Dave Gonzalez and I haven't read any of the books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm Joyna Robinson. I've read every book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. And I'm Neil Miller and I have also read all of those books. We are headed back to Westeros to cover the Game of Thrones spin-off series, House of the Dragon. We'll be answering your questions, so send us a raven at trialbycontent at gmail.com. Take some bread and salt and join us Thursdays on the Trial by Content feed. And don't worry, you're safe. The Reigns of Castamere

hasn't even been written yet. I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about your fantasies and mine. Later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with Owen Klein. He is the actor-turned-director whose clever new oddball dramedy, Funny Pages,

which is produced by the Safdie brothers, is available in theaters and on VOD right now. Owen is a writer-director in the mold of Terry Zweigoff, and this is an off-kilter, odd, interesting movie. He's very film literate, very smart. Interesting conversation with him. I hope you'll stick around for that. But first, George Miller, the beloved filmmaker responsible for the Mad Max films, Babe, Happy Feet, many more, has a new fantasy film in theaters this weekend starring

Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. It's called 3,000 Years of Longing. So the Doyenne of fantasy is here, Joanna Robinson. Jo, what's happening? Wow, Doyen was not in the notes. You just blindsided me with that. I love it. Thank you. Hello, I'm thrilled to talk about this movie. It's a very sticky, tricky movie from a filmmaker we both love.

I was really, really anticipating this film because fantasy film, fantasy film on this scope from George Miller is right up my alley. really anticipating this film because fantasy film fantasy film on this scope from george miller uh is right up my alley and i always love these films always feel like a huge huge gamble and whether or not they pay off i love to see the filmmaker try that makes sense it does and the timing of this movie is very interesting because fantasy is right at the heart of our culture at this moment. Just this past weekend, the new Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, premiered on HBO. You are covering that show on three different podcasts every week on the Ringerverse feed and on Trial by Content.

I encourage everyone to check out all three of those shows. Is it Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday? Is that the outlay at this point? That's the cadence. Yeah. The Thursday show is a little unhinged, which is as it should be because you're deep into the week. We've already been talking about this show for so long and that's when we sort of answer weird and wild questions and get a little loopy. Nothing gets interesting until hour six. So I'm all for that. And then in addition to that, we've got a Lord of the Rings series right around the corner,

much anticipated coming to Amazon. And in addition to that, there's a lot of other things in the culture, I think just in the last couple of years, you know, recently Netflix launched their long awaited Sandman adaptation. Dune was a movie phenomenon last year and we are awaiting part two of that movie

phenomenon. The Wheel of Time premiered last year. I believe you had an episode about that series on the Ringiverse as well. It just feels like fantasy, perhaps even more than comic book storytelling, is driving mainstream culture, both movies and television. Now, George Miller, I would say he has been fortunate to be absorbed by the mainstream at times, but I would not describe him as a mainstream storyteller. What's your relationship to him and his movies? I'm embarrassed to admit

that I think the first George Miller movie I ever saw was Babe, right? Nothing to be ashamed of there. Great flick. But great, great movie. But there was a time when I got i don't know when i got into mad max but i watched all the mad max films and then fury road came out of course and it's just like a huge smash hole and one of my favorite films of all times and um i think i've seen the

happy feet films maybe i have no strong memory of them. But George Miller, for Fury Road alone, and then for the, I mean, what I admire so much about George Miller is that he was like a doctor and decided to become a filmmaker. origins of the Mad Max franchise are so let's put on a show like low budget shambling let's put on a show and what it grew into uh from there and I think the the fact that we point to I mean these these tv shows that you mentioned House of the Dragon Rings of Power these are prequel films and we're often when we talk about IP uh we talk about sort of our exhaustion with sequels and prequels and how they feel like they're running on fumes and nostalgia. And the one exception that almost everyone can point to is Fury Road. That film feels like a miracle that it worked as well as it did. And it made the case forever for people to say, well, but maybe this one will be the next Fury Road. Maybe we've got that story in us.

So that's my Miller relationship. Great, you know, incredible visuals. And also someone who's constantly in pursuit of cutting edge technology in the way that some of our more interesting filmmakers are that, you know, he's in his 70s now, but he's still like very interested in how film technology is progressing so yeah i think that's a great cap on what he does i'm always interested in what he's doing because he's not a follower he is not a trend seeker or humper he's very much a person who is making the kinds of movies he wants to make even if they're sequels or new part like furthering stories that he's been telling for a long time. He's clearly doing so and trying to add things

on top of or elevate the work that he had done previously. And so when he does a new original story, it's a pretty big deal. You know, this is his first film in seven years since the epic production of Mad Max Fury Road. He's 77 years old now. This movie is much anticipated. It's an interesting piece of work. It's based on an A.S. Byatt story called The Jid and the Nightingale's Eye, and Miller adapted it along with Augusta Moore, and it stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. And I really, really wanted to like this movie, Joanna, and I went in very open-hearted and I found it a little bit of a struggle. And I think it's actually quite reminiscent of Miller's less celebrated works, which is to say it's wildly ambitious. It's fascinating to look at. And it feels like he somehow got a little bit

more interested in the way that the movie looks than in the way that the story is told. And I'm curious, what was your take on this movie? I think all of that's really fair. I think it's, for me, for films like this, I think it's worth it to go see it in the theater just for how stunningly gorgeous it is. And this more than so many other films that can translate to at-home viewing. This is similar to like some of our, Dune is a much better movie, but like similar to our conversations around Dune where we're like, dear God, please, if you can and you feel safe, see this in a theater. This is some of the most stunning visuals. And, you know, you can get that sense just from the trailer, like some of the most stunning visuals I've ever seen. But actually where the movie, this is a story that

takes place in fantastical stories, but then also there's a very grounded, insofar as there's the gin involved, played by Idris Elba, very grounded conversation between two heartbroken adults in a hotel room. That's actually the more interesting movie that's happening. And so we take these breaks from that story to go on to these other fantastical adventures. And I find myself wanting to go back to the hotel room where the biggest special effect is the fact that Idris Elba is standing on a box and makes, you know, five foot 11 Tilda Swinton look dainty. Yeah, I agree with you. The structure of the story is interesting you know Elbez the the djinn basically is telling the story of his life as a djinn over hundreds and thousands of

years and all of the different sort of masters that he was serving over that time and in doing so we're constantly being torn away from the primary story and we're spending time and you know it's very much in the vein of Arabian N nights and stories like that it's very this is all an homage and in fact hilda swinton's character is a scholar a narratologist which is not necessarily a a field of study i was familiar with but you could make the case that here on the ringer podcast network we are narratologists we are spending a lot of time breaking down story um yeah and since till this when you know it's this sort of self-reflexive story about a person who all they do is think about story.

And in the process of spending a lot of time thinking about story, certain things in their life go by the wayside. And she's sort of forced to confront what she really wants from life when she is given the opportunity to get anything that she wants. And she actually struggles to come up with something.

And then it leads to this sort of exchange between her and Elba's character. And that's a superpower alone, having Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton in your movie. And especially because they have chemistry. They're great together. Yeah. And I felt the exact same way that you did,

which is to say when they're not together in the movie, I just wasn't really into that movie. I felt like I had seen those kinds of adventures before. I'd seen movies like this before. It is fantastical. It is sometimes beautifully rendered. But as far as fantasy storytelling goes, I think the hero archetype is so powerful in these stories.

And we're kind of left without that archetype in this story. You know, it is like it's a romance in search of a quest. And there's no quest, really. It's, I guess, maybe a quest for love. But that feels a little bit, I't know a little bit sentimental and maybe didn't totally work for me i think it's extraordinarily said it's an extraordinarily sentimental film and like a genuinely very earnest film which is not always easy for us to swallow in 2022 i think but um so george moeller wrote this you mentioned augusta gore that's But so George Miller wrote this, you mentioned Augusta Gore, this is daughter,

like he wrote this with his daughter and he, he read this A.S. Byatt story in the late nineties, I think it was. And I read this really interesting exchange between them when he, you know, it's the Gin of the Night and Gale's Eye is part of a larger collection of short stories that she released. And so when he went to her and was like was like hey i want the rights to the story way back in the day she said why this one he was like oh it's the one that felt the most true and she said that's because it's all true except for the gin right so like this is a very personal story for as by it so when we're thinking about as by it and tell this went to his character like we're that's i think why the juice of the film is in that stories because this is a very real story that a woman

wrote about her own life experience of being in her 50s, not being a wife, not being a mother, and so feeling aimless in the world to a certain degree and unsure of how to want something. That's such a powerful story. And then we get distracted by this other thing which is a feast for the eye but not but doesn't have the juice especially because you know as the jinn is telling the story the the title of the film three thousand years of longing like the series of stories are about you know without spoiling anything majorly like heartbreak for the jinn and like it feeling trapped and feeling impotent to you know in the sense of feeling powerless he's tied to this vessel all of all of this stuff and

you know you can make the case that that's a really interesting story where it's supernatural and fantastical but it's the stories we tell each other about all the heartbreaks that led us here to each other and stuff like that. Like there's something really kind of beautiful about that. I just think the movie loses its balance a little. It feels like it rushes through. Rather than feeling perfectly balanced, I could have taken those fantastical, visually dazzling things as vignettes rather than the larger portion of the movie. And then I think it's a stronger movie overall. You know what I mean? Yeah. I felt very similarly. It's an interesting

miss. Miller is not without his misses over the years. There's a really good piece on TheRinger.com by Adam Naiman sort of moving through his filmography and talking quite eloquently, I think, about his best work and some of his less accomplished work. I'm a big fan of filmmakers' lesser lights or the underlooked or overlooked gems. I'm a big fan of The Witches of Eastwick. I think that's a really zany and exciting Hollywood production from a wild filmmaker. And it's star-studded and it's supernatural and fantastical as so many of his stories are. But it's not the most critically lauded, nor is Lorenzo's oil necessarily, nor was, I don't know. I feel like even Beyond Thunderdome, the third Mad Max film, has its detractors for sure.

And so he has a very kind of up and down critical reputation. So this feels like it's more on the downside. Although it's a movie that I also feel like is probably ripe for rediscovery approximately one year from now, once we've all decided it's not good. I was going to say the exact same thing. I think that Witches of Eastwick is an interesting one. I actually have to amend my earlier statement. Witches of Eastwick is definitely the first George Miller movie I ever saw. I saw it as a kid, put me off cherries for like a couple of years, but,

um, the, and that's a movie I remember being perfect and wonderful. And then I showed it to someone recently and I was like, oh, this is actually pretty shaggy. It's pretty weird. Yeah. For absolutely bombshell performances in it is still like a really kind of

shaggy, messy movie. And so, um, but I think this movie someone maybe some of the movies we're going to talk about later is going to be one of those things that people you know people are just saying you haven't seen 3 000 years of longing like you have to watch like you oh you're a george miller fan you haven't seen 3 000 years of longing like i don't know if

it'll be a year i feel it'll be a little longer like 10 years something that and i don't think it'll ever be quite the same as people saying the prestige is the best Christopher Nolan movie, something that I am guilty of saying myself. But I think it's- I've probably done that too, yeah. I think it's something that people who love filmmaking and love the art of filmmaking will just want people to watch this just to be dazzled by what he pulls off here. Because the journey through the history of fantasy film, which we'll get to a little bit, people to watch this just to be dazzled by what he pulls off here because you know fancy the the journey through the history of fantasy film which we'll get to a little bit but like one thing that

um marks this boom is is the way that digital effects have advanced enough to match imagination but what i love about what i do love about movie, there's plenty of digital effects in it. But what I do love about it is that for the most part, it's Idris Elba standing on like an Apple box to make him look taller than Tilda Swinton. Or like when he's super five times the size of actual Idris Elba, they built a tiny model hotel room around him. You know what I mean? So George Miller, especially if you've gotten into the nitty gritty of Fury Road, which I know you have and plenty of people listening have, really prizes practical effects. And so in that regard, I do think this movie is going to age well. It's still messy, but I think people are going to find something to really

admire in it. I think so too. And I think just from a film historical perspective, the context of it will seem wild when we think about what movies do and do not get made in 2022. And when people have that understanding 10 years from now and they see that he was able to get this movie off the ground, it's kind of remarkable. I shudder to think what its box office future is. Probably not super strong, especially given the release date. But nevertheless, it's ultimately not that important. I mean, it feels dumped in August.

I don't know if your screening had the little video from George Miller in front of it that mine did. It's very akin to the Tom Cruise in front of Top Gun Maverick video, which is like, thank you for coming to see this on the big screen where it was meant to be seen, you know, one of those little speeches. And so, but I,

I think it's going to absolutely tank and, and that's okay because George Miller is the kind of filmmaker who can absorb that and is go on going on to make the next, you know, Mad Max installment that this is like the meat in the middle of his Mad Max sandwich is good. Fine. Great.

Experiment like this. I believe he is literally in production right now on Furiosa, the next Mad Max movie in Australia. So he will be fine. Let's talk more about fantasy. I haven't really had a chance to talk about House of the Dragon. You have talked about it for many hours already um but i i think it is an interesting object of our times because on the one hand it suffers from i think what so much of our modern movie and television culture suffers from which is the sort of like the desire to have something that is knowable and familiar and only being able to tell a story with characters or ideas that we have a relationship to already.

On the other hand, that's true basically of all fantasy storytelling. So in this particular case, like there has not been a new style of fantasy storytelling that's been developed that is disconnected from its ancient origins in a long, long time. And so with that in mind, I'm more willing to forgive, I think, some of the, what I perceive as crimes in a lot of modern movies or modern television in a case like this, if it's well done. I thought House of the Dragon, at least the premiere episode, which is all I've seen, was very well done. Was it a little handholdy for the common audience? It was a little handholdy. Will it be that way in the future? I'm not really sure.

I thought the performances were good. I thought it was very well cast. Unlike my podcast partner, Amanda Dobbins. I thought it looked pretty good. Honestly. I think the bar is challenging. What did Amanda think?

She thought it looked not very good, but I think somebody needs to go over to her house and fix her TV settings. Cause she, this is a common refrain from her. And for a show that needs to have, yeah. Okay. I mean, for, for a show that needs to have over to her house and fix her tv settings because she this is a common refrain from her and for a show that needs to have yeah okay i mean for for a show that needs to have dragons in it like they could have done worse um and so i'm i'm hopeful i've heard i've heard very positive things about the lord of the rings show you guys will be covering it in depth um and so it's interesting to me that like the the home of fantasy has now fully shifted, perhaps rightfully, away from the big screen to television because obviously books are the origins of a lot of these stories going of these stories are not sit down two hour,

two and a half hour fables that need to end with a message and the conclusion of a hero's journey. They're long. And so it does feel reasonable. There is something a little sad because there have been some great fantasy films over the years and the idea of there not being nearly as many of them is a little frustrating for somebody like me. But ultimately, I'm excited about the prospect of more and more fantasy TV shows, which is not something that I normally say on this show. How do you feel about the way that this has sort of become the domain of television? I think the word we usually plunk down after the word fantasy is epic. And so I think if you're telling a fantasy epic, you do want long form. And when you think of some of the best examples of the film genre, or at least the most successful,

you're thinking of trilogies, double trilogies. In the case of Harry Potter, you know, eight installments, however many, you know. So the journey, the hero's journey is a journey that requires, you know, like many steps along the Joseph Campbell road. And so I think that the slow burn of the TV show, the ability to really dig in, because there's a version of Thrones, the original A Song of Ice and Fire, that is a movie, a trilogy. And can you imagine how superficial,

and we've cut a million of the fascinating characters that George R. R. Martin used to populate that universe just to give us the bare bones of that story? And it's interesting when you think about the cadence of everything. As I was trying to, as the big pictures want, we're going to have a top five fantasy conversation in a little bit. And as I was looking at the balance of movie options, there is a huge 80s boom, which I grew up in. And I was like, well, I guess I never really, really investigated why was there an 80s boom? And the best answer I could find sort of digging around is that most people attribute that to Tolkien, that like people read Tolkien in the 60s. And then several decades later, those people grew up into the people who made decisions about, you know, same way we talk

about like J.J. Abrams and his ilk being raised on Star Wars and then proliferating that in the moviemaking landscape. And so the 80s boom comes from Tolkien, from the invention of mass market paperbacking, like Ballantine and all this other stuff. It comes from Tolkien. It comes from that kind of saga. And then this boom that we're in is also Tolkien inspired because Peter Jackson makes Lord of the Rings with an assist from J.K. Rowling. And that just like busts down the door of the second boom of fantasy and then Thrones comes on the heels of that Thrones does not get made without Lord of the Rings and then because Lord of the Rings is a mega best picture Oscar winning cinematic

phenomenon and then Thrones becomes an Emmy winning global event then we're just in it and it goes hand in hand of course with our our comic book you know glut that we're just in it. And it goes hand in hand, of course, with our comic book, you know, glut that we're in at the same time. Those are American myths. We're all in like a myth-making space. And I don't know, I know you've said so many smart things on the show about the death of the mid-level movie or the death of the adult movie where has the adult movie gone um all of that and i feel that and i still don't feel like i have a huge sense of why we are so thirsty for fantasy and comic book storytelling you could make a 9-11 argument but i think we're gonna need a longer lens to fully understand what's going on with us right now that we need this so much right now i didn't really answer your tv question but i was wondering what you know that's

a that's a i mean that's a much more provocative way to frame this conversation which is why why is this so dominant and why does it persist because obviously superhero stories and fantasy stories have a lot in common they're sort of they're they're it's a modernized version of the same tale. And I have some theories about why the slightly fascistic, slightly libertarian quality of hero stories sometimes rises above. I think there's also something about the notion of the the underdog class being fans of stories like this. And then obviously having the opportunity to kind of raise them up. That point's been made many times. Like I don't feel it's a self-indicting point to make to be like, this is something I really cared about when I was 13.

It's funny to have Owen Klein on the show later because Funny Pages is a movie about an aspiring comics artist. But he's really more in the mold of an R crumb or an underground comics artist, but he's somebody who had previously lived, had sort of had his phase with Marvel and DC and image and had moved on to something, whether you want to call it more sophisticated or more juvenile, I think is neither here nor there.

But the character in, in Owen's film is similarly, you know, a person from a middle-class background who is trying to reject the familiarity of his upbringing in order to seek stories that are somehow more transgressive or provocative. And I think fantasy stories, they take us away. They take us to a different place. And they're always going to be popular, and they always tell us something about our own moralities and our own perception of faith and what we think about the gods and what's controlling the universe. There are so many big ideas that inform those stories.

The right now question, though, I don't have an answer either. I probably shouldn't even pretend to have one because we're going on 20 years here of this being the most important thing in front of us. I think part of it dovetails into the power shift in Hollywood. And like, um, I don't want to speak too much about something I am not an expert in, but I think if you think about the timing of when Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings,

those film series, which just enjoyed their 20th anniversaries respectively. Right. Um, that they kicked, they kicked off within months of each other, like a month of each other, I think.

Um, as I said, nine 11s on the soup there, but also I think the rise of internet culture and internet fandoms and fandom as a community, fandom as a thing that we got, the campfire we circle around as humans online, etc. etc um fan fiction fan art all these ways in which like the consumers now feel more active in the story and then many as many you know filmmakers and studio chiefs will grumble like hashtag release the snyder cut the way in which fandoms have taken control of what kind of stories we tell and i was thinking about the way in which the 80s fantasy bubble burst. And I don't know quite why it bursts, but there are like two films that people point to. There's The Black Cauldron, Disney's like very infamous disaster of an animated film that I actually really love The Black Cauldron. But it was like it was a movie that like nearly bankrupt Disney

animation and set them on their heels and like shoved the animators into a trailer on a side lot. And they were like, well, RIP Disney animation, I guess. And then Willow. The 3,000 years of longing of its time, perhaps. Yeah. Exactly. And then Willow, right? Like Willow happens in 1988.

And that's also a huge flop for Ron Howard and George Lucas, like two of our big guys. And then I think the people who make the money off films got scared and were like, nevermind, no one wants fantasy anymore. But I feel like if the internet were thriving when Willow came out, it would have been a different story or like different people are making decisions about what gets made now. I'm not saying it's all fandom controlled, but the balance has shifted slightly. And I think that's why we're seeing this sustained 20 decades of longing for fantasy content that's happening right now. Yeah. I think another part of it too, is that because television is becoming the dominant medium or has already become the

dominant medium in mass entertainment, these stories are just very well suited to it. That epic nature that you're describing, it allows for a kind of storytelling that a courtroom drama or an erotic thriller perhaps does not work as much if we're not thinking about procedural television you know like once we've moved away from classical network procedural television and we're looking at stories that span a decade in which we can keep our user, our subscriber engaged and not have them churn out because they want to know what's happening this season on House of the Dragon or the Rings of Power or what have you.

It makes sense that this is a form of storytelling that insists upon itself for a long, long time now. You know, the other thing too is it's been a powerful 20 years for fantasy, but it's been also a powerful two millennia for fantasy you know this is this is go we're going way way back in terms of where the heart of a lot of this storytelling is i'm curious from your perspective like what is fantasy what defines it at this point because yeah i was trying to figure out like is the bible fantasy i don't i don't mean that in a blasphemous way i mean if you watch cecil b demille's the ten commandments

i was gonna say the ten commandments is that a fantasy film it certainly feels like one it does feel like one it's a mythological film and again i don't mean that to offend anyone but like you know these are these are tropes we're dealing with and these are archetypes we're dealing with. And when you think about the Ten Commandments specifically and you think about the Red Sea parting and Charlton Heston, all of that, that feels akin with the other fantasy films that were being made at that time. So is a biblical epic a fantasy film? Maybe not all. Like, I wouldn't put Passion of the Christ in that bucket, but I would put Ten Commandments in that bucket, you know? And then.

Agreed. But for the 80s boom of like Sword and Sandal, I think people think i don't what do you think is the movie that kicks off the 80s is it dragon slayer like what is the movie that makes the 80s fantasy boom happen um i think conan the barbarian is very powerful in this um in that it was a hit. I do think there is that cluster, though, of the Beastmaster, Dragonslayer, Ladyhawk, Krull. There are a handful of movies

that are... It feels like they are attempting to riff on the success of Star Wars by making them all happen on Tatooine. You know what I mean? It's almost like, how can we make desert epics that feature swords

and no technology. And those movies are obviously riffing on Ray Harryhausen movies and the stories of Hercules and the stories of Merlin and Morgana and King Arthur. And all of this stuff is all kind of bound up together. And it's interesting to look back at some of the origins of some of the stories. A lot of this stuff is born of Greek and Roman myth. Some of it is born of English folklore. Some of it is born of the Bible, frankly. Some of it is just born of ancient wars

in the first millennia AD. It's pulled kind of from everywhere. And a lot of times what happens is it's all ahistorical and it's all, you know, not just because it has creatures in it, but because the stories kind of get smashed together. And so you'll see a figure from one story find its way into a story that happened theoretically 500 years later. And what happens is, is like, we get this, I don't know. It's like, it's a recombinant culture. It reminds me a little bit of hip hop where like, you're kind of pulling different

sounds from different eras and making them fit together and fit neatly. I do like the stories that are sort of quote unquote, historically accurate, even if they have magic in them. But I think that these stories tend to thrive best when they're, when they're unbound, you know, like, uh, obviously Lord of the Rings is a completely invented world that has nothing to do with Earth, but Hercules is not. Hercules ostensibly is a story written of real times. And I'm always interested in the collision of those two things, of something that presents itself as real, even though we know it to be impossible.

That's so interesting. Were you a big myth guy growing up? Like, were you a Greek myth guy? A myth bro? It's like, that sounds like I went to adult movie theaters or something. You know, like, I don't know. I was fond of the myths, sure. Scylla and Corybus, I'm in, yeah.

You have Orpheus and Eurydice in the notes and that makes me think that you were a myth guy honestly well Orpheus and Eurydice are so huge in movie storytelling like that this their story is told over and over and

over again in science fiction and so it's interesting that like look at what has become archetype versus what has become actually adapted and told like like I keep bringing up Hercules

because there's just so many, Hercules is just in so many movies, but Hercules is not the inspiration for, there's no like modern retelling of Hercules, but Orpheus and Eurydice or a number of these different stories. Like should there be? It's a good question.

Let's think about it. The same is true for the Odyssey, right? The Odyssey we see over and over again in movies, even if it's not Homer's Odyssey. Yeah. And then my follow-upup question because i actually don't know about you or were you a fantasy guy growing up and that makes you sound like you went to adult movie theaters okay uh you were not i was not i was not like at all and i would say it is probably the one true badge of the nerd than I never really

got on board with. I never played D&D. I never was into LARPing. And I never really cared about these stories, at least in like movie and TV format, honestly,

until Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is the thing that got me excited about these kinds of stories because Lord of the Rings is so good. And so few things

to that point that had been trying to tell stories like that didn't feel it didn't feel like it had aged the moment the print

was published and they ran it at a at a cineplex you know what I mean like if you look at Dragon Slayer now Dragon Slayer is a fun movie

but like it looks like the time you know like it doesn't look good at all and many of these movies don't age well because they're all kind of a victim of their their present technologies so some of them don't but some of them like i think legend which has so much relies so much on just like a makeup effect

on tim curry um you know i think that i think a lot of, yeah, it's really interesting. I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with fantasy and I should have dug into this a little bit more before I got on the mic. But when I talked to Mallory Rubin, our friend and colleague about fantasy, her stories all originate with her dad. Her dad is a big sci-fi fantasy guy. And so every book that she got into is something her dad gave her. My parents were zero percent interested in sci-fi or fantasy and but my sister my older sister was so i think i just stole books off my sister's shelf and that's like where you know my sister and i used to watch beastmaster oh an obscene amount of times i've seen beastmasters as a kid and so like i that that's the origin of that for me and and like but none of my friends were really into it until it, it was like, it felt

like I was not, I also was not playing D&D. I was also not LARPing. There was like, I found those, some of those friends later in life, but it wasn't sort of the environment I grew up in. And I just like randomly wandered into a bookstore in, in praise of the sci-fi mass market. I ran, I wandered into a bookstore, found the sci-fi fantasy section and just I wandered into a bookstore found the sci-fi fantasy section and just plucked a Dragonlance book off the shelf and Dragonlance is this like D&D and like

collab book series that has a million entries and it's just one of those things where it took up like three shelves in the section so I was like sure let's start here with Dragonlance why not and um and I was a huge myth person I was huge into fairy tale as well. And I think that growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, et cetera, it felt, I guess the bigger question maybe is, why were the 90s such a fallow time? Because if it was the 80s and then it came back with Lord of the Rings and the beginning of the aughts, then it's just the 90s

that are just sort of this weird little dip in in high fantasy storytelling I forever am grateful though to Harry Potter and to Lord of the Rings for the way in which they made these worlds mainstream so that you didn't feel like you're going to get shoved into a locker if you talked about your fondness for this genre and and um yeah and the the high critique of it is that it keeps us in a it's juvenile but when it's done really well as a lord of the rings it's going to appeal even to like a you know maybe cynical teenage sean who's like i'm not i'm not automatically into these worlds but there's something in this story that is a core truth that speaks to everything you know yeah i think i think you nailed why i didn't care for it which is that i was like this is deeply uncool and even as a kid obsessively poring over Spider-Man comic books, I could at least be

like, well, Todd McFarlane is an awesome artist and that felt like there was some distorted pathetic vision of what I think is cool that made sense to me and I couldn't get there with wizards. You know what I mean? I just couldn't get... I couldn't convince myself that

that was acceptable for a 12-year-old. But now I myself that that was acceptable for a 12-year-old. But now I realize that that was all a mistake and a joke. And one, I was never going to be cool. And two, just indulge the things that you care about. That's all I want for people. And that's all I want for us. And I eventually did really come around to this genre.

I think it's actually a really fun way to tell stories. It doesn't necessarily result in a ton of all-time classics. I think most of the movies, even the ones that we'll talk about today, are pretty divisive. And they have their hardcore fans, but with a few rare exceptions, unanimity is not really a factor

in these movies. They are objects of obsession and objects of derision almost simultaneously, which I find interesting there's also the added layer of um frame narrative which is really interesting like this this movie uh three thousand years longing has ostensibly a frame narrative in a hotel room right um and the princess bride which was far away at least in where I grew up the most popular of the 80s fantasy movies

has at least that layer of like Fred Savage and Peter Falk in a bedroom talking talking about the story and making snarky comments about the story so there's like one layer removed from it so you're not just like all in on Princess Buttercup you also can just sort of be like is this a kissing book like what's what's going on here um the safety of the meta narrative yes yeah it gives you permission to sort of like absorb yourself in that i really love that let's do our list because your list is great and i'm excited to hear you talk about your movies okay here's what i decided for my list. Since this is not a competitive draft, and nobody's voting on who has a better list,

I just decided to put favorites that I want to champion on my list in hopes that people listening would... Your number one, which we'll get to eventually, is clearly the number one, and it's ridiculous it's not even on my list. So let's just be clear. I know my list is kind of ridiculous. It's a co-number one and you'll be making some recommendations for some people. You'll be tapping a nostalgia button for some people.

No shame. I'm excited. Mine is more an opportunity to talk about the history of movies because this is really like, to me, it's more of a snapshot of what's been going down in this genre over the last 50 or 60 years. Why don't you start? Because you've got the only movie I think made in the last 20 years on the list at number five.

No, that's not true. You do have one more. I take it back. 2021's The Green Knight made by the great David Lowery. I'm guessing most people who listen to the big picture probably have seen The Green Knight, but it still feels like a wildly underwatched movie that I feel like championing, so I'm going to talk about it. Like 3,000 Years of Longing and like another movie on my list,

this is a very messy movie. I think I just have a high tolerance for mess when it comes to, not in general, maybe in general, but definitely when it comes to, um, not in general, maybe in general, but definitely when it comes to the fantasy genre, uh, retelling of a classic Arthurian poem, uh, David Lowery decided to cast Dev Patel as, uh,

Sir Gawain or Sir Gowan, however they pronounce it five different ways in the movie itself, which is its own English lit inside joke. But, um, you know, on a classic hero's journey, except David Lowery is like, yeah, but what if our hero is kind of a piece of shit? Isn't that interesting? And there's a lot of really beautiful visuals.

Just an exquisite film to look at. The sound design on this movie is incredible. You put a bunch of like really eerie sounds that is supposed to unsettle you. It almost feels like a horror movie. The score is like, you know, Lowry's longtime composer, et cetera. And then there's visual allusions to other 80s. Like he was inspired by his love of 80s fantasy classics one that i will talk about later on this list so i will hold that for a second but um but also um he has allusions to like barry lyndon like there's a lot of like cool classic film allusions in here

too so there's just like a lot in the soup here and i have re-watched it a bunch of times um but it's not necessarily an easy sit i just think it's such an interesting it's a vibe movie and i i think it's really interesting what do you think yeah it's kind of a it's a nice double feature with um a movie on my list that we'll get to and i say this with reverence it's a little bit of a stoner classic because Gowan in the film is like kind of a stoner. And he is like an aimless fail son in some ways. And he's kind of a cowardly guy.

And I'm a huge fan of this movie as well. And I love David's movies in general. This movie probably is a little bit underseen, is my guess. There's that interesting story that david has told many times about how he because the pandemic struck and the release date for the film was pushed back he basically completely re-edited it and perhaps made it a little bit more certainly slower and more um of a of a mood, a think piece in a way.

And I think that that was actually a great choice. And I think that working in that mode, he's so successful. You know, a ghost story is just like that. He's really good at that kind of tone. Movie streaming on Showtime. If people haven't seen it, check it out. It's really, really good.

Great pick. If you just want to stare at Dev Patel draped in saffron, you could do worse. It's a pleasure. My number five is Jason and the Argonauts. Now, is Jason and the Argonauts as good a movie as The Green Knight? No, it is not. Is it as good a movie as 3,000 Years of Longing?

I don't know. Maybe not, honestly. There's something a little bit shambolic and silly about Jason and the Argonauts as well. That being said, it's one of the most important movies ever made. It's directed by Don Chaffney, but the real auteur behind the film, as many people probably know, is Ray Harryhausen, the incredible effects artist and figurine artist and stop motion animator and basically the single most inspirational person for a generation of filmmakers that would come along in the late 70s and early 80s who wanted to tell fantasy and science fiction storytelling um the movie is worth watching just to see the work that harry hausen did uh and the way that he famously kind of created

talos and those skeletons and all the things that you see in all of these movies all the harry hausen movies are interesting and entertaining and all their sequences are great you can kind of like it's a little bit like um buying an album with five songs that you like. And you can kind of just skip to the sequences you want as you're watching a movie like this. This movie is streaming for free on Tubi right now. People haven't seen it. It's from 63. You know, it's a very familiar mythological fantasy tale.

But it is worth watching because it's also i think harry hausen kind of at the height of his powers after already having worked on the seventh voyage of sinbad and the three worlds of gulliver and mysterious island he would go on and you know work on one million years bc and a number of other movies after this too um and i guess most famously um oh gosh what is the harry hamlin movie a Clash of the Titans from 1981 was sort of like his denouement. But it's just a really fun fantasy movie. It's just a goofy movie that, you know, there would be no chessboard on the Millennium Falcon without Jason and the Argonauts. It's that kind of a movie if you're looking to draw direct connections.

Yeah, and not only that, but, you know know there's a pretty notable sequence in game of thrones i think it's season six i could be wrong maybe season five when they get attacked by skeleton whites north of the wall and the skeletons are just like stabbing at our heroes that's a classic uh illusion or um in book of boba fett classic tv show that came out this year but there's a there's a creature in there that is a direct nod to this movie so yeah you're right it's its impact is ongoing for sure okay number four you already mentioned this one glad you got it i did i love this movie so much 1988's willow uh directed by ron howard story by george lucas it's not quite the flopola that i might have implied that it was earlier it got two academy award nominations

it did i think it did strong home box office it's just an interesting movie that like time has kind of forgotten like if you were in it you were in it when you were a kid and if you weren't you probably maybe never even heard of it you will will have heard of it because Disney is doing a Willow TV series that's coming out this fall. But this is the adventure of Willow, a character played by Warwick Davis. It's got Val Kilmer. It's got Joanne Wally Kilmer, now just Joanne Wally, like a classic sword and sorcery hero of humble origins story. Very earnestly so. No snarky frame narrative. You're just in it all the way.

I loved this movie as a kid. Like, overwhelmingly so. It was impossible to find for a while until it reemerged on Disney+. You couldn't find it for a really long time. So, you're going to say something about that? Just why was that? I agree. I mean, this was a favorite of mine, too.

I never even really thought of this as a fantasy movie in part because I never thought of Val Kilmer. He's such a modern actor that he's like not very believable as like whatever time this has been to be happening in. He never felt like an ancient figure, but it is an all-time classic. And it did feel like I was watching it every day from 1986 to 1991.

And then all of a sudden, I was never watching it again and I couldn't find it. I don't know why it went out of circulation the way that it did. It's unusual for a George Lucas thing. It's very bizarre. And like, Val Kilmer is Mad Mardigan.

I highly, again yeah this is on Disney Plus you can watch it right now hang up the phone don't stop listening and go watch Willow but uh and I've shown it to people recently they really liked it I still need to Mallory Rubin has not seen it I'm really excited to show it to her but like I know but do you want to come do you want to come watch Willow with us Sean I? Honestly, I do. That sounds great. But Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton play these pair of brownies, these little like fairy creatures. And like for, you know, the people that are our age growing up with this movie,

like endlessly quotable, the brownies. And Mad Mardigan is a kind of Han Solo-ish sort of figure in all of this. And this is the movie that I was, David Lowery referenced. There's this part right at the beginning when Sir Gawain goes on his adventure and he comes to this crossroads and there's like these, you know, gallows and gibbets and all this other stuff

on the crossroads. And I was like, was that Willow? And he was like, it was Willow. And I was like, that's what I thought. That's Val Kilmer's skeleton in that cage. You know, so it has its impact for some people. And I'm hopeful. I hope the show is good.

And if the show is good, then hopefully people will, you know, respect Willow the way that they should. That's great. My number four is the film that I think would be an interesting double feature with The Green Knight, which is Excalibur. This is a movie that to modern audiences will be an absolute befuddlement. But for me, as a young man, I was amazed by this movie. It's a 1981 retelling of Le Morte d'Arthur

by Thomas Mallory, which is of course the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and Merlin and Morgana and the Sword in the Stone. It's a classic tale. John Borman, who is the director of such films as Point Blank and Deliverance, is an odd choice, I would say, for a King Arthur story, and yet a perfect choice because of the visceral and psychotic nature

of the King Arthur mythology, and the fact that those are the stories in which he really thrives. And this movie is a trip, man. It is an absolute LSD mind bomb. Absolutely. It is so strange. It features some of the weirdest

performances of the 80s. I think probably most especially Nicol Williamson as Merlin and Helen Mirren as Morgana. Absolutely tearing the scenery off the walls and also off of each other because apparently during

the making of the movie, they hated each other. And so it creates this incredible enmity between these two mythological figures. And then also it's a movie that introduced

a lot of great actors. So really one of the first roles Liam Neeson ever had. He appears in the film as Sir Gowan, coincidentally. Gabriel Byrne, one of his early films as King Uther,

who is King Arthur's father. A young Patrick Stewart is in this film. And then a number of, you know, celebrated English actors, including Nigel Terry, who plays King Arthur.

This is a wild film. It will feel slow to anybody that was born after 1981. But when it is running hot and running weird, it is a lot of fun. So that's Excalibur. These are all probably like movies you can get stoned to, but Excalibur is the one I would probably most recommend. It's so strange.

You experience altered i remember my theater teacher in high school he was pointing out to us that um in the beginning uther has sex with a grain in like full plate armor and he was like how was that something that happened in a film he green who was played by john boorman's daughter. Oh, yike. Okay, cool. Cool story. That's weird, man. Yeah, that's Gabriel Byrne in full plate armor

having sex with a naked woman. Okay, looks very uncomfortable. Can I do my number three? Please. Okay. Gotta give it up for Labyrinth. Jim Henson did a like, gotta give it up for Labyrinth is that that's what i'm laughing

on merch um okay um give it up for labyrinth uh jim henson made two muppet centric centric fantasy classics quote unquote of the era dark crystal labyrinth they were huge classics in my house at least dark crystal is fared not as well i think historically as labyrin Crystal, Labyrinth. They were huge classics in my house, at least. Dark Crystal has fared not as well, I think, historically as Labyrinth, because Labyrinth has this insane, wonderful Bowie performance at the center of it. A young Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King,

and it's a blues adaptation of, I think it's called Out There, or something like that. But, you know, Jennifer Connelly plays an 80s teen who gets sucked into the Goblin Kings world to go rescue her brother. And there's just, you know, puppetry galore everywhere. I have seen this movie so many times. And it wasn't until I was an adult that I understood like how psychosexual it is. It is wild what Bowie is doing in this movie and, and what felt, uh, you know, sane and fine to put in a, in a kid's

movie, but it works on all levels. And I reference it all the time, I think. And it's just, you know, we talk about things aging well or not aging well. I think there is something sort of eternal about the Henson Muppet puppet stuff that doesn't look, at least to my eye, doesn't look that dated despite the fact that like, sometimes there's this little, I can't remember the breed of the dog,

but there's a little dog that sometimes it's a real dog and sometimes it's a Muppet dog. It just sort of goes back and forth depending on what it has to be doing at the time. That's, that's all part of the charm of of labyrinth yeah so last night i saw moon age daydream the forthcoming david bowie documentary which i thought was quite magical um oh and i waited the and the film is it's much more

montage style it's not told in linear fashion there are no talking head interviews it's large the only voice you really hear is Bowie's with the exception of the occasional interviewer and archival footage. And we see lots of images of Bowie for 40, 50 years of his extraordinary career. And it took until like literally the last five minutes before they gave us a shot from Labyrinth,

but it made it in. The Labyrinth Bowie did make it into the movie very briefly. And they would have been remiss had they not included him. I did try to rewatch this movie on Netflix last year. And I will say I struggled with it personally because this was not a big one for me as a kid. But I know that it like really scratches the heart of its fans. This is an example of a movie that I'm thinking of where I'm like if you like it you love it i have tried to show this to grown-ass adults who did not see it as as children and they're like what what are you

showing me so it is one of those where you like you got to get them young with labyrinth i think also some banger songs from bowie in this in this film um my number three is in the same vein might even be very close to the same year um and it's a you know a shout out to the late great wolfgang peterson who passed away while i was on vacation um and this is one of the first films he made after das boat his his all-time classic uh it's never-ending story which is a a wonderful fantasy movie a very innocent seeming fantasy movie another movie that was on in my house all the time growing up. And I never necessarily correlated it to fantasy the same way I didn't correlate the princess bride or legend to fantasy, even though they're,

they're classic fantasy tales. Um, I, do people need the plot of the never ending story explained? I don't, I don't, I don't, I think we know what this movie is, right? Did you care for this? Oh, I obsessed with the The NeverEnding Story. I absolutely love The NeverEnding Story. But it's got that, you know, a frame narrative on it, right? Bastion is sort of like skipping school, reading about this fantasy in his school's attic, question mark. But, yeah, I love this movie and I love the book it's based on by Michael Ent. Very, very good book if you've never read it.

I love the Neverending Story. Okay, number two, what do you got? What if I cheat here? Are you going to allow me to cheat? Or do I have to pick one? No, yeah, cheat. Cheat away. I don't care.

Okay, I wanted to have some animation on here. In fact, my Trial by Content co-host, Dave Gonzalez, said he would be embarrassed for me if I didn't have any animation on here. And he suggested The Last Unicorn, which I had never seen, which I did watch the first time last night. That is another, like, maybe you should have some substances before you watch The Last Unicorn, a real wild ride. But I am picking instead Wolf Walkerer slash song of the sea and these are from the same animation studio they also did secret of kel's um and uh cartoon saloon these are just uh when you're talking about like celtic mythology song of the sea which deals with selkies wolf walkers which deals with you know, people who can turn into wolves.

It's a skin changer sort of thing. Gorgeous movies. Absolutely gorgeous. Very earnestly mythological. And I loved Wolfwalkers. I was a huge, huge fan of it. I really wanted it to win the Oscar that year for animated film. I want these folks to win the cartoon.

So, and I really want them to win the animated Oscar year for animated film. I want these folks to win the, the cartoon. So, and I really want them to win the animated Oscar one of these years because I think they're just doing high, high caliber work. And again, it's just like unapologetically

mythological is, is what they're interested in. So, I love both of these films. Great picks. You've shouted these films out before on the show.

Probably Wolfwalkers. Yeah. Yeah. I think you have. These are great movies. They'll win one eventually. It might take 30 years like it did for Al Pacino, but they'll win one. I just hope they still have the funding to get there. Because they're up against some bruisers.

That's true. My number two is Conan the Barbarian, which I mentioned earlier, which I recommend with some trepidation because Conan is a vicious film. It is one of the early films that made Arnold Schwarzenegger into one of the biggest superstars in movies in the 80s and 90s. It is written by John Milius and Oliver Stone, and it is directed by John Milius. And I, to this day, fantasize in my way about the conversations had between Oliver Stone and John Milius.

My understanding of this production is that Stone wrote a screenplay and then Milius rewrote the screenplay and Stone became less involved in this adaptation um of the you know great robert e howard uh stories that they were you know both fascinated by conan but in different ways and that stone in the i think in the warriors you know personal struggle and millius in the strident machismo of the warrior. And there was some difference of opinion, but this is a movie that, um, you can feel its age, but it still has power. Um, and

that's, that's unusual for these kinds of stories. This doesn't have the dragon slayer problem to me where I don't feel like I'm stuck in 1982 when I'm watching it. I feel like I'm watching something that is at least has some modernity to, in part because it's got great performers surrounding Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, most notably Max von Sydow is in this film, a number of other really, really good actors, William Smith. And it's just a brutal epic and one of my favorite Arnolds for sure. So Conan the Barbarian. When's the last time you saw this one? I actually watched it earlier this year in preparation for Book of Boba Fett because uh I did a lot of preparation for Book of Boba Fett that maybe that show didn't deserve but um I had a great time watching Conan the Barbarian

because there was a lot there's a lot of similarities between what they were trying to do with Book of Boba Fett and Conan the Barbarian and um I had seen it as a kid, but I barely remembered it. And watching it was a real wild ride. James Earl Jones, especially, is a real wild. And there's a lot, as you say, there's a lot feels very uncomfortable, downright outrageously bad in that movie, watching it now with a modern eye. But it has got something that is hard to describe that that makes it still very powerful and so so impactful and inspirational so i i really do think it belongs on your list okay your number one is a great great great pick what is it

okay so when you were like hey joanne i come up with five fantasy films. And I said, hey, Sean, like The Fall. And you were like, exactly. So of course, The Fall. The Fall. OK, this is 2000. Not to be confused with the Gillian Anderson Netflix series. So the 2006 film by Tarsem Singh did the sell. And this starring Lee Pace, Instagram thirst trap of the year, Lee Pace, back when he was a mere pie maker.

And it's got a framed narrative. It's about a wounded stuntman. I think he's in a hospital and he's recovering and he's trying to get some morphine. So he's not necessarily like the best guy in the world. And he's trying to trick this young girl who's in the hospital with him to go get the morphine for him. And he's telling her a story to try to sort of charm her and get her to do something for her. And as he's telling this story, she's imagining it in this highly fantastical way. And I think this is the best pairing for 3,000 years of longing because in terms of the, I don't think I've ever seen anything as beautiful as The Fall. I think it's the most beautiful film I've ever seen in my entire life. It is also a very shaggy film. It is not hanging together perfectly well. And part of that is the

way in which Tarsem made this movie, which is he was like a commercial director and he would take jobs all around the world and scout locations while he was on location shooting a commercial and then fly his cast out to shoot something in these dazzling real world locations. So he literally cobbled together a film based on visuals and locations and all sorts of stuff like that. And so what you get is genuinely the most jaw-dropping, beautiful thing. You know, like those locations coupled with these color-saturated costumes, you know, and then Lee Pace as both the injured stuntman and the, like, you know, the gunslinger at the center of this fantasy story does a lot of work to hold it all together. But it's messy. It's choppy.

It's cobbled. But I absolutely love this movie. I own it. I'm not quite the physical media queen that Sean is, but I do own it on DVD. But my understanding is you can't find this movie streaming anywhere. So if you want to come over to my house watch the fall fire up the uh the dvd but other than that i don't know what you're gonna do sean what are your feelings about the fall well i'm glad you asked um this movie might be the first film i ever saw a press screening for um in part because before it was released, I think that they were inviting

every single journalist in America. Anybody they could find who would show up. And at the time, I was 23 and I was like, I would love to come to see a free movie.

That sounds wonderful. And I saw it and I was absolutely bewildered by it. I was like, what is this meant to be? And I have not seen it since. Now, I know that you are not alone in your celebration of it, that it has taken on something

resembling cult-like status over time. But I've often wondered, is that because it's hard to see this movie? And the harder something is to see, the more excitement grows around it that's maybe the subject of a different podcast but um i like that you went to bat for it i like that tarsen saw the future with lee pace and that he predicted his rise notably um i remember being obviously quite beautiful you could not deny the visual power of what he was trying to put together i think like imagine being at your first press screening and trying to like understand what a film is about and then watching the fall. And it's not there's no narrative logic. That's not that isn't what the film is.

Yeah, though. It is a bit about, you know, like 3000 years of longing. It's a bit of a story about storytelling, which is, I think, a reason why it has such a place for people who write people care about story. It's a story about the power of stories, much like the final episode of game of thrones um but uh the but you know tarzum has done other beautiful movies like mirror mirror um or immortals but this one does hang together at least a bit better and maybe that's just because of lee pays hangs together a bit better than those. I think The Cell is probably his most coherent movie.

And even that movie, you know, wilds out in many different ways. But he's got such an eye. And I feel like he just needs someone to tell him no sometimes. And yeah, The Fall, just a beautiful mess of a movie that I absolutely love. And that's why it's improbably my number one.

What's your much saner number one, Sean? Well, I, with all the boldness of your, the fall choice, all of the, the fear and cowardice of my number one is, uh, the Lord of the Rings, the fellowship of the rings the fellowship of the ring which is the first installment in peter jackson's epic trilogy adapting jr tolkien's work um i picked fellowship because that's the one i like best is that is that the consensus among the among lotr fans yeah return of the king won the oscar but that was more like a good job for three films sort of award. I think everyone thinks Fellowship is the best one. Yeah.

That's when everyone's together, the gang's all together. Yeah, I like that. It's really hard to set up that world. It's an amazing achievement of table setting. And it also still features some great battle sequences it features um you know it features a quest unto itself even though the quest continues on in two and three um features some great performances i think jackson is really underrated as a director of actors and he gets really great performances in what could be considered kind of schlocky setting you know

like the the way he rendered the world to this day i still think it's pretty underrated because there's been so many stories like great cast it's just extraordinary um who's the standout for you in the lord of the rings movies like what's the best performance for you um i mean i you know i ian mckellen i think is pretty pretty extraordinary as gandalf um but i got love for vigo who doesn't have love for vigo he goes so good what about you i my hot take it's not so hot i think it's been been sort of spreading in the fandom for a few years is that like sean astin is samwise gamgee is sort of like i don't think the movie works without him and uh great take i i you just like really need sam and and sean astin even though his accent comes in and out a little bit like just really crushes

that role but vigo is just just the just the epitome of everything you want of a man who will be king like and this is you know but it's got exactly what you were talking about before. The allure of fantasy is like, even your humble hobbit, your pipe leaf smoker can go on a journey and save the world. Like, that's there. But then we also have our classic hero in the shape of Vigo. We've got Sean Bean in this first movie doing something really interesting and nuanced with Boromir, I think. And that's why Thrones gets to do what it does because they're like, we got Boromir. Come on,

come on over and watch Game of Thrones. Uh, yeah. Great pick. I mean, it's, it is the pick. It has to be.

Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring. Absolutely. Have we underrated Circus? I feel like maybe he's not as significant a figure in fellowship. So. No. Yeah.

His time to shine, I think is two towers for sure okay um joe this was fun thank you thank you for i felt like you revealed a little bit of your childhood on this episode i love to get personal on the big picture though the only movie that i didn't mention that you had is sort of like an option you have like a little sort of option list here in the notes that i just want to shout out is Oh Brother Where Art Thou because I think in terms of like an interesting take on mythological storytelling that's my favorite Coen Brothers film and I think what they did with the Odyssey through the lens of depression era America is really wild and interesting and I love that movie it's a great

one I probably would be remiss if I didn't mention Monty Python and the Holy Grail which came out like a full five years before Excalibur and excalibur almost feels like a parody of the parody of monty python and the holy grail but um that's obviously a movie that i love that most people love uh okay joanna well thank you so much i i this will be the last i talk about fantasy for uh the foreseeable future but for you it is it is a full-time job you can listen to joe on many many podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. Thanks, Sean. Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Owen Klein. say hello to tim selects tim's everyday value menu enjoy the new spinach and feta savory egg pastry or our roasted red pepper and swiss pinwheel starting at only 2.99 plus tax try one

or try our full tim selects lineup terms apply prices may vary at participating restaurants in canada it's time for tim's very happy to be joined by owen, who has a new film, his debut feature film, Funny Pages, out right now. Owen, thanks for being here. Listen, I grew up reading Image Comics, and then that led me into the world of R. Crumb and a number of the other artists that you feature and celebrate in abstract ways in your film. I'm wondering, I think you're a little younger than me. How did you get entrenched in that milieu as a kid? I had an aunt who passed on that stuff to me. In the movie, it's like an uncle kind of handed over the older image titles to this kid.

And we can imagine what those are, although we don't see them. Young Bloods and, you know, all that Liefeld stuff. And maybe The Max, you know, if he was lucky. And, you know, this kid though, he just wants to do, once he found underground comics, he was just kind of one of those kids that just said, ah, fuck all this other stuff. You know, it's a specific kind of kid within that I'm not commenting on that in any way. There's great image comics and it's a really important thing that that image

happened. And there's a really important thing that that image happened. And there's some kind of irony there that, you know, this company was formed by independent creators, you know, and, you know, that were at the majors and said, no, we're going to just go and make our own thing. And it's, you know, creator rights guys in one way or another. The idea that this guy's an image casualty of that system in some way. We don't know the story, though.

It is kept vague. We don't know exactly who was in the right or wrong there. But I'm sure he feels victimized by the industry in some way, but he's also raving mad. Well, I love the idea of commenting on how even when people break free to become independent, they somehow get entrenched in corporatized worlds and then inevitably there are victims of those corporatized worlds. But that's kind of a subtle note in the movie. I mean, pull back a little bit for me and tell me when you first started thinking about Robert and this character and kind of creating this world for a feature.

I had drawn comics and I could not never professionally. I could never figure out how to do it. In fact, you know, it's just, it's hard. Um, and the same thing with movies.

Like I just made little movies and, and drew comics and in, in unison. And at the same time with movies like I just made little movies and and drew comics and in unison and at the same time and uh yeah and at the time I was kind of trying to just model what I was doing in college just in approach of how I treated the projects the way that Josh and Benny did in college. And they had a little website, you know, where they were putting up all these little moves. And they treated every project as if it was like this serious little, you know, like a small little piece of cinema, you know?

That approach of never treating anything like a project, I just really stuck to that with my comics and this and that and made little, I don't know, made little, you know, Xeroxed publications of all sorts, you know, joke books and silly shit.

And I had like one little compilation of comics called whippers and snappers where I had like a, there was like a proto version of the basement apartment scene where, you know, when he first tours the boiler room and, um, you know, when he first tours the boiler room and, um, you know, the details of that, the character is a little more aloof. We can't exactly tell the, the punchline and the setup of the whole thing is you don't really know what this guy who's on this tour is really thinking. And then at the end of it, he's like, I'll take it. But, but, you know, uh, and then it was just thinking you know that how it was paced and the

sort of uh chock full of details kind of uh specific details of the horror of the apartment and all that i kind of just translated that over to a script page at some point just to see what it would look like and thinking about that it was a thing designed for a comic and more focused on this kid's behavior and what he's asking sort of obscuring exactly what he was after that didn't translate in the end of the movie you know I changed it for the screen a little bit but and the character changed greatly you know what I mean it's not less of it's a he screen a little bit, and the character changed greatly. You know what I mean? He's a little bit more vulnerable, a little more aloof in the movie. You know what I mean?

His behavior in the comic is slightly more masked. I mean, the movie, he walks through and he's like, yeah, man, cool, this is great, you know? But I think that, yeah, the fact that it was designed visually and for the comics page, like, in some way helped the grammar of the movie and figuring that out, you know, even more pretty recently. Like, even to the very end of the edit, you're figuring out figuring out you know how this movie is communicating with an audience and it's a different it's a that's a different process than a movie or than than a comic book and how one you know a single artist a single vision of a single artist with a single pen and pencil and paper uh communicates themselves to a single reader it's a different relation movies are a different relationship you're thinking about it in a communicates themselves to a single reader. Movies are a different relationship. You're thinking about it in a different way.

You're thinking about the grandma in the back row. You're thinking about the dumb kid who's going to just go see it with his skate rat friends. Whatever. You do think about all the different perspectives, just in terms of how different kinds of people can see themselves in something you know i think that says a lot about how you think of the comics world and comics artists versus filmmakers like you just seem you just started describing the potential audience for a film but not the potential audience for readers of a comic and i like i wonder where you see the delineation there like why is it because one has to make money and the other feels somehow more personal, where there's a lower threshold for success? The comics that I really gravitated to once I got through my marginal interest in,

or I really tried to like superhero comics, but then finding the long box of underground comics and the fabulous Freak Brothers and Crumb and Zap and Hup and Weird, all these Crumb titles and all these things. Then like, yeah, delving into like just all of those fan of graphics artists, because all of those were still growing up like at the same sale price. They didn't like mark those those original books up yet of um peter bag's hate daniel clowes's eight ball you know the um the last issue of eight ball that he did like a kind of he came out of the woodwork at one point and and did a final issue of eight ball that kind of appeared in the world i was like 14 or 15 and that was a really it was the death race story if you know that.

It's been republished as a graphic novel. But that's the stuff that I was absorbing, but it wasn't the stuff of my generation. I'm sort of answering a question of yours earlier. I don't know if, I don't even remember what your, what was your question before this? Well, just thinking about like the idea of audience, you know, like Daniel, Daniel Klaus, I imagine was thinking, I hope people buy this, right? And that there maybe is an audience for it. And I don't know how much he visualizes his audience, but I thought that was so interesting how you were describing translating an idea, a vision that you had from the page to the

screen. And then when you translated it to the screen, thinking discreetly about who would be watching, which is maybe different from when you were just drawing it, whether that was just for yourself or whether you thought it should have been produced somehow well i mean when i think about who's i don't really think about i don't i don't know if i think about the grandma in the back now i take that all back actually i think i really writing i'm really thinking about my friends and what's going to make the people that i respect laugh you know uh because then you're just ultimately i think that's all you really have as an artist, because you're just grasping for straws in any artistic scenario, I think. But, um, just trying to, like, imbue something with your own feelings about things and your own, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what makes something good but um but like you all you just

kind of have to lean on those heroes in a weird way i like harry the only thing that i can ever kind of create some reason for doing anything is like oh maybe this would make one of my heroes laugh it sounds silly you know what i mean but like people that you really respect and uh i don't know maybe that's relevant to the movie in some way but like i always have that mount rushmore or even the people that passed away in my life that mentored me in different regards. You can hear those voices and you can summon those voices if you really think about them. The people that you spent so much time with that were hard on you about your writing or your this or your that. That Mount Rushmore in your head of the kind of angel devil devil voices on your shoulder you can summon those and you can you can imagine what those people would say as you come into uh as you develop

because they set you on those paths so there's only really you know what i mean well it's it's funny that you say that because i had i literally have written down here that i was really struck in the film by robert's desire and almost like a hunger for mentorship. Like he seems so desperate to have someone guide him through the stages of how to become an artist, how to become a creative person. Like what, where does that, where does that come from? Obviously, like I feel that in some ways, but maybe not in the literal sense that you just described it, but it really was a kind of an echoing theme in the movie. Did you draw comics, by the way?

Did you ever have a relationship with trying to make comics? I didn't, no. I mean, I was really deep in the world and worked in a store. Wait, what store did you work in? It was one of the first online distributors. So it was literally like a warehouse. And I bagged and packaged books for people and sent them all across the country on Long Island in New York.

That's interesting. Yeah. I mean the, the, the diamond catalog was kind of the, the, the Holy grail distributor. I mean,

still is, I'm sure the diamond is, you know, they put the, you know, the place that we shot, I was like trying to figure out the, you know,

it's been, it'd been a while since I'd spent a ton of time in a comic store that actually put out new comics and stuff and not just sort of haunting bookstores for old comics. But yeah, I found that in my life, mentorship and connecting with people was the way for me to learn outside of school pretty early. And yeah, at first it was Anthology Film Archives. I showed up at the door of Anthology Film Archives just begging to intern for them. And everybody that interned there was of college age, but I knew a little bit about this stuff and, you know, had read the Amos Vocal book and, you know, film versus art and had like a banjo teacher who I had had like lent me his Harry Smith, you know, tape of early abstractions and, you know, with the, with the Beatles, you know,

intact of it, he'd changed, he'd changed around the music a lot of different times to these experimental films. But, um, I just was like, had an early appetite for experimental film and ended up there.

And, but I wanted to be a cartoonist too. And I took class, you know, I was like, I don't know. I worked at this place, nor,

you know, I, I took the classes at this place, the Art Students League, and the guy who taught the figure drawing class, his dad, you know, animated Felix the Cat and all these incredible, you know, he worked on, you know, Warner Brothers, classic Warner Brothers cartoons and was out in Los Angeles and struggled his whole life as an animator. And, you know, this guy was like a modern artist who was teaching life drawing. And, you know, I really got to know him and pick his brain about, you know, his animation history and stuff.

He worked on Doug. You know, he was like a little, you know, he worked on stuff since the 70s and like designed cartoons and stuff. He worked on, but he did work on like, you know, different crap. And, you know, Nickelodeon shows like Doug and said, he's storyboarded for Doug and was like, I still don't know what the fuck that was.

I always thought that was really funny. But just an older guy trying to figure out what Doug is. It's just very funny to me. So yeah, and then just different things. I just have found that you know and

there was this older guy robert haller who ran the library and taught me the whole history of anthology and everything and passed that down to me and how this guy jerome hill you know who's like this wealthy guy who had like 16 millimeter and 35 millimeter films made of him as a kid his home movies his parents would pay for these home movies and were just complete lunatic, wealthy ass thieves that just threw around money. He's the guy who bankrolled Anthology Film Archives

and why they're in that incredible building. Have you ever gone to Anthology in New York? I have, yes. I lived there for 10 years. They found skeletons buried underneath Anthology a couple years ago. Is that true? Hopefully not my ancestors. Yeah, there's a lot of mob history in downtown, you know, East Village area, West Village area.

It's a lot of that. These are the victims of murder, is what you're saying. Or experimental film. Anyway, mentorship. the victims of of murder that's what you're saying or experimental film uh anyway uh mentorship yeah yeah even like even pretty recently you know in the last three years you know when i was just sort of stuck editing this movie and struggling with it and going like well i don't even know how to talk to actors you know like i just have no vernacular to talk to actors in a way you know like i found it very difficult, you know, not that I, I mean, I'm better with people.

I'm good with people, but like I needed, I wanted, I wanted the vocabulary, but in order to, but the vocabulary is really, you have to know the tools. So I studied Meisner with Louise Lasser. I had known this guy, Joe Franklin, who had an office in Times Square and his, his mess of an office was, he was the first talk show host and he had this insane office, but that was sort of what the basement was modeled off. But around the corner was Louise Lasser teaching Meisner and you had to sort of audition to the class and be accepted in, in this way. And, but yeah, then she started teaching it out of her house and I, I went over and

interviewed for it. And it was this small little group of people. Some, some of them were actors. So, you know, I don't think anyone had a headshot. It was all people like interested in theater and, um, you know, like, uh, there was a wacky real estate lady that I'm still friends with from the class that I love. Uh, and, uh, but like, I got really close to Louise and then wrote a part for her in the movie. There's a wacky real estate lady that I'm still friends with from the class that I love. But I got really close to Louise and then wrote a part for her in the movie.

And it's sort of inspired by the repetition exercise of Meisner, which she sort of taught me. And it's entirely about presence and only reacting as opposed to acting. And really receiving the pinch before you know how to do the ouch you know focusing you and making you present in that way and she's so present in the scene it's i mean i think that's my that's my one of my favorite scenes in the movie she's just kind of the way that she connects to daniel's character i find really amusing and and kind of touching i really like how you've dotted all these personal hallmarks throughout the movie. The other thing that I like about it, it's just this really kind of damp, grainy 16 millimeter that makes me feel like I'm watching a movie from 1994 in some respects. I'm wondering, like, are you trying to purposefully recapture the feeling of seeing those movies? A lot of those movies were the things that propelled me to think I could make

movies. So I think a lot of what those movies offered in that regard was a little bit more just unconscious. I mean, I just, just from just making movies, you know, like something like the Robert Downey senior movies are a better example, you know, in his prime and like the sixties or something like the spirit of those and the resourcefulness of the really early ones pre Putney Swope, um,

which he had a little bit of money for, I think as the first one, the rest are sort of just sort of stumbling around and figuring it out. But, um, that in the same way as the John Waters movies or, uh, you know,

um, and yeah, you know, the early movies or, uh, you know, um, and yeah, you know, the early Jarmusch movies, you know what I mean? You see those and you see the Ed Burns movies and you see the brothers McMullen and El Mariachi and, um,

you know, all those movies that, that people, you know, said were made for Nichols, you know what I mean? That were actually made for, they got the money for post from Harvey Wein weinstein or whatever you know usually but uh you know the mythology of

that thing to go and make a movie even just for a little bit of money and some of the ones that don't have that fear like slacker even that's just like there's no expect i don't know there's like maybe a low expectation or something and i was ambitious about the work but i was i just always wanted a movie shot to shoot something on 16 i just have a relationship with the medium of 16 which i think is its own medium within the thing and you know i i like took in my school's like bell and howell my libraries libraries, you know, my school libraries, like Bell and Howell projector when I was a teenager and started running stuff I'd find in the basement of anthology, you know, that they were just was just the crap that they were getting rid of things like, you know, educational films, or Mel Brooks is the critic, or I don't know, different weird things I would find and just run through a projector, you know, uh, little rascal shorts and Laurel and Hardy,

like 16 millimeter power road shorts. I don't know. What, um, having made the film now, what, what was your favorite part of making it? What's your,

what's your favorite part of the process of filmmaking? Finishing. I hear that all the time. Coloring. Really? And getting to like saturate I mean I just didn't expect this movie To look good

It's like this movie can't cost The cheapest thing like production value That we have is making this look bad You know I probably said that at some point And we just really leaned into that But instead of With sort of like some sort of just purely snotty aesthetic sense, I was trying to just lean in towards the humor of it as much as humanly possible. Of just sort of the nightmare of American weirdness.

I don't know. Owen, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. I feel like you see a lot. Do you see a lot? Yes. I watch a lot of movies. These days, mostly in the theater again because I'm happy that all the theaters opened up again. Lincoln Center really surprised me and flattered me and loved this movie and gave me a block of programming. I wanted to pick some movies that inspired this movie.

And that's a really daunting task to do at Lincoln Center. So I really just kind of tried to close off my brain and think about the movies that just made a stain on me at 16. And, you know, just movies that I rented that made a stain on me at 16 or 17 that like, you know, when I was thinking about all the different kind of movies I want to make that, you know, I don't know if it's Lord Love a Duck and Greaser's Palace. We've been watching all these movies all this week that I programmed at this place. You know, the Walter Reed Theater. And I would say the last I don't watch a lot of new movies, but the last, is it new movie, old movie? Anything you want. Last night I watched Frank Tashlin's Artists and Models again for the first time ever on film.

And it was a 35 millimeter IB Technicolor print in the Walter Reed Theater, the best screen in New York. I just, you know. It was astonishing. And in front of it, we ran Swooner Crooner, which is a Tashland cartoon, a really classic one, where all the hens fall in love with the rooster that sings, and that's the only thing that'll get them to lay the eggs. And Porky, who runs the farm, has to pay these roosters. Anyway, those two, these roosters. Anyway, that was those two back to back and seeing those and thinking about Tashlin's director a studio comedy director and gag man and just stuffed them all with this these these great camera angles and you know humor that is just

so brazen and surprising and its filmmaking was just off the charts like chuck jones like i love like the crazy cartoons i love bob clam but i love tex avery but chuck jones and tashlin and frizz freeling like their stuff is just so meticulous in terms of the filmmaking i don't think i've ever seen artists and models so i'm gonna have to go check that's a martin lewis right yeah it's a martin lewis it's my favorite of them all that and the stooge but i love i love you know a lot of those movies it's a great wreck but tashlin is great i mean girl can't you know uh girl can't help it is hysterical uh and we screened george axelrod who wrote that and you know who wrote 70 year itch

and created all the great gags on that you know the the marilyn monroe's dress blowing up in the from the subway train. We screened his Lord love a duck, which is just a completely Dada insane like sort of satire of a sixties comedy by way of like mad magazine and Terry Southern or something like that was just his, you know, this, this guy who wrote like breakfast at Tiffany's, you know, or adapted it. And And, you know, all this great, all these great like American comedies and, you know, taking a swing at I don't know what. Lord Love a Duck is so weird. Ruth Gordon's in it.

She's this alcoholic, insane woman. I don't know. It's great. It's really, really funny. Those are great, Rex. Oh, and congrats on getting Funny Pages done and made. And thanks for doing the show. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is really insightful. I hope I didn't babble. Thanks to Owen. Thanks to Joanna. And thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's

episode tune in next week we're building the Sylvester Stallone Hall of Fame we'll see you then