The Big Picture - The Final Girl Film Canon and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ With Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun!

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Sean is joined by “mean pod guy” Adam Nayman to cover Jane Schoenbrun’s new sexy slasher flick ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. They celebrate what makes the movie so exciting and singular, and make the case for why it cements Schoenbrun as a crucially important and definitional millennial filmmaker. Then, they discuss what makes a great “final girl” and build the “final girl” film canon. Finally, Sean has a very special conversation with Schoenbrun, Einbinder, and Anderson where they dive deep into their film, shed light on the actual process behind making the movie, and explain why the project felt so special for each of them. (0:00) Intro (0:51) Adam Nayman joins the show! (1:38) ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ (44:07) The Final Girl Film Canon (1:04:11) Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, and Jane Schoenbrun join the show! Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Jane Schoenbrun, Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, and Adam Nayman Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh It's on Prime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about sex, death, and everything in between. On today's episode, we will be joined by Adam Naiman to discuss Jane Schoenbrun's new blood-drenched, meta-slasher, sexual awakening, coming of age, satire, romance, drama film, teenage sex and death at Camp Measma. Then Jane returns to the show with their stars Hannah Einbinder and Jillian Anderson for an in-depth discussion of Camp Measma. How it was made, their histories with horror, and a lot more. Needless to say, you will want to see. stick around for that discussion. But first, let's talk about that movie with Adam. Okay, me and pod guy. It's just me and you today. How you feeling?

I'm good. Welcome. Greetings from Toronto, where the Toronto Blue Jays are a game and a half back. Wow. In the wild card, as of this morning, I'm sure you're relentlessly paying attention to the Blue Jays' playoff fortunes. And you know, A.L. East, a lot of exciting stuff going on this year. The Red Sox tearing the cover off the ball.

The Yankees fallen back, as they always do in the late summer. You must be feeling great. Yesterday was the first day I heard someone talk about the Blue Jays in the wild. I was at a restaurant having dinner before the screening of a house at or end of Oak Street and heard someone saying, oh, the Jays are good again. And I said, all right, it's back. But yeah, you know, it's back. So, yeah, that's what's going on here. The Jays are back.

I wish you no good fortune, as always. I know. Let's talk about teenage sex and death that can't be asthma, okay? Sure. Yeah, yeah. So here's the deal. the movie is written and directed by Jane, as I mentioned. A lot of the crew from I saw the TV glow is back.

Cinematographer Eric You, it's edited by Graham Mason, Alex G is back to provide a score. I'll give you a very brief snapshot synopsis of the story. We'll talk about the film somewhat in depth here, and it's opening wider and wider around the country and in North America over the next couple of weeks. So basically it's a movie about a queer director making a slasher franchise sequel reboot, who becomes obsessed with casting the original film's Final Girl, and that leads both of the women into a journey of sex, death, and discovery. Why don't we talk a little bit about slasher's before we talk specifically about this movie?

Do you like slasher movies, Adam? Very much. You know, I think that they are the, this is the psychic territory of, you know, VHS box art, and, you know, watching movies at a friend's house at night, and the anxiety over whether you should be watching this. Like, I very much want to versus, you know, should I? You're kind of looking over your shoulder as you're watching it. I mean, I know that the first couple of movies I tried to show to, like, a girl were horror movies, you know, slasher, you know, movies, movies or not.

Do you know what those movies were? I would love to know what those movies are that you tried to show. You know, one was a 17-hour documentary from the point of view of a Polish pigeon, you know, no. No, I mean, it's Halloween, right? Yeah. Because you know, you're like, it's Halloween. Come over and watch Halloween. And you don't like learn that.

There's no manual for that. It just feels very natural. It's scary. It's dark. There's a kind of, there's something kind of pent up about it. And I think also that, you know, for me and my synephelia and Jane Cinephelia, I think, are different. Although there's some points of convergence in the movie, including some musical ones, too. If we don't do a long talk about Cat and Crows, this is not a good podcast.

We shall. don't worry. We shall. I know. But I think that that's how I associate them. And I think that there's a way that doing that kind of domesticates them or take some of the threat out of it or fetishizes it. But I also think that these are the themes that the movie's playing with, you know, actively. And play, I think, is a key word here. You know, that word gets used a lot in the script. And I think in talking about it, that idea of play or playfulness, I think is important. Not that play can. can't be serious, right? But this is a playful homage. Very much so. Playing also means using something too. It's playing. It's using. It's repurposing, you know, to some extent, it's kind of like slamming, not action figures, but maybe like Funkopops together, you know, in a way. So yeah, it's an interesting thing to talk about. But in terms of just slasher movies, do I like them? I mean, who doesn't when they're done well? And like pizza, even when they're not good, they're like mostly okay. Could not have said that better myself. I ask you that question because I wonder, do you need to

love slasher's to love this movie? Or is there an entry point into this film, which is very much interested in and maybe even obsessed by the conventions and sensations that a slasher generates inside of people like me and you? Well, that's, I mean, it's a good question. I think there's a lot of things that wouldn't hurt with this movie. You know, I don't think it hurts to be generationally close to the filmmaker because not only do you get the older frames of reference, but maybe that's your point of view on what's happened to horror or to Hollywood or to, you know, identity politics and representation in film. So like, you know, that helps. I don't think you have to love them. I do think that I know some people in my life, including my wife, who are anxious about watching

because it looks like there's a lot of blood in it. And I'm like, there is. And it's great. But it's not scary. And that's not meant as a put down. I do think that this is not really a scary. movie, but also as a satire, it's not like scary movie because it doesn't have, it doesn't have contempt or like just opportunism for what it's dealing with. It's very specific. And this is one of these times people misuse the word academic all the time. It's like if you literally write about anything pop culturally in two sentences or more, people are like, you're an academic, you know, but this movie is kind of academic, but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but playfully so I think both the best thing you can say about it and maybe some of the persuasive

racism against it is it's so academic that maybe it's cut off from those simple pleasures, the visceral pleasures you get from slasher movies. But then again, I think it makes those pleasures its subject. And I liked how it did it very much. This is going to seem like a bold comparison, but I just saw the film for a second time yesterday. And the second viewing reminded me a lot of my second viewing of The Odyssey, which is after I got my arms around the intention and strategy of the movie and all of the things that it was trying to accomplish. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit more. And I think part of it is because Jane is biting off a lot here. And maybe that's some, that's one of the reasons why it's being accused of a kind of academia and its approach because it's

just got a lot of ideas on its mind. But it's also a wildly feeling movie, a very deep and sincere movie, I felt, even though it's got a lot of gags and it's also got a lot of high-minded ideas about deconstructing genre. and also got a lot of ideas about satirizing contemporary Hollywood, I thought it was a very, very emotional and visceral, not in the bloody sense, kind of a film. So while I think that some of those notes make sense, I should say, I think you and I both really loved this movie and had a great time with it.

And I find it interesting because it does remind me of Jane's previous two films in only one way, which is that I couldn't really think of another movie that I thought was exactly like this movie. You mentioned scary movie, you mention Halloween. In theory, this movie lives in between those two, but it doesn't at all. It generates a completely different kind of feeling inside me. Well, the arc of the films is interesting because, you know, self-induced hallucination is this doc that deals with Slender Man.

I mean, that's the first real feature. There's also work for this omnibus film called Collective Unconscious, which is maybe for a deeper, deeper dive. But, I mean, you know, self-induced hallucination, which I think is a great phrase for a lot of Jane's films in some ways, you know. Like sometimes you have a phrase from a filmmaker's career, a title, or a line of dialogue. You're like, we'll be using that one. You know, I think that that one works. Like, that movie wasn't ahead of the curve on Slender Man. It was, it was analyzing it after the fact, the phenomenon and the creepy pasta.

But that movie really is, I forget what year it is. It's like 2000, whatever, like pre-2020, because World's Fair is 2021. But really just analyzing that idea of viral horror, creepy past horror, participatory horror. I mean, backrooms represents the mainstream cresting this phenomenon. But Jane was kind of really in on the ground floor with self-induced hallucination and then with World's Fair, which I liked at the time because it had an element of surprise and because it was made so cheaply and ingeniously and with no recognizable actors, it had that element, not a found footage horror, but the same thing that great found footage horror has, which is just this feels anonymous. This feels found. Even if I didn't believe that any of it was real, it has that great urban legend, creepy past,

a message form quality of like, do you believe in this stuff? And the arc, I think, that's fascinating is not just that idea of characters, of films that are increasingly explicit in that sense of the word about, you know, gender and transition, but also about media,

where in World's Fair, it's, you know, like a girl, vlogging, you know, in YouTube. And then TV glow is about a 90s TV show that sort of, you know, these kids who are obsessed with watching it. And now we've gotten to the point where we have a movie about a creator, right? We've gone from viewers to fans to creators. And in that sense, miasma kind of subsumes the previous movies into it.

It has elements of all of them in it. But it's also different because one big difference. And I watched TV glow the other night because my wife hadn't seen it. and she really liked it. We had an interesting time watching it. I was reading about it again, both positive and negative reviews. That's a film that's so melancholy and so anxious and so,

you know, fearful in certain ways. Miasma is so preoccupied with pleasure, not in an empty way, but it's very sweet, you know? I mean, it's quite literally sort of candy-coded, and I don't think it throws those fears or those anxieties away,

and I don't think it's impersonal. But that's the big difference from the other work. It's not just that cameasma is not really trying to be scary. It's not really trying to be heavy. It's smart, but it's light. I know what you mean. Not a put down at all. But it's light.

And I think that the things it's about that are serious, it does in a very playful way. Or conversely, the playfulness, it's kind of booby-trapped at times. Like when we get to the Counting Crows scene, but we'll get there. So I agree with you. And the candy-coded is particularly appealing. The TV glow I really connected to Because obviously I think you and I are similar in the same way as Jane in that A lot of media imprinted very hard on us at a very young age and then we

At times transposed ourselves onto that media and then Sort of turned it into a meaningful part of our lives if not the defining part of our professional lives And there's a lot of shame and guilt kind of stitched into that story and this movie is sort of the opposite where we do in fact see Chris, the Hannah Einbinder character at a very young age, consuming media much the same way the Justice Smith character consumes media and TV glow. But it's not shame, it's wonder,

and those two things are kind of tied together in some ways. And so Jane pivoting away from that and going towards this much more joyful approach in telling the story, plus all of this indulgence that is happening for the characters at first with candy and then

with sex and then with this explosive corn syrupy blood as we go into the final third of the movie is almost feels like an artist in real time getting happier. You know what I mean? I don't know if I could chart that in quite such clear terms, but it does feel like that's what's happening with Jane. Well, there's these blocks. There's creative block. There's a social anxiety. There's romantic block. There's this kind of, you know, sexual frustration that, you know, has to be kind of, you know, surmounted. I mean, there's a degree to which this movie is playing a game of wish fulfillment.

That plays out in a lot of the set pieces, you know, like commandeering the movies that you used to watch and now you get to make them and they can be how you want and about what you want. Or you project yourself inside of them or you can kind of pilot this fictional serial killer as a way to get rid of all the people who are frustrating you in your life. Or, you know, the movie star that you've been crushing on your whole life, you know, is like inviting you in to hang out. But, you know, and we'll get there.

But what's interesting is when you say you identified with the films and so did I. It's tricky because on the one hand, there is no shortage of movies that are made for the kind of cinephile demographic and which flatter them and cater to them. This is the post-Tarantino phenomenon of like, you know, critics get turned into fanboys and to greater, lesser degree. Some artists do that and a lot of hacks do that. Jane's an artist. But also, we're kind of imperfect people to be talking about a movie like this because the points of identification and the points of difference are very significant.

And yet, that loops back around to the fact, I think I read an interview with Jane. I don't want to misquote. They said, how many trans filmmakers in the United States have had the kind of releases and budgets that I've had? And it's like the only one. So there's actually a number of significant trans filmmakers in the film making cameos. And Jane is in communication, not just with, you know, mainstream slasher signifference. fires and top 40 alt rock, but with that, you know, artistic community and tradition,

that's a wonderful thing that then on a mainstream film podcast or in mainstream outlets, it's being reviewed and looked at by critics for what their points of convergence are. Because those points of convergence are actually in some ways, and I'm saying something that a critic Sam Brojan wrote in reverse shot, they're profoundly uncool. I kind of like how uncool the reference points in this. in this movie are, they're actually not Vanguard. They're not hip. They're not elusive.

They're night swimming and long December and the Friday the 13th franchise. That's fascinating to me because that was not the language or the rhetoric around World's Fair. I guess what I'm saying is that some of the things that people are anxious about, which is here's this independent, you know, significant American trans filmmaker or making stuff that seems too accessible to a wide audience. And I'm like, that accessibility and that discourse, to me, is potentially part of what's excellent about the film

and excellent about its release. Also creates some elements of, you know, territorial reception and the question of, you know, who is this movie for? Who should it be for? Who it's supposed to be speaking to? I see it as such an expression of an individual filmmaker and their interests, which are not, always easily compartmentalized, not always easily reconciled, that's a good thing for me,

whether that's exactly the kind of criticism that should be being written about it. You know, I don't think I'm a perfect audience for the film or a perfect, you know, person to be in conversation with Jane's taste, but I like it. And the parts that speak to me speak eloquently, you know? Yeah, you're tapping into something that I thought about a lot during TV glow as well. And I just don't think a perfect audience exists. I think any artist is going to have experiences that we're not going to fully understand.

And so in an effort to represent how they're feeling, if you can at least create the sensation of universalizing that feeling, then you're just creating empathy for someone who's had a different life than you, someone who has got a different point of view than you. And this is, I think, particularly two movies in a row that really aces that, that does that.

And I think in many ways kind of transcends whatever narrow lane of conversation a movie like this might have been slotted into five years ago, ten years ago, or if it were done a little bit differently. And so I agree with you about the generational point. I've been thinking a lot about Jane. I asked Jane when they were here about

just the kind of millennial pretext and the counting crows usage and a couple of the different aspects of it. And I think of Jane now in that same conversation that I've been having on the show with like, Coogler, Damien Chiselle, Greta Gerwig. Like there's a handful of people who I'm like, well, these are this kind of definitional millennial

filmmakers. These are the people who they all are having different experiences. They all have different kinds of movies that they want to make or that they're in love with from the past and are trying to iterate on. But this is kind of one more link in that chain in a really exciting way. And I think it's interesting that they're all as funny as they are sincere too. That's like the other thing that I really enjoy about this movie is. It kind of gear shifts pretty regularly from scene to scene, from a madcap, almost like Zucker Brothers gags, into pure slasher, POV horror, back into these kind of, like, deeply sincere, almost like sundance coming of age tonality. You know, like, it really is.

And in some cases, you might think, well, that kind of whiplash doesn't work in telling a story. but I think in this movie, it's fantastically effective. Well, there's another movie from this year that I also like. I mean, you made the comparison to The Odyssey. I make the comparison in a way to Maddie's Secret, the John Early film, which I really like. I mean, that's still my favorite film in the year or close to it. And it's like you put everything in quotes,

but not to belittle it or to undermine it. sincerity in of itself doesn't and you're not saying this but you know sincerity is not necessarily a positive quality in movies there are a lot of movies

that are sincerely awful or sincerely smug or sincerely confused I think you're right that the tone is elastic but I mean it's certainly not messy and one of the things that I

like about that idea of the stuff that's sort of in quotes is when Han Einbender needs to give a kind of real performance. I think some of the monologue stuff mid-film, you know, the quotes come off. And I think that, on the other hand, the quotes around that big mid-film slasher scene from the killer's point of view, you know, whirling around with the fake blood and all of these kids being kind of killed off, that's in quotes, but not in an ironic way. I mean, it's kind of a stunning scene to me. That idea that you can

kind of have blood and guts and camera movement that are so obviously not of that period. People will watch that scene and sort of say, well, that's not how a movie from the 80s would look. And it's like the movie knows that. And one reason that it knows that is because eventually the camera turns back around and it's not just the point of view of the killer. It's the face of the killer. And, you know, in a way, the face of the filmmaker or that face of sort of control, you know. I like, I've read some reviews where people have said, oh, it's so obvious. that, you know, the Chris character is supposed to be Jane Schumras.

Yes, it is obvious because the directorial credit is superimposed over the first time we see Han Einbinder in the film. But that doesn't mean that just because things are explicit, it doesn't mean that it's a total one-to-one ratio or there aren't different interpretive avenues. Or just because it's a sweet film doesn't mean that it's not tough or doesn't mean that it's not thoughtful. I think in some ways the tough stuff and the alienating stuff is more buried in this movie. it's so out on the surface and so raw in World's Fair.

It's so on the surface in TV glow. Here it's kind of buried under the candy a little bit. But that's what candy is for you. Put razor blades in it on Halloween, you know? And I think that that's some of what this filmmaker is very good at. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the sort of POV big slasher set piece in the middle of it, which is, I guess, the most notable scene in the movie for a variety of reasons. So why do you think they made that decision to not?

not replicate the feeling of a slasher kill scene and to create something that is like a little bit more elevated, a little bit more colorful, a little bit more, I would say, video game influenced in terms of the POV filmmaking. You know what? It's funny. The better the filmmaker, the less inclined I am to know their intentions. It's bad filmmakers, I think, as a critic, really like, well, that's what they're trying for and they didn't do it.

I mean, when I see a filmmaker I like, I try and describe, but I can't say for sure. And I thought that it's incompatible. I mean, that completely, again, kind of anodyne, not CGI, but, you know, computer-assisted fluidity, but of no place in an 80s movie. Or an early 90s movie, I guess. I guess we should say the Camp Measma series is kind of supposed to be located more in the 90s than the 80s, right? And we also see in the opening series that it's gone through. I think it's a blur. I think it's a variety of things, right?

It is very much Friday the 13th, but it's also gone through some of the same paces as Scream, and I know what you did last summer and things like that. Yeah, exactly. But so let's just say, you know, the needle drop is an oldie to us now. It also never would have been on the soundtrack of a movie like that then. It's saying something about distance and time that doesn't even just have to do with horror movies, but I think just has to do with age. It's contrapuntal use of music.

You know, it doesn't go with the killing, which is a sort of, of, you know, all the way back to singing in the rain and clockwork orange or stuck in the middle with you in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in reservoir dogs. I mean, it deliberately takes us out of the film within the film and almost kind of takes us out of the film around the film or the film is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, whirls around and you see the killer's face underneath the mask and you are suddenly brought back to what this filmmaker in the film Chris is anxious about, which is, you know, repurposing and in the process, you know, pinkwashing, this highly problematic, you know, transphobic slasher

franchise that they grew up with and get off on, you know, and Schoenbrin's own anxieties in making this movie. I think anxiety is funny. I'm sure you would agree, you know, you're a fan of Albert Brooks. I know you're like, you know, Ari Aster, you know, Elaine May. I mean, anxiety is what's funny. So the, the, the, the, the anxiety and the humor of this movie are, are bound up together in a way that I think is very familiar, but also very precise. I do not love the showbiz satire in it. That feels like something you could get on a TV show or, or, or in other movies, you know, with the agent and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I think it's fine. What I love is when they get to the camp where Jillian Anderson's character,

was it Billy, not Billy Presley. I was just going to say Billy Preston, though, it would be a very different movie. You know, and the idea that this kind of summer camp is just laid out for her now as this sort of primal scene, but then all they do is like eat chicken nuggets and watch a movie. I like how small that is, but, you know, within the context of the film, it feels very epic. You know, but, but, but, but it's, I mean, it's a chamber piece. And for a lot of it, it's a two-hander. And for a lot of it, it's almost kidding itself as a kind of softcore or a kind of fantasy roleplay situation. Again, lots going on managed, I think, very smartly.

Yeah, the movie is full of these great signposts. and some of it is briefly gratifying in that Tarantino way that you're describing and some of it is a little bit more heavily meaningful. I think there's a lot of time and care put into things like watching Chris pour raisinettes into a popcorn bucket. Which I know was at least one person's breaking point for the film. I saw a tweet where they said,

I couldn't watch the movie after that. Who would put raisinets in popcorn? Like, it's just the worst snack mix. Oh, wow. I could not disagree more. As a non-popcorn person, that's a way to make popcorn more tolerable for me. I really, I could have, I could have taken her left the Sarah Sherman agent stuff, but I did find that the Zoom call was eerily accurate and good. And I'll just say I found it to be like quite acid-tinged in terms of like some real-life comps that the film is making. And I do, I'm not. sure how much that will go over people's heads or how much they'll care about where it sits. But I do think it also serves a really good purpose, which is that's a, it's a moment of Chris being able to kind of take a real agency in their career when they're defining how they want to make

the thing that they want in a moment when they should feel fearful that they're going to blow their chance and instead having this moment of catharsis and realization and carrying it through and just, you know, being weird in the way that they want to be weird, which I really, really enjoyed. and that is a counterpoint to that real sensual and sexual and emotional experience that Chris is having with Billy. Every time Chris and Billy are together and the kind of pod to do that they're having with one another, which is such a fascinating thing. Jillian and Hannah, I'm curious like what you thought about them. And, you know, Gillian is another one of these signposts in the film, obviously. Well, Julian Anderson's a great actor, right?

Like, really great. And if you watch, you know, the House of Merth, they're like, that's a great actor or you watch Hannibal, you know, that's a great actor. And then on top of that, she's also, I don't know if the internet has doubled down and made it more apparent or if it's made it less apparent just with time. I don't, I try not to spend that much time on these corners of the internet. But like, she's a real icon. I mean, everyone will say this person is iconic. This person is like, like this is like a pre-internet or early internet kind of sexual icon for boys, for girls, for everybody. And that character is...

I asked her about this and she tried to be modest about it, but it was like, you know, we all know. Like, we know what you represent. If you were born between 1972 and 1987, we all know what you are.

Yeah, I mean, that show and it's kind of fandom and the neo-cult aspect of the X-Files and the fact that it was a primetime hit, but beyond being a hit, it was, I mean, again, it's like a TV glow kind of show.

And, like pink opaque, obviously it's a little more mainstream. So she's being cast, but she's also being kind of deployed, you know, by the movie. But then she also has to give a performance within that. And I think that her performance obviously has echoes of the stage work that she's done. I wish I'd had a chance to see her in Streetcar Name Desire. I haven't. But, I mean, this is someone with a real arsenal as an actor and a lot of technique.

And you feel kind of all of that technique. It's a very grand, very flamboyant performance. It's not just Anderson who's performing. it's the character is performing, an idea of Norma Desmond. You know, I mean, one bit I liked where people are like, oh, the meanings of the movie are too explicit. They're going to compare her to Norma Desmond. And then they get there and she's like, yeah, I know I'm a little like Norma Desmond.

You know, it's like the annotation has an annotation. No one deserves points for getting ahead of this movie's references. And I know for some people that insulates the movie from like real fear or real thornyness or real kind of alienation within horror that when, everything's a reference, nothing's actually scary. I mean, again, a critic I really like wrote this, which is it's easier to think of this, not as a horror movie, but as a kind of stoner romantic comedy that, you know, is about the world of horror movies or it's sort of, you know, a movie about unblocking oneself sexually that kind of just happens to have that as an aphrodisiac or as a fetish object. She's not making, they're not making a horror movie.

They could. And, you know, we're all going to the World's Fair has some pretty good scares in it. But I don't think it's a horror movie. But as for Han Einbender, I mean, Grind Binder. I mean, interesting actress. I don't watch hacks. I've heard she's very good. Obviously, the dynamic with her and Gene Smart on that show informs the casting here.

She's also an extremely overtly political person. And sometimes that has no bearing on someone's performance on the right or on the left. And sometimes it's a function of casting. To me, that's a function of the casting here, too, you know. I like watching them together. I think they're very sweet together. I think that there's a real erotic and neurotic energy in both of those performances. And I enjoyed them, you know.

It's a different kind of actor than Jane's worked with previously. Or experimented a little within TV glow using actors iconography. Like Fred Durst is in. I saw the TV glow. And when I watched it the other night, I was just like, what an amazing idea to have like limp biscuit as the face of kind of like, you know, paternal disapproval. Uh-huh. You know, why are you watching a girl show, you know?

But, and, you know, TV Glow does it with musicians, with Phoebe Bridgers and Caroline Polichick. So, yeah, I mean, Anderson is, is very well used. The two of them are, are very sweet on screen together. I think, I think they're both very fine. Well, I think that idea that you hit on about the movie not being scary, which I had also on our list of topics of discussion is fascinating to me because, you know, as a certified Slasherologists, most of the other slasherologists I know,

are not scared of these movies. They have memories of being scared of them when they were nine, when they saw them, which is a key component in this story. But no one sits down to watch Friday the 13th, part six, for the fourth time worried about being scared of it. It's an emotional point of connection. And so the movie is very, very smart about this, I think.

It is. I think the movies that are in this movie's DNA or that have come up in interviews. And again, with filmmakers, whether you like their work or not, you're trying not to put words in their mouth. So I don't want to misquote, Jane, but I mean a movie like Sleepaway Camp, which in some ways is kind of cheesy and dated and, you know, capital P problematic, whatever that means. I usually don't like that word as a way to talk about movies, but I like when people talk about that aspect of filmmaking, then I think it's fascinating. A movie like Sleepway Camp or like a great example of Nightmare on Elm Street, too, which are movies that. that are maybe frightening to people or seductive to people in ways that either exceed their makers' conscious intentions or just that mix of extremity.

I mean, the readings, the queer reading of Nightmare and Elm Street, too, is very famous and very popular. I think there's a whole documentary about it. I taught that film in a cult film course once where it's just like, is this actively, consciously an allegory for gay experience or did this? Did the filmmakers miss this? You say the same thing about Commando, frankly. You know, I think that you could. These are the movies that they're not scary, but the guardrails aren't up, you know, or they feel like an unsafe space somehow. So that's something that this movie is about without doing it.

The only time it starts to feel unsafe, and it's conceptually my favorite thing in the movie is when, and this isn't like a plot spoiler, but it's a talking point. So I hope people don't mind us talking about it is when Chris is talking about how what she gets off. on in these movies is that idea that you're the voyeur and the victim at the same time. And this movie is not invented that idea. But it articulates it in a way that I quite like. And she's kind of ashamed that this is how she feels that she wants to be the victim. But it's also very sort of liberating. And that's the kind of pleasure this movie is getting at. It's a little double edged. And it very clearly belongs to Jane as well as to Chris. You know, that's what the whole movie's about. Yeah, I think that and I think that's a, that's perhaps the most critical scene in the movie, this idea of accepting and letting go and also being stalked and getting joy from that feeling of being stalked. And being seen by being seen by the camera. You know, this is a movie that. In slow motion. In slow motion.

Like this is a movie that's sort of like, it's not just jokes about split diopter shots and tracking shots. It's sort of like, what a joy to be seen that way. which is tricky and not everyone who's going to watch that movie is going to feel that way. I think for people who connect to those feelings, it will be very liberating. Yeah, I think the movie's trying to have

its cake and eat it too with respect to the problematism that you're describing because there's that great moment when Billy and Chris are watching Camp Measm together and the reel is running and Chris can't help

but continue to turn to Billy and offer either detail tales about filmmaking technique or noting moments of transphobia in the film. And every time that happens, Billy is like, shut up and like rolling her

eyes at this kind of millennial Gen Z desire to constantly be noting the referentiality or the discourse around something as opposed to just letting it totally wash over you. And so the movie also becomes this really interesting dialectic about

what is the purpose of a movie like this? You know, and can you enjoy it without its externalities or is that actually a mistake to only consume culture in that way? And I think just portraying that in general is so exciting and so smartly done.

Well, this is now becoming, again, there are some people for whom just having a movie where tropes are mentioned in dialogue is just like a jump off the train point, you know? And some people have sort of invoked phrases with this movie that I invoke for other movies. So I guess

everyone's palette is different, but they're like, you know, this is like epic bacon kind of humor and the oh my god you know the kind of post joss weeden you know well that just happened sort of stuff i don't actually think that has much for corollary in the text of the movie at all but i think that i understand that tone i also think that at this point it's not it's telling that talented and semi-talented horror people in a lot of mediums their only subject is horror movies because there's such a proliferation of them and in some ways it's a safer space than dealing with reality i believe in that too i'm about halfway through this novel by Paul Trombly called horror movie.

I don't know if you've... I haven't read it. Reddit, which is about a kid who made in high school a horror movie with a bunch of other kids that never got released, like, only two or three scenes ever got put on YouTube, and now a studio is trying to remake it. And it's uncanny how close his scenes meeting with the executives are to the scenes in miasma. I think the two projects are completely independent of each other.

My implication isn't that one takes from the other, but they're almost identical. It's like meeting with executives. and the guys who think, yeah, we want to get that 90s feeling, but remake it now and, you know, make it modern. I mean, this is the condition of a lot of modern horror making. And again, when we talked about the Counting Crow's little death scene, you mentioned that the visual language in it. I mean, it is the visual language of elevated horror or an idea of elevated horror or an idea of an idea of elevated horror. I don't think this movie has much truck with that idea. It doesn't come out and openly say, I hate this shit, because it's,

it's kind of doing that shit. But you'll notice it doesn't do it for the entire movie. I don't think Jane would be caught dead making that movie. And we don't have to say what that movie is, because I know you like some of these movies, and I like some of these movies. And I think saying backrooms or obsession or any movie is just like, what's right or wrong with horror is a losing game.

It's just the movie. It's just a movie. But I do think that this movie has a certain amount, if not of skepticism, then of wariness. It's like, I'll do this for a couple of minutes, but this is not really what I'm making, you know? I do. It's a really interesting way to think about it. Is there anything in general that, well, one thing that you tapped into that I thought was really interesting was that feeling of like, does this movie know what it's doing in previous horror films?

And I've thought about this a lot with obsession. I've rewatched obsession this week. And it was my first time seeing it since I saw it at a screening. And, you know, there's a sequence near the end. into the film where Nikki and Bear are sort of fighting and Bear has kind of reached his breaking point after Nikki has gone completely crazy and he keeps asking her to be the real Nicky and he's screaming at her and she starts screaming at him and it's an incredibly effective scene and a scene that feels like very wise about difficult romantic relationships reaching a breaking point

And you know, Curry Barker is 26 years old. I talked to him on the show. He's very smart and a nice guy. But I was like, is this person, does this person have enough life experience to know how sophisticated this idea? I'm reading this idea as this sequence in this film. And this is true throughout all of horror. It's true in a lot of different genres, but it's especially true in horror movies. And, you know, Sleepway Camp does have a lot of sequences in that film.

We're like, whoa, this seems, this movie problematic, though it may be, seems to kind of see the future about gender dynamics and, a lot of other ideas that we're going to get into in the next 30, 40 years of our existence. And this movie is an attempt, I think, to almost, like, subvert that sensation by literalizing everything, by announcing everything that it's doing. And neither one nor the other is, like, better or worse. But I find it fascinating that they're both, like, sitting next to each other as signature moments in the genre right now. I mean, I think it is interesting, too. And I'll say something about obsession, which we've never talked about on the pod. I wrote about it briefly on the ringer when I did the year, mid-year thing.

And I said, you know, this is, the obsession is a movie of the year. I mean, like, kind of derogatory or not necessarily complimentary. I'm not going to get you in trouble. You can like it as much as you want. I've Kurt Burkker on as many times as, you know, he's around. I, we've both watched movies for a long time. We've covered them for a long time. You and I are not exactly the same.

But, like, we get along, right? We kind of know the terrain. I propose that obsession has generated the most deranged discourse of any American movie. since I started doing this. And I think about 80% of that is the moment that we're in, and only 20% of it is the movie. It's a deranged moment. Deranged isn't even a good word.

I know that. But it's wild, how intense and passionate and polarized and digressive and kind of fascinating what people are reading into or pulling out of or projecting onto this movie. And in a strange way, I'd say the difference between obsession and came as well. I like Campi Amiens by exponentially more, you know, like much, much more.

But I do think that obsession, having seen it now with an audience a couple of times, it makes people feel unsafe. And it is not because it is innovative. I'm going to say all the things it's not, it is not innovative, it is not inventive, it is not original. I don't think it's particularly responsible with what it's playing with. And it's certainly not a dissertation, you know, like Jane's movie gets an age. plus, you know, I would say, I'd say obsession is kind of incomplete. And yet, its hands are so dirty.

It's really opening the can of worms. I'm not even giving it credit. I'm just saying. I mean, I am giving it credit. That's one of the reasons why I go to movies is to feel a little unsafe. So I know, I know what you're saying. You're right to kind of like couch it in in this space where we analyze things and we try to understand where they fit in the culture and are they politically sound and All of that is true, and I think that movie's reaction that it is generated does feel it's highly uncommon is something I'll say. And it's highly uncommon, and it reminds me of if one movie had existed when Twitter was out. If fatal attraction had come out when Twitter existed or if Twitter had existed for fatal attraction, it's not just the heteropessimist thing or the like, you know, the rom-com into slasher trope things. it's like, could you imagine

if fatal attraction had existed in Twitter era? Well, I think again, that's a movie also that is about fraught gender dynamics and obsession and teenage sex and death in Khamianasma are about those things too, in very broad

in different ways. And I think that's something that we still don't really know how to talk about. And one movie can kind of literalize the idea and another movie can kind of supernaturalize the idea. And that in either case, We feel like we have a lot to chew on. And no one's right.

That's the unique thing that I think both of these movies, like, brought out of me of like, oh, I have a lot to learn. Like, I'm still learning. There are these movies, they just, they kind of instantly belong to history. And it just, it is what it is. You know, I happen to like the Blair Witch Project very much. And I kind of like paranormal activity. Like, I'm mostly on the side of these kind of left field horror.

monoliths and also what we have to see with obsession is what will happen with Blair Witch or with um a paranormal activity which is is it repeatable you know in the case of those movies it's sequelizable without being repeatable yeah kind of like what will what will the obsession slop look like or what will the backroom what will the backroom slop slop slop look like but i do think that miasma will be i hope not a footnote i mean i think it's a chapter it's not an annotation it's a chapter in this same story. And, you know, Jane's work is sort of its own, its own chapter in this moment. Because, of course, I also can't remember a moment where horror was this mainstream in terms

of like normal people going to see it. Do you know many people in my life who would not be caught dead going to horror movies? Like parents, friends. I say this about Canadian films earlier this year, too, horror and Canadian. But like, they're just like seeing it as a normal person. Like my wife's parents were like, should we see obsession? And I was like, under no circumstances should you see it. obsession, but the fact that you kind of want to, you know, I love my unlaws. They go see the

Odyssey. They don't go see obsession. Yeah. It's a, and they're, and they're, and they're thinking about it. No, it's a, it's a really exciting time in that respect. And it's going to produce some, some lousy results, but maybe it's also going to inspire a lot of people to make some exciting stuff. It's, I want to, I do want to do, I want to talk more about final girls with you. And, and, and because this movie is a real final girl piece of the puzzle. So we'll get into the final girl canon together right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy?

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Okay, Adam, one thing, one movie that I revisited this week in writing of about Final Girls was Smile 2. Did you see Smile 2? I quite like Smile 2. Okay, I thought you might. I'm not as high on it, maybe as you are, but there's a lot to admire about it. And I do feel like obsession is certainly grabbing quite a bit

in terms of its mechanical decision-making from Smile 2. You know, the sound design, the way that the camera's moving. Well, it's taking, well, very much from the original smile. Yes, yes. Right, where it's just like, what if person stared at camera? Would that be scary? I guess so. That's true.

I'll never forget being at Smile with a bunch of friends. This was my letterbox review of it. And someone in the audience goes, she's going to smile. And I just like they were calling the finishing move at WrestleMania. Here it comes. She's going to smile. It's great.

It's really funny. What's your favorite professional wrestling finisher? My favorite professional wrestling finisher? Oh, I mean the macho man big elbow. Oh, no kidding. From the top rope. I was the sort of kid who, like, I hated Hulk Hogan very much. And when I went to see it, like, house.

The most name of thing I can imagine, you hating Hulk Hogan. Oh, he fucking sucks. Yeah, he sucks. So you go to the, you go to the house show at Maple Leaf Gardens with my dad who did not want to be there. And I was like, this guy's great, macho man's great. And, like, truly Hulk Hogan stealing his girlfriend and stuff. And I'm like, I still think that that angle is better. It's a great angle because, like, Hogan's a complete creep.

We can talk about this another time. We should do a wrestling pod, me and you. We should rewatch. paper views from the 80s and 90s and talk about them. I honestly would have the best time doing that. Elizabeth! No, but I got a lot of macho on me. Absolutely. Sorry, go on. Back to, back to

Ormond. My favorite finisher is the Razors Edge, which is one of the most cinematic of all finishers. One of the most cinematic of all characters. Do you know, do you know the Scarface story? You must, right? No, what's the Scarface story? When Scott Hall supposedly auditioned to Vince McMahon, he's like, this is like Tony Montana and I'm doing Tony Montana.

It's like, great, yeah, I love it. And then afterwards he's like, I do not know what Scarface is. You know, the, I'm like, was there then a period where he got very curious and went to watch all the De Palma movies? We'll never know. Sorry, go on. I love the idea of Scott Hall watching De Palma's obsession. That would be intriguing. Oh, yes.

Okay, final girls. I think that there are a handful of them that are easily understood as canonical. You already mentioned Halloween being a movie you tried to show to a girl. I think we've all tried to show Halloween to a girl over the years and Lori Strode being the signature. There are a couple that come before that feel important. I don't really think of, you know,

Carol Clover's essay about this idea comes in the late 80s. And it's primarily focused on 70s and 80s films. And so in that tradition, she identifies Jess Bradford from Black Christmas. She identifies Sally Hardesty from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. she identifies Lori Strode. I can't recall, does Ripley come up from Alien?

I think, I think in scholarship around the original essay, I think Alien is like a lot of people's clever answer to that question. Yeah, so what do you think about that? I mean, I think it fits. I think it's interesting that, I mean, very interesting in light of talking about Jane's work that in the original scripted Alien, Ripley was a man. And they didn't really change much of the character for Weaver's performance,

except for them when Ridley Scott has her stripped down to her underwear at the end. A great choice, by the way, because it's about vulnerability, right? I mean, it's like, you know, couldn't be more vulnerable in that moment. You know, then that kind of, you know, pressurizes it as a final girl discussion. I mean, I love. One that's echoed in teenage sex and death. Yes, it is echoed in teenage sex. Although Sigourney Weaver never, like, you know, ran around.

I mean, I think of Night of the Living Dead where the first girl was also. the final girl. You know, like she's the first one we see kind of running around and that trope of being chased through the cemetery and losing her shoe

and falling over. I mean, Camp Miasma has fun with that too. A Night of Living Dead precedes a lot of these films. I mean, an interesting final girl, I don't think Carol Clover writes about them, but we talked about De Palma.

It's funny to think of Carrie White as a load-bearing character who is both the monster and the final girl at the same time. I thought about asking about Carrie if you thought Carrie fits the bill here. I mean, there's, you know, for those who don't know,

Final Girl is a trope that was developed by Clover, who is an academic film scholar, and it's about the final surviving female character in a horror film, and what attributes that character frequently has? That character's frequently virginal, frequently sober,

frequently brunette, frequently less bodacious than some of the other female stars of the film. Frequently, frequently sober, virginal, all these things. All these things. Like podcast listeners. Truly. If you've been to our subreddit, you know, that's accurate.

A lot of sober virgins there. I think it's been bent a little bit over time, the trope, but it's still pretty consistent. And one of the things that has struck me, and you can think about this through the lens of 60s and 70s and 80s horror films. But one of the things that has struck me is just the absolute wave of them that we've gotten in the last 10 or so years. And the way that horror films are sold so hard now on the female protagonist or the woman in peril in ways that are sometimes very self-aware and in other times that are just sort of like your kind of stock and trade run-of-the-mill horror studio movie. And so I'm really fascinated by that. Like, you know, in the 80s, there's, of course, Nancy Thompson from Nightmare. There's Angela Baker from Sleepaway Camp, which kind of flips that on its head because of the shocking.

reveal of that film. There's, I think, Kirstie Cotton from Hellraiser, I think, is a really, really good one. Yeah. And then we get into the 90s and we get Sydney Prescott and Gail Weathers, we get. But then it's not until the 2010s when I think things start to be turned on their head a bit. So I don't know. Do you think of them as kind of sectioned over time? I do.

And I think one of the scenes we didn't talk about in Miasma is that opening scene that shows the life cycle and the evolution of a franchise where it goes from like, exploitation, you know, to just running on fumes to that idea of rebooting and repurposing across genres, like this wonderful credit scene of can't miasma being sequelized and merchandised and made fan friendly and turned into a cartoon and then becomes a collector's item and then they send them to space. I mean, that stuff's all very clever. I mean, that's the study of pop culture, is the study of cycles and, you know, variation, surface, surface variations, variations on a theme. I mean, there's always going to be an interesting discourse around different kinds of aggression and vulnerability in horror movies.

So are men de facto more aggressive or frightening or frustrated than than women? No. But on screen, that trope has a kind of power. Are women inherently either more superficially vulnerable and, you know, more indomitable? Does, is there like an innocence or whether it's the innocence of virginity or the good? in more recent films of being sexually active and killing them anyway. I mean, these are archetypes. These movies sort of play with.

Every so often you have one that plays with it sort of intelligently. You know, some people have compared Kambiasmid to the Joss Whedon film to Cabin in the Woods, which is an interesting comparison. That was one that I thought a little ahead of the curve was just popping the hood and elevating the horror, elevating it past the point of being scary, elevating it into that realm of kind of dissertation or or or or or or discourse. I mean, that's a movie that really goes for it. As I recall, the final girl in that film, you see her being like stocked and brutalized and beaten up and you see everyone watching her on their screens.

Right? That's that idea of like implicating the viewer, which is what a lot of these movies like to do. Brian DePaul. Brian DePaulme used to do that without saying, I am implicating you, the viewer. But, you know, we can we can talk about that another time. Yeah, Cabin in the Woods, upon its release, I adored. And I think it was because we didn't quite have the language for the Post-Sream, post-post-modern horror film.

And I haven't looked at that in a long time. I'd be curious to know how I felt about it. But I also felt that that movie did something that a lot of the contemporary movies are doing pretty well, too, which is that that movie at times was quite scary. You know, it was not actually, it didn't turn and look at you and wink at you. And in fact, it has this really chaotic third act. that is at times felt the way that I felt when I was 11 in the library, like reading a book, it was a collection of monster descriptions,

but it also felt like watching a really violent and scary horror movie. And I think of that movie very closely with Your Next, which is sort of like Adam Wingard's movie that just sort of feels like what if Laurie Strode studied jujitsu before encountering Michael Myers? You know, like what if the, What if the final girl was stronger, tougher, and meaner than the killer? Which I really, really enjoy that idea.

And there have been some films that, like, Ready or Not is kind of riffing on this at this point now, too. Yeah, and even though it's only there. And even though, I mean, the final girl also implies that there are people killed before them. But a movie like Revenge by Crowley Farageat, she's like the only girl, right? She's the victim. She's killed. She's resurrected. She goes from the victim to sort of the, I mean, that one sort of coded as a kind of rape revenge movie.

But, I mean, again, it's a movie that plays with that sort of intelligently. I mean, there's movies like, you know, Jennifer's body isn't quite a slasher film, but, you know, Diablo Cody's having fun playing with those tropes. You know, you mentioned the Ready or Not films. Now the sequel features a, my obligatory mention of David Cronenberg, good performance by David Cronenberg is the dying criminal patriarch in that Toronto shot film. But the final girl gets a sister in that movie. And the other one I like, I can't remember the character name,

but I like, it's a Jessica Roth and Happy Death Day. Yes, she's terrific. I think that's a very, it's almost great. I put it in the almost great category. There's things about it that don't quite work, but she's funny because she has the existential

frustration of knowing she's the final girl and having to just psych herself up time and time again, which is like, this is just going to keep happening to me. It's very funny. I think there's a few other movies in recent years, too, that have done it really well. and they're more prestigious, for lack of a better word. I think Adelaide in us fits the bill here very much.

I think Danny in Midsummer really, really fits the bill. And both of them seem to be kind of actively exploring what it means to be a final girl, even though those aren't pure slasher's. Nauru from Prey also, Amber Midthunders character, I think fits the bill well. And then I think that it kind of like, it kind of, gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? It kind of like reaches the end of the road. It's like there's like a, there's like nowhere to go. The bridge is not finished with Maxine, Minks, and Pearl.

That's where I'm like, okay, we have kind of gotten to the conclusive point of self-referential riffing on rape revenge and slasher films. And we can go no further. And teenage sex and death of came asma attempts to kind of like rebuild the bridge, you know, it's like trying to finish the job? Yeah, I mean, I remember back in a couple of years ago. I mean, I thought the way that the first X built itself, this sequel or kind of prequel out of nowhere with Pearl was pretty good. It was amazing. I thought it was very efficient.

Yeah, I mean, I wrote about Maxine or whatever it was for Ringarm. I don't like that movie at all. But, I mean, it is close in some ways to something like Miasmo, where it's not so much. that its ideas are different. It's just that little matter that sometimes matters of, you know, form and execution and style and tone, which miasma has, and I don't think that that one does. I mean, people really like Cato Flynn's Final Girl episode of Widows Bay, which I don't know if you've watched.

I have. The one where she's being pursued, which is very miasma-ish, too, where she's being pursued by, like, I guess within the lore of the show, it's a serial killer, but it's also just a capital S-K serial killer stand-in and, you know, all the things that happen, especially the idea of these movies that no one helps these women, but no one believes them and that no one opens their door and no one lets them in and the cops are useless. I mean, I don't love Widows Bay, but that scene was good and it was priceless when the thing was lying there dead and she just kept pointing the gun at it for like about five minutes and all these different rooms. I thought that was that was really funny. But yeah, I mean, miasma's obviously playing with this idea of a, of an, first of an it girl, you know, like the touted filmmaker and then a kind of, you know, this frustrated girl where it's like, you know, not virginal by choice, you know, not not virginal by choice. There's a block. And then the last 10, 15 minutes without being at all scary, restage that, the sex, the death, the chase, the, the catholician, the. the Tharsis, the confrontation, the victory, but in a very different way than, you know, Texas

Chainsaw Massacre. It's funny you mentioned that as an early final girl. You see, that's a movie where she seems to be the final girl by default, because it's not a movie star and it's barely a character. She just happens to not die. But when she rides away on the back of that truck at the end, that's one of the greatest moments in any movie, not just horror movie, I mean, just period. It's beautiful. Like that sense of survive was unbelievable. You can't top it, I don't think. I was at my childhood

rep house when I was on Long Island last week and introducing a movie, introducing a movie that we both love, Miller's Crossing. And they told me a story about running Texas chainsaw at a midnight there. And they had an original they had a print.

And right at that exact moment when she jumps in the back of the truck and leather faces swinging the chainsaw, the print broke. and the movie had an abrupt ending and the lights came up too quickly and everyone was freaked out in the movie theater and the idea that that movie,

which is 50 plus years old, has still has that power. It's so fascinating to me. And it does get me thinking about kind of like, where can we even go with this trope, this genre, the idea that this is the year of obsession and backrooms and that,

you know, Resident Evil is coming out in a month And even though it's an adaptation of a video game from a major studio, I think there's a sense like, this has a chance to be a great movie. Is Austin Abrams this fall's final girl? I think so. With Resident Evil and Whale Fall? And I haven't even gotten into all that, which is, you know, obviously there have been quite a few final boys in recent years as well. And that the gender dynamics there have been shifted quite a bit. Well, the greatest final boy is Bruce Campbell.

Of course, yes, Ash. as Ash in the Evil Dead films because he's very macho-coated, but then he's not. Yes. And I really love the way, I mean, he's such a wonderful actor in those movies.

The way he sort of sways between like total competence and just like shrieking cowardice is a gift that just keeps on, on giving. I can't think more fondly than actor than Bruce Campbell. I hope he's okay.

Me too. He's the best. Any final thoughts, Adam? We didn't talk. We, we, we talked with the,

scene as opposed to the counting crows needle drop. But I mean, I love the cover of night swimming at the beginning. I can't not. I love R.A.M. It's a beautiful song. It's very well chosen because, I mean, night swimming is very much, you know, summertime at Camp Measma. That's what Little Death is doing. What Little Death is doing, yeah. And I, and we didn't even talk about the idea in the film, which again, some people find a little, a little too declamatory or obvious, but like the hole in the movie where the movies, the hole in the lake where the movies come from. Yes. As a sort of thing about

the mystery and the sort of submerged and subterranean nature of creativity. I love how they come out of that kind of Cronenbergian slit and they're already VHS tapes, you know? I mean, it would be interesting to see if Jane makes something that doesn't ultimately, not

resort, that's not right or lean on, but like maybe something that's not purely about the gaze of watching TV and seeing yourself on the screen. But on the other hand, you know, good and great filmmakers repeat themselves. I mean, that's sort of what one understanding of a tourism is. So one understanding, at least for critics, if not for filmmakers, I think at this point it's conscious. If they were to say, oh, I don't know I'm doing that. That I wouldn't believe. You know? It's also, I forgot to say

about the final girl thing. One of the funniest things I ever interviewed someone about was when I talked to John Carpenter for The New Yorker. And we were talking about the final girl. And he's like, I don't know what that is. What is that? I'm like, oh, it's an essay by Carol Clover. He's like, okay, good. Now I know what that means. And, you know, moved on.

I mean, he, much like almost anything, he has no, he, the only thing he had a lot of interest in, other than, you know, some of his own movies was NBA basketball. He's a great basketball fan. But, I mean, a filmmaker like Carpenter is not doing this intentionally. Jane Shunbrun's doing this very intentionally. No question. No question. I think Jane has a novel and then a Netflix adaptation of Black Heart. hole coming out. And so Black Hole is not, Black Hole is aware of genre tropes, but it is not

about genre tropes. And so I'll be curious to see how, how much they modernize that graphic novel, because it's really old now. And I mean, I must have read it. Is it possible that it's like 20 years old? When did it come out? It's going to be 30 years old. Yeah, I don't know off the top of my head, but yeah, 30 years sounds, 30 years sounds about right. So that'll be interesting, but that's television. As far as films go, I don't know. I do feel like we're reaching a kind of end point because of that progression that you talked about from a vlogging to fandom to, to creator. Well, this year we even got, we got the haunted podcast movie. Sure did. Undertone. The Canadian haunted podcast. Some are saying this has been the

haunted podcast for many years. What, what, what if I had a podcast? Would that be, would that be of interest? I'll tell you it'd be scary. That'd be real scary. It'd be scary. Who can say what's coming? But maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe that. With an elegant, elegant tease.

Wasn't that, wasn't that, wasn't that subtle? Yeah. You'll be a podcaster yet, Adam. One, one day. I've been, what's the line I've been, I've been taught by masters? Yeah. And it was great to have you in, it was great to have you in Toronto. Yeah.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having Amanda and Chris. What a year for Toronto. You guys are doing it. Blue Jays are back. Back, game and a half back. Look at that perfect circle we just traced with the podcast. You'll have to learn about this when you podcast.

Yeah, there's nowhere to go now. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Thanks, Adam. Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Jane, Hannah, and Jillian. So happy to have Jane Schoenbrun, Hannah Einbinder, and Jillian Anderson here to talk about this film. You're getting this question a lot, but I do need to hear from all three of you.

the first horror film you've seen and whether or not it made you a lifelong fan. I think I know the answer to the second question for you, Jane, but where did you start? First horror film that I saw, I think technically was my grandma's copy of Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, is that a horror movie? I think so. I watched it like it was a horror movie.

I knew about Frankenstein. I was like, oh, this guy and these goofballs. And they also had Night of the Living Dead on V.H. So then I watched that. And so it was like dipping my toes further into the water. With your grandparents? Like, watched it live with your grandparents? I forget if I watched it live with them or I just like waited for them to leave the room and

grabbed the cassette. Did you not have a lot of guardrails in terms of what you could watch as a kid? No. I famously watched with my parents at age like I must have been eight or nine the first episode of South Park, the first broadcast like when it aired live. I was there. Oh, history. Everyone who watched it started a band.

No, yeah, I was watching some nasty stuff from a very young age. Hannah, what about you? Absolute freak. I think mine is Silent Hill. Oh, sure. Yeah, I remember being so terrified. It's kind of a little girl's nightmare being separated from your mom and sort of like in a world filled with scary creatures and ghouls. Were you a gamer?

No. I just, my, my mom showed it to me. She just is like a real horror head. She wanted to watch it. It came out in 2006. So I must have been in like, I think sixth grade or maybe fifth grade. And I was really scared. It freaked me out. But I actually revisited it because we've been having a lot of these kinds of conversations. And I rewatched it and I found it to be so beautiful. I think I'm more so identified with the perspective of the mom. And it's also just like beautiful filmmaking, actually. And it looks great. And I hear that for folks who are fans of the video game, it's a faithful adaptation. Okay. Did you stick with horror or was that not really a genre for you growing up? Yeah.

Yeah, I did. I wouldn't say I was all the way in. But I think it was one element of my media diet. Okay. Gillian, what about you? I've now told this story so many times. I'm slightly boring myself. But I...

You can lie to me if you want to tell you a story. No, but then I get myself into a world of pain. I had a bad trip at somebody else's house. Somebody I didn't know very well when I was very young. And it was just some really, really strong marijuana. And they decided to put on Texas Chainsaw Massacre. and I couldn't get out. I couldn't, like if I went outside, it would have been dark,

and I didn't know them real well. It was just a one-room apartment, and so it was just horrific. And that was kind of the first and the last horror film I saw. Really? Yeah. And so you don't have a huge relationship to it. No, I watch the gruesomest true crime stuff, but I can watch horror. And even when my kids watch it in other rooms,

if I hear the sound or I hear I need to like plug my ears kind of thing. It's the strange I get really triggered. That's maybe explains a little bit of it why you haven't been in a lot of movies like this. But I kind of wanted to ask you about that, Jane, too, in terms of how you found these two actors

and maybe like what they, they represent to audiences. Was that a component? And how did you figure out who should be in the movie? Jillian made this great, um, Instagram, Twitter post recently where you were posting pictures of yourself from from back in the day and and then posting

pictures of Hannah and and how similar like the energy is and this is like actually I think something I was aware of when when coming up with like a pairing. Yeah, there's something like, I mean obviously there's something psychosexual going on in this movie in general but like I just I had this impulse that like there's never been a like pairing of like two acts. actors who are starring in like an erotic thriller of sorts that's been quite deranged in this style. There's just like, yeah, something about the two of them together just immediately. Like I knew I knew it was going to be like, I think maybe because of how similar you seem

in some ways and you're very different people knowing you well at this point. But at first I was just like, yeah, it felt mischievous in a way that I couldn't quite explain. I love that. And that was exciting. But no, I was a fan of both of them. Obviously, Jillian, I grew up watching. It was very strange meeting Jillian for the first time because, yeah, I just like, I did spend like so much time with you when I was like eight years old. Like really, like I think probably like as much as my siblings. Like I was so. Yeah, I just, I lived, I lived in the screen, obviously. And so then meeting you and feeling like, oh, I kind of. Like, like, there's something like almost Pavlovian, you know, like, and not just like, oh, I've seen you in things, but like, I know you from like a past life or like childhood in some deep way.

And, and then that familiarity, like, now it's invisible to me because, like, very quickly we just, like, started forming a connection as people. And yeah, and you're, you're so different than the roles, all of the roles I've seen you in. And that's what's so wonderful about, like, this performance and all of the others. But yeah, there is definitely like the iconography in the film that was in my head while writing it. And I was, I was thinking about Jillian while writing it of like, yeah, like somebody who, who we, when we see her, will believe her as like this icon from like a, you know, a past life or or a past like franchise or something. But I think more than that there is this like, yeah, there are very few actors who can like make the entrance that that Gillian makes in this movie. movie and it has something to do, I think, with like, like the classical old Hollywood, like,

just like glitter or something. There is something that is like, yeah, you can't fake that and you can't like invent that on the fly. You know, you can't cast somebody that like we've never seen before or never seen in that way. Like there is just like this elegance that goes beyond like elegance that becomes like the dream that we've been enjoying in the cinema for. 100 years in just like the way Jillian inhabits space and and physicality and the screen and and I knew that and that moment when she does enter the movie it's like it is asking a lot to be earned I think and there are very few people in the world who could earn it like Jillian does and Hannah I was a fan of through hacks but I watched her stand-up special I've talked about this

before too she's heard me gush about it but she's psycho um the way that she's was like dancing with the camera in that special. I like went beyond yeah she's she's crazy like she is a little crazy like like we've spent a lot of time over the last couple weeks in the back of like cars and random cities getting like ushered to screenings and and I'm like realizing more and more like how Gina Rollins Hannah is like that's crazy and is Anna's and is a loon and such a performer but like um yeah and like so like perennially caffeinated or something and uh and so such a natural performer i feel like you are most comfortable performing uh in a way that is like a little deranged and i saw that in your stand-up um and i was like oh

i think that america needs to like learn a lot more about how deranged this person is i don't know how purposeful this was but i'm curious to hear you guys react to this because it's sort of in the text of the movie, you know, like we're being leveraged while we're watching the movie, thinking about like you as an icon of a certain kind of, you know, film and television and you as a person, you know, you're basically starring in your first feature film, you're making your first big feature in the film. I don't know if that was an intention on your part, but how did you think about that? Did you see yourselves and your careers and your work going into these particular characters when you were making the movie?

I mean, I understood from the standpoint of franchise and being in iconic space, whether that's because of, you know, X-Files being an iconic status. and, you know, it's a common relationship that fans seem to have with their, with their particularly female stars that they're enamored of to refer to them as being icons or, you know, mothers or whatever. Those words are these days they're going to be about in socials. And so, you know, not to poo-poo it or shrug it off or whatever, because obviously it's a huge, you know, it's an honor and a privilege to even be categorized in that way.

But it's, it's, so I got that aspect of it. I got the value of having someone with my history being, you know, playing Billy. And so I did understand that, but also, you know, the, the Sunset Boulevard reference. And even though I didn't want to play into that too much throughout the whole thing, there were certainly aspects throughout that were fun to play with, you know, not least in some of the costuming and stuff. So it was both, but it also became part of the joy and the fun in the comedy of it, you know, because she's so much more than that trope. And I think she, Billy, also plays with it. You know, she knows the power that she has.

She knows what she's doing. She knows. So she's both very self-conscious and completely not self-conscious at the same time. And in there lies a kind of a, I know, naivete and an innocence with that, which I really liked. And so she feels much more complex than what you would expect from a character who represented that. Right. Yeah.

I feel like Chris is very self-conscious. And I don't know if any of your own self-consciousness went into being that character. Yeah. And I think to your previous question as well, like I think the consciousness of self, like, was I having sort of a matter awareness of the fact that, like, archetypally, I have similarities here. I think my work was to really try to forget all of those things and really tap into a completely different frequency. Like, I am so low and slow, like, Callie vibes. Like, and so I was just trying to be like, how can I go wet, go east, for me?

You know what I mean? Like, how can I, like, embody this new frequency? and only bring myself to it when it comes to like the very deep and the emotional, when it comes to the intimate, you know, emotional truths that the film is trying to communicate and especially via the character that I was playing. Like I definitely think that the only times that I brought anything from anything that was true for me in were in those intimate moments. And so I think I tried my best to really forget all of those other things because what I really really, really was committed to trying to do was to feel like a different character and like a

different person from myself. Yeah. Does that feel like a big shift from what you've been doing on hacks? Of course. So how do you do that? Like, you've been doing this for a while. You know how you're going to transform. You're thinking about a new character. But it's still, it's a relatively big change if you're moving off of a comedy series that

seemingly has elements of your own experiences in life. Yeah. Yeah. I think, well, first of all, like, the text is so rich, and so there's so much there for me to latch on to. Also, I spent a lot of time with Jane who, you know, imbued some of their emotional truths into the material, but also, like, I was absorbing some mannerisms and things like that from Jane. And then also just, like, honestly, I was so shocked at how much wardrobe and costume like the frames like the specs putting them bangs on i was like okay new bitch in the

building you know like i just like really all of that stuff like why wearing like a long skirt and socks and those mary janes and like three sweaters and just like that is like such a you know that is such a useful tool for me um to tap into kind of the discomfort and the self-consciousness and those things that affect the physicality of the body itself. So it just, I kind of like went with it. Like, I didn't understand that that was going to happen. I was kind of like, yeah, any day now, I'm going to figure out what I'm doing here. And then we did the fittings. And I was like, okay, this is different, you know. And yeah, like the first time that I like did those fittings, I was just starting to move around and look in the mirror. And like my body was just changing.

And my way I was holding myself was just changing. And I started to like, yeah, just feel it. super psychedelic, really cool. Jane, last time we talked, I think we spent some time talking about tone. And I do feel like the tone of this movie is different from the previous two movies. Like, it is a very sincere, direct piece about sex and desire and some other things. But then it is, it feels like an active satire at the same time. Totally. And that's really hard to pull off.

So I'm curious, like, how you thought about making those two things fit together. But then maybe even more specifically how you make actors get on the wavelength to hit that tone. Yeah, it was really scary and something that I like knew for me was like at the absolute heart of the project. Like I think it's like a filmmaker's goal, at least for me, is to like create a body of work that's like representative of like the full scope of like how you experience the world and process things. And especially I still think of myself as like fairly early on and what I hope is like a long film. I want each film to be like surprising in some way or at least like even for myself expanding the like definition of what I'm allowed to do. And I think I'm like pretty goofy and funny, you know, like, uh, and the first two films, like obviously like those are films that came out of early transition and they're really intense. And I was like, my life was exploding around me and I was like, I will capture the pain. And it's pure distilled form.

And I didn't want to do that again because I wasn't in the same place. It would have been unnatural, you know, or like it would have been this like mining of a well of like, yeah, I think that I was actually really scared about this. But like, it was amazing to make something that I'm prouder of than anything I've made so far that like didn't feel depleting in that way or that like the good art. doesn't have to equal, like, ripping out your insides in front of the world, even though a lot of the art that I like seems to be of that variety. There's some ripping out of the insides in this movie, though. Oh, for sure. We did a little bit of ripping out of some insides.

No, I was like, I want a blood guy that are in the first scene. And it's like this is my, like, line in the sand of, like, if you are coming in, expecting kind of like a slow, sad, emo, you know, like, a dirge. Yeah, and then the other thing that was really scary was like, yeah, doing something that's like unself-consciously campy and yeah, like kind of like fast-paced with Stillman kind of dialogue and stonery and just like doing a lot of goofs and gags. I think you just risk like really embarrassing yourself, you know, like a class clown who like isn't funny. That was the fear and being in rooms where people like. are enjoying the humor of the movie or, like, feel that the perspective, like, that they, they can, like, go along with it and have a good time has been so gratifying because it, it,

yeah, it's just a huge part of who I am. And, um, and it did feel like, uh, yeah, like freeing to, to be myself in the movie in a way that, like, I hadn't before. Um, I, um, yeah, I, I, I, I remember really feeling on set, like, like, liberated from some, some, like, conception of myself post-TV glow of like, oh, I'm like, I'm the, like, sad teen person, you know, or like this fear of that as the, like, one-hit wonder or something of like everything is defined by what that movie's tone was because it was such a moment for me and I, you know, and in general, making this movie and being like, oh, I feel so free making something completely different and I'm looking at it and I'm realizing that like I can have a long career of doing things that are surprising and different. Like that was a really, yeah, it was like

five years of living in this reality of like maybe every, maybe everything will sort of be in the shadow of that. And immediately with this one, I was like, no, I'm going to have like a whole life and career of making things that are completely different. Forgive the simplicity of this, but how do you know you're doing it right when you're in a movie that doesn't really have a lot of comps? Like I couldn't, there's not a ton of movies you can specifically explicitly completely completely, pair this to. So when you're performing, you're obviously getting direction and you're having conversations, but I'm curious, like, how you know is this too can't be? Is it not campy enough? Is it funny enough? It's such a good question. I mean, for me over the years, I guess

partly it's been trusting my instinct on things. I feel like there have been times where I've showed up with quite a bold choice. I remember with great expectations many years ago, I hadn't really even done her voice out loud to myself, let alone to anybody else when I showed up on set the first day and spoke as her in front of the camera. And it only occurred to me after the fact, like after we were done shooting, that the director could have said, what the fuck you do that? Like, it's just weird.

Like, don't this, no, no, let's try something else. And I, and I guess I've had a few instances like that where, you know, where I was asked a question the other day on one of the things that we were doing. And one of the things that I said that I wouldn't have been prepared for as a drama student was the degree to. which you're so often on your own when you're trying to put all this stuff together and work all this stuff out because so much of the time, you know, if you're doing television or you're doing a few episodes or something or you're doing, you know, there's not necessarily that rehearsal period with directors or there's not necessarily, you know, you really kind of show up on the day and you're meant to go. And, you know, I've made some pretty bold choices over the years that

may or may not have worked, but they could have. of, you know, really not. And, but I felt like with Jane, I felt like from the moment we started talking about the project, that even though I was, you know, in my head was keen on doing Southern, a particular Southern and even, you know, the makeup choices with the Twiggy eyes and all the different aspects, I could trust that they would find a way to gently tell me that it wasn't working if it wasn't, or whether it was too much or whether, you know. And so I felt in that instance that we'd have a dialogue and real communication about it,

whereas there's other things that I've done where that level of trust or potential collaboration wasn't necessarily there and it really was, it felt like it was winging it a lot more, which I think is a lot of what happens these days. It's a lot of really talented directors out there who aren't necessarily good at communicating with actors. They may be good at the visuals and they may be good at the technical aspects, but they're not also so knowledgeable about what is needed from every single scene from the performers that they know even how to communicate that. And that's quite a rare talent in and of itself. And Jane certainly has that or I found that.

What about for you, Hannah? Yeah, you know an avatar where they take their braid and they connect it to the tree branch? And then they're able to kind of just like download the truth. Of course, they do AWAT. Yes, I know all about it. Yeah, thank you. So that's kind of what it's like for me. Me and Jane kind of just.

Am I the tree? Yeah, of course. Yes, obviously. On the tree from Avatar. Yes. literally it's just like that sort of like that's the connection it's the connection like the script is kind of that like connection point but also like we just had like a lot of deep and vulnerable conversations about the subject matter and for me my approach was just to be like what is the

reality here always like just tapping into that that's all I was concerned with I think that like scene to scene you can sort of tell as you're moving through the work on the day like what it's asking of you that sort of ending is is far different from some of the more comedic beats you know but even in this zoom call which like is this comedic point in the film like for chris that is dead dead fucking serious like she has just had this crazy experience she's coming like you know what I mean like for the comedy it has to be serious and so I'm always approaching the work of like what is real to this person, like no concern for the meta, sort of the, you know, the way that it's being perceived, just like staying in the reality of the thing. It's great to hear you say that. It's a funny scene in the movie. I assume that scene comes out of whatever water bottle tour you went on over the period after the first or second film.

I have been getting this question a lot. And one of the, I think like one of the early. inspirations for this idea in the movie in general of like zombie IP, right? Of like find the, like, find the like minority creator who, who like pairs up to the material that like lets you resurrect the otherwise unreserrectable franchise. Um, was after World, like, right after World's Fair. I was getting, I was getting like, like, what happens after you premiere your, like, tiny little art film at Sundance and you happen to be trans is like you just get like a slew of scripts written by cis people that like haven't been getting made about trans people and they're Oh, we get you in here.

But I also got submitted the Lepricon reboot. Fantastic. And I was so amused by this because it sounds like something clicked in my brain where I was like, I think they're sending this to me because they think that like trans will cancel out. They're like, oh, if we got a trans director, like no one's going to ding us for making a Lepricon movie. The Irish Little Person movie? Yeah. That is very funny. Maybe that got me started thinking about this whole sort of idea of like, yeah, like plugging up their holes of like potential like cancellations on the internet or whatever from franchises.

But yeah, no, it, I think it's just like I tried to let what needs, like whatever, when you're making a movie, you know, and I work on these movies before. I show it to anyone for like years often. It's like, you're just listening to your world, you know, and you're keeping your antenna up and you're letting in the things that are coming in and post TV glow or during TV glow. Like, yeah, there were a lot of Zoom meetings and being like the trans person in the room on those Zoom meetings and dealing with the social dynamics. And I'm you know, like I'm sensitive. I'm sensitive. I'm sensitive to power dynamics and to the thing that's unsaid in the room or on the Zoom. Yeah, that was like a big part of my life.

It still is a big part of my life. Like being trans in Hollywood and being in those spaces and being both like tokenized and also like having some like, yeah, like otherness that that is being like commodified or whatever and participating in that commodification and like seeing some of the worst men in the world do their thing. Yeah, it just like it had to be in the movie because like I was a transatlantician. person trying to make another movie in Hollywood and, you know, it's like, it's pretty on the nose about it, but it would have felt a lot less truthful, especially, you know, especially because

it's a movie that's like trying towards liberation or that's trying towards like some ideal of like free queer expression, right? This is what Hannah's character is like really questing towards in the movie is like, I want to make something that is like, as she says, beats Hollywood at its own game or is like, yeah, like free to express itself without the shackles of those men on those Zoom calls. Yeah. And so like, in a sense, I was trying to do that. And I was also very aware that, like, that's not possible entirely in this space because

of like all of the other forces at play. And so it just like for the movie to feel honest to me, it needed to be a part of it. It's interesting. It's like your confrontation with the minotaur or something. And you try to get past the minotaur. This is like a much more practical question, but I was curious about this because, Jane, you mentioned the geysers of blood. From a practical perspective, when you're working on a scene that has a lot of blood, you have to reset. What happens?

Like, do you have to just change wardrobe completely? Is the set being completely cleaned? I've never talked to anyone about this. And I feel like this. No, it's a great question. So what happens? It depends on the budget. Yeah.

So you know how in Avatar there's not. No, it's crazy for sure. I have, personally, I have sensory issues. I have like sensitivity to certain sounds and sensations on my body, one of which is any liquid with any sort of fabric that is, like, if there's water on me, let's say I'm out of the shower and I don't dry off properly and I put like a shirt on. Crawling, skin crawling, even if it's water. Okay, so I'm coming into the situation like, I'm going to die. I'm going to absolutely die. And I'm passing away in real time. And so basically it was crazy. I was like sticky head to toe with the like blood that was on our faces. And then there was the tube, the side sort of tubing, which pumps the blood into my mouth that I'm choking on. But it's also spilling out of my mouth and filling the beds. The bed is soaking up with blood like. completely soaked. And there's, we didn't have a backup bed, I don't think. So I was, and like that day, like they kept making these like really sloppy mistakes. It was like one of the only times that I got

so protective of you when I realized how much you were suffering. I was like, Hannah is suffering. I set that bed. You were literally mama bear. Okay. You were like, get away from my cub, literally. But, yeah, it was really crazy. It was really, yeah, we had. to time like the blood filling up for me and then Jillian the blood coming out of her mouth and spitting onto my face. There's like a guy under the bed with like a pump. He's just going, go. And it was pretty cool though.

The blood, they were mixing it up with a drill. Just like zee-z-z-z-z-like drill into a bucket of blood. Like drill or killer, yeah. Really crazy. So that sounds horrible, honestly. That doesn't sound fun at all. It's most horrible. I will say this, though.

I've never felt more beautiful. Then when I was covered in blood. Why? I just felt like it was, I don't know how to describe it. I just think that last split diopter shot with Jillian and I in blood is just like glorious and liberatory. And perhaps because on some level I'm realizing in real time that Jane expressed something to me about the gas station scene in the end where like they were like, you know, like being visibly trans and moving through the war. world, like sometimes in certain areas or in certain settings, like, you know, there's that cutaway to that old guy who's like, you know what I mean? It's like sometimes people look at me like I'm

covered in blood, but like it is this moment where the characters are just in love and they don't care. And that was so meaningful to me. And so I think when I got into the blood, I was feeling like I was tapping into that acceptance and love and beauty and like all of the things that I feel like Jane has like walked this hard-fought path to tap into and feel. And perhaps I made some association between what you shared with me and how it felt to be in the blood. You also look great. And also, honey, come on. So I assume the film was not shot in sequence, but one thing that I love about it is it does really feel like the two of you are creating a genuinely intimate relationship over time across the movie.

I was wondering how much time you spent together before the movie or did you talk on set? How do you create the illusion of connecting? We had a few days before we started shooting, rehearsing. We read a couple scenes over a couple days. We chatted from time to time. But you either got a connection or you don't. I mean, it's either there or it isn't. It feels like.

Do you try to withhold anything? when you're meeting someone early and you know what work you have to do? Not purposefully. I don't feel like I do. I think we just both really thought a lot about what we were going to do and made our individual decisions about what we were going to bring to the movie and like really did some deep and serious meditation on like how that progression should happen. And then in collaborating with Jane, kind of modulating that and steering it.

I just think like the end product of this thing is like everybody having the same idea of what the movie is and how that obviously and how that like, you know, hinges so much upon what happens between us. I think we just like. I think it was helpful that we started pretty much at the beginning though in the film. I think that, you know, whenever one can do that, it can only be helpful because so often you, you know, your first day is your death day or your divorce day or. That's been my experience. But also, one thing I didn't realize beforehand how much I would need to walk a fine line between, you know, I didn't want to be a predator. I didn't want to be creepy. I didn't want to make the first move.

I didn't want to be too maternal. You know, all those things that, and there were so many. scenes and opportunities to go one way or the other in that wouldn't have been beneficial to their journey together. And I suddenly realized that it was something that I really needed, it needed a lot of thought and care. And I hadn't anticipated that quite so much. I mean, I think I brought it up at some point, particularly in regards to our first kiss. And you know, not even necessarily even wanting to lean in, but allowing her to take her, you know, to really be in her power at that moment and be the seducer. And, you know, and so I think because

we were able to start at the very beginning of our relationship, there's a certain point worm kind of in the clear in a sense because we fall quite quickly after the you know after the first intimacy scenes after the scene where I put the we're smoking the joint and stuff it feels like from that point on it was safe to fall in love in a way or it's safe to show that that I'm equally smitten and stuff so it was you know it was but yeah and And yeah. Well, and for me, it was, I got to know both of you guys individually in the lead-up to it. And, but no, it wasn't until two or three days before production that we did the first rehearsals altogether. And seeing you both, like, read, like we just read through a bunch of times, those, those early scenes where you're meeting each other. And, and I, I remember just being like, oh, this is the movie. Because it's like, it's, it's the accent that Gillian is doing. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the like strangeness of the way that you're like playing each other a little bit at the beginning there. But it's just like, yeah, the disconnect. And yeah, it's a very specific energy

that you enter with that like I had a fuzzy picture of in my mind. But it was like only until I saw you both together that like what the chemistry actually was started to reveal itself. And then you're like, yeah, I also am glad we shot in the order we did because then it like you, you let one thing inspire the other. Like, I remember that first day when we were shooting the, like, you guys getting ready to eat dinner together. And I was talking about this the other night to Jillian, like the, I feel like something opened up for me with the movie when I saw her like patting the chicken. You know, she's like putting so much chicken on this platter. And then she kind of is giving this very elegant, caring pad. And Eric was like, we got to get a close up of that chicken

pad. And I was like, totally agree. But I was like, yeah, there's like a freak, there's a weird kid. energy to the film and the way they fall in love that I think is like very queer and and like there's something of like a quality in it too right it's like you're you're looking for these signals in each other that you're like game to just be like freaky you know and to do these like sort of um yeah like like like uh like these mating rituals of like eating chicken or like enjoying dipping sauce or being like go get scared in my room like just like do like matching each other's freak in this way that... Yeah, but I didn't realize until after I started talking about it for these interviews

is that those scenes couldn't have been played like for play scenes. The way that they worked was playing them straight up for what they... You know, it's an eating dinner scene. And even though there's a particular way that Jane wanted me to say, do you like dipping sauce and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and they had it in there. for me in terms of what worked was the juxtaposition between Billy's, um, uh, Billy's naivete and innocence, which I keep coming back to, you know, which leads to, you know, Mickey did that, you know, and the juxtaposition between that and Hannah's, uh,

anxiety and nervousness and, and, um, diatribe and, et cetera, that those two, The two rhythms of that and speed of their, of how they exist in the world, are the tension that actually makes their coming together more alive and more interesting in a way. And I think had I been playing too much, you know, that it was a seduction, I think that some of that might have been lost. And I don't think I even realized that until after the back. Totally. Hannah, did you feel like in the same way we're talking about maybe some of your experiences mapped,

being seduced and being asked to be in such intimate settings in your first big movie? Did you bring some of those same anxieties to any of this experience? You know what? I think I felt so much anxiety leading up. And then I think genuinely when we got to the island and Jane and I did our first rehearsal, I had so much relief. And after Jillian and I did the scene work together, it was like total relief. Like I just felt like, okay, this is like, I feel that the thing is working and it's here.

I think that that really just was my work to keep up that anxiety and to just maintain that frequency for sure. I think like the intimate scenes, the thing is that like just, I don't know, like I said, Jane and I did so much talking about what we had to portray there, but also the ways in which the thing that's being portrayed is true for us both. And it was through that that I felt genuinely like walking in confident to portray something that is incredibly familiar to me. So, yeah, I don't know that I was actually feeling any of that. I think it was kind of all a facade. Acting, baby. Well, the minute that Hannah walked out, you know, naked but for her underwear from the bathroom, there was such, she was completely spellbinding.

Like she came out with such confidence and was radiating a sexiness and a assuredness and it's like you couldn't take you couldn't take your eyes off her. You guys are recording? You got to see that. The cameras are recording? Send the video over this. It's like...

It's on it. No, but it's so true. I was completely bold over. I'm trying not to say anything. feeling dying myself here. It is like the buddy love and the nutty professor thing where you're like, oh, wow. It is like there's a transformational. Yeah.

Yeah. Who's more embarrassed me or you right now? It's all natural, man. It's cool. Acceptance, man. It's all good. Yeah. Millennial question for you.

I need to hear you talk about the counting crows needle drop. I think I need to hear the exegesis on. this. My second cousin was their guitar tech. Oh, wow. What a connection. Did you know that?

Have you heard that before? You're dropping this now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I went to see them when I was like 11 years old and went backstage and got their autograph on like a glossy, you know, like on a promotional photo.

Can you recreate Duritz's facial expression in that glossy? I'm going to pass it over to my actors for that one. Hannah get in the hair chair for those dreads. I love Big Count and Crows. Yeah, I mean, they're in rotation. I had a big breakup in 2024.

I was like finish. I was getting ready to like start really like making this movie. And I wrote the script for night swimming, another millennial banger. Maybe that's a Gen X banger. We share it. Yeah. We share it. I claim it too.

And I would, yeah, for whatever reason, like during this breakup, I reached for recovering the satellites the second Count of Crow's record, which I'd always liked, but never as much as August and everything after. And I was just listening to it. And I was in Spain at a festival. And I was just sitting at coffee shops in Spain, like, really angsty listening to that record. And it felt like really good in its way. And then, like, something about Long December just, like, got stuck in there where I was like, oh, my God, I think this might be a better choice. the night swimming and night swimming is like my favorite song so i was like that's crazy i think it was um it's just it is a perfect song uh but it's also yeah it's like a song about like this year has been

really long and really shitty and like maybe next year is going to be better this kind of like hard one triumphant resilient kind of like becoming uh that is what that scene is about and in many ways is what the movie is about, but without that song and that tone and those na-na-naz. You know, it's like, it's all about the contrast between seeing like these geysers of blood and heads flying into the air and that kind of like piano vibe. Yeah, and I, somebody put me in touch with Adam Duritz and we texted a little bit and he said, I've always wanted Long December to be part of a killer oneer. It's like, hell, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't think he's... He literally got one, though. No, he said that. I don't know if he's seen it yet, but I mean, no, I mean, I love the Counting Crows. I could go deep on the Count and Crows, besides, you want to talk about it, you let me know. I produced a documentary about them, so I know all that. Yeah, I did, yeah. I've seen it.

I've seen it. Yeah, yeah, complicated movie. Interesting. Amazing career, fascinating guy. I think he, like, can I say one last thing about the Count and Crows? Of course. It's a safe space. Like my band

when I was like 15 was bright eyes. Like I loved bright eyes. And I think there's like a lineage of like people that it was like embarrassing to like if you were a boy. I think that this was sort of the vibe for Counting Crows was like they got they got like post-Nirvana kind of like a lot of flack for not being like masculine

or being like whiny or being like, like too pretty boy or something. I think it has a lot to do with gender, you know? Or I think that like there's like an earnestness and like an emotional forthrightness in that music and in Bright as music that like is wonderful and I felt really embarrassed to like it during the years that I was growing up and liking it and yeah, deserving of some reclamation. Okay. Last couple things here.

I'm curious will you make any more horror movies now that you've made? made one and you're now part of the lineage of this history of film and you're in your first starring role will you make more? I'm curious. Because Scream Queen and Final Girl, these are these are also iconic delineations in movie and TV history. So I'm curious how you feel about them now, having made this. I had actually tried for a while, Jason Bloom. I'd met him a couple times and we'd tried to make a couple different things over the years. So I haven't been against it. Also, you know, obviously a good portion of the X-Balls was horror adjacent. And so I feel like it's in my bones, even though it's not something that I've been able to absorb as a viewer.

I've been offered stuff over the years, and sometimes, depending on what it is, sometimes it feels so dark. I just don't know if I can put myself in that place. And, but I'm not adverse to it. It's more of the right thing coming along. And it was important to me that this had, it's so much more than just that, and has so much depth and humor, obviously. And so this feels like a deaf thing. first in a sense if I was going to have a first, this would be the perfect first.

But so I'm not, I'm not adverse to it. Okay. What about you, Hannah? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm totally down. Line them up. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of genre agnostic. Like, I just like good shit no matter what it is. Makes sense. Okay. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last

great thing they have seen? you're not prepared for this No, no, I'm happy to talk about the last great thing I've seen Who wants to go first? Jane, you want to go first? Yeah, the other night I got it to hell

I got to L.A. I had a night off. I looked and saw what was playing at the Regal and they were playing End of Evangelion. Oh yeah. And so I got myself

an extra large icy and I planted down and that fucking movie. that fucking movie is so amazing. That's like one of the great films. And at the end of that movie, the last line is just disgusting. Somebody says,

disgusting. The movie ends. And that just like put me in the exact right mindset for this press tour week. Disgusting. Disgusting. I could go. I saw a film called Boucherah.

Tell me about it. It's an animated... Uh, sapphic, furry, trilingual, French Moroccan, very, like, small, intimate family drama. Dramity, perhaps. It's funny. It's an animation style I've never seen. It's really cool. There is this, like, yeah, the visual world is, like, so intricate and, like, vivid and thought out.

and the style of the voiceover is incredibly casual as if there's no script. And it was super moving and sweet and romantic and funny. And it was unlike anything I've ever seen. Where did you see it? Lemley? Lemley, in the theater. Okay, cool. Julian, what about you?

The very, very last film I saw was The Invite. Oh, yeah. What did you like about it? Olivia Wilde's latest film. And I thought it was fantastic. I find her such a confident filmmaker and the complexity of the relationships. And, you know, it's on quite a consistent pitch throughout. And yet you don't feel like you're participating in a scream fest.

It has a lot of undulations and all the characters are such, are so well played by all the actors in Ed Norton and Penelope Cruz are just so phenomenal and watchable. And I just thought it was fantastic. Another movie that kind of glides between tone pretty comfortably in the same way as your movie. Hey, this was really nice. Jane, Hannah, Gillian, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Thank you. Thanks to Jane, Hannah, and Jillian. Thanks to Adam. Thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on today's episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support next week. We're going to Oak Street all the way to the end of it. CR and Mallory Rubin will join me to discuss the new dinosaur thriller. We'll see you then.